I’ve shortchanged and sabotaged myself more times recently than I care to admit. All because I have a tendency to overthink things.
My best golf is played when I pick a target and hit the ball—no messing around trying to select between different clubs. I pick the one I want and let feel take over, not bothering to think about whether I’m gripping the club too tightly, or am slightly laid off at the top. That’s best left for the driving range.
Playing well boils down to this: getting the ball as close as possible to the hole to leave a make-able birdie putt. It’s that simplicity that helps me focus. When I overthink on the course my game goes downhill fast.
The same applies to my writing. Yesterday I killed off six solid ideas for blog posts by getting caught up in trying to be perfect and writing in somebody else’s style. It was a recipe for disaster.
“Oh, this sentence will never do, too wordy, the reader will lose interest.” I found myself saying. “Damnit, I used too many articles in that sentence …” It’s nearly impossible to create something with an attitude like that.
You have to be yourself.
Go with your first instinct. Pick a starting point and let the words flow. You can always comeback later and edit your words down, but you can’t if nothing’s there in the first place.
So pull up a chair, let perfection go, and create something unique.