Merlin Mann has an excellent/painful post on real advice; it’s not necessarily what you want to hear.

It made me think of some of my favorite distilled advice: Just do it. Many people ask Ze Frank how he is so creative. It’s because he tries to execute on an idea as soon as possible. He puts it into working form instead of mulling about and shaping it into the perfect idea in his head. This is same reason he never really talked about what camera he used or his editing process; he didn’t want people to get hung up equipment when all they should be concerned about is the content of their videos.

I’m still working on pushing out ideas. That’s actually why I use Skitch so much. It’s me shoving a joke out the door instead of just pondering “well that could be funny”. I could get hung up on trying to learn Photoshop and making a perfectly rendered image. Deviating from the original goal: yak shaving (only now realizing I learned that from another Mann column). Instead, I put in the appropriate amount of energy and move on. I get the satisfaction of creating something and hopefully someone gets a chuckle out of it. I may have purchased a domain or two with similar motivation. The majority of these images are hosted in private on Skitch because I never intended them to have the general audience of Flickr.

I hope this gives a little insight into what makes me tick. Apologies if it doesn’t quite make sense; I kinda wanted to get it out there.

Selected Skitch stupidity: CK the broker, Maker Faire Arrakis, arm transplant, twitter bird failure, the Stones, crypto humor, the cup, another word for pirate treasure.

[Thanks to Chris Miller for the original link.]