There is no do. You can only try.

TLDR: Try or try not. There is no do.

Yoda is doing it wrong. Cancel Yoda. Don’t buy his new album. Unfollow him on Instagram.

First of all, I should state that I didn’t watch Star Wars. And I’m not into. But let’s forget about that and forget about what Yoda said.

Yoda says “Do or do not. There is no try.” Well, where I live -the place called real world- you try first. If you would live with Yoda’s attitude, you would be in a mental hospital.

People fail trying hundreds of times until they succeed.

Remember 10,000 hours theory mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in the Outliers? Can you imagine somebody that spends 10,000 hours on something and achieve success every time, without even trying or failing? Without even feeling hesitation, exhaustion? Do you think they’ve never burned out?

We crawled (tried to walk) before being able to walk. After we learned to walk then we tried to run. Even Usain Bolt did it the same way.

You tried to walk before “doing” it. You couldn’t do it at first but you tried it again and again.

In software engineering you “try” then “catch”. Computers are the most precise things in this world. And you’re even “try”ing while talking to them. Even when you’re right and even when you know your shit well. So no offense to that green thing and its fan base, but we should forget about Yoda’s attitude.

try and then in case an error(Exception) occurs, make the computer catch it.

Some may say “If you gonna do something, just do it properly and completely or don’t start! It should be perfect and all the details should be taken care of, fortune favors the bold…” Well you fail boldly then, if you do it like that.

There is no success without trying and failing first or in the middle of the process.

There is no roads taken which didn’t start with small steps.

There is no long distance walked without stumble or rest or failure in between.

Even superstars fail. Elite athletes fail. They try to score, sometimes they can’t. They have bad days, bad matches, bad seasons.

I just don’t understand people expect perfection in every single process starting from day one. There are great answers already given to them. Like Manolo told Tony in Scarface(1983) “You can’t worry all the time. You’re gonna have a fucking heart attack.”

Manolo: “You can’t worry all the time. You’re gonna have a fucking heart attack”

If you wanna achieve something, do not overcomplicate it. Just try it. See how it evolves. I’ve seen it many times: Perfectionism ends up with no outcome.

Flickr started as a game. The author of it tried to make a successful game but saw the photo sharing ability of the game gets greater attention. Ended up as a giant photo sharing medium.

Dave Mustaine started as a lead guitar player. He tried to be the lead guitar player of Metallica. He ended up as the founder and the vocalist and the guitar player of Megadeth that has those wild vocals and beautiful songs even you can’t find today in the music industry.

And it doesn’t need to be this big of a success of course. You can even think about cleaning your house for example. Perfectionism would end up with an unfinished, never ending work and a dirty house.

Modern day work is not like a duel anymore

Try. Modern day work is not like a duel anymore where you can hit and win or miss and die. You have plenty of time and plenty of tries left. And when you hit, don’t forget to try to make it better.