Overthinking—making and updating plans, gathering information, talking to people—is only useful for protecting you from the pain of reality and the hard work it takes to learn. 

It is not useful if you actually want to achieve your goal.

What is useful is doing. Because you’ve already thought so much about it, you probably aren’t rushing into anything.

Scope out a small project and see how it goes. Make sure it’s the actual thing you want to do. For example, if you want to write, don’t practice writing book proposals—write an actual article or a chapter of a book. 

Stick to the small scope. Plan for what you need to get done, and when. Don’t let your imagination get the best of you. Make progress every day until you’re done. Practice completing and delivering a project again. 

It might go exactly as you’d hoped, but it also might not—and that’s exactly the point. You never needed to do more thinking. You needed to risk disappointment, rejection, and failure. Doing something, and seeing how it goes, is the way you get there.