I’m sitting down on my dad's chair facing the partially broken window in my room. It’s one month after a huge riot at my University and after a lot of self-reflecting, I discovered how much I needed to do stuff I love.

Ideas came to me like fast cars on a busy road with one thing different; it was all quiet inside.

Then a crazy idea came rushing like a traffic defaulter;

Why not try bodybuilding?

I chuckled. I’m nearly 5'8 and I’ve got a quite sexy chest (Irony), but something kept telling me to still do it.

I had just discovered the internet, so I had to google. Men the images I saw weren’t encouraging; tall men with broad chests. I couldn’t help but admire them.

I started a WordPress blog already, started working out and in no time, I started wanting to see results. After about a month of no results, I gave up.

I gave up because of how impossible it sounded for me to look like one of those top bodybuilders. My first reps weren’t gonna get me there. I couldn’t just conjure up an image so it never seemed possible. In my head at least.

It’s 2 years later, I’ve learned a lot about starting up and here’s the most important concerning beginning anything.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.  -Ira Glass

That was it. If you’re a designer or creative and you expect your first group of ideas to be world changing, you’re the problem.

Be Focused On Just Making Stuff.

Make it a habit, don’t care about the fancy stuff yet, Just do it every day. By doing this, you conquer fear. Fear of failing and in no time, you begin to mutter confidence and develop your true style.

Don’t just sit there with your ego trying to build the worlds next app or company, that’s trash. And so is every success that comes with it.

Take me for instance.

When I was primarily an Engineer, I wrote some articles that got well accepted by the community. I was excited at the activity and I wanted to replicate it again and again and forever.

So I became conscious about the quality of stuff I was writing. When it didn’t get much traction, I would be sad. Then it came to me as a realization that I was building false confidence.

I wasn’t a great engineer and I was giving others the impression that I was. This meant I wasn’t ever going to stay true to my knowledge, I would always be on the search to please people who were more experienced than I was.

I made the decision. If I couldn’t replicate the success, then I didn’t have it. If it took me a week to produce an article far complex that I know, it meant I concentrating on quality. A beginner should leave the quality for later.

Don’t Care About Anything yet.

Whenever I’m given this kind of advice, I try to validate if the things I’m executing on haven’t been done before. But that was a very big mistake. You’re not building the next Facebook, you’re just trying to learn a skill.

Doing something original isn’t a requirement. You’re not trying to start the next unicorn company. You’re just trying to build skills. So, if you see something that inspires you, and you’d like to try your hand at doing something similar, go for it. You’re bound to come up with a few interesting and original variations in the process, but moreover, you’ll be learning how to create the types of things you appreciate. — Julie Zhuo

So if you’re a beginner writer, write more. A singer, sing more. A designer, design more and in no time, you’ll create mental shortcuts that let you be more creative and understand the process more.

Thanks for your time 😄 😄 😄.