Doing vs. Thinking about Doing

“Focus on circumstances and you’ll be a consumer. Focus on capacity and you’ll be a creator.” — Kade Janes

By Minh Dang

Do you ever set your expectations for your work so high that you end up not taking any action out of fear of not meeting them? That's the mindset I have gotten myself into many times in my twenty years on this planet.

It usually goes like this: I have an idea, I think about doing it but the prospect of a lengthy process, mentally draining efforts, and high uncertainty associated with the activity overwhelm me. I end up not following through with the idea and resort to watching Netflix or calling my mom to complain about how many exams I have instead.

We tend to be our harshest critic, and a lot of the time we ourselves can't see the merit in our own work. As someone who loves creating content and voluntarily immersing myself in the creative world of the Internet, I am inspired heavily and abundantly on a daily basis. From a plethora of videos produced by the dynamic YouTube community to extremely well crafted tweets and Instagram posts, my mind is bursting with idea and hopes of what my content could be. But when it comes to sitting down and actually do the work – writing a blog post, sharing a photo, editing a video, etc. I hesitate. I second guess myself, thinking that X idea is not original or inventive enough. I tell myself that it would take too much time and no one would care about it. What culminates is a list of 10 drafts and 0 blogs posted.

And what's the point of deliberating that much? I believe I am doing myself a favor by consciously mapping my plan and only execute when it's the best idea or when I know I could carry a task out perfectly. That barely happens and stops me from growing and learning through experiencing a new process or even failure.

This tendency does not only apply in my virtual world however, it also seeps into real life where I'm stopping myself short of trying out things, learning new skills and meeting people.

Truth be told, I used to be very bad at Excel, very utterly shamefully bad at Excel. Not that I'm computer illiterate or dislike technology--I's simply consider Excel to be overly complex and suspect that I'd never master it. Year after year, I avoid Excel like a plaque while being well aware that if I step into a corporate office or any organization with my meager knowledge of the tool, I'd be kicked out sooner than I know.
But no worries, I have gone through a formal education and several online courses on business analysis in Excel (you can check my LinkedIn for proof--okay I’m actually not serious about the LinkedIn, but you know what I mean)

Same thing with photography: I realizedmy interest and a knack for visual imagery in early middle school. I am by no means a professional but I have a good eye for composition, colors and angles. On Instagram back in 2011, I was mesmerized by the majestic images of Japanese bamboo forest in Kyoto and breath-taking photo of the Alps mountains. For a short period of time, I strived to be like the Instagram travel photographers by posting my own rendering of wanderlust photos using the Instagram original filters! That was all fun and games, until I decidedthat I needed to venture into DSLR and learn real photography. As soon as I noticed how vast the knowledge body of manual DSLR could be, I got paralyzed, and my interest was replaced with the fear of failing and not getting it “right”.

It's ironic how a piqued interest + obsession over perfectionism = unproductivity

When we dwell too much on perfecting an experience, we can miss out on many learning opportunities.

We as humans learn best by doing. For me, most, if not all, memorable lessons were acquired through actual execution. Sitting in the classroom or on my bed reflecting on how much I want to learn something is drastically different from actually putting myself through the act of doing it. That lesson had prompted me to recently share my podcast, which I have quietly worked on for a while but haven’t found the courage to let it be known in my social circle.

With each “publish”, “submit” or “sent”, I notice that the work I have done is by no means perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. What does perfect mean anyway? It’s a highly subjective term, particularly when evaluating creative and unquantifiable work. As young people, we are only at the very beginning of our career and life journey. If we hold ourselves back from exploring the world and occasionally failing, it would only take longer to master the skills or knowledge that we care about. Instagram’s founder Kevin Systrom shared a “life hack” that I really like: If you don't want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing.

Doing life vs. thinking about it is the approach I want to take with my life from now on. Putting in the work, getting my hands dirty and trusting the process as opposed to feeling frustrated because an effort does not lead to immediate success. I’m starting off with learning French 15 minutes everyday, slowly achieving my goal of reading 20 books this year (currently on my 18th book) and writing more! Actually, I’m doing it right now by submitting my writing to The Wake, so if you are reading this, I have successfully achieved one goal.