I know the phrase might be a bit trite, but has been on mind consistently for the past few months, maybe even years.
I’ve always felt jealous of people who say that they have to share something they know, they’re holding the information that can help other people. Also of people who can learn in public, sharing their progress online. The same with people that stream or record videos of themselves, and can be both entertaining, engaging while sharing knowledge and learning for themselves.
This is something I think about very much since reading Sivers’ blog post. For the longest time in my life, I’ve felt this way.
In the most recent months, I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot because I’ve been struggling and forcing myself to write down my ideas, not only for sharing but also for future reference and introspection.
Most of the things I share on my day to day seem very obvious to me, so I feel that I should not share them. It has even gone as far as not writing thoughts down because I don’t seem to deserve writing them down. Or I am not sharing things in meetings, due to this same feeling (and fear).
Forever I’ve wanted to share what I know, and have a blog that I can reference later on and think about how I’ve progressed. But it’s hard for me to sit down and write. There might be more than thinking that my ideas are apparent; there’s also fear of being critiqued. Sharing publicly is a big thing for me.
I feel this is related to the phrase in the title. We always think of ways that we can move what we want to do and think that we’ll do it one day versus starting today and making ourselves accountable for it effectively, making today’s day one of our journey.
While my career’s day one has since long passed, I think that recording my learnings is definitely on a “one-day” sort of mood. I want to change that in 2020.
As part of my 2020, I plan on recording more of the things I learn throughout the year, without too much thought if it’s obvious or not. Without making myself feel fear about publishing it, feeling compassion about making mistakes, not trying to push perfect content out. Perhaps I’m not learning the topic I’m writing about, but I’m learning the ropes of writing and sharing, I’m new at it.
Perfect is the enemy of good
This has also been one of the traps I fall into, and I may want to write the perfect blog post or the perfect newsletter. And there’s a road to take when it comes to starting writing things down. While I’ll never write anything perfect, there’s a progression to be made in terms of writing my thoughts down and being more succinct and, in general, being better at sharing and writing down ideas.
The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. —Vince Lombardi
I want to record the progress of my career and be able to learn in public. Success doesn’t happen overnight. And we have to put in the work.