Overcoming The “Do-er’s” Block

I’ve been trying to write an introduction to my new book all day.

But instead I went to reddit, my phone, and anything else that would help me not write the intro.

I couldn’t. Every time I tried I got a little nauseous and some voice in my head said, “This sucks, you don’t even know what you wrote a book about.”

So I didn’t. I was trying to do it all day yesterday too.

Stupid.

Finally I got so pissed off that I just wrote a terrible introduction.

When I stopped typing, I looked up and saw one terrible paragraph and a pretty good introduction. It barely even needs any editing.

I know the only way to get anything done is to lower the bar but sometimes I forget. I want people to love the book. I want it to be good.

It’s the same story with everything else I avoid.

I know I can’t do it perfectly, so I don’t do it.

But then the pressure builds enough and I just do it terribly and it ends up not actually being that terrible.

Or it is terrible and I trash it and redo it.

Taking action gives you a whole bunch of information you don’t get from thinking about things in the abstract.

Not to mention courage, inspiration, and momentum.

Action forgets unreasonable expectations, the judgments of others, and imagined permanence.

It’s stupid simple.

Just do the thing.

Do it poorly.

And keep doing it poorly.

Then, one day you’ll look up and notice you’re not doing it that poorly.

In fact, it’s pretty damn good.