It’s not the content of its opinion, it’s the presence of it

You just need to get in the game.

Whatever you’re launching, keep it simpler than you think you need to. And just get it out there. You’re not putting your whole career on this singular moment.

Stop listening to the voice of resistance saying your work has to be perfect or popular or even great. That critical voice has no purpose except delay. It’s the most harmful enemy of the creative process.

Matter of fact, it doesn’t matter what that voice says to you.

It’s not the content of its opinion, it’s the presence of it.

That’s the main reason history is littered with corpses of potentially world changing ideas that died. The voice doesn’t want you to know that good enough is good enough, because the sucker is done. It’s real. It exists. Even if it’s still in beta or minimum viable product, whatever you call it, now you’re in the game.

And in a world where most people don’t finish things, that’s the most valuable currency. Executional choice in the face of inner criticism counts as a success regardless of outcome.

Dilbert recently made a comment about this principle:

Experts only know about old ideas, if they knew about future ones, they would be entrepreneurs, not experts. This is what’s possible when you choose to step out onto the field. Once you decide to get into the game, failure ceases to be a possible result. There is no losing, since the only goal at that point is to play.

Remember, creativity is a long term relationship. Every day that you sit down to work on your project, you already won. Nobody can take that away from you. Strangers can trash your work, the media can criticize your strategy, the competition can itemize your faults, and the trolls can call you all kinds of shameful things on the internet.

But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re in the game. Tennyson’s poem also comes to mind. He wrote that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

Most people are familiar with that line, but the stanza right before his last is even more powerful, in my opinion:

What may count itself as blest, the heart that never plighted troth, but stagnates in the weeds of sloth, or any want begotten rest.

How many people have you met that fit such a description? Those whose hearts never plighted troth and stagnated in the weeds of sloth?

It’s simply tragic. You sympathize with their struggle and wish them well.

But at the same time, you also keep your distance, because you don’t want to get any of their stank on you. It can stick like a wet tongue on a frozen lamp post.

Anyway, as if my point hadn’t already been beaten into the ground, you just need to get in the game. Whatever it takes to make that happen is a worthwhile investment if your time, money and effort.

Everything that happens after that is a bonus.

What if your inner critic was just a distilled version of everyone else’s negative attitudes?