IGMT #055 | Somewhere between too many ideas and not enough finished ones.
Hello again, Reader.
I opened my laptop three different times this week to work on this newsletter.
The first time, I ended up reorganizing folders instead.
The second time, I somehow convinced myself that I needed to clean up old podcast outlines before I could possibly write something new. Which naturally led me into rereading unfinished blog drafts, half-built course ideas, random voice notes, and at least seven documents titled something like “new newsletter idea FINAL final.”
I wish I was exaggerating.
Then yesterday morning, I sat there staring at the blinking cursor while simultaneously thinking about youth sports culture, burnout, social media, coaching behavior, attention spans, anxiety in athletes, college athletics, neurodivergence, creativity, and probably fifteen other things that all felt important enough to deserve their own conversation.
So instead of writing anything, I did absolutely nothing.
And it got me thinking.
I honestly think one of the strangest forms of paralysis is caring about too many things at once.
Because eventually every thought starts feeling too important to get wrong. That is where I have been lately creatively. I keep feeling this pressure that whatever I write has to fully capture the idea. Not just touch it. Explain it correctly. Defend it properly. Cover every angle before someone misunderstands it. Somewhere in that process, creating stopped feeling creative and started feeling like preparing a legal defense for an argument nobody was actually having yet.
The strange part is that I know better because I literally coach athletes through this exact thing all the time.
You can see it happen right in front of you during competition. An athlete starts thinking about too much at once and suddenly everything slows down in the worst possible way. The serve becomes mechanical. The hitter hesitates. The defender freezes for half a second because their brain is trying to organize eight thoughts before the ball even crosses the net.
Keep your elbow up.
- Don’t drift.
- See the block.
- Snap faster.
- Don’t miss long.
- Coach is watching.
- Don’t make another mistake.
By the time the brain sorts through all of it, the moment is already gone.
I think adults do the exact same thing, we just disguise it better.
Coaches overthink practice plans until they become exhausted by their own expectations. Parents spend so much time trying to make the “right” decision that they stop trusting themselves entirely. Leaders become so worried about saying the wrong thing that they stop saying anything honest at all.
Creators are no different.
I think social media made this exponentially worse. Somewhere along the line, every thought started feeling like it needed to become a polished performance immediately. Every post needs a strategy. Every video needs a hook. Every opinion needs to survive public trial. Every creative thought suddenly carries the pressure of branding, engagement, metrics, algorithms, reactions, screenshots, and comments from strangers named things like “VolleyDad427.”
It is exhausting. And honestly, I think a lot of people are creatively drowning because of it. Not from lack of ideas, but from too many of them. Too many things they care deeply about. Too many directions pulling at once. Too much pressure to make every creation profound.
I started noticing something while digging through all those unfinished files this week. Most of them were not actually bad ideas. Some were honestly pretty good. The problem was usually somewhere in the middle. I would start writing, realize the topic was bigger than I originally thought, and then panic because I suddenly felt responsible for solving the entire issue in one newsletter.
As if one Tuesday morning email was finally going to fix youth sports.
That is a lot of pressure for a guy typing in gym shorts while reheating coffee for the third time.
I think this is where a lot of people get stuck in life too. They convince themselves that if they cannot solve the whole thing, they should not start at all. But most meaningful things are not built that way.
You do not build culture in one speech. You do not build confidence in one game. You do not fix burnout in one weekend. You do not build trust in one conversation. And you definitely do not build a meaningful creative life by waiting until every thought is perfect before sharing it.
A few nights ago I found an old document from over a year ago. It only had about four sentences written in it. No structure. No ending. Just a random observation I apparently thought mattered at 11:48 PM, and for whatever reason, I never deleted it.
I reread it and actually laughed because it sounded more like me than half the polished things I have tried to force lately.
It was messy. Unfinished. A little all over the place. But it felt alive.
I think that is what I have been missing lately. Not motivation. Not ideas. Not discipline. Just the willingness to let something be honest before it becomes impressive.
Because maybe the goal is not to say everything perfectly. Maybe it is just to say one real thing that makes somebody stop for a second and think.
Ironically, I guess that is exactly what this newsletter became.
