Just do it.

“What’s the hardest thing about writing? It isn’t having the idea or structuring your thoughts, or even having good prose. The hardest thing about writing is getting started.” - KP

When you sit down to do something, there’s often a conflict. Part of you is the person who is excited about the possibilities, and part of you is the person who wants to critique anything new.The critic often wins; before even putting pen to paper, the doubts begin. Before you know it, distraction kicks in. All the momentum you had is gone.

So what can you do about this? In Read, curate, and write, I found that to start an idea, you can first start with other people’s ideas. The act of reading or seeing and then curating other people’s work can help to overcome that first step of putting your own idea down on paper. Curation will become an essential skill in the future as news and ideas become homogenized by all-seeing algorithms; people who can collect thoughts in novel ways will be precious indeed.

My second approach is to use drawing as an entry point to organize your ideas. In Visual Thinking, I offer a simple method for using sketching to organize your thoughts and to generate that all-important first mark on the page.

That all-important mark lets you leave the chief critic in your head behind to start the work of bringing your idea to life!