Developing a Bias for Action

Facing the Fear

Here it goes—my first blog post ever. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.

There’s a lot of internal noise pulling me in different directions.

I don’t really write. I’m not a writer. Hell, I barely read anymore. So, what could I possibly say that’s valuable to anyone? Truth is, I don’t have an answer. The point of this blog is mostly about overcoming my personal barriers and holding myself a bit more accountable.

It feels strange sending this into the void, knowing that the only readers will be a few web crawlers and maybe some dyslexic 8-year-old on an iPad.

But this is the thing that scares me. Taking this step is monumental for me. Putting my name on a website and giving the internet, anyone in the world, the chance to peek at all my half-assed, half-forgotten projects is downright terrifying.

A friend's dad recommended_ The War of Art _to me when I was at a bit of a crossroads some time ago and a few lines have always stuck with me and feel pretty appropriate now. You've probably read hundreds of platitudes about why leaning into fear is beneficial. Here are a few more.

"Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do."

“Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”

A Bias for Action

Recognizing the fear is one thing.

Not letting those negative thoughts take root is a whole different battle. And those thoughts make some pretty valid points!

What do I know to have the gall to write this stuff? My writing is scattered. My ideas are stupid. I have no discipline. I’m too far behind. There are too many smart people working on too many things—I’ll never be able to compete.

My projects aren’t going to make money. I’m burning precious time that I could spend doing something safer and smarter. I’m wasting my life away. Everyone and everything is moving past me, and here I am, writing my first blog post at 31.

I can’t deny or disprove any of this. All I know is that I feel miserable not trying.

I spent the better part of seven years bouncing around the world, stop-starting a hundred projects about twice as many times. I let myself be swept away by the next project, idea, or plan, over and over again. Always hovering just above that point where I could truly fail—and grow!

I’ve been putting this off for YEARS, and I’m tired of it.

I heard the term “a strong bias for action” mentioned in an episode of My First Million last week, and that’s what prompted all this. It clicked. Little pieces of various books I’d read, podcasts I’d listened to, words of advice from friends, and my own journaling and thinking all lined up for a moment—it all made sense. It all fit together. It’s so simple.

Just start! Anything!

Here are some more miscellaneous related quotes:

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

Progress Requires Unlearning

I’ve been trapped by my own story for years. My own maladaptive belief system.

Therapy helped me see it, but it didn’t offer much actionable advice on how to overcome it. From where I’m at now, the only thing that makes sense is to take action on the things I’m curious about.

Get out of your head. Feel things and act on them. Don’t waste time on the bullshit your mind concocts to either validate or dismiss your aspirations.

I’ve spent years in therapy trying to tweeze things apart, attempting to understand them. But I’m starting to believe that none of it really matters.

Reading Atomic Habits, one thing stood out to me more than anything else:

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

“Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.”

My goal now is to create a body of evidence that proves my ability to move the needle forward. To create. To bring my ideas into reality. To believe I even have ideas worth sharing—or any at all.

I constantly look back at my only fully completed web project. I have some doodles I’ve done (I draw at a kindergarten level) that I’ve put on my wall. I only recently realized that I love them so much because, in making them, I put aside my bullshit for a moment. I just shut up and made something.

Having those doodles on my wall reminds me that it’s possible.

Building this website, writing these little posts, and slowly putting up the projects I make over the next while is just an attempt to build some evidence for myself. Some proof that I’m in the process of rewriting the story I tell myself about myself, and rewiring the unhelpful belief system that has kept me stuck for so long.

Finding Quiet Moments

I can’t say whether this will hold true over time, either for myself or for anyone else, but it has been crucial for me.

I used to find that quiet through sports. Surfing became an addiction because it gave me a break from myself. I could just breathe and exist without bombarding my inner world with thoughts and plans.

Since that’s not as readily available to me now, I’ve found my way to that same quiet place through breathing exercises. Just 5-10 minutes a day has been unbelievably helpful. Maybe something like that could help you too.

Make space. Get out of your head. Let yourself feel what comes up. Be present and trust yourself.

Don’t Take It Too Seriously

“The amateur will never write his symphony because he's overly invested in its success and overly terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously, it paralyzes him.”

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably realized that I’m writing a lot of this off the cuff. Over time, I expect it’ll get more organized and direct, but I’m not going to get ahead of myself.

If I tried to make this perfect, I’d never have taken the steps to get it out there in the first place. There’s going to be some dumb stuff. Silly stuff that I find funny. Maybe just random diatribes I feel like going on.

Maybe I’ll make a wildly terrible product, spend tons of hours on it only for it to fail, and then write up a postmortem just for the sake of it.

The point is to get shit out there and keep moving. Keep learning, keep creating, and have fun doing it.

Looking Ahead

I once heard about the idea that we all carry some version of an unlived life within us. A hidden list of hopes and goals that we’re often too afraid — or too caught up in other stuff — to even acknowledge.

There’s a nefarious little part of me that used to say my dreams were someone else’s dreams. That none of them were possible, that it was too late, and so on. I don’t buy it.

Sure, there are some things I’ll never be. I’m not going to be a professional surfer, an astronaut, or a billionaire living on an island with a bunch of supermodels. But I don’t need some over-the-top fantasy or specific vision of my life to hang my hopes on.

The only thing that truly matters — for both you and me — is to not take life lying down.

Have the courage to admit what you want and the trust in yourself to start moving toward it. Even if you don’t have that trust yet, just start. Doing something and failing is better than doing nothing and wondering what could’ve happened if you’d tried.

“Fear doesn’t go away… the battle must be fought anew every day”

Good luck to you in whatever it is that you need to do to get out of your rut.