Want to start? Stop thinking.

Treat an idea like a platform instead of an end point.

This was explained to me in a bar over a couple of Jamesons. I was talking about all the things I want to do with my life, and my brilliant brother was telling me what he’d learned over the last year of actually doing with his life.

“Stop over-thinking every idea. Just start.”

We’ve all heard lots of versions of this, but for me this came with a slightly different spin. He went on to say that for a decidedly bitter time in his life, when he’d come up with an idea that he thought was funny (he’s a comedy writer) he’d think about, massage it, and pore over every angle until he’d decided that it was garbage. Then he had absolutely no will to undertake such a shitty project.

“I’d pick a funny moment and marginalize and humiliate it in my head until I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t funny, then I’d move on to the next one.”

Talk about spiraling self doubt. You write something down, and just like an overly critical co-worker, you pick at every crevice until what’s left has been pasteurized, processed, and beaten into a mass of dark gray sludge. Then, after abandoning that decomposing mess you somehow find the drive to start another project? Yeah right. Right after I go to the gym and do a bunch of other hard stuff. Sounds absolutely exhausting.

Slowly, my brother started to realize that this was his pattern. So, he stopped over-thinking and just started doing. He’d write, or shoot some film, or (insert action here), until he had something to build on, and then he’d let it grow. It wasn’t until this unfiltered beginning that actual concepts were allowed to breathe and become their true selves. New, organic directions took shape, and the outcomes found themselves miles from, and often much better than, the original concept.

A lot of us have grown up with the notion that if you think about something long enough and hard enough the solution/idea will eventually come. And when it does, it’s going to be a banger!

Perhaps the reality is that letting intuition guide the concept organically is a much more efficient and effective strategy. You’re already a good designer/writer/whatever, just go do that and see what happens.

And yes, that’s exactly how I wrote this.