Q&A: “Can I I force myself to ship something every two weeks?”

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Can you force yourself to ship something? Can you force yourself to publish something, share something, produce a product every two weeks? That is the specific scenario here today. Endless research feels productive, like you're just doing lots of research and studying, but then you realize like a whole bunch of time has passed and you haven't made anything. You haven't actually sold anything or presented it.

So I think in this situation, the fix isn't to stop learning altogether. It's creating a bit of a guardrail that says, okay, I'm gonna research or study for this amount of time, but then I'm gonna make sure I have something. But let's talk about, how can you make yourself publish something, whether it's a product, a service, a new social media channel, a platform, whatever it is you want to put out into the world, how can you kind of push yourself forward to make sure it actually happens? That's today's topic. Stay tuned for the details.

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Hello from Kansas. I've jumped into the side hustle world recently and have been binging podcasts, YouTube channels and online courses from Udemy. My notes are stacked, but weeks go by and I still haven't launched anything. I jump from course to course because I feel unprepared then feel guilty for not acting. How do I set up a system?

Maybe a learning to action ratio that forces implementation. Are there practical checkpoints to stop consuming new information until I ship something real? - I think you're in a good place. You've been learning, you've got some ideas. And I think it's wise to set up a system that kind of forces you to publish.

I use the timeline of every two weeks and the introduction doesn't have to be that of course. But I think what you can do is kind of bookend your week. Maybe you reserve half a day for some fresh material, you're learning stuff, you're taking those course modules, you're watching those YouTube videos, whatever it is. But the rest of the week is implementation mode. And so if you get into Wednesday and you see another shiny tutorial you want to watch, you just kind of save that link or put it somewhere into a like learn next weekend folder and you keep building.

It's also helpful to convert your notes to tasks. Like a lot of times when we're learning something, we take notes, which is a very helpful way to learn. But if you want to apply what you've learned or implement, it's good to go from like, okay, here's some things I learned and here's how I'm going to apply them. So like an action step is like, pick my domain name, write my first landing page headline, set up my Stripe account. Those are active actions that will help you get going with your business.

And then perhaps set that launch checkpoint. Again, two weeks is a good timeframe, it could be 30 days. I wouldn't do it much later than that. And you promise yourself that you're gonna publish something according to this timeline, whatever that is. It's a pre-order page, it's a sample product, it's a landing page.

The point is public visibility, no matter how small. And then what happens if you reach that timeline and you haven't actually shipped? Well, then you don't earn more tutorials. You don't learn anything else. You pause watching YouTube and watching those courses, you implement first, then you go back to learning more later.

A lot of what you're going to learn, you will learn through doing. You'll learn more through actually getting that product or service or whatever it is going, than you will through other forms. So the other forms can be helpful, no doubt, but not at the expense of actually doing. So that's the thing, I think we need to flip the ratio of learning to doing and make it more of like a 30/70 split. 30 learning, 70 doing.

Let's see if we can do that. 30 learning, 70 doing. Listeners, good luck, wishing you well, cheering you on as well. I wanna hear about your successes, things you were starting, your ideas. If I can be helpful, let me know, of course.

And one of the ways we try to be helpful is with 3,200 plus episodes that you can access download stream for free at sidehustleschool.com. Hope you're doing okay over there during the holidays, sometimes a busy, hectic time. So take care of yourself and new episodes coming out tomorrow and beyond. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.