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Overthinking is the mind killer.

That’s a Dune reference for the uninitiated, what an amazing movie, go see it…

After close to 30,000 sales of my 7 Figure Marketing Copy Guide (thank you!), several years of development, and making just about every mistake you can make I’m finally getting it ready to bring to print! More updates on this soon, but in this post I want to share some key insights about this whole creation process. Insights you can leverage when you’re facing your own “Mt. Everest” sized creation goals.

[Creation Insight #1] Overthinking is the worst kind of thinking.

I’m a chronic overthinker. I make plan after plan, mind map after mind map, list after list, all with the intent of ‘getting myself ready’, but regularly ignoring a simple truth that: at some point you just have to start!

While it doesn’t hurt to have a plan, over planning (thinking) often raises the stakes so high that you psych yourself out of even getting started! You create a monster on your desk that your brain simply looks at and says “how bout no.”.

Another insidious aspect of overplanning is you get the satisfaction of ‘doing something’ through the process of planning. That’s often what our brain is looking for more-so than doing the thing. It want’s to feel that dopamine rush of completion of a goal, it doesn’t care that the goal (the plan) isn’t worth the paper it’s written on (if you don’t follow it).

So what can you do?

Make a rough plan if you must, get the key bits down that you can reference to as you go. But set a time limit, and if your plan isn’t complete (it won’t be) JUST START creating something, ANYTHING, related to your project.

If it’s a book, write an introduction even if you’re not 100% sure what it’s about. If it’s a course, record a part of it that you’re very confident you can teach off the top of your head. If it’s a business plan, write an about us page… 

You may not use these bits you create early on, that’s not the point. The point is to start the momentum of creation. You can always go back and revise your plan, but if you don’t start you won’t start!

I’ve re-written probably 90% of the content in my book over time, but starting is what kept me going! I didn’t know exactly where I was going, which might drive you crazy, but it has the added benefit of also taking off a lot of the ‘big picture’ pressure which an overly rigid plan often creates.

Start before you’re ready, and you’ll find yourself much more ready than you thought.

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