Worry ruins the work

Have you ever worked on something for a while, thinking it’s good progress, just to start asking too many questions at the wrong times? 

Writing on your own

Using those questions to make changes you didn’t really think are in character with what you had planned at the beginning. Bit by bit … until the work stopped raising doubts about how it would appear in the public’s eye, but it didn’t feel good anymore. 

That’s called overthinking and it’s a trap.

Asking the wrong type of question too early, questions fueled by emotional shortcomings and hidden fears, before the work had a chance to stand on its own legs, is a recipe for disaster in any line of work.

I’ve seen the same thing come up both in creative writing groups and in corporate settings where people may think they are above the pitfalls non-professional enthusiasts fall in. On the contrary, the dynamics of self-doubt affect humans pretty much everywhere. We’re all susceptible.

The secret of working with or in spite of doubt is to treat it no different than drinking a cup of coffee. You need to feel comfortable in dealing with the unknown. Working on anything, the next big American novel, a triple A game, a productivity app, it all involves a lot of unknowns.

The unknown is your best friend. 

It feels counterintuitive, but the right thing to do here is to stay calm and not let panic control your actions. You let that energy of the unknown wash all over you, give you ideas, present bumps on the road. The thing with energy is it never goes away, it shifts from one form to another. So instead of panicking, being afraid, or worse, throwing things away, you keep riding that wave, using the energy to produce something of actual worth.

Debilitating doubt is a symptom of not being in control of the self. It feels like fuzz in the mind. Like an unknown entity telling you what to think, what to do. That’s your internal critic.

By all means, do not ignore it. Voice the worry you have, to get it outside of yourself. To take power away from it. But don’t let it take control of the work.

You’re always the one who’s in control.

Working in a group

Especially, be careful in group settings. To a group, voicing concern can behave like wildfire. A virus that takes over every member of a group through a set of social conventions and the cavemen instinct of needing to mimic belonging.

When it comes to other people, the worst type of critic is a vocal, confident one, without experience of their own or a single argument to stand on. You need to learn to shut voices like that down. Whether that means ignoring them completely, or opposing them with your own confidence backed up by actual experience.

I’ve always thought about reviewing, criticism, and groupthink like this:

You can talk anything down as a bad idea. And if not everyone is aware of that, bad things will happen.

A lot of good ideas die very early on as a result of self-doubt or groupthink.

When the group gets tired of talking everything they see down, suddenly the first other thing that gets shown ends up being “good enough.” Why? Nobody minds it. 

It doesn’t make people uncomfortable. It doesn’t create impressions or reactions. Usually that’s a symptom of being mid-ground, something everybody can say it’s okay, but it’s not great or the best or the worst.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Something you publish ends up being not good enough. So what? Most things are. 

Did it still produce a good result? Did you learn something from the experience? Did it lead to a new opportunity?

Aurora borealis by NOAA from their photo library, here to symbolize the unknown.