The Day 100 Problem

Hi and welcome to The Daily Dot, the daily edition of the Connect the Dots podcast. My name is Matt Raglan and in each episode I share a short lesson about how to be more focused and productive. I draw these lessons from personal experience, work with clients, modern psychology, and real-world application. Thank you for listening and if you enjoy The Daily Dot, please share it with a friend. Now here's today's lesson. The Day 100 Problem. In my work at ConvertKit and Podia, I have the pleasure of working with thousands of creators. Most of them were new and ready to start sharing and selling their work. It's an exciting time and the opportunity for creators is only going to expand in the years to come. If you're early in your creative journey, then one of the best lessons I can share with you is to move fast and make stuff. You absolutely have to build a library of content to show the world that you're serious about the work. Now, there is something that I call the Day 100 Problem. And this is that too many new creators over-research every decision on a platform, service, brand, color palette, customer voice, and on and on. These are absolutely questions worth getting right, but not on day 0, and maybe not even on day 10. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but at the beginning, you probably have a gut instinct on the answers, so it's important to start from there. Now, this also applies to productive work. We can get so caught up in what is the right goal, what is the right step that I should be taking, how should I prioritize this, is there one thing that I should do instead of the other, which app should I use? This is really common for the tool selection that we might have. Should I use Notion? So should I use Roam? Should I just write it down on a note card? Should I use my Bullet Journal? Should I use any other number of productivity apps? But these are all symptoms of a problem that is a fear of getting started, a fear of failure. This is not a day zero, a day one, or even a day 10 problem. The more that you have work that you're actually able to organize, the more that you have made progress on the goals that you have set. Then it becomes easier to understand which tool is going to be best for getting the right work done. If you want more information on this, I encourage you to check out the Productivity Flywheel episode, which talks more about how tools are influenced by the actions, time, or ideas that you need to manage and not the other way around. Because for the most part, the tools and platform that you use for a creative business or productive work are all pretty interchangeable. So it's best to use the one that fits your budget and makes it easy to get started. Don't spend months researching the difference between WordPress, Squarespace, Ghost, or Notion and Roam and Things and any number of tools that I've already mentioned. Give yourself a week and go with the one that looks easiest to set up and start using. The reason you make decisions on platforms and tools quickly is to spend as much time creating and working as you can. The platform you publish on, send emails from, organize your projects in, or sell courses on isn't near as important as actually creating the content and doing the work. If you want to switch, optimize, and upgrade later, the opportunity cost of switching isn't nearly as high as the opportunity lost early on and the momentum because you tried to solve a day 100 problem on day 0. The quote I want to share with you today is from the writer John Steinbeck: Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. The question to ponder today: What day 100 problem am I trying to solve on day 0? Thanks for listening to The Daily Dot. I really appreciate it. The best way to help the show grow is by sharing with a friend, but the other way is to rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'd love to hear from you on Twitter or Instagram. You can find me @MattRagland. I'll be back tomorrow with a new episode, so thanks again and I will talk to you tomorrow.