What’s keeping you from getting started? I often find that the biggest roadblock to getting started is the fear of perfection—worrying about putting something in motion without being sure it’s the right approach, or without first being an expert in how to do it.

Perfection on the first try is a self-imposed requirement, though. The purpose of the first thing you build is not to be the final product. In fact, the first one almost certainly will not be what you end up using. When you are just getting started, the goal is diversity of experimentation and magnitude of learning.

Put another way, the quality of the product will often be directly related to the quantity of failures along the way. The more you press on in the face of failure, the more you will learn. Mastery is achieved through experience—by doing, not by simply seeing or hearing. The more attempts, the greater the experience won.