A few weeks ago I noticed something about the most successful people around me. They don't really have an "planning/ prepaing" phase. They just decide and start.
I used to sit on ideas for weeks. I'd tell myself I needed more research, a clearer plan, the right setup. What I was actually doing was buying time so I wouldn't have to find out whether the idea was any good. The fix wasn't motivation. It was understanding two things I had completely wrong.
The first is that nothing you do this week is the final version. Whatever you ship on day one is just a test. It tells you what people actually care about, what to cut, what to lean into. The video that flops teaches you more than the one you never posted. A first newsletter with 12 readers tells you exactly what 12 people responded to. None of that information exists until you actually publish, and no amount of planning is going to give it to you.
The second is that the cost of waiting compounds in a way nobody really talks about. Every week you don't start, you're handing the work to a future version of yourself who is going to be just as nervous as you are right now. Doing it badly today is almost always cheaper than doing it properly in a month (that never actually arrives lol).
So my rule now is small and slightly stupid. If I have an idea that I'm still excited about 24 hours later, I commit to the ugliest possible version of it being live within 48 hours. Not perfect. Not even good. Just something. Sometimes that means a video without fancy editing, sometimes it's a newsletter without a clear structure. The point is to get something into the world so I can stop thinking about it and start reacting to it.
If you've been sitting on something then close this email, open whatever tool you need, and do the worst version of it before you go to bed tonight. Tomorrow you can decide whether it's worth doing properly. Just don't stay the person who has the ideas. Be the person who has the receipts.
💡 My Recommendation of the week
A short essay from Paul Graham “Do things that don’t scale”
Have a great week,
Chris