Rick Rubin says doubt your work, not yourself. The difference: self-doubt is "I can't write a song." Work-doubt is "my song isn't as good as it could be." When you're stuck, ask why you can't do it. If others have done it and it's physically possible, you're just making excuses.
You can doubt your way to excellence. That's what Rick Rubin says. For most of my life, I doubted myself and failed again and again. I even have a piece about this called 10 Years Losing on the Internet. But then I started doubting something else: my work. And that's when I started hitting exponential growth online. It's left me with one simple idea: doubt your work, don't doubt yourself. So how are the two different? An example of doubting the work would be, I don't know if my song is as good as it can be. Doubting yourself might sound like, "I can't write a good song." So how do you stop doubting yourself? Ask yourself one simple question: "Why can't I?" If it's possible by the laws of physics and other people did it, why can't you? The only possible reason is an excuse. He's smarter, she's prettier, he works harder, whatever. Stop focusing on yourself, focus on improving your work instead. When you improve your work day after day and you see the results, you'll start start doubting yourself and your capabilities less and less. Here's the full Rick Rubin quote. I hope it inspires you like it inspired me to make this video. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. All-or-nothing thinking is a non-starter. However, doubting the quality of your work might at times help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. Go out there and create some cool shit.
