The problem with doing something for the first time is that you’ve never done it before. You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know exactly how much effort will be required to succeed and you don’t know every single pre-requisite and support structure needed to prop up your New Thing.
When faced with this scenario you have two options: 1) study until you know every possible detail about your New Thing that can be known from the outside and then proceed 2) make an effort with a minimal amount of prior knowledge and learn as you go along.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. The great thing about spending a lot of time in preparation is that when you finally start working on your New Thing you should have a lot of confidence. Maybe too much confidence. The fact is that there’s only so much you can learn about your New Thing without jumping in and getting your hands dirty. Studying and planning can also lead you down a lot of unnecessary rabbit holes, as I mentioned here.
Jumping straight into your New Thing means a shorter, steeper learning curve. What you learn will be more relevant to your needs and more accurate for your situation than any general information you would have picked up while in research mode. The downside is that your first effort is very likely to fail, since you’re probably starting without having a good grasp of the necessary and sufficient conditions of success. This path is more likely to result in a bruised ego.
What if failure was OK? Yes, there are times when failure is not an option, but I’m guessing your New Thing isn’t a matter of life or death. What if initial failure was the fastest path to success? What if you started your New Thing accepting failure as a natural part of the learning process? How would that change your outlook? Would you be more open-minded, more curious, more relaxed? Would you be more likely to succeed in the long run?
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