Gustav The habit, in one sentence: release the work while it still scares you a little, then improve it with real feedback instead of guesses.
Why it matters
Almost nothing you build is as good in private as it becomes in public. In your head, the product has a hundred missing features and three embarrassing flaws. In the customer's hands, it turns out they only cared about one thing, and it wasn't on your list. Every week you hold the work back to perfect it is a week you spend polishing guesses.
Waiting feels responsible. It usually isn't. "Not ready yet" is the most comfortable place to hide, because nothing can be judged, rejected or proven wrong while it sits on your hard drive. But a business is a feedback machine, and a feedback machine that never ships has nothing to learn from.
What it looked like for me
When I built the live data portal for the SOSU schools, the instinct was to keep refining it until every edge case was handled and every screen was beautiful. I didn't. I got a working version in front of the client early, ugly bits and all. Within a day I had feedback I never would have predicted on my own, and it pointed straight at what actually mattered to them. The polishing came after, aimed at the right things.
Same story with my own company site and the tools I release. The versions that taught me the most were never the "finished" ones. They were the ones I pushed out a week before I felt comfortable, then fixed in daylight.
How to build the habit
Pick a deadline that is slightly too soon. Not reckless, just soon enough that you have to cut the nice-to-haves and ship the core. Define "done enough" before you start, so perfectionism can't move the goalposts mid-way.
Then make shipping small and frequent rather than big and rare. A small thing released every week builds the muscle; one giant launch a year builds dread. Show a rough version to one real person before you show it to everyone, their reaction is worth more than another night of solo tinkering.
The pitfall to avoid
"Ship before you're ready" is not "ship junk." The point isn't to lower your standards, it's to move where the standard gets applied, from your imagination to the real world. Ship something small, honest and functional, then raise the quality fast based on what you learn. Shipping broken work carelessly teaches people not to trust you; shipping unfinished-but-solid work early teaches you what to build next. Know the difference, and you get the speed without the damage.