Recently, I finished watching a show called Nathan for You. The show follows comedian Nathan Fielder as he attempts to help struggling business by employing marketing tactics that can be described as somewhat unorthodox. To those that haven’t seen it before, here’s an example. In one episode, Nathan helps a local clothing store plagued by shoplifters. He notes that clothing brands benefit from having attractive celebrities are wearing them and decides to turn shoplifting from a negative into a positive by creating a new marketing campaign for the store where attractive people are allowed to shoplift one item from the store in hopes that their “less attractive friends” would want to buy it. Although this is a brilliant idea in theory, there is one issue: how do you determine if someone is attractive? To solve this problem, Nathan hires a security guard to determine if the customer is attractive enough to shoplift and this premise becomes the main joke of the episode.

As you can see, Nathan’s marketing tactics are created for comedic purposes rather than legitimate results and they usually flop. However, sometimes he strikes gold. When attempting to boost the popularity of a local zoo, Nathan created a fake video of a pig saving a goat stuck in a pond and uploaded it to YouTube (link). Prior to the episode airing, the video was showcased on several talk shows and gained a majority of its 10 million views. On another occassion he created a store called Dumb Starbucks (parody of the giant coffee chain) that garnered a large following and was thought to have been created by Banksy.

As silly as it may seem, Nathan for You is inspirational. It teaches us a valuable lesson: just get started. By implementing even the most ridiculous business ideas, Nathan is already doing better than those who haven’t gotten started, mostly because of fear of failure or waste of time. He constantly tries new ideas, fails quickly, and gets started on the next one. Eventually some ideas of his stick, as seemingly ridiculous ideas can actually be a stroke of genius.

Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the history of science, knows that’s how big things start. Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world. - Paul Graham (source)

In the business / startup world, Nathan for You is a humorous emodiment of the idea that, no matter how ridiculous your idea seems, you should just get started. You will fail, so just get started on your next crazy idea - don’t let the critics, the loudest one often being yourself, persuade you not to. Your ideas aren’t guaranteed to be successful, but they also aren’t guaranteed not to be.

Of course you can draw this conclusion by just looking at almost any founder of a huge company and see how often they failed or were told their product was too crazy and people aren’t ready for it, but where is the fun in that?

On a Personal Level

However, the main reason I wanted to talk about Nathan for You is because I have been trying to apply the lesson of “just get started” to my personal life.

In the past year, I have been struggling to find motivation to be productive outside of work. This frustrates me because I used to be able to do so much work during college - I would be in the library or a study space for the whole day other than to eat or go to practice. I rarely went out with friends, played video games, or just enjoyed the city. It was a very stressful time for me and not sustainable, but I can’t help but be amazed by how much motivation I used to have. Perhaps it is because I had the end goal of finding a job, but now that I have one I need to find another goal to work towards? It feels weird feeling guilty for not doing extra work after a tiring day of doing actual work, because isn’t the whole point of working hard when we were in high school and college so that we don’t have to work hard later on in life? That’s the reasoning I use to persuade myself that it’s fine to shut my brain off after 5:00 PM.

This is not to say that your life should revolve around work. I regret that I didn’t enjoy my college life more and just do what college kids do. Additionally, in the past year, instead of working all day, I have been able to pick up new hobbies, be healthy, and actually enjoy living. It’s important to take that much needed break because life is a marathon, not a sprint. However, no matter how long I rested, I constantly felt like I needed a break. I was in a rut and I couldn’t help but feel guilty for my lack of work since I know I am still so young and I know I have the potential to do great things. Nearly everyday I felt this guilt. I would get excited thinking about all the new things I could learn and work on in my free time, but I also would get insecure that I will never be an expert or that my work on a side project is a waste of time. So to avoid my insecurities, I never get started. But when I never get started, I constantly feel guilty and discouraged. It’s a constant back and forth.

Recently, I had the opportunity to mentor some interns at my company as well as give advice to some undergrads who have contacted me. One piece of general advice that I often give them is to start working on a side project (original, I know). It may seem intimidating at first and the toughest part is getting started, but as you start working you will learn so much since you are driving your curiosity. Once you learn something new, you will soon discover there is something else you don’t know and now that you have the momentum, you are ready to start on that next obstacle. After a while, you will look back and be amazed how far you have come. I am so honored that people voluntarily reach out to me actually find my advice useful, but I realize that I often forget to follow it myself.

I started off this essay with a probably unnecessarily long explanation of Nathan for You and I feel like I immediately lose all of my credibility by so seriously dissecting a show like that. But I felt like I needed to include information about the show because watching it, oddly enough, inspired me to write about this topic, a topic I have been lacking the motivation to write about for a year. And now that I accomplished this, I can finally feel the momentum flowing again and I am excited to start working on other things again. This time I am confident that I will go through with it because I already got through the hardest part of getting started. Let’s see how it goes!

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