Articles - Snippits

When I started practicing Aikido 2 years ago, every time I stepped onto the mat, I felt like a club footed monkey after a lobotomy. I was bad. Very bad. Nothing went right. I didn't know how to roll, fall, attack, turn, or simply keep my balance. My Kote Gaeshi looked more like Kote Wussie and Ikkyo was more Sicko.

In Aikido, all of your instinctive reactions are wrong. It takes a lot of practice to overcome the basic instincts of avoiding punches and kicks, instead stepping into them. Instead of a strong hold being a loss, it becomes an opportunity to introduce your attacker to the ground, suddenly.

An internet business is much the same. Your first product is probably going to be horrible. Let's just be honest here. It will squeak and whine and you'll say too little in some parts and too much in others. Your first sales page will most likely be the same. Benefits instead of features? Not likely in a first draft! Your first posts will be weak and your first articles probably won't be all that and a bag of chips either. You'll struggle for traffic and sales will be dismal.

But it's important you do them AND you release them. What you're looking for at this time is feedback. It's similar to the time I was performing a technique (poorly) and my partner thought I should have been doing it better. So she (all 5' 90lbs of her) countered and introduced me to the mat, sharply. In an online business: Did the sales page convert? Where is the traffic coming from? How can I get more? Am I getting a lot of returns? What could I have done better? Each time did I survive and learn my lesson? Yes. Have I had similar lessons since then? Of course, both in Aikido and in my online business. Improvement is the key. Focus on getting better, not how terrible you are today.

Here's 3 reasons why being bad at something is good:

1. For the ideas. Everything you have problems doing is a potential product/blog post/article - once you find an answer. Can't do something in WordPress? Build the plugin yourself and sell it on to others. Did you find a nifty combo of techniques for bringing traffic to your site? Create an e-book. Don't understand what FTP is? There's a blog post. My suggestion: If you're having problems with something - WRITE IT DOWN! Keep it in a journal or a simple txt document. I personally keep a list of product ideas in a Writeboard in Basecamp.

2. You get better at it. Even the master was once a beginner. Leonardo Da Vinci started out drawing stick figures. But he drew those figures and then drew something more complex, until he was able to paint the Sistine Chapel. You don't get better my reading, you get better by practicing. My suggestion: Consider every action between now and whenever it is you consider yourself a master to be practice and for fun. If it's for fun, there's no pressure to do it well. Just do it better.

3. It's fun. Perhaps it's just me, but I find learning fun. You can't learn about things you've already mastered, so most of the things you need/want to learn about you're going to do badly! There isn't a single person who is good at everything. Make your tasks fun. Make discovery fun. My suggestion: Children find everything fascinating. Adopt a child like attitude towards all the tasks you're faced with. Enjoying the learning process is probably why children learn so fast and innately. When you learn something let out a big AHA! Then do a little dance.

So get out there and be horrible at something. If you keep at it, in a couple of months/years, you'll actually be good at it. That's how the masters got to be masters.