It’s far too easy to let the worry that you’ll not do it right stop you from doing it at all. As someone who’s spent most of his life avoiding embarrassment at the cost of inaction, I feel rather certain I know what I’m talking about.

Doing is the only way you’ll learn anything. Ten thousand books about how to speak Italian will not stop your first spoken words and sentences from being sputtering conveluted unrecognizable messes. Ten thousand tips about how to write will not make words flow from your fingers pure as a summer rain.

Life exists, mostly, in the doing.

Ten unexecuted million-dollar ideas do not yeild ten million dollars. Fifteen great ideas for books does not make you a prolific author. Twenty great ideas for organizing your life does not organize those junk drawers in your kitchen.

The first thing you learn about doing is that it’s hard. It’s scary. It’s messy. And it’s not always fun. What’s required is a commitment that you’ll make it through the beginning stages until it becomes fun. You’ll keep going through all the hard work that’s required before you’ll get any recognition. Before it’ll start to feel second-nature. Before you’ll realize that maybe you’re overusing the power of repetition to convey your point.

We need more doing and less thinking about doing. And we need more doing without the constant worry that we’re doing it wrong. And most of all, we need fewer people pointing out where someone else is doing it and more people learning for themselves how to do.

It’s easy to watch. And it’s also easy, while watching, to develop opinions about how it’s being done wrong. But sharing those opinions isn’t doing it. And broadcasting mere opinions formed by watching hardly counts as doing it.

I’m no master of doing. I’ve not been doing this for far too long. But I’m begining to realize the value of just doing it. And I really hope to find the time to just do it more frequently.