There's an infinite number of ways you can improve yourself and consequently your results. A fraction of these ways corresponds to simply not listening to your primal instincts or to not do what’s “intuitive”. This week I put some thought on one of them: doing things even if you’re not ready.

First I'll talk about what happened that led me to think about this and then what are my takes on it.

Context

This week, me and Abdul finished the process of setting up a CNPJ (like an EIN in the US) for Mind. We also opened up a bank account for our new company, enrolled in Apple’s developer program, and created a Stripe account for receiving payments. This felt like a huge progress for me, but, to be honest, it also made me kinda nervous. And I think I felt that way because of what I wrote earlier: I had the feeling that I was not ready. For example, one thought that came to me was that I should’ve studied more about the laws around it. In brazil, there are a lot of regulations surrounding setting up a business and these can be tricky sometimes.

Another episode that made me meditate on this idea of just doing stuff happened yesterday in a Post Malone concert here in Curitiba (it was dope btw). There’s a tradition in Post’s shows where he calls up a fan from the crowd to play Stay with him on stage. So, he called a guy named João, who was super nervous but after a couple of sips, he did it wonderfully. This made me think about how opportunities appear and you got to catch them even if you think you can't do it. Imagine if when Post called him he was like: “Nah man, I'm kinda nervous, sorry”. João would’ve wished he accepted it until he died.

Conclusion

Both these episodes made me realize that it’s impossible to make progress playing safe. Just doing things when you’re comfortable with doing it will take a lot longer and maybe you’ll miss the timing. João probably would never have another shot.

You can learn along the way.

The problem is that (at least for me) when it's time to act, a voice in my head says: "But what if you waited a little bit and studied/prepared more before actually doing it”. Feels like some primitive instinct and that's why it seems so natural to go that way.

Particularly, I find this “Just do it” attitude really hard to have constantly. Feels like I’m trapped in the orbit of this planet called Comfort Zone and that he’s always pulling me back. Another trait of my personality that conflicts with this is that I unconsciously want to control everything. I’ve always been like this. That's one of the aspects that led me into software engineering - the perception that if I tell the computer what it needs to do in the right way, it will do it. Because I have this urge to control everything, this “opportunity” of stepping back and waiting to execute something looks favorable to me, but I know that's a lie.

The aftermath is that the trade-off is not worth it. Your only reward for stepping back and studying/analyzing a little bit more before executing is a false perception that now you’re more prepared, but that's an endless loop. You’ll never know everything and be 100% ready for every decision.

This is definitely something I need to improve.