As we start up a new project the beginning is the first place that people get tripped up.

There are a lot of little decisions and steps along the way, but most times we never get to those decisions as we often fail in the first step. The very decision to start something in the first place.

This could be something like refinishing furniture, cooking something new, publishing a paper, or learning a language. We get in our own heads as we are trapped by all of the narratives that society pushes on us.

It’s important to know some of the roadblocks we’ll see so that we can address them and press on.

Perfect is the enemy of good. We believe that the new product that you want to send out is absolutely amazing before sending it out to others.

You already have a ton of projects happening. Overcommitting to opportunities at the expense of actually completing them is a problem. The hard part is building that muscle where you learn how to say no to things.

You’ll never finish. We often underestimate the time it takes to complete a thing. This is called the planning fallacy, which leads us to overcommit to opportunities at the expense of actually completing them.

As we think through goals and the process of achieving them, there is a need to remember that we sometimes spend too much time thinking and scheming before we get to completion. As we ruminate and consider things we want to build, share, or do…there is one step needed. The first step.

As detailed in this post, what matters most is to understand that you’ll suck at everything in the beginning.

This reminds me of Hemingway’s philosophy that the first draft of anything is shit.

Get out of your head. Don’t let self-doubt make you give up.

Get to building and making. Get that first draft done, and then continue to iterate.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash