Can you reframe the most pressing current obstacle as simply a to-do list? In other words, in order to overcome this, what do you need to learn? What tasks do you need to perform? Who do you need to convince?

Hmm. My initial reaction to this question: I don’t know about that… it’s not that simple.

Then I gave myself pause to challenge my default reaction of rejecting the idea completely. Can anyone else relate? To the part about rejecting something by default…

If I were to use time, money and energy as the default obstacle, I imagine it would be easier to turn those obstacles into a simple to-do list. But how would I turn fear into a to-do list?

Well, when I look back at my past experiences of social anxiety, and fear of being rejected or ostracized, the to-do list was comprised of various speed dating and social networking events I would schedule as my own form of exposure therapy to expand my window of tolerance until what was once uncomfortable eventually became comfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have social anxiety to this day, but I’ve learned to mask it really well by studying body language and learning how to appear confident, even when I don’t feel confident inside.

So when it comes to the fear of wasting my time, I suppose I can operationalize it by doing market research and creating a buyer avatar for my first online course. I imagine that would reduce the likelihood of me wasting my time creating something no one cares about. But there’s a part of me that thinks that’s a cop out for actually doing the thing since I end up actually, in fact, wasting my time by getting lost in the market research.

I have a tendency to create these side quests for myself in the spirit of perfectionism. So here I am, 10 years later, holding onto an idea that has long stayed with me but has yet to be fully executed. I literally have over 22 multiple page documents of different variations of outlines and content dumps.

I recently synthesized all of the information to come up with my umpteenth “final” outline that has been validated by multiple coaches I’ve worked, which—in my brain—negates the need to do market research under the assumption that I have a better read on who my avatar is without actually spending the time to map out the avatar.

Quite frankly, it’s just a lot of work I don’t wanna do when I should be writing content and creating the curriculum for what I had just outlined, speaking of which I should find out where I put that so it doesn’t get shelved for another few years…. Brb

Annnd I’m back. The course has 12 lessons across three core sections. Step one: find latest outline. Check. Step 2…my struggle is if I create too many steps for myself, I’ll overwhelm myself. But if my steps are too vague, I’ll still overwhelm with myself.

I have to keep it simple and specific. The general to do list, if I were to stop getting in my own way, would be as follows.

Step 1: Describe the primary purpose or function of the lesson in one single sentence.

Step 2: Set 2 to 3 learning objectives or intended outcome by the end of the lesson.

Step 3: Pull 3 to 5 key points from the archives to fulfill the learning objectives.

Step 4: Create a slide deck that covers each of the key points in order.

Step 5: Create a fill-in-the-blank workbook for participants to take notes, and complete coaching exercises.

Step 6: Repeat for the next 11 lessons.