I think that the worst possible thing you can do for yourself when you are trying to start something new is to plan.

A plan is something that you do, something that you can do, once you’ve had a bit of experience doing the thing that you want to do and enough knowledge of the thing to establish a sense of where you want to go. You feel things out with a plan. You don’t need to check off every item on a plan usually but making one can really help you chart a direction for yourself.

Starting something new isn’t that moment. Starting something new is the moment of walking through a door that had been closed to you until this moment in time. You don’t know what is on the other side of that door. You have no idea. You don’t know what you’re capable of and you don’t know whether the things that you are inclined to try will succeed and why.

The second worst thing that you could possibly do when you are trying to do is to go out and research what everyone else is doing. That’s old. You’ll just find a bunch of experiences from people who aren’t you that your brain tricks you into thinking are like you because you don’t know enough about them and these experiences will give you an alienated experience of having done something when you haven’t. You’ll start to think that you have more experience and less naivete than you think you do. You’ll start to think of things through the eyes of a judge or critic rather than from your own perspective.

There’s two components to starting something new. The first one is that it’s new. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. That’s crucial. It’s vital. That’s part of the excitement.

The second part of starting something new is that you’re doing it as yourself. You’re not doing it to borrow the identity of someone who has ten years experience doing the thing that you want to do. They already have their own perspective and their own way of doing things. That’s not you. The way that they do things won’t be the same as yours. The point of starting something new is to do it as yourself, is to find out what you might do that is different from everyone else.

The only way to start something new, something that you haven’t done before, is to just do the first thing that you can think of.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Just do the first thing that you can think of when you imagine yourself doing the thing that you want to do.

I’m talking about the most basic, most mundane, and most banal thing. I’m talking about the most unoriginal and most corny thing. I’m talking about the thing that you think a million other people have tried before that you want to do anyway not because it’s so fresh or original but because it is simply the thing that excites you the most about the thing that you want to start.

You want to start drawing? Then draw a picture of a huge eye. Every teenager does it. It’s corny and it’s fun. You want to do it so why not? Just do the thing that you want to do the most.

You want to start writing? Then write the story that you want to write. Don’t write the ideas that you think have the most literary value, the ones that you think are lower stakes because you think you need to practice your hand before you get into the real deal. Enough with the exercises. Exercises are for people who have already started and are trying to build different habits. If you’re starting, then just start from the actual story that you want to tell right now.

There’s really nothing that can replace the energy that you get when you’re trying to do something that you actually want to do. No amount of discipline or motivation or idealism can replace something as simple as desire.

I’m not saying that those other things are important, just that you’ll find them later. Habits are something that you have to build over time. Your reasons for doing something will take you further but you won’t figure out what those reasons are until you actually start doing the thing that you enjoy. It’s impossible to find purpose by navelgazing. You have to find purpose by doing.

I think that a lot of people find it hard to find the energy to start. If that’s you, then I’ll ask you this—why are you holding yourself back? I mean that as a real question. What is holding you back from doing the thing that you most want to do? Is it a matter of thinking that you don’t have the right taste? Or maybe a fear of not wanting to fuck it up? Is it because you think that you must choose between your life now and the life that is created by you trying a new thing as though those two lives exist in a binary opposition? (They don’t.)

Or, maybe you don’t actually want to do the thing. Maybe you like the idea of the thing. Maybe you used to want to do the thing but the idea died and doesn’t inspire a sense of life anymore. All of those are good reasons for not starting something new.

If you want to do it, then do it. Go for the most obvious thing even if it feels very dumb and it makes you afraid of looking very dumb. It’s okay to be a bit bullheaded sometimes.