Just Do It: How to Overcome Analysis Paralysis

1K Blog Marathon: Day 36

It’s been 5 years since I created my first WordPress blog. After 3 1/2 posts, I stopped.

2 years later, I’ve read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but didn’t take any actions.

I also read about dropshipping, online business, affiliate links, Google Ads, how to make an e-book – all of which remained as stored knowledge and no action was made.

I wrote my first blog here at Curbside Coder last October of 2019. The second post was followed by May of this year, 2020.

I’m overanalyzing. Everything.

I think that people would not want to hear what I’m about to say or write.

I thought that online business needs a big capital.

I knew all of this was wrong.

I am not able to start anything because I’m over analyzing. I feel like I’m paralyzed. My motto is “Stagnation is a sin”, but for a long time, I’m stagnant.

So after watching Nas, I decided to take a leap of faith! Although cautious, I started blogging daily – running for a thousand days.

How did I manage to overcome it? Well to be honest, I’m still battling with Analysis Paralysis. But here are my two cents about that. Let’s start!

1. It is okay to analyze, just don’t overthink.

Analyzation is normal. We are Homo sapiens, capable of critical and logical thinking. But when overthinking is taking over you time, you didn’t even started a single action from your plans – you’re doing it wrong. You can start working on it until you find your rhythm. Take me as an example.

It took me 5 years to really do what I got to do. I thought that I will be bashed or embarrassed. I thought that my words has no substance (is there any?) but here I am, writing a blog post for the 36^th day.

2. You are only wasting your precious time.

Every second you put into Analyzation is a second of your life that you can’t bring back. It took me five years to just start my blog. All you need to do is start taking action according to your plan. Don’t regret if the time you will spent in doing it is not worth – at least you learned something new. Instead of theorizing for possible outcome, spend your time by actually doing it, it’s a time well spent I promise you.

3. Don’t be afraid of failing.

Failing is not fatal. And just like Goku, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Don’t fret if you fail a hundred times, you need to just get it one time. You have unlimited tries. But please take my words, don’t just fail and try again, learn from your failures, then try again.

4. Learn from others, but lookout for Impostor Syndrome.

I’m guilty of it, I’ll admit. I spend hundred hours watching motivational speeches, life of great people, read blogs about life of successful entrepreneurs, but I still didn’t take a leap of faith. And the worst is, the more I learn about the greatness of others, the more I compare myself and started doubting my abilities. I’m caught by the Impostor Syndrome by over-learning and over analyzing.

5. Ready, Fire, Aim!

According to the book of Michael Masterson, the “Ready, Fire, Aim, you don’t need to be an expert in your field to start a business. All you have to do is start – Fire. And if you missed your hit, you adjust your Aim, then Fire again.

6. Stop Gold Planting.  

In programming, and again I’m guilty of it, we tend to make our program perfect, to the point that we are missing the deadline because of a “cool” feature that we are adding even though not necessary. We also “plan ahead” for the future, so we perfect our code that comes with backward and forward compatibility. Stop it, please. I’ve been there, and I know how time consuming is that. My advice is to create an MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, then launch. After that, get some feedback, revise, and again launch.

7. Just do it!

I cannot iterate more on doing it. Just do it bro. Just do it sis.

Don’t overthink, just do it. Don’t waste your time, and everyone makes a mistake. Learn from it. Don’t aim for perfection, aim for development. And remember, “Stagnation is a sin”.

“And that’s one blog, stay hungry!”

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”

― Theodore Roosevelt