Shortie 1: The trick is not to be right, the trick is to begin
Four ways to just get started on a new thing
Preamble
I'm experimenting with publishing some short thoughts and interspersing them among the longer posts - the last post took nearly two whole weeks to complete around parenting and projects and I live in mortal fear of being forgotten by you. Hence, the shorties. Let me know what you think - if you're feeling spammed or bombarded or if, like Neo in the Matrix, you just can't get this sh!t fast enough, let me know!
Amble
Waiting for the stars to align when starting anything, big or small, is futile 1. Whether you're considering a research approach, a proposal for a client, a project, a concept/idea, or whatever, don't wait for inspiration. Inspiration is the biggest bullshit idea ever. Pick up your pen(cil) and sketch or write something. ANYTHING to do with your thing.
Getting it out is the first chance you have to get into an intentional conversation with yourself about your thing. By starting, we can show our efforts to ourselves and develop them in a (relatively) lossless fashion. Also, getting it out creates a trail of thoughts for us to develop, evaluate and reflect on.
It takes a lot of courage to do it this way. BUT THERE'S JUST NO OTHER WAY TO START.
Take heart that nobody will see the crap that spews out of you, so you can get amongst it fearlessly.
Unless you're judging yourself of course. And if you are then…
…stop judging yourself you numpty!
If you judge yourself when you're with just yourself then you'll never get anything new into the world. This is the hardest thing we're never really taught to do - to build our ability to create something and bring it to the world. And if you don't create some crap, then you'll never find the gold that hides amongst it.
A couple of hacks to get things going:
Start in the top right corner.
I'm a visual thinker: I sketch a lot. I sketch pretty much everything before I start working on it in detail and in words. I begin any exploration at the top right of a page. It's unconventional so it helps me break out of doing things "the right way". I've done it for so long now that the cue of starting in the top right is enough to get me generating work immediately.
I work around clockwise too, so by the time I'm finishing a page my most developed work is right where fresh eyes might look first.
Two-by-twos.
Pick any two parts of your thing and plot them: one on the horizontal axis and one on the vertical e.g. customer-organisation and want-need.
All of a sudden I've got work I can do, and it can help me shape questions or themes to do with those axes.
Try this with anything- most of the time something useful will come from it, I assure you, even if it's the knowledge that there's no correlation between the two axes.
The new-notebook cure.
In every notebook or notepad I use I treat the first page as a "burn page", where I deliberately do something shit. It helps me care less about the book and more about doing the work.
The writing cure.
If I don't know where to get started I write a reflection and ask myself the key critical questions:
Who am I concerned with? Why?
How do I think I can act? Why?
When do things need to happen? Why?
Where do things need to happen? Why?
This is generally enough to start creating two-by-twos or visual thinking sessions or, really, whatever medium you prefer to work with.
Postamble
I hope this helps! Let me know, oh silent ones. More coming in the next couple of days.
This post is also a part of what I'm covering in my Melbourne CBD research masterclass on 19 September. You can check it out here.
All my love,
Matt
Except maybe babies. ↩︎