𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐨 𝐗 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧

‘I’ll start that project when..’

‘I’ll call him as soon as..’

‘I’ll organize that event if I’m able to..’

I’ve been in this loophole so many times, I’m even ashamed to admit.

The things that are the easiest for me are coming up with ideas, concepts and new material. I can switch on creative mode and waterfall new things.

Writing everything down, one by one. The dopamine and excitement already hits me. But when it’s time to implement… Oh boy, that’s difficult.

Analysis by paralysis. It mostly remains on paper. No action step(s) afterwards.

And often, no action is there from me wanting to do the ‘perfect action’…

It’s such a heavy expectation, it doesn’t come.

Embrace the mess

But I’ve come to realize that messy action is better than no action.

Perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale made up in our own minds.

It’s a construct we often create as an excuse to really put ourselves out there. It’s protection against failure. So we don’t have to do the thing.

I am still in the learning process to accept messy as good enough and move forward from that place.

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

-Leanord Cohen

The Tesla effect

It was November 2019, and Elon Musk unveils the long-awaited Cybertruck at this big Tesla event.

A lot of people had high expectations of this futuristic piece of automotive engineering.

One of the promised features of the Cybertruck was the windows of armored glass, and that the panels were ‘bulletproof for a 9 mm round’.

During the Cybertruck event, Elon smashed the glass with a sledgehammer and then threw a big steel ball into it. It was completely smashed to pieces.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what Elon had hoped to show the world… One would expect this to negatively influence the sales of the Cybertruck.

But despite this little prototype error, Tesla received 200 000 Cybertruck pre-orders over the next few days after the event.

And total pre-orders to this day are more than 1.25 million trucks.

Those are really impressive numbers.

The imperfection in that situation was human, different and it sure as hell made the launch of the Cybertruck go extra viral.

As so many times in life, there’s a great paradox here…

The paradox of messiness

Imagine: you’re looking to produce social media content to promote your business, wanting to write that book or finally wanting to reach out to that high-level C-suite leader.

You’re motivated to start, but something quickly stops you in your tracks: the need to do it perfectly. ‘I can’t f*ck this up and make mistakes, right?’.

I believe there’s a paradox here:

Imperfect action and results get us going, take us in movement and get the ball rolling. Often, it even gets a better reception than a polished up and perfect end product.

So don’t overthink it, and let’s get messy!

Just start.

What’s one messy action / win you’ve had today?