Just do it. Always be closing. Real artists ship. The same adage said many different ways. And yet, it’s still not a cliché — it’s the most important bit of advice any creative can heed.

Thinking kills

Left to our own devices, we will think any idea to death. It seems to be the curse of our amazing imaginations — we can think of an infinite number of interesting possibilities, but if we don’t do any them, all we do is think.

Keeping creative output up helps get over the stress of unrealized ideas. Letting a “great idea” stay in your head, festering for a few weeks, and it will pull you apart with stress and frustration. If you start acting on that idea however, you’ll start to see just how great it is (or if it’s not). You can start to tackle the problems, learn from your mistakes, and have the reward of something to show for your creativity.

Jeff Atwood recently posted a great piece from a book on artmaking relating to the classic “do vs. think” situation. The setup is interesting — an art professor grouped his students into two groups, one focused on quality, the other on pure quantity. The result is striking — “the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.”

Always be doing

Without question, the single best piece of advice relating to the independent, freelance lifestyle, is to always be doing. Pack your days with action. Whatever your “it” is — every side project, blog article, web-app concept, or website for a friend — do it, and then the next.

Just doing it works for every situation — the more you do, the better off you are.