Do the Thing

Then keep doing it

Last week a friend of mine had a stall at a market near where I live and I went to support. He had a concept ‘co-create’ piece where anyone could come up and add something to the canvas, he added to it throughout the day, flipped it around, gave people different colours and the goal at the end of the day was to have a piece of art that had a story - a community on a canvas.

He asked me if I wanted to add something to it and I said well of course I can but know I’m not much of an artist. He replied there was absolutely no harm and I could add whatever I want, so I did and it was really quite nice. I spent about an hour there chatting away and trying to get people to add to the same canvas, but I noticed an interesting pattern which was every single person that was asked to add something said some version of ‘no thanks’. They would explain that they’re worried about ruining it, they would talk about their lack of creative skills. My friends’ technique was wise, he would just get the brush and slash it across the canvas without looking and say ‘no pressure you can do whatever you want’. Most people after that felt that their potential ‘failure’ was acceptable and would contribute something tiny, but others still refused for fear of some unknown fate.

There was even one man who said he went to art school but after much hesitation decided he ‘couldn’t think of anything to add’ and just stared at the painting for 5 minutes looking awkward and uncomfortable. It’s rare we get moments of someone saying ‘hey I want you to try this and if you fuck it up that’s fine, here is me doing that right now’. It’s like we break some very strange fear forcefield when someone fails in front of us with a smile on their face.

I think of the classic example of how one person dancing looks like an idiot, a second joins and it begins to look fun and then when a crowd forms everyone joins as dancing is now an accepted practice in this zone. In fashion we see the same, counterculture creates trends by going against the grain and being labelled ‘outlandish’ only to be the number 1 seller in shelves a month later.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point argues that ideas, trends and social behaviours spread much like epidemics. They are slowly built over time and then at a certain moment finally break out into widespread adoption. I see failure in the same way, the first dancer is deemed a failure until the tipping point of the fourth person joining, at which point the crowd begins to run in.

In modern times it is easy to feel discouraged by trying to find a start point, it feels like wherever you turn there are an infinite number of others that are outworking you; but beneath every individual is this same fear of failure. The single greatest differentiator between two people in the same position is their individual willingness (ability) to continue to try.

If we are to acknowledge that failure is harder to deal with than success, then we must acknowledge that improving our ability to deal with failure is more likely to result in outpacing those around us than understanding of success.

I remember working a sales job where I was to make 200 cold calls per day with the aim of booking 3-5 appointments per day. Each day my ideal failure rate would be 97-98%, this was extremely draining to me and without holding any passion for the product I was selling it felt like a bad use of my time. I will never forget one morning when we were huddled in a ‘morning meeting’ and people were announcing their sales targets for the day and someone said ‘I want 5 sales’ only for the manager to interrupt with ‘I will make 5 sales, you need to believe!’. It was at that moment I knew my resignation was coming later in the same day, no amount of manifestation will get you to succeed in something you don’t care about—I lasted in total 4.5 working days.

It was not until I started learning a second language that I began to appreciate the incremental beauty of slow progress. I once heard someone describe each time you return to your breath in meditation as a ‘mental rep’, one that strengthened your brain and made you more likely to add another rep sometime in the future. I took this same concept for language learning, each time I spoke to someone in another language and made an absolute fool of myself I was less likely to do it in the future, another rep in the linguistic gym. I once ordered three sandwiches for myself at a cafe, on another occasion I bought two kilos of chicken breast instead of two pieces, and I remember also once ordering what would essentially translate to a ‘dick with cheese’ from a local bakery.

In hindsight these are all hilarious experiences, but to live them felt horrible. I think that’s often times what makes failure so special, we know the asymmetric upside, but we still don’t do the thing. We know that the upside might be life-changing, that trying something new could start a cascade of events so delightful that the ending results in a better version of ourselves, but we don’t do the thing. The sad part is we know, based on almost all our failures to date, that in a matter of time it will just be a funny story you can tell, and we know for certain no one will care, but we don’t do the thing.

Learning language is also funny because after a few wines you can feel like you are a native speaker, but all you’ve done is break-down the ‘fear forcefield’ and give it a red hot crack. In vino veritas is a Latin expression meaning ‘truth in wine’, but perhaps the greatest truth we can see through wine is it’s ability to short-circuit our fear of being the first to fail. The guy who first started dancing in the park was unlikely the most sober there, and maybe that’s what empowered him to do the thing.

So much in life comes down to just doing the thing, and seeing what happens. This has been my approach with writing, I initially started this Substack years ago with several long-form and well researched articles that actually scared me off consistency. I started a few drafts but I didn’t think they were up to the standard and instead of just continuing to try I let it sit untouched for 3 years.

This year is my year of just doing the thing, and one of them is my writing. I will post each Monday knowing continuous improvement is better than delayed success, who knows maybe there will be a tipping point and this will turn into something beautiful.

Do the thing, then keep doing it.