why you can't "just do stuff"
part 1
“You can just do stuff” is Twitter’s favorite high-agency catchphrase.1 The world might as well be a simulation: every wistful hope and intrusive thought you’ve had is adjacent to reality. You are brimming over potential for glory and chaos, so go forth and conquer!
Okay, but clearly people don’t just do stuff.
Logically they can, clearly they want to, but they just don’t.
They couldn’t tell you why, either. It feels to them like life just always gets in the way. We’d live in a pretty cool world if human potential was realized to the utmost.
Unrealized potential is one of the greatest and most intimate personal tragedies. The worst part is you can’t even admit to people how much it eats away at you. It feels presumptuous and petulant to say “I deserve more than I have, I’m not as great as I should be!”
I know very few people who don’t, to some degree, feel that way.
So, here are the most common reasons people can’t just do stuff, compiled from observation and personal experience.
