Taking care of the right Itches

15Jan10

Note: this is a post about an idea that’s inspired from three books (Meatball Sundae, Small is the new big both by Seth Godin and Ignore everybody by Hugh MacLeod) that my hero, Derek Sivers, recommended.

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When will that someone pay attention to all my problems?

Someone who will take me seriously knocks on my door day one day and then informs me, “Hello Daniel, it’s your lucky day. I’m here to take care of all your itches.”

It’s probably going to happen when the moon meets the sun. Never. Instant noodles beget instant disappointment. We have never heard of someone who conquered Mount Everest in 30 minutes. We have never heard of a baby that has a height of 6’5’’. We have never heard of Wikipedia back in the 90’s.

Where can we start? We always start with the seed. We start small. We begin now. How can we trust ourselves to handle the big things when we can’t even excel in the small things to begin with?

We’re overwhelmed by our cluttered priorities: put up a website, study a LOT of books, consistently experiment, focus on the music, save money, tighten our relationship with the fans, etc.

But when we think through all the possible options on where to start; we realize one significant insight: there’s a plethora of opportunities and most things are not what they may seem at first sight. The problem I think is that we tend to torture ourselves with the assumption that some miracle must happen first before we take serious actions.

“I have to earn $20, 000 before I can start making the music that I want…”

“I have to graduate college first before I can pursue a career in music…”

“If only I started when I was 9 I could have been on a different road right now…”

“I’ll start composing once I’ve mastered and memorized all the intervals by ear…”

“After reading 30 books on marketing then I can come up with a solid business plan…”

Obsessed with certainty no?

What if we shift our focus from pure certainty to spotting the right itches?

The path that the few will take brings doubts and fear, but be true to yourself, isn't this the thing which excites you?

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