Transcription
Okay, the simplest way to start anything is with the 3-2-1 trick. Whether you're starting a difficult project or trying to get out of bed, all you need to do is count 3-2-1. This stops you from overthinking and activates your brain's prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and taking action. That works for simple stuff, but what if you're trying to learn something more difficult, like starting a life-changing project or learning a difficult skill? I've done that a few times, as well as writing literally hundreds of published articles and a couple of books, and I can say pretty confidently that starting is the hardest part.
So today, I'm going to give you an evidence-based guide to what I think of as the four levels of starting things. We've already done level one: count it down. Which brings us straight to level two: write something down. This is pretty easy. If you're starting an essay or an article, just get something on paper. Put down a first sentence, a first paragraph, or just a rough draft of the whole thing. It doesn't have to be perfect; it doesn't have to be a sentence that's going to finish up in the whole thing; and it doesn't even need to be right. But it will give you something to fix, and fixing something is almost always easier than making something new. If it's a larger project, write down what you want to do on a Post-it and put it somewhere visible. Both of these things have the benefit of committing you to starting the project, but they also do something else useful. It's evidence that starting something but not finishing it leaves it to percolate in our minds, getting us thinking about it and noticing all the other things in our life that relate to it. So that means you'll be constantly attuned to random incoming cues relating to the project, whether that's a video on YouTube or somebody mentioning someone who could help. That all helps you build momentum until it's almost difficult not to continue.
When you've done that, the next level is to break it down. The next job is to break down whatever you want to achieve into the simplest steps you can and find the first thing that moves you closer to your goal. The easiest way to do that is to start listing out the things you need to do and then find the ones that make you go, "Okay, I can't do that because..." That "because" will give you the thing you actually need to do. It might lead to another "because," but that's fine; just keep breaking it down until you hit something simple and small, small enough to do immediately. For me, a pretty simple and kind of embarrassing example of this is that when I was doing my taxes recently, I couldn't send all the forms I needed to my accountant because I couldn't log into the government website. I needed to get them because I didn't have the passcode for it. So the first thing I actually needed to do was start the process of getting that passcode back, which fortunately I'd done well before I needed to actually do the taxes. A benefit of starting early with the smallest step you can is that it's going to alert you to any problems that come up when you're ready to tackle the project for real, problems that might kill your momentum when you've actually got the time to dive in. If you're looking to do something like starting piano, the first thing you need to do is get a piano, which you can't do because you don't know which one to get, which you don't know how to do because you don't know who to ask. So then the first thing to do is find out who to ask, which in this case is Reddit, but for other things you might need to do more research. By the way, if you want some more in-depth examples of how first-thing thinking works, that's the sort of thing I talk about in my newsletter, which you can find a free link to in the comments. I'd love it if you signed up.
Then, once you've done the first three things, the only thing left to do is get it done. Because really, the process of doing anything is just repeating these steps again and again until they become second nature. The toughest thing about most long-term projects is overcoming what Julian Smith calls the "Flinch," which is the little bit of psychological resistance that stops you from sitting down to work on them every day. But starting things is really just a habit, and like most habits, it can take you anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months to build. But the good news is that just learning to start big or small things every day will make a huge difference to your life. As Smith puts it, what you're missing is that the path itself changes you. As you climb the mountain, you'll get stronger; your brain will be shaped by the path. You might think the path isn't for you, but it is right now; you just need to start. And once you've got started, what will make the process a whole lot faster is building systems and creating resilience. I've got a whole video about how to do that right here. See you over there.