So you’ve decided you want to finally take action.
You want to create a video series about the thing you can’t stop thinking about. Or maybe you want to start a business around an idea that’s been quietly tugging at you for months. You can picture it. You’re a little nervous, but you’re excited, this could be the thing.
And then you stumble upon a video.
Someone’s already doing exactly what you were just planning. And they’re great at it. Polished. Confident. Thousands of followers. Comments full of people who love them.
And just like that, all your excitement, and all the hope you had for the future you were just starting to picture, gets wiped out. You feel small. You feel silly for even thinking about it.
“Someone’s already doing this. How could I possibly beat that?”
If you’ve felt this, you’re not weak, paranoid, or uniquely behind. Nearly every creator, founder, writer, and builder feels it. But it’s worth examining closely, because “someone’s already done it” is one of the most limiting beliefs you can carry, and it’s also one of the least true. Because honestly, originality is overrated.
I feel this all the time. In fact, as I write this, I’m feeling this exact thing. And I’m writing it down so that the next time it creeps in, I’ll know how to counter this negative self-talk in my head.
What helps me most is going back to what I’ve learned from creators I’ve come to look up to as mentors.
1. Nobody can do YOU
Here’s the thing the fear conveniently ignores.
Think about fried chicken. There are a thousand places that sell it, same dish, same basic recipe, a branch on every corner. And yet you have your spot, the one you’ll happily drive past three others to reach. Not because it’s the objectively “best” chicken on some scientific scale, but because something about it is yours.
Or think about your favorite person to talk to. Plenty of people could give you the exact same advice they give. But you go to them, because of how they say it, how they make you feel, the way only they put things. You’re not really after the information. You’re after them.
Or think about the one song that stops you in your tracks. Everyone’s heard a hundred love songs. But there’s one that makes you pause whatever you’re doing, and it’s usually not the one topping the charts. It’s yours, for reasons you can’t fully put into words. Someone else, just as smart, just as sincere, loves a completely different one.
That’s not random, and it’s not a flaw. It’s because humans are complex. We’re all different, different tastes, senses of humor, things that move us. And it goes deeper than preference: everything you’ve lived through shapes it. All your experiences, your memories, the specific path your past carved, even the future you’re reaching for, all of it stacks into a way of seeing the world that belongs to no one else. That accumulated complexity is your fingerprint. And it’s exactly why “someone’s already done it” falls apart: the topic can be taken, but you can’t.
Anyone can cover what you cover. Nobody can be you covering it, your voice, your taste, your story, the specific way you see the thing. Content is copyable. A person isn’t. That’s not a motivational platitude; it’s the actual mechanism by which creators win. People don’t follow topics. They don’t subscribe to “brand histories” or “productivity tips” in the abstract, they subscribe to the one person whose way of telling it clicks with them. The information is available everywhere. What isn’t available everywhere is the way you frame it, the jokes you’d make, the details you’d notice, the angle only you would think to take, the parts of your own story that leak into the work. Two people can cover the identical topic and produce two completely different things, because the topic was never the product. The person was.
So the goal was never to find something nobody has touched. It’s to be so unmistakably yourself that a certain kind of person finds you and thinks, this one, this is the one I get. You don’t need everyone. You need the people who resonate specifically with your version, and the only way they ever find that version is if you actually make it.
So when the voice says “someone’s already done it,” this is what you say back:
“Yeah, someone’s done it before, but they haven’t done it as me, and nobody can. That version doesn’t exist until I make it.”
2. Consistency over originality
Here’s what almost nobody wants to hear: originality is overrated, and it was never what won anyway. What wins is showing up, and compounding. Consistency of output beats novelty of idea, almost every time.
James Clear strips the emotion out and makes it about systems. Through his lens, Atomic Habits, 1% better, identity-based habits, “someone’s done it before” is simply irrelevant to your actual job: showing up consistently and getting slightly better each time. He’d remind you that outcomes are lagging indicators of habits, so instead of worrying about competitors, worry about your rate of consistent output and iteration. The math is brutal and encouraging at once:
A creator who publishes consistently and gets 1% better each time will, within a year or two, pull far ahead of more talented people who are inconsistent or paralyzed by comparison.
He’d also flip it to identity. Don’t think “I’m competing with established creators.” Think: “I’m the kind of person who ships valuable work every week.”
Alex Hormozi says the same thing louder and more tactically. The belief that you need a wholly original idea is a beginner’s myth, almost nothing is original, and execution is everything. Most people lose not because someone did it first, but because they quit early or didn’t put out enough work to get good. He’d happily be the 1,000th person doing something, as long as he was willing to do it better, more, or longer than everyone else.
You don’t lose to competitors. You lose to your own quitting.
So when the voice says “someone’s already done it,” this is what you say back:
“So what? First doesn’t win, consistent does. The only person who can actually beat me here is me, by quitting. As long as I keep showing up, I’m still in this.”
3. It’s a false story
And once you see the first two clearly, the whole thing collapses into what it always was: a false story. A lie. The one your insecurity loves most, because it’s the one that lets you off the hook before you’ve even tried. It’s insecurity’s go-to move to stop you from ever starting.
Chris Williamson is the clearest voice on this. He started a podcast in one of the most saturated spaces imaginable, millions of podcasts, and became one of the biggest by refusing to let “it’s been done” stop him. He’d name the feeling honestly: this is comparison and insecurity talking, not reality.
He talks constantly about how comparison is the thief of joy, how the goalposts always move, and how “everyone else seems to be doing better” is a distortion your brain manufactures. And here’s the trap at the heart of it: even when you’re doing well, there’s always someone bigger. So if your sense of worth is measured against others, you will feel small forever, at every single stage of the journey, no matter how far you get.
That’s the point that changes everything. The biggest names still feel this. It never goes away; it just changes size. So it was never a reliable signal to stop, it’s just background noise that plays the whole way through. And if the feeling is coming either way, whether you act or not, then you might as well do the thing. At least then you’re in the game with a chance of winning, instead of sitting it out and feeling small anyway.
The people at the top were all once exactly where you are, feeling small, behind, intimidated. They just kept going while the feeling tagged along, and let time do the work.
So when the voice says “someone’s already done it,” this is what you say back:
“A false story. Even the biggest names feel this. They felt it in every part of their journey, but they kept going. And if I’m going to feel this all the time anyway, I might as well keep trying, because at least then I’ve got a chance of actually hitting that goal.”
The belief was never protecting you from a real risk. It was fear wearing the costume of strategy, insecurity dressed up as a reasonable observation so you’d mistake it for wisdom and stop.
But you know better now. The topic being taken doesn’t matter, because you were never offering a topic; you were offering you, and that has never been done. Being first doesn’t matter, because consistency beats novelty every time, and the only person who can truly beat you is you, by quitting. And the feeling of being small will never fully leave, because it never leaves anyone, so it was never a signal to stop, just the toll you pay for caring enough to try.
So the next time that thought arrives, don’t freeze, don’t compare, don’t shrink. Do the one thing that dissolves it faster than any reassurance: go make the next thing. Let the fear ride along if it wants to. Just don’t let it drive.