The Do principle

In theory, this principle is easy. Just do something. Want to become a writer? Start writing. Want to be a musician? Start making music.

In practice, this is obviously the hardest thing. Doing something takes willpower, motivation, time, and most of all: a way to combat the never-ending self-doubt.

After years of struggling with this, I ended on this simple rule.

When doubts creep in, stop them. Just do the first thing that popped into your head.

Learning starts by doing something. So if you can do more of it, and do it faster, that will always be a good thing. Even if your choice turns out to be a terrible idea. Even that is better, because now you learned what not to do. You made a mistake before you could even make mistakes, which will teach you a lot.

In the game industry they call this: “fail faster”.

Most games will need hundreds of iterations before they are good and balanced. Trying to “think your way” through problems, or “prevent them from appearing” before you start work on the project, is futile. It just means you wasted time on one iteration, while another already did twenty.

After reading this guide, I highly recommend reading my guide on Productivity. It explains habits and techniques to do more with less effort. It overlaps with this guide in some places. Some highlights to remember here:

• Split your tasks into sure and unsure. Keep a list of tasks you need to do anyway. Whenever you’re stuck creatively, or in doubt, just start doing tasks from the “sure” list.
• Go to work immediately after waking up (or feeling a spark of motivation). Don’t give yourself time for excuses or interruptions.

People will complain

Yes, people will tell you this is stupid. That you’re making the wrong choices and not thinking enough about them. I heard it all a thousand times over.

• “Why did you make this game? You can’t sell it. It doesn’t work.”
• “To make something. To keep doing and trying.”
• “But why?”
• “Because it’s better than not doing anything.”
• “But … but … " <blank stare>

Don’t allow this to muddle your mind. On the path to self-improvement and learning, doing is always better than not doing. Doubts are your biggest enemy.

So yes, do dumb stuff. Write one chapter for a novel, then abandon it the next day. Spend a weekend learning how to program, but you accidentally picked a really tough language that is basically never used. Visit a garden center, acquire tips and tricks about gardening, then realize you don’t actually like gardening.

Doing beats not doing. Even if it ends up being a mistake after the fact.

People will say that quality is more important than quantity. It is! But there’s one important relationship they forget …

Quantity breeds quality

Again, studies show this. One group was given one chance at a task and told to make the “perfect vase”. The other group were told to just “make a lot of vases, and we’ll grade the best one at the end”. You guessed it: second group outperformed the first by a wide margin, and had more fun in the process.

How to apply?

This is, again, simple in theory and harder in practice.

Look at the skill you want to learn. Pick any part of it and try to do that.

It might take some time to break the skill down into parts and find one you can execute. (This might depend on money or resources.) But in the end, it’s a skill. So it’s something that can be done, which means there are parts you can do.

While doing the skill, you will automatically learn the facts and knowledge associated with it. As such, “studying” or “reading facts” isn’t really doing in my eyes. It will teach you something, but it will be very inefficient.

Example: game dev

A year or two ago, I created a few “One Week Games”. That’s—unsurprisingly—a full game made in one week.

Why? Because I was static. I couldn’t choose my next project. I didn’t even know if I wanted it to be a game. So I had lost a few days just sitting around and weighing all my options, never reaching any conclusion.

So I said: screw that, let’s just do something. The first idea that popped into my head was that term: “One Week Games”. A game in a week. No longer, no shorter. Fully finished.

I did that. A few weeks in a row, I just did that. No plan, just do it.

Most of the games turned out pretty great, actually. Good enough to be bought by a gaming website.

I was surprised when I got that message. I never expected anything from these games. They were there to keep me doing stuff while I struggled. Again, people told me it was stupid. You couldn’t make a game in a week. And releasing it for free? Bah!

Maybe it was stupid. Had the cards been dealt differently, these games would never have been noticed by anyone. But even then, they taught me a lot and gave me new ideas for new projects. Ones that I was more excited about and could execute better.

Example: writing

Brandon Sanderson is a (fantasy) writer who is infamous for his writing pace. He just churns out books left and right.

Many people who hear about this will assume the quality is terrible. How can you write that fast? Surely you make mistakes, stories are uninspired, it’s just for cash.

The opposite is true. I read (and write) a lot and think he is an exceptional writer. He gets a lot of credit, and that might not even be enough.

Quantity breeds quality. He said it himself:

If you write a lot, all the basics of storytelling will become easier for you. You stop making mistakes with the important stuff, allowing you to focus on the details and the challenging parts of writing.

With each book he writes, he seems to get better. Issues with plot, pacing, or character from previous books are now mitigated. Because he wrote that previous book and got the feedback on it.

I try to apply the same thing with my writing. My first book took ages to complete—which is true for 99% of authors. I spend almost a year writing on and off, often doing nothing and just doubting myself, at other times writing only a paragraph.

After that, I learned these principles and flipped the switch. I try to hit 5,000 words a day. That’s a lot, yes. Many of those words will be garbage.

But think about it. Within two weeks, you actually have a finished novel. A finished product which you can refine and rewrite as much as you want.

What if you only wrote 500 words a day? Or only when you were certain of yourself? You’d take a year to write that book, if it even finishes. Yes, that first draft will likely contain fewer errors and sharper prose. In the meanwhile, the other writer has already done five revisions on that novel of theirs and have published it.

Example: Ed Sheeran

I heard this idea first from an Ed Sheeran interview at some late night talk show. But by now I’ve heard countless professionals mention a similar thing.

First, all the bad stuff need to come out. Drain the flow of terrible ideas. After that, the good ideas will come.

Ed Sheeran supports this by stating just how many songs he wrote before he became famous. And how terrible they all were. But it was still necessary on the path to becoming an international superstar. Everyone starts with their flow of stupid and naïve ideas—and they block the drain, stopping any of the good ideas behind it.

Just do a lot and you will get the bad stuff out of your system.

This is another reason why doubt or spending too long considering what to do is useless. Even if you thought about your next learning experience for months, you’ll still pick the wrong things at first. Because you can’t get out the bad ideas just by … waiting.

In that same interview, Ed Sheeran is also asked about his singing “talent”. He responds by playing a recording of him singing when he was younger. It’s bad. He goes on to say that it’s all practice and hard work. Most people start out really bad at what they do.

But keep doing it, get the stupid thoughts out of your system, and you might become a superstar.

Last example: self-publishing

At my first year of university, I made a picture book for my little sister. In the Netherlands, we have this tradition to make fun “surprises” or “gifts” for each other at Christmas, or St. Nicholas before it. I decided to draw a tiny picture book, to learn that skill.

So I did. But that’s not even the important part.

A few years later, I didn’t know what to do. I was static again. A thought popped into my head: “hey, can’t I self-publish that picture book?”

A naïve thought. Self-publishing is a complex process about which I knew nothing. But it was the first though I had, and I was static, so I did it.

The book sold 30+ copies. It started my career in self-publishing. It allowed me to make my first huge mistakes on a relatively risk-free project.

I wrote an article about the platform I used, on my (Dutch) writing blog. It has been visited many times each day ever since. It eve prompts curious comments from readers about self-publishing once in a while.

Hopefully the message is clear. Doing something naïve, stupid, challenging and making major mistakes is better than not doing much at all.