Hey folks, I'm Stephen Peterkins and this is Episode 10 of The Peterkins Podcast.

Today I'm gonna talk about how to stop thinking and start doing.

Recently, I received feedback from friends about this podcast on the audio quality. They gave me a bunch of great information about audio equipment, tricks for eliminating "popping p's" by holding a pencil in front of your mouth, and how I would want to "sound proof the room I was in to maximize audio quality".

These are all good suggestions, and it's fun to think about all the things we want to do and how to do them. Although many of them have much better conditions and equipment to produce a podcast, none of them do. I have one friend who wants to do voice acting who has posted his audio equipment to Instagram, but has never posted himself doing any voice acting. There is a chasm between thinking about doing something, and actually doing it.

These are the steps that I follow to do the things that I want to do and overcome the chasm:

1. Perfect is the Enemy of the Good We must allow what we create to be imperfect. It is better to start and finish something than to start and give up because it does not meet our standards. There are a thousand ways that this podcast could be improved, and over time I will address them one by one. However, in the meanwhile I can't let the lack of perfection get in the way of producing episodes. Every time I make an episode, I learn just a little bit more about how I want to make the next one better.

2. Make it a Habit As I mentioned in a previous episode, willpower can only help you so much. If you want to consistently do something, you better make it a habit. I talk more about this in episode 7 of this show where I share how to build good habits. I'd advise you to check it out if you're interested in learning more.

3. Become OK with Failure The biggest reason we don't take risks and do things is because we're terrified of the failure that comes with it. The way to overcome this failure is to gain self-esteem, and realize that we are not our failures. Success can only come by overcoming failure multiple times. Failure gives us the opportunity to learn more than if we never tried in the first place.

Ultimately, it is our ego that is the chasm between thinking and doing. Consistently overcoming our egos and giving ourselves the ability to fail makes it much simpler to go and do the things we want to do.

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you later.

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