Recently I’ve started asking a question when people sign up for my email list:

What's the biggest obstacle keeping you from chasing your ideas right now?

The answers tend to fall into two categories.

The first is internal obstacles: fear of judgment, fear of failure, or lack of belief in oneself.
The second is external obstacles: lack of time, lack of resources, or lack of skills.

Internal obstacles are real, and we’ll talk about them in another email. But today’s email is about the external ones.

There’s a common saying about creative types that I think it completely misguided.
The saying is “That person really thinks outside the box!”

But that’s not how creativity works at all.
In fact, it’s the exact opposite. “The box” is a vital part of the creative process.

Thinking OUTSIDE the box is easy: Your boss tells you he needs you to get a project done in the next six days, and you say “Hear me out... Instead of six days, what if I got it done in six WEEKS? What if I didn’t get it done at all?”

That’s some outside-the-box thinking, baby! Unfortunately, it’s going to get you fired.

Without constraints, you don’t need to get creative. You just write a big check and get whatever you want. But when you don’t have the time, the team, or the budget you wish you had, that’s when you have to get creative.

But sometimes there’s a size discrepancy between the box and the project at hand. Try as you might, you just can’t make it fit.

In that situation, you have two options: scale the project to fit the box, or scale the box to fit the project.

If you don’t have the resources to launch the full version of your idea, you have to decide: do I build a plan around the resources I do have, or do I find a way to get the ones I need?

Both are viable options. Both have pros and cons. If you go with the first one, you’ll have to scale things down. You’ll have to forego some of the cool ideas you wanted to pull off because you just don’t have the budget. You may have to redefine what success looks like in this environment.

If you go the second route, you’re gonna have to go into fundraising mode. You might have to scale back your spending in other areas to free up funds for your project. You may need to take on a side hustle or get some investors to chip in.

But there’s a third option, too. It’s the worst one, but it’s the one most people pick: waiting for conditions to improve.

The problem with waiting is that it feels like the responsible move. It feels like preparation. But it’s a trap. The reality is, you will never feel like you have everything you need. You’ll always feel like you need a little more time, a little more money, or a few more key connections.

Those things are nice, but they’re not necessary.

The harsh truth about creative work is this: if you wait until you feel ready, you’ll die waiting.

Maybe you don’t have the time you wish you had to write your book, launch your business, or start your nonprofit initiative. But what can you do with the time you do have? Where can you find a spare fifteen minutes to write or plan or organize your thoughts?

Maybe you don’t have the money you wish you had. But when has anyone ever been satisfied with the amount of money they had?

The best creators figure out how to make the most of what’s available. They don’t waste a second imagining what they’d do with more resources, because that’s a fantasy.

In order to impact anyone, your work has to exist in reality.
That means it has to exist within the constraints of your situation: your time, team, budget, and skills.

When I first decided to try my hand at being a keynote speaker, I knew I needed headshots, a website, and a demo video. Unfortunately, I had no money for any of these things. So I called in some favors. My sister-in-law took some pictures of me. I spoke at a friend’s youth event and had a friend set up a tripod to record it. I hacked together my own website and asked a friend to fix the coding stuff I couldn’t figure out.

None of it lived up to the ideal in my head, but it was all good enough to get me going. And once I got going, I upgraded my materials over time as I could afford to. But if I hadn’t started with the less-than-ideal versions, I never would’ve gotten off the runway.

I’m working on a new book right now, and I’ve written chapters in airports, in hotel rooms, and at my daughter’s gymnastics practices. It’s not the secluded writing cabin I’d prefer, but it gets the job done.

For most people, the thing keeping them from chasing their ideas isn’t actually time or money or anything else. It’s that they don’t feel ready. But ready isn’t a state you reach. It’s a decision you make.

Here's the question: What’s one action you could take this week to move your idea forward, even if conditions aren’t ideal?

Happy Friday, friends. Make it a good one.

Kyle Scheele
Helping Organizations Build and Launch Better Ideas, Faster
​www.KyleScheele.com​