Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly

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.

Hardly anything done in Aikido is what a normal person would choose as a first option. Do you know how much practice it takes to make stepping into a punch or kick feel like the right thing to do? Do you know how much confidence it takes to realize just when your attackers think they have you where they want you, they just gave you a great opportunity to introduce them to the Earth... very suddenly.

In an online business, it's much the same. You're going to start out doing everything badly. The first product will not be perfect. It will contain typos and squeaks and whines. You'll say to much in some places and too little in others. The conversion rate on your first sales page will probably be less than 1%. You'll list features instead of benefits. When you start blogging, the posts will be short and me tooish or too long and cumbersome. Your articles won't contain the pizzaz needed to bring traffic. Traffic and sales will be slow for a long time.

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. Don't understand what FTP is? There's a blog post. Did you find a nifty combo of techniques for bringing traffic to your site? There's an e-book. Can't find a plugin to display a collapsible list of pages in WordPress - develop the software to do it. My suggestion: If you're having problems with something - WRITE IT DOWN! Put it in a text document specifically for product ideas or write it in your personal journal. 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. Maybe it's just me, but I find learning to be 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! And everyone is bad at something. My suggestion: Children find everything fascinating. Adopt an a child like attitude towards your tasks. Enjoying the learning process is probably why children learn so fast and innately. Make the discovery process fun.

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.

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