Why learning more is killing your momentum

Hey there, solopreneur!

When I first caught the entrepreneurship bug, I became obsessed with consuming knowledge. Books, podcasts, courses – you name it, I devoured it. Four Hour Work Week blew my mind wide open. I genuinely believed that if I just read enough books, I'd somehow osmosis my way into business success.

Man, I was dead wrong.

I fell victim to what I now call the "self-optimization trap" – this weird cycle where learning about business feels productive but actually moves you further from your goal.

Over the last couple of years, I've completely flipped my approach. Now, I'm all about learning by shipping.

Instead of consuming more content, I'm focused on creating.

Instead of thinking, I'm building.

Instead of planning the perfect launch, I'm iterating in public.

And I've never felt more aligned with my goals.

Today, Im gonna to share the key insights I've gathered through this journey – why shipping beats learning, and how it's fundamentally changed my approach to business.

Learning creates aspirations, but shipping creates an identity shift

Every time you read and dream about your future business you are actually moving further away from it.

But the second you ship something into the world, your identity changes.

The moment you make your first dollar online, a completely new world opens to you. It changes from "I might do something" to "I am something."

I experienced this firsthand when I launched my first product. The night before, I was just another wannabe entrepreneur. The morning after my first sale? I was a founder.

That feeling is like nothing else – a weird cocktail of validation, terror, and excitement all rolled into one.

No amount of books, podcasts, or courses can give you that identity shift. It only comes from shipping.

That mental leap is worth 1000x more than any business book you'll ever read.

You need 10,000 iterations, not 10,000 repetitions

I've been obsessed with something Naval said recently about skill development.

It's not about spending 10,000 hours becoming the best at something. That's just grinding the same path over and over.

What actually matters? Ten thousand iterations. And the longer you wait to get your first iteration, the longer it'll take you to become a true master.

Your first iteration is supposed to suck.

If it doesn't suck, you waited too long. And it's the pain of sucking that actually brings the change.

I learned this the hard way with my first product launch. The landing page was ugly. The copy was clunky. The product itself had bugs I didn't catch. But that messy first launch taught me more than months of research ever could.

The key difference between iterations and repetitions: Iterations are meant to change over time.

Each new version incorporates what you learned from the last one. You're not just putting in hours – you're evolving with every cycle.

Seeing customers interact makes your creations feel 10x more REAL

There's something almost magical that happens when real customers touch your product.

Especially with digital products, it's easy to feel disconnected from reality. The whole thing can feel abstract – just pixels on a screen.

But watching someone use what you've built? That changes everything.

When you see:

• Real people solving real problems with your creation

• Genuine feedback (both good and bad)

• Someone actually willing to pay for what you made

It suddenly becomes 100x more real.

Even if sales are slow or you're struggling, making that connection with actual customers is a crucial step toward building something great.

Nothing beats that feeling of "holy shit, someone is actually using this thing I made."

If it feels too big, go for a tweet first

I made the mistake of always thinking you have to launch this crazy big product.

It really changed my mind once I understood that you can start shipping an idea in form of a tweet or a video.

Every time I have a product idea now:

• I post a simple X thread about it

• I mock up fake product images with ChatGPT

• I gauge interest before building anything substantial

Every time you create a surface area where people can interact with your ideas, you already make them more real.

Sometimes it feels too big for us to directly go into production, so sending out these little signals into the world is a great way to get started.

I've tested dozens of ideas this way. Some got crickets. Others blew up with engagement. And a few turned into actual products that people now pay me for.

The beauty of this approach? Zero commitment. Low stakes. But real-world feedback that guides your next steps.

Failing will light a fire under your ass to make things great

Every single time I ship something, things go wrong. Without fail.

And that's become my secret weapon.

If you feel 100% ready when you click launch, you've waited way too long. But when you see everything that's broken, it creates this strange motivational energy.

Because if it's really bad right now, it can only get better.

I've learned to:

• Celebrate every bug I find

• Welcome every piece of criticism

• Get excited about all the flaws

Each problem is just a signpost pointing to the next iteration.

That's the weird paradox of shipping – failure actually becomes fuel.

And that fire burns way hotter than any motivational podcast ever could.

People respect everyone who tries

Most of the time we judge ourselves way worse than anyone will judge us.

Most people have huge respect for everyone trying to launch anything.

Because it takes a lot of courage to fail, especially in public.

So once you decide to actually bring something out into the world, you already have more courage than 99% of people.

Even if anyone ends up judging you for it, don't get mad about it. It's usually just a projection of their own insecurity because they would never have the courage to start.

Remember this: builders respect other builders. The critics? They're just spectators.

Once you start shipping, you'll take learning more seriously

You should only dive deep into learning resources, podcasts, or PDFs once you have the problem that these solve.

If you encounter that your email marketing went wrong, you'll learn so much more efficiently when you look at the resource helping you to solve it.

We learn without applying it? It's just a waste of time.

So shipping products will actually make you a better learner because you learn motivated by a goal. This emotional charge will help you learn much more efficiently.

I wasted hours on marketing courses before launching anything. Then I shipped and learned more in a week than I did in months of passive learning.

Look at everything as experiments

I've completely reframed how I view business in the last year.

Now, I see everything as an experiment.

Think about scientists in a lab testing a new drug – they expect most trials to fail. It's just part of the process. When one experiment doesn't work, they just set up the next one.

I've started to approach business the same way:

• Each launch is a hypothesis being tested

• Each failure is just data

• Each iteration gets me closer to something that works

When you adopt this mindset, you almost start looking forward to finding out how your next experiment will fail. Because each failure narrows the path to success.

If you can learn to enjoy the process of running experiments, you disconnect from obsessing over outcomes. You start appreciating building itself.

Your biology rewards you for trying difficult things

Nothing feels to me as more at ease as the day after I launch something new.

If you are stuck in the constant state of paralysis, it will actually make your nervous system go crazy. Feels like this constant fear is building up inside of your body.

We are hard-wired to be rewarded to try hard things.

Every time you go through a launch it will be painful, you will want to quit, but it's also part of it.

In the end, there's no feeling that's more rewarding than when you finally did it.

That rush of endorphins after shipping something difficult? It's better than any artificial high I've experienced.

Most successful people you look up to try way more often than you think

Almost everyone has countless fake ventures before they hit it big.

The most important trait of an entrepreneur is the love for trying and the love for risk.

I've seen it too many times that people start one business, they fail and they never try again.

It's the biggest tragedy for me because so many great entrepreneurs never start to shine because they quit too early.

So if you try something and you fail, it is supposed to be like that. All part of the plan.

Look at Elon, Bezos, any founder you admire - they all have graveyards of failed projects behind them. The ones we see are just the ones that worked.

Your idea about what customers want is usually wrong

Every time you delay shipping a prototype, you feed a more unrealistic view of what customers actually want.

From my experience, there's almost always a massive gap between:

• What we think customers want

• What they'll actually pay for

• How they describe their problems

It's that moment of connecting with real people and real problems that brings the crucial insight.

You'll hear the exact words they use to describe their pain. You'll witness their emotional reactions. You'll understand the nuances you never could have guessed.

And those insights become your most powerful sales copy and product roadmap.

Think about your start-up as a stepping stone not the endpoint

Almost all start-ups find success after they pivot, not with their initial idea.

This really removed some pressure for me.

Every time I think about an idea now, I think about it as an entry point into a new niche or market.

I don't expect it to be the be-all end-all of my journey.

The best founders I know didn't end up building what they initially set out to create. They allowed the market to guide them to problems worth solving.

Your first idea is just the ticket to the game. Once you're playing, that's when the real opportunities reveal themselves.

I want to light a fire under you today. To get you to finally say "screw it" and ship that thing you've been holding back.

Because here's the brutal truth: only things that exist in the real world can actually change your life.

Nothing feels more draining than the endless loop of "maybe someday" thinking.

You don't need another course. Another book. Another year of preparation.

You are ready enough. You know enough. The rest you'll figure out along the way.

This year, I'm committing to shipping relentlessly. Multiple projects. Multiple iterations. Zero attachment to outcomes.

Some will crash and burn. That's fine. Others might surprise me. Either way, I'll be building the most important muscle of all: the ability to transform ideas into reality.

Because at the end of the day, that's what separates the dreamers from the doers.

This stray cat is a real do-er, because all it does it wait at my window all day to grab some leftover food

See you next week 🫡 

Ole