On Beginning

I have a confession to make:

I’ve been putting off writing this newsletter for a month.

I’ve been busy building an audience on Threads and making new connections with like-minded people.

I was waiting get to 1000 followers.

I’ve been decluttering my room, my life, and trying to get more organized.

I’m busy trying to wake up earlier at 5am.

I needed to lose more weight.

You see where this is going?

All of that stuff was true.

And they’re also excuses.

Don’t let improvement get in the way of improvement.

The Excuse Factory

The mind is prolific at creating excuses. You might even have valid reasons why you haven’t started.

As a beginner, it’s even easier, paralyzing you in a state of inaction.

It’s a nasty loop. You think you’re not ready, so you need more information. Then you start overthinking. So you put it off, because you’re feel you’re not ready. Until you give up.

But all of these excuses are to cover up the true reason you haven’t started:

You want it to be good.

And you’re going to be caught in this loop forever unless you understand one thing:

It won’t.

Don’t even bother trying.

I get it, you want to be the prodigy child who burst out the gates in full swing, the “chosen” one who started off stronger and better than everyone else.

The sad reality is even the prodigy started from 0.

Everyone does.

Get the Shit Out

As a beginner, what you’re going to put out will be shit, and you need to throw it at the wall as fast as you can.

Ever seen the Voice?

All the judges are celebrity singers. Experts in their fields. People qualified to judge.

If you’re a beginner, you have no meaningful pool of data to effectively judge whether something is good or bad. Your ability to judge quality is determined by your current skill level. It’s the reason why I’ll put out this newsletter thinking it’s decent, then 3 months later realize it was shit(because it is).

There’s no point in thinking too hard about making it good, because you won’t even know if it’s good.

Only one solution exists for this madness.

Ready, set…

Just fucking start.

You spend so much time thinking upfront that you paralyze yourself from taking action, when action was the first thing you should’ve done.

You’ve never done it before so you have 0 data. Simply doing it will lead to progress.

And there’s hope.

The bar is so low that all you have to do is walk right over it. You just haven’t taken a single step.

Take the pressure off yourself. It doesn’t serve you.

You’re holding yourself to an unfair standard.

You want to make something good, but it’s just gonna get in the way and stop you from making something. I’ll say it again:

Just. Fucking. Start. (Please)

You wouldn’t make your kid read about kinesiology before letting them learn to walk.

Showing up is Winning

In training for my first marathon, I made the mistake of getting caught up with my goal time of 4:45. Up until the very last day I was thinking about it.

It wasn’t until I got to mile 20, when I hit the wall, that all conceptions of a goal went out the window.

At that point, all that mattered was to finish.

Hal Higdon, a big name in the runner world, advises against setting a specific goal time for your first marathon. Just finish it.

Let completion in itself be the accomplishment.

Gather data, so you know what to do for the next one, and the next one. (For the record, I ended up running a 4:44:42).

On Courage

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

This stuff takes courage.

You want it to be good because you fear what people will think if it’s not.

But you don’t have to yield to fear.

For there is no courage without fear.

Take the step. The great leap.

For one small step can be a giant leap.