There are lots of good reasons not to do something. It might be too expensive, the timing might be wrong, you might not have the capabilities yet, or the downside might genuinely outweigh the upside.
But there’s one reason to keep a watch out for.
What will other people think?
It’s a surprisingly powerful brake on doing interesting things.
We tell ourselves not to publish the article yet because someone might disagree with it. Not to put the idea forward because there are still holes in it. Not to start the project because it might fail. Not to make the career move because other people might think we’re crazy.
All of this can sound like sensible caution. Sometimes it is. But I think we make a mistake when we include the possibility of criticism in the cost of taking action, because it assumes there is another option available where nobody judges you.
There isn’t.
Move quickly and someone might think you were reckless; move slowly and someone will wonder why it took so long. Take an unconventional path and people might question your judgement, while taking the conventional one leaves you open to the accusation that you played it safe.
Build something ambitious and some people will think it’s ridiculous.
Never build it and you avoid that particular criticism, but you also guarantee that nothing comes of the idea.
Criticism is a fixed cost.
Once you start thinking about it this way, the calculation changes.
We have a tendency to compare the downside of doing something with the apparent safety of doing nothing. The first column fills up quickly: failure, embarrassment, wasted effort, criticism. The second column looks reassuringly empty.
Except it isn’t.
Doing nothing has an opportunity cost, and unlike the possibility of embarrassment, that cost is guaranteed. The experiment you don’t run produces no learning. The point of view you don’t share influences nobody. The job you don’t apply for cannot change your career. The product you never put in front of a customer has precisely zero chance of working.
This matters particularly when the thing you’re considering is reversible.
Imagine you have an idea that you think could make something significantly better. You could spend six months making it bulletproof, socialising it, refining it, anticipating every objection and building the perfect deck. Or you could make the smallest useful version and put it in front of someone.
The second option exposes you much earlier. People can see what’s wrong with it. They can question your assumptions. They might tell you it won’t work.
But now you have something you didn’t have before: information.
You discover which assumptions were wrong, which parts people misunderstood, which objections actually matter and which disappear as soon as someone sees the thing working. You change it and try again.
Three months later, you may know things you could never have learned by making another slide titled “Key Assumptions.”
This is why I think action has such an underrated compounding effect. Doing something creates information, that information improves the next thing you do, and the next attempt creates more information again.
You have to lean into the messiness.
Over time, the person who is comfortable putting imperfect things into the world accumulates dozens of these cycles while someone else is still trying to make their first attempt defensible.
And the compounding isn’t only in the thing you’re building. It’s happening to you.
Write enough things and you become a better writer. Build enough things and you become a better builder. Lead enough difficult things and you develop judgement that no leadership course can teach you. Start a business and you very quickly discover which of your beautifully reasoned assumptions survive contact with someone being asked to hand over actual money.
Many of the most valuable things in life work this way. You cannot think your way to the answer because the information you need only exists on the other side of action.
Which means excessive concern about criticism has a much bigger cost than it first appears. It doesn’t just stop you doing one thing. Over time, it can stop you becoming the person who has done lots of things.
There is an enormous difference between those two people.
One has theories about what might happen. The other has accumulated judgement, pattern recognition and a much better sense of which risks are actually worth taking.
None of this is an argument for recklessness. There are real risks that deserve serious consideration. Money matters. Reputation matters. Relationships matter. Irreversible decisions deserve a much higher bar than reversible ones.
But someone thinking your idea is stupid? Someone disagreeing with something you wrote? Someone wondering why you’re trying something that might not work?
Those are remarkably cheap risks.
Especially when you realise you were never going to eliminate them anyway.
So perhaps the question to ask when you find yourself hesitating isn’t what will people think if I do this?
It’s if criticism is a fixed cost, which choice gives me the most upside for paying it?
Write the thing. Build the thing. Apply for the thing. Put the idea forward. Try something sufficiently ambitious that there’s a reasonable chance it won’t work.
You’re going to pay the fixed cost anyway.
You may as well choose the option with upside.