Start before you’re ready. That particular wording comes from author Steven Pressfield, but the lesson is an old one that I keep finding illustrated in new ways all the time. It’s like the old saying: If you wait until you’re ready to have kids, you’ll never have them.
By the same reasoning, every large undertaking in life seems to carry with it a long checklist of things we need to get out of the way first. I’ll start my book after I set up my home office, which will be in the garage after I clean out the garage, which is filled with mother’s furniture that I will sell when I have a garage sale, which needs to wait for nicer weather, which….
You get the picture.
The problem with these lists is that they expand through a mysterious power all their own. Consciously or subconsciously, the list is a nice, comfortable way to get around the actual necessity of commitment to the one thing that really matters.
Don’t wait until you lose 10 pounds. Don’t wait until the last kid is out of school. Don’t wait until you finish your degree, your housework or your research.
Whatever it is you need to do, just start.
Start before you’re ready. Start before you know how big the task really will be. Start before you learn how to avoid the predictable pitfalls. Start before you have all your pencils sharpened and the phone off the hook.
Just start. Everything else will follow.