Do the Thing Before You Judge the Thing

A few days ago I was in Sedona with some friends when one of them mentioned that they had always wanted to learn how to play guitar. Then came the qualifier: “I just don’t think I’d be very good at it.”

I had recently listened to ​Rick Rubin talking with Steven Bartlett​ on The Diary of a CEO, and I immediately thought about something Rubin had said. So I asked my friend a version of the same question: Why does being good at it have anything to do with wanting to play guitar?

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that question.

We Judge Before We Begin

Rubin’s larger point was about creativity and comparison. We have a tendency to decide whether an activity is “for us” based on how good we think we might be at it. Worse, we often make that judgment by comparing ourselves with people who have been doing the thing for years.

Want to play guitar? I played bass guitar as a child. I was okay. I enjoyed it. But I couldn’t stop comparing myself to my brother (​he’s a world-class jazz musician​). Maybe we want to paint? We think about actual artists. Want to write a book? Now we’re comparing ourselves with our favorite authors. Want to start running? We look at people running seven-minute miles and decide we’re not runners.

Somehow, interest isn’t enough anymore. Instead, we see something we might like to try and almost immediately begin evaluating ourselves. Would I be good at this? Could I become great at it? Is this worth my time? What would people think? Could it turn into something?

And many times, before we’ve actually done anything, we have our answer. Nope. That’s not for me.

The more I think about it, the more backward this seems. We’re evaluating the experience before we’ve actually had the experience.

What Does It Mean to Be More Human?

Over the past few months, I’ve gone pretty far down the artificial intelligence rabbit hole. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what happens as AI gets better, does more things for us and perhaps eventually becomes something more than simply another piece of technology.

Almost inevitably, these conversations end up in the same place: We need to be more human. I’ve probably said some version of that sentence myself dozens of times, but what does it actually mean?

Maybe part of being human is allowing ourselves to follow curiosity without first demanding an outcome from it. AI is very good at evaluation. Give it enough information and it can compare options, identify patterns, calculate probabilities, find benchmarks and tell us what has worked before. Increasingly, it can help us predict which idea is most likely to succeed before we ever pursue it.

That can be incredibly useful. But I wonder if we risk applying that same optimization mindset to everything in our lives. We experience a spark of interest and immediately turn it into an equation. Should I do this? Will I be any good? Is this the best use of my time? What will I get out of it?

Maybe we’re asking those questions too soon.

Do the Thing Before You Judge the Thing

I’m not arguing that judging something is bad. Evaluation matters. We should learn from our experiences, figure out what is working and decide whether we want to continue. I just think we’ve put judgment in the wrong place.

The sequence should be simple: Interest. Do the thing. Experience it. Then evaluate.

Instead, too often it goes: Interest. Evaluate. Compare. Predict. Don’t do the thing.

My friend doesn’t need to know whether they’ll be a good guitar player. They need to play the guitar. Maybe after six months they’ll decide they hate it. Fine. Maybe they’ll discover they’re not particularly talented but love playing for 30 minutes every night. Great. Maybe they’ll become obsessed with it and spend the next 20 years getting better.

There is no way to know without having the experience first.

I think this applies to far more than hobbies. You have an idea for a different kind of marketing program? Try it. You’ve been thinking about making videos but aren’t sure anyone will watch? Make a few. You want to write fiction even though you’ve spent your entire career writing nonfiction? Write the story.

You want to start a business, organize an event, take a class, learn another language or get up tomorrow morning and try something you’ve never done before? Stop demanding that the idea prove itself before you’ve given it a chance to exist.

We are entering a world where more and more decisions can be evaluated before we act. We’ll have more data, more predictions and more tools telling us what we should probably do.

Maybe one small act of rebellion is to occasionally ignore all of it.

If something interests you, do the thing first. Then judge the thing.

P.S.: ​A reminder that I’m giving away my book, Burn the Playbook, for free​. Please share it with a friend. I’m finding more and more parents are reading this and then sharing it with their kids.