If you want to get good at something, just start by doing it. Today. 

Sam Altman writes an important reminder on this: don’t outsmart yourself and spend precious time and energy working on fake prerequisites. Here’s an example, from my life, that I write about in Creative Doing:

I felt like I needed to have a book agent, write a book proposal, and build an audience, all before I could actually start to write a book. For years, I tortured myself with that idea that I needed the system’s buy-in before I could write a book. This fixation on being accepted by the traditional institutions distracted me from the clear vision of what was in front of me and the valuable experiences and ideas I already had.

I was also working on all sorts of other fake prerequisites—building an audience, learning how to write a good proposal, coming up with an idea that would be a guaranteed bestseller—that accumulated to a huge imaginary wall.

The most important thing I did was get out of my head, and realize that there is much less in the way than I had thought. More importantly, I actually got to do the actual thing—write a book. (Which is also why I write at this blog every day.)