Start somewhere or steal something
There you are, at the beginning of a remarkable mission, that you decided to embark on. The goal is clear, you can see most of the steps that you are required to take, but still it seems daunting.
You procrastinate, you convince yourself that you need more time to think.
Long walks, elaborate lunch breaks, lot’s of reading: you do anything NOT to get started.
This is a problem and it does happen to people. Not just to you but to lots of professionals out there.
What sets achievers apart from procrastinators is that they know that the best way to get started is by starting somewhere. Unfortunately it is easy to explain this to others but sometimes difficult to do yourself. For example, I often tell my clients about it:
How are we going to effect change if we are NOT actually changing things? Rather than looking for the most important thing to improve, let’s just improve something. The act of improving something will be valuable enough because we will work on habits, we can cultivate process and we will break taboos.
But like I said, when it comes to our own tasks the difference between saying and doing may be more difficult. The irony is that I started to write this post because I was procrastinating on writing. I figured writing this post would be a good way to flex the writing muscles. But when I got started I realized that Mark Twain described this way better than I ever could:
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one. – Mark Twain
Reading this quote nearly flipped me back into procrastination mode. Fortunately I realized in time and figured I would just incorporate it into this little story. In fact, I’m going to try and steal something more often as a means to get started.
And you know what? Writing up this silly little story inspired me to write some more.
When was the last time you just got started by stealing something? Tell me on Twitter