Just Start: Imperfect Action is Better Than Perfect Planning

In my post about social media and art, I wrote about my struggle with using social media and the internet to learn about starting an art business. I ended up becoming addicted to information and then entertainment (more so than I already was). This is what James Clear “motion vs action” in his book “Atomic Habits”. Motion is planning and research which is great in the beginning, but it doesn’t produce results. Action, actually executing on your plan and learnings, is what produces results.

I had fallen into the trap of over planning and needing everything to be perfect. That’s why I have redesigned my website a dozen times using a handful of different platforms because I would find evidence that another platform was better in some way than the one I was using. It’s the reason my YouTube channel hasn’t grown because I am far too concerned with not getting it right.

I needed to break the cycle of my perfect action syndrome.

My solution? This blog.

I decided that I needed to take imperfect action, and the best way to do that (other than my art) was the container I wanted to showcase my art…my website.

When you go on Google or YouTube and search “How to build a website” you get a vast amount of content for various platforms along with titles like “10 mistakes to avoid using Wordpress” or “Don’t do these things when building a website”. Now this seems like a good thing right? These people are helping us avoid mistakes, but though they may be valuable in some way, the wording of these title hooks plays on the fear of those of us who have a perfectionist complex. It’s borderline predatory (even if it’s not their intention) because unfortunately fear is one of the levers marketing experts pull on hard to get us to buy their thing. Next time you come across a landing page that has an offer with a timer on it, see if that timer resets after you refresh the page. Chances are that the timer will reset and your limited time offer is actually more infinite that you’re being led to believe.

But I digress.

My point is that the internet is only so helpful in the decision making process for how to build a website and choosing what platform to use. At some point you have to make a decision and commit to it. That was really hard for me to do. I was concerned about whether a platform had all the features I needed (or thought I needed) and so I compared platforms endlessly. This year I wanted things to be different.

I decided to decide.

In his book “The 10 Best Decisions a Man Can Make”, Bill Farrel states that the number one best decision you can make is to decide to make a decision. It sounds way too obvious, but obviously it’s not, especially to the overthinking perfectionist like myself. I read that book over 10 years ago, but that advice is the one that stuck with me the most. So here is what I decided in regards to my website.

I determined my platform: systeme.io

Systeme.io is a relatively new platform. It has only been available to the U.S. market for 5 years give or take (it is a French based platform). I chose it for 3 main reasons:

It had a blogging feature with drag drop editing that was easy to implement.

It had email capability so I could build a newsletter and email list.

And it had a forever free plan that included a custom domain name (stephendorr.com) which you can’t find with most free plans on other platforms.

Now this isn’t a sales pitch (however, when I signed up I automatically became an affiliate which is pretty sweet) this is just an honest walkthrough of my decision making process. For me if was the best option. Is it the best platform? Who knows, and really, who cares? As long as it does what I need it to do then it shouldn’t matter. It’s not about the tool but about how the tool is used.

Designing a website can be very daunting. I wanted something that was quick so that I could start blogging without a lot of fuss. There are so many template options out there on any given platform. For this platform there were only a handful of blog layouts (which I could still customize later) so I was able to make a quick decision and move on.

I then decided to post my first blog. My website wasn’t even really finished before I posted it. Again I wanted to practice imperfect action. Besides, at this point nobody was looking at my blog so who cared if my logo wasn’t up or my pages were full of gibberish filler text?

To be honest it was liberating to create something and post it without worrying about optimization or the perfect image. What I found is that after posting one blog everyday (I'm on day 4 today), I would feel momentum to tackle another aspect of the website such as adding a logo, setting up my newsletter, and tweaking things here and there.

I still don’t have a portfolio of my recent work up yet, but for now I use snapshots of my paintings as blog post images. Eventually I’ll have a portfolio and a shop to showcase my work, but I’m content with slowly adding those things over time.

I just need to keep in mind that imperfect action is better than perfect planning.

Below are the sources I mentioned in this post. They are affiliate links to help me work toward earning a fulltime income with making art and talking about my process. Using the links adds no extra cost to you, but gives me a small commission that I use to fund my work.

Thanks for reading my humble blog!

Affiliate Links

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The 10 Best Decisions a Man Can Make by Bill Farrel

Website building platform of choice: Systeme.io