Recently, Paul Jozefak wrote a post headlined “Get busy doing and stop reading“. It’s good advice, but then you have to read obviously to further educate yourself, or not? Quite the conundrum. And then you think, Gary Vaynerchuk‘s Crush it or Seth Godin‘s Linchpin are quite short, and they’ll motivate me enough to start shipping. So that has to be ok, right? And I need to read C.C. Chapman‘s Content Rules (with Ann Handley) to ship better stuff, obviously. And I need that new software because I’ll write better stuff with that software, yep.
I recently discovered Back to Work, a new podcast series with Merlin Mann (he of 43 folders fame) and Dan Benjamin, and am pretty hooked and episode #3 is something I can recommend to everybody. Two random things I remember: Sometimes you’re looking to blame your unhappiness on details, like email, or wrong software, your neighbor, not enough time but often the reason you’re unhappy lies within you breaking deals with yourself. You had vowed to write 15 minutes everyday, and you broke that vow. And instead of figuring out why that is you try to put the blame somewhere else.
Merlin also talks about the art of art. Knowing when to produce and when to research and be confident enough to be happy in either moment, knowing the other will follow in time, at the right time.
Unfortunately, this is all connected. You become more confident in yourself the more you ship. And you’ll be happier. That’s why it all starts with small steps.
To me the key is to allow yourself to be honest with yourself, change the things you can and accept the ones you can’t. But focus on the former…