I’m going to share something. I’m the worst perfectionist in the history of the universe. My natural state is to do nothing until I’ve planned ten times over, and then replanned twenty times over. I’m obsessed with a vision in which I say “go” where everything falls into place with fluid synchronicity. Everything lines up flawlessly and I bathe in the satisfaction of the idea of an infallible execution of my intelligently designed plan of perfection. Here’s a secret. This has been the number one killer of success in my entire life, ever. 

Not everyone is a perfectionist to the maddening degree I am, but the lessons I’ve learned in overcoming my own perfection demons can be invaluable to anyone who struggles to just… do. In a sentence: You can effectively learn anything by deciding you are going to do that thing and just doing it until you are a master at it. Preparatory education is almost never needed.

Step 1: Starting

The next time a project pops into your mind, I want you to take the first step to making it happen within one hour.

To illustrate, we’re going to say that mythical Jimmy wants to start a podcast.

1) Jimmy one day thinks he wants to start a podcast.

2) Jimmy immediatelygoes to Google and figures out the easiest way to start a podcast in five minutes.Jimmy now knows more about podcasts than 95% of humans.

3) Jimmy messages interesting people and gets three guests lined up.He sets times up, and in a few hours, Jimmy has a plan for a podcast.

4) Jimmy starts recording with an earphone mic, starts uploading his stuff to SoundCloud and shares it to his blog, behind improving, and Jimmy is now in the process of getting a world-class podcast education.

Jimmy learned more about podcasts in the few weeks it took him to schedule, record, and edit all his interviews than he ever, ever would have reading “How to Start a Podcast” articles on Google. Will you use those articles? Yes.

Step 2: Continuing 

Let’s go back to the example with Jimmy.

Jimmy now has a podcast and he is interviewing people every week.

But Jimmy doesn’t have any listeners.

Well, to solve the problem, Jimmy needs to learn how to promote his podcast. This is where the magic happens. Jimmy already has something to promote because he spent the last several weeks and months just building a digital trail of podcasts, and now he is bestowed with confidence to get it done. Jimmy will again learn by doing, and what’s awesome is that it will be infinitely easier than if he had spent weeks stressing about marketing and never actually doing anything.

Lesson: Information absorption can be valuable, but creation breeds innovation. Action cures fear. Create whatever it is you want however you want and learn as you go. You will learn more effectively and you won’t want to die as you read dozens of articles before finally doing what you want.

Jimmy also knew nothing about how to make podcasts flow. He knew he should have conversations with people about things, but he was clueless when it came to making things smooth as silk.

So what did Jimmy do? He just used his guests as science experiments.

He researched podcast tips, but he didn’t drown in the scary addiction of knowledge overdose. Instead, Jimmy began testing different strategies on his guests, and as time passed, Jimmy’s flow improved tenfold. Because Jimmy had already taken action and done what he wanted, he had an incredible educational tool he could use to learn.

Jimmy was embarrassed at first because he had to release many low quality podcasts to get to the top, but this is where Jimmy really had an opportunity to personally develop beyond just podcasts.

In order for you to become spectacular, you must be willing to start at the bottom of the spectrum. 

Pride can be an evil, snarly monster that prevents us from doing anything. We get caught in our own heads about how much we won’t produce a low-quality product because we aim for excellence always. We don’t create things because they don’t meet our arrogant standards of quality and since we know we aren’t yet capable of meeting our standards, we stay in a stasis of nothingness where we never create anything. Our pride and our fear of failure are what prevent us from driving our mission forward.

I encourage you to engage in real introspection over the course of the next several days and try to find what part of you isn’t okay with the idea of releasing something low quality for the sake of learning.

My best advice? Stop worrying. Just produce content like a wild animal. I promise it will be okay. I promise that if you create low-quality content, you are only catalyzing your way to high-quality content. The line between good and great is so small, and you’re never going to get to that line if you don’t even try to produce good.

Preparation is important, but if it ever prevents you from an educational experience, it should be abandoned.