Forget Perfection…Just Start Already

When I started writing a couple of years ago, I knew nothing about developing websites or how to share my writing through social media. But I started anyway because I realized if I waited to be an expert on all things writing, I’d never make a single post.

My main goal at the time was to write more. That’s it. Having a platform like my own website gave me an outlet, and a kind of accountability, that I wouldn’t have if I just wrote in a personal journal.

I learned how to develop my own website and how to gain followers using social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Medium. As I wrote more, I also started to find my niche as far as writing style and topics. This was something I really couldn’t figure out until I actually went through the process of writing over many weeks and months.

If there’s one thing that sabotages our goals and aspirations, it’s our tendency to overthink and believe we have to wait until we reach some undetermined level of knowledge or expertise before we can even start. As a result, we discourage ourselves from ever beginning.

It’s a shame because we learn best through action and experience, not from thinking and planning. Envisioning what we want is important but until we act upon it, it’s just that…a vision.

We learn, too, from putting ourselves out there. An audience in the shadows of social media or in the form of a follower we’ve never met is still an audience. And a natural occurrence of interacting with this audience is raising our game. We learn, improve, and accomplish a lot more with them. Ultimately we want to put forth the best content possible when we know someone is going to read it.

Overthinking leads to inaction. We literally talk ourselves out of trying something new because we focus on all the things that could go wrong, or what other people will think.

Those hurdles are mostly in our minds, so don’t exert unnecessary effort trying to jump over them. Instead, never set them up in the first place.

Realize that this mindset applies to just about anything; fitness and weight loss, saving and investing, learning a new skill, or taking on a new hobby. Don’t overthink the specifics. There will be plenty of time to focus on the details later. But for now, just get started.

Rick