🤔 Why Most People Never Start Projects & How To Change That

Self doubt can be your biggest enemy. Here's 3 ways to beat it:

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Before we dig in, I want to wish all of the women readers a Happy International Women’s Day. If you want to see a list of women founders I’ve been inspired by this year, check out this article I wrote.

It’s a curation of 22 founders that have inspired me with their startup ideas on Kernal. Ping me a note if you want an early invite to the platform.

Now let’s dive into today’s topic. 🥁

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We all have good ideas.

• That one podcast,

• that one interview series,

• that one startup idea to build

The tough part? 90% of us never act on them.

They just sit on a shelf waiting for the right time to launch. The sad part is that most of the time that day never comes. ⏱

Today I want to tackle one of the biggest reasons holding people back from shipping their ideas.

Enter: self-doubt and the fear of irrelevancy.

“Why would someone read my work?”

“Why would someone follow my project?” 

“Why would someone pay for my product?”

Self-doubt can be our biggest enemy. So today we’re gonna destroy it together.

Here are 3 defence spells you can use against the dark arts:

1. Do It For Yourself First

Entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant once tweeted: 

"Your mistake is that you’re writing to be read."

This is the root cause of fear of irrelevancy. When starting with a new side project, we aim to instantly please other people. That’s bad. Instead, our fulfillment should be internal. 

Our concerns should be slightly selfish at the beginning of a project because if we’re being honest, no one cares about our new idea in the early stage. 

We should ask ourselves:

• Does this project fit in the Venn diagram of my interest, skill and growth? 

• How can I scratch my own itch with this new project?

• What opportunities could it open up? 

Shift your focus from external results to internal opportunities. Focus on learning. Focus on meeting new people. Focus on up-skilling an area of your toolkit that you’ve been putting off.

2. Build For A Niched Community 

We buy into the fear of irrelevancy because we believe the market of new projects is over-saturated. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. 

Stop thinking:

“There’s already so much content out there.” 

“There are already so many big creators in this space.”

“Why would someone even want to hear what I have to say?” 

The thing is – You don’t have to be the next Adam Grant, Brené Brown, or Tony Robbins.

You can simply serve a small group of people who’ll value what you say because you are solving something for them. They could even be:

• Your colleagues, 

• Your friends, 

• Your clients

Instead of trying to talk to everyone, start talking to a few key people. Build a feedback loop with what they’d like and work from there. 

3. Irrelevancy Is Subjective To Time 

It took James Clear eight years to hit 1 million subscribers on his email list. Here’s an image that he shared at a ConvertKit conference in 2017. 

In an interview he shared: 

“When I began writing in 2012, I thought I was too late. It seemed like blogs and newsletters had already peaked.”

The lesson here, my friends, is:

What seems completely irrelevant today, has the power to become tomorrow’s revolution. You just need a bucketful of patience and dedication to your craft. 

Exploring a side idea is going to be messy and uncertain. The whole point is to be willing to dabble and learn to swim through uncharted waters. 

In his best-selling book, The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky shares, 

“Sadly, most people are not patient enough to reap the fruits of their own labour.”

You cannot get to the other side without trying to steadfast your feet in the messy middle.

“So what’s the break, Joel?”

• Use your fear of irrelevancy to drive self-improvement

• Make it a healthy prerequisite that shapes your craft 

• Instead of seeing it as a barrier, see it as an opportunity 

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get back to those projects.

(It's what Dwight would do).

💡 Riff of the Day

I’ll highly recommend you add Scott’s book to your reading list.

The guy is the founder of Behance, chief product officer of Adobe and an angel investor in 80+ startups. I’d trust what he has to say. 

Thanks for reading. I try hard to make it worth your time. Got feedback? Let me know.

Stay outta’ trouble and catch you next week.

✌🏻 Joel

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