Scott H Young

    Last week, Steve Pavlina wrote an article entitled, “Skill”.  In it, Steve claimed, that most people under-invest in the skill-building phase.  In a rush to profit, they don’t spend enough time working on their ability to create value.

I agree with Steve that skill-building is important.  I’d also agree that many bloggers (or other new ventures) fail because they don’t provide enough value to other people.  It isn’t marketing strategy or search engine optimization, it’s writing skill and useful content.

But as someone who started his blog when he was 17, I have to disagree with what I felt was Steve’s underlying conclusion.  I started this blog with a minimal skill set.  I never started with the idea that this blog would be hugely successful in six months (or even six years), but I did start with the goal of earning some passive income.

When Should You Get Started?

Steve argued that the time to go pro was when other people were practically recommending it.  He writes that before he started StevePavlina.com, many people were telling him how great his articles were.

My only quarrel from this advice is it holds people back needlessly.  I think, before we get started, all of us have a lingering fear of, “Am I ready for this?”  Steve’s article suggests that people should spend more time incubating in the skill-building stage instead of taking the bolder step of going full-force into an endeavor.

I agree with Steve that you should invest in developing skill.  But, one of the best ways to build skills is to have repeated failures.  I’m two years into this blogging and internet entrepreneurship adventure.  I’ve poured a lot of sweat and strain into building this blog, a great deal more than the financial rewards it has brought me.

However, the lessons I’ve learned from getting fully-engaged have been worth it.  If I had sat on the sidelines, hiding all of my writing and reading business books instead of starting a business, I would have learned only a fraction of what I know today.

A friend and reader of this website corresponded with me that he was posting comments on forums before taking the step to start his own blog.  My question is, why?  You’ll learn more about blogging from actually blogging than posting comments in forums that will be read by a few dozen people.

Steve Pavlina’s First Business

I don’t think the 20 year-old Steve would have followed the advice of his senior.  Steve started his personal-development efforts by graduating from University in three semesters and starting a game development business.

Twenty year-old Steve didn’t sit around, perfecting his game-design skills in his basement while working another job to pay the bills.  He dove right in and failed numerous times before getting his first commercial success, Dweep.  In his first endeavor, skill-building was never separated from “going pro”.

Stumbling in the Dark

I think a better alternative than incubating in a skill-building period is to just go out and fail.  Place yourself in the real world and set the real goals that inspire you.  If you lack experience, then go get some, instead of waiting for it to build privately over years.

When you do fail from a lack of skill (and everyone does), you’ll know that you’ve learned more by failing than you could have done practicing by yourself.  Indeed, going full-force and failing is often the best skill-building experience you can get.

I think the lesson to be gathered from Steve’s article, is that you shouldn’t expect success without the years of skill.  Have the humility to brush off early failures.  When I didn’t have readers for a few months of posting articles, I wasn’t frustrated or disappointed.  It was exactly what I had expected as a starting point.

Don’t hold yourself back because you lack skill.  If you want to become an actor, act.  Don’t sit in your basement memorizing Shakespeare.  If you want to start a software business, build software and release it.  Who cares if it is crap?  You’ll learn far more about what it takes by getting bruised in the real world than by reading every PHP, Perl or C++ book in the library.

I don’t think anyone can argue that skill is unimportant.  But I think you can argue about what it takes to build that skill.  Practice and mastering the basics will always need to be there.  But if you’re always training in a place that’s safe, where you can’t fail or be criticized, you’re going to build skill a lot more slowly than the person who is willing to go forward anyways.

Perhaps I have a lot of opinions about this subject because of my situation.  The most common compliment I receive is the quality of writing, for my age.  It’s also one of the most common criticisms I get for the same reason.  I’m not arrogant enough to believe I have all the right answers (or even a fraction of the right answers).  But I’d like to think I’m smart enough not to sit around and wait while bolder people build skills faster than I do, because they had the gumption to get started without a lot of skill.

At some point in every long project, you’ll hit a motivational rock-bottom.  A bad day, week, or month where you don’t feel like doing any work.  You’ve been writing, coding and working for months and the initial enthusiasm that got you started is gone.  Now you’re left staring at your computer screen blankly, as doubts fill your mind about whether you’ll ever get finished.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

Staying motivated on big projects isn’t easy.  I’ve worked on several large project without any pressure from a boss or team leader.  Some of these projects were a year or more.  While working on personal projects (and finishing them) can be incredibly satisfying, it means that motivating yourself is even tougher.  After all, nobody is going to fire you if you stop.

But if you want to write a book, start a business or release a piece of software, you need to get the motivation to finish.  Unfortunately, I’ve found most of the pump-up motivation techniques are lacking.  These can be great when you have a twenty minute performance, but they often die out over weeks and months.

Staying Motivated Means Avoiding Motivation

The best way to stay motivated is to not need motivation in the first place.  If you’re constantly needing all your emotional cylinders to be driving at full force to get work done, you’re going to get stuck in long projects.  Finishing multi-month efforts means you need to build a baseline.

A baseline is your default level of activity.  Although you may do more work than your baseline (and occasionally less), the baseline is your average.  It is what gets finished automatically, without whipping yourself into a productive frenzy.

People who finish long projects don’t necessarily have more motivation.  But they do have a higher baseline.  The amount they do with zero motivation is high enough, that they don’t need to be pumped up every day to stay productive.  They can have moments of doubt or disinterest, and they still get work done.

Building a Baseline

Whenever I start a long project, I try to identify what the baseline needs to be to reach the end.  If I want to finish writing a book in four months, that might mean writing 1000 words a day.  When I had done work on software projects, I would break the entire program into stages and figure out the bare minimum that needed to be accomplished and still finish on schedule.

Once you’ve figured out what the baseline needs to be, you need to make that your default.  One way you can do this is establishing a regular level of output.  With continuous projects like blogging, this is easy.  All you need to do is figure out your posting levels and stick to a schedule.

With complex projects, you may want to define your output in terms of a weekly to-do list which equals roughly a certain amount of productive work.  Don’t define your output in terms of hours, that’s just a recipe to procrastinate while watching the clock tick away the day.

Forget Olympic feats of productivity.  Just try to get the baseline established.  Set it at something that is doable, even if your workweek isn’t perfect, but still large enough to accomplish something meaningful.

    Creating a Baseline Through Habits

Another way to build a baseline is by setting up habits that encourage productivity.  Waking up early, sticking to a regular work schedule, keeping a daily to-do list or giving up television are all examples of productive habits.  Installing habits can be an indirect way to create a baseline level of productivity.

You can set up a new habit by committing to changing it for thirty days.  I don’t suggest habit-building as a measure for individual projects, because the process can take too long.  If you need 4-5 habits to ensure a baseline, that requires at least 4-5 months of commitment.  However, you can use habits to create a general baseline you can use for every project you start.

Restarting the Motivation

With a solid baseline, constant motivation isn’t a requirement to finish projects.  But if you combine a high baseline with the ability to restart your motivation, it’s much easier to avoid the motivational traps you can fall into after months of work.

   Ignore the Carrot and Stick

People, as a rule, tend to be motivated by rewards and punishment.  I feel a lot better after hearing a glowing review of something I’ve written than reading a piece of hate mail.  But just because carrots and sticks are universally motivating, doesn’t mean they are the best way to stay motivated in long projects.

A better way to stay motivated is to create a clear picture of what you want the project to accomplish.  Create that clear picture, and write down the specifics.  Then, when you lose motivation, return to that starting point and re-examine the reasons you got started.  It’s better to use your long-term vision to motivate you forward than short-term feedback.  Feedback is fickle, so you need to anchor yourself to a long-range plan.

Some days I’ll get great feedback from this website.  Some days I’ll get criticism.  But I try not to think of either of those when staying motivated to write for this website and constantly improve.  Instead, I think of my long-term vision for living entirely off of a web-based business, reaching thousands of people and making something that inspires me.

The best way to stay motivated is not to try.  Build a baseline so work happens without constant willpower.  Then, regularly refresh your reasons for starting a project.  Those should be enough to overcome a temporary lack of encouragement.  Staying motivated for months and years isn’t easy, but if you’re smart you can avoid the crashes that plague most projects.