One motivation that works particularly well for me is curiosity. I like to try new things just to see how they'll turn out.

We just don't have enough experience with early versions of ambitious projects to know how to respond to them. We judge them as we would judge more finished work, or less ambitious projects. We don't realize they're a special case.

It will be easier to try out a risky project if you think of it as a way to learn and not just as a way to make something. Then even if the project truly is a failure, you'll still have gained by it.

Imagine if we could turn off the fear of making something lame. Imagine how much more we'd do.

The thing you're trying to trick yourself into believing is in fact the truth. A lame-looking early version of an ambitious project truly is more valuable than it seems. So the ultimate solution may be to teach yourself that.

One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame. And this fear is not an irrational one.

This is a difficult problem, because you don't want to completely eliminate your horror of making something lame. That's what steers you toward doing good work. You just want to turn it off temporarily, the way a painkiller temporarily turns off pain.

For some it might work to rely on sheer discipline: to tell yourself that you just have to press on through the initial crap phase and not get discouraged. But like a lot of "just tell yourself" advice, this is harder than it sounds. And it gets still harder as you get older, because your standards rise. The old do have one compensating advantage t... See more

But there is another more sinister reason people dismiss new ideas. If you try something ambitious, many of those around you will hope, consciously or unconsciously, that you'll fail. They worry that if you try something ambitious and succeed, it will put you above them. In some countries this is not just an individual failing but part of the natio... See more