The title comes from a quote from the title of Guy Kawasaki’s book because it fits so well to the point I want to make, even though his book is about entrepreneurship and this post, well, is not. Now, what this post is about is getting started. Getting started might seem so simple, and in a way it is, but, at least for us procrastinators, it is the hardest part to get to. Starting means being decided, being committed, being there. As we get ready keep fumbling and stumbling, we might think things twice or thrice, yes, that’s a word, and is important to know words, before thinking them once again, and that’s OK, we can think and plan all we want, but when it’s time to start, we start.
When we start we engage, we build, we produce. By starting we set on a journey, we give our lives some sense, even if the task can seem meaningless or is a lifelong journey. Starting is something we do all the time. Every morning we start a new day, we start a new meal or we start a new commute. We are constantly starting. You might think it’s not the same thing because we are repeating and we know what will happen. In a way you do, although you already know that not two days are the same, similar, but not the same, surprises happen. And let’s use that familiarity with our willingness to start. We don’t even think it twice before going out the door in the morning. Familiarity of what’s to come has diluted the fear or anxiety we might have had before. We know where we’re going, what route we will take, how much time it’ll take and we have it pretty much known. And that can be the same thing for something new we are going to embrace for the first time. How? By using some of many visualization techniques that are available to us. I have already talked a little about visualization in my post “Seeing the future” that you might want to check out. You can then visualize your way into familiarity and that will help reduce your fear. We can overcome all when we start, we can overcome none when we don’t. Starting is getting the ball rolling, we roll and roll and roll when we’ve started, but not when we are yet to do so. Even in physics there is more resistance to start than to keep on moving, what’s called static friction and dynamic friction, it takes less work to keep an object in motion than to put it in motion. We are the same, once we are in motion it takes less work, in this case, willpower, to keep going than what it took us to start moving. What can we do to start then if that is the hardest part? We make up excuses, like the following ones.
The “It’s too late excuse”. We’ve all been there, when we face the excuse that “it’s too late now, why even bother” and unless it physically is too late then any moment is a good one to start.
The “I’ll do it later” excuse. It’s good to wait for the right moment to do something, no use in getting to the office at 2:00 AM or starting preparing for the New Year in the first week of March. But when the time is right, we start.
The “I’m not ready” excuse. This one’s a little trickier because we might not be ready. But we can feel it when we are genuinely not ready and when we are just stalling. When we are getting ready we are eager to start, when we are stalling, we are not.
The “I don’t know why I am doing this” excuse. Again, this one is also a little tricky, because we might not know why we are doing something, we have to figure it out first. Most of the time a valid reason not to do something is when we are being forced to do it by someone who is manipulating us. For all other reasons, we take the Nike stance and “Just do it”
Last but not least, the “I don’t want to do it” excuse. Like the last one this can have some validity, but we can feel it in our gut when it doesn’t, then we can also “Just do it” and start.
Now, starting is easier than doing, we are not committing ourselves to go all the way, just starting. We’ll just start. We’ll only lay the first brick. But we know how this works, and we’ve seen above how much easier it is to go on than to start. Once we start we tend to keep on going, inertia takes over and we go on and on and on until we’re done or until a stronger force stops us. I hope this helps you, remember, just getting started helps you getting to the finish line in a way you didn’t imagine it before. I’d love to read your comments about this and other posts either here or on our Facebook page, and thanks for reading.
