A lot of people want the title of something, without doing that thing. They like the idea of being, let’s say, a musician, but they’re not really interested in making music.

A friend of mine was telling me that he wants to be funny, he wants to some day try stand-up comedy, do an open mic.

But he is never putting any effort on saying anything funny. Never trying to even make a pun. He rolls his eyes on my very bad jokes. He judges people who try to be funny and hog the limelight.

He really thinks it’s a skill that you first acquire and then you become funny. Like how you clear a driving exam and become a driver.

He was focused on the noun, when he should have done the verb.

Same thing with a junior developer that I was talking to last week. He wants the tag of open source developer. Complained that there aren’t enough open source opportunities in India. Companies are not hiring for this profile, no good projects in this space here.

I reminded him that to be an open source developer (whatever that means), you don’t really need any permission. Pick a project, pick an issue in the project, fix it, and voila, you’re an open source developer. Do this a few times and you’ll start getting recognized for it.

Don’t even need to do on an existing project. Start a new project, stick with it for a year, and I swear you’ll be a legit open source developer.

He was focused on the noun, when he should have done the verb.

Same goes for you. A lot of things don’t need any permission these days. You can start your own TV show, side business, music career, writing career, and a lot of other creative things. Most of these needed permission earlier (like airtime, recording studio etc).

You can just start doing, the title will follow.

The title is taken from this book I am reading called Keep Going by Austin Kleon.