During “Only one way to find out…” moments.
When you (1) aren’t sure if it’s wrong and (2) it’s unclear what should be done, it could be worth trying and failing anyway.
From “Articulating Design Decisions” by Tom Greever:
After a few seconds of agony, he yelled to me, “Well, do something! Even if it’s wrong!” This was actually a common phrase of my dad’s. The sentiment is that sometimes it’s not clear what we should do, but it’s almost always better to do something rather than nothing.
- Shaan Puri talks about something his dad taught him: movement first, direction after that. Janis Ozlin worked with Shaan on illustrations for his power writing course and says the thing that stuck out most was how Shaan gets moving quickly on things.
- Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush teach their Ship 30 for 30 students the importance of practicing writing in full loops. If you’re going to get moving quickly, shrink the loop to a size where you can complete it regularly. Feedback on published pieces allows writers to begin learning which things are working and which aren’t.
- David Perell suggests turning to audio to keep moving on an idea. The best way is to share an idea with multiple people in different conversations. You’ll get good reactions to the idea or a very high resolution image of boredom. And if you don’t have someone to talk to, you can use a tool like Otter to talk through your own ideas. This will prevent you from over-editing as you think through a piece.
Start doing something and your dad will yell at you if it’s the wrong thing. Nice, tight feedback loop.