The 4 Stages of Good Work

Everything has a laid down process, even magic.

Every product, service, manifesto, movement or work was created to address a problem. For most people, their life’s work is defined by trying to solve one single thing that makes them unhappy. For this reason, they create in order to address it.

In Genesis 1:2, even God had to brood over the chaos. He wasn’t exactly happy about how it all looked.

So stage 1 is usually the brooding stage: identifying that there’s a problem.

Unfortunately, some people never stop brooding. We’d rather complain, than act. We’d rather point out the wrongs than start doing what is right.

If taking action didn’t matter (stage 2), then God would have never said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3).

Vision is often birthed during the brooding stage, but it only comes to those who have action in mind.

Action could be anything from doing research, gathering resources, to creating a minimum viable product or service to test the market.

The next stage is what most people don’t give attention to because of how boring or disappointing it can be. It’s performance measurement.

Is the work you’re doing giving you the results you want? How well did the product or service perform? What do you need to change or modify or remove or add? What does your data tell you?

According to data, the light that was created was performing at optimum condition and was doing what God wanted it to do, thus He said, “it was good” (Genesis 1:4).

However, in order for feature #1 of the creation project to be complete, it needed to be separated from darkness (Genesis 1:4b).

When all modifications have been implemented, then comes the launch (stage 4). This doesn’t have to be the full package. It could be the launch of a specific feature which has been tried and tested. After all, day and night was only one feature in the whole creation project.

It all depends on how robust the work you do is. The launch stage comes with its own responsibilities such as branding, copy, packaging, etc. The name you call it is what everyone else will call it (Genesis 1:5).

It’s functionality and acceptance is determined by how well you did stages 1 to 3. So if what you’re doing isn’t yielding the “fruits” you expected, take a step back and review so you too can say, “it was good”.