Average Joe's Guide to Success

1. Finish the thing

The most important part is finishing the thing. All the other points in this list aim to make this point easier. (Usually) the best way to learn the thing is to do the thing and the only way to do the thing is to actually do the thing. You can't put your name on something if you don't finish it.

1. Keep it simple

Take (safe) shortcuts and drop features that are going to take time. Whether you're trying to learn a lot of things at once or hone in on one particular skill, being able to finish 10 things in an acceptable way will give you more variety of experience than spending 10 times as long on one thing that has to be perfect.

1. Repeat step 1

This article about pottery covers this point. If you're focusing on quantity over quality, you'll end up better at doing the thing, since you'll have done it so many times.

For me, the thing that I did was write this blog post. It's probably not perfect and I'm sure in its brevity I missed many things, but I'm a blogger now, and if I keep going, it will only get better. Now to hit that Publish button...