Kyle lives two doors over. He’s thirteen and, in my eyes, cooler than Miles Davis. I’m seven years old. Every time I’m out playing with the other kids my age, I peek over to see if Kyle is jumping on his trampoline. When his friends aren’t over, Kyle is nice enough to let me bounce with him.
I wish I could flip and twist like Kyle. But I refuse his first offer to teach me. And his second. Seeming inferior isn’t an option when I want so desperately to win his approval. The reward of trampolining like a master takes a back seat to the fear of looking silly in the process.
Finally I swallow my pride and oblige. Not sure how or why, but I’m glad I did. Turns out I was a natural. That next summer I was able to impress a score of “teenagers” at the town pool with my tricks on the diving board. And a decade later I was awarded a Division I scholarship for diving.
Creative thinking is overrated. You’ve got a library of great ideas. So does everyone else. Cool, fun, helpful ideas that absolutely should happen. Unfortunately most of those ideas won’t even sniff reality. To me, that’s a shame.
Anyone can think or dream. But in this world there are few doers. I know you know this. Doers don’t have anything special in their DNA that makes them do. They’re not smarter, better-funded or more well-connected. They have to deal with all the same crap that the mere thinkers or dreamers do. The only thing that makes a doer different is the fact that they’re willing to endure the suckiness.
Take this blog, for example. We post every Tuesday morning without fail. The nature of committing to a new idea each week means sometimes we’re not going to knock it out of the park. Some of our posts fall flat to some of our readers. You could argue that sometimes we suck.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the past I’ve been on teams that had ideas similar to The Sea Log in that they were meant to share valuable, original content with anyone willing to consume it. The ideas we’re great, but even today they’re unfortunately still just ideas. Nothing has come of them. And the biggest reason why is because these teams are terrified of doing something that isn’t perfect all the time.
Two problems with that. First, ideas are subjective in nature. That means they can never be perfect to begin with. Second, the only way to get closer to perfect is to do it. And each day you decide not to ship the goods is like waiting another second at the starting line of a marathon.
Something special happens when you commit yourself to doing. You get closer to perfect. I’m even a little embarrassed by some of the stuff I wrote JUST FIVE MONTHS AGO!
It’s like having children; you can’t ever know until you do.
Just like how you have to run a couple miles before you hit your stride.
And take a few smacks before you earn a diving scholarship.
That’s how it works.
The only way to get to the end is to start from the beginning.
Photo credit: onlinedarkzone
