Why Start Before You’re Ready?
I had to hear this message so many times before actually taking this advice.
Some sayings are so common to see or hear that we might tune them out. This phrase below used to be one of those for me.
Start before you’re ready.
My perfectionist brain heard, “Yeah sure that works for other people but not for you! You are better than everyone else.”
While this seems like a nice thing to say it was keeping me from trying new things, being messy and failing at anything.
You can’t fail or succeed if you never try.
I remember in high school I loved to procrastinate. Even with classes and projects that I loved doing. I felt like the only student who enjoyed writing essays!
My high school project horror story
In my senior year I had a giant project in my AP English class. Since English was my favorite class you think I would already have jumped on completing this project before the looming deadline, right?
Wrong! For reasons no one knows I didn’t start seriously working on it until the night before! I’m sure many high school students and college kids can relate.
When I finally started to work on it I realized that this was going to take more than just an hour or two. This might be an all night project party.
So I’m working on this project freaked out by the prospect of not finishing and getting a bad grade.
I’m alternating between crying and wanting to give up while watching infomercials babble on in the background. It’s already so late in the day and I’m barely half way done!
Finally I reach my breaking point where I knew putting something together, anything, even if it isn’t very polished is better than nothing.
Even though it wasn’t my best work- I still got a good grade and an A in the class!
What I Learned
I’m not telling you to procrastinate and create when you are stressed out by deadlines because that’s not fun or productive.
But if you have a big, scary goal or project the act of chipping away at it even when it seems impossible will do more for you than just thinking about it.
I also love to use research as an excuse not to take action. If I learn everything before I start then I will be better prepared!
The problem with that type of thinking is there will always be more to learn. So this just pushes back your start date until years later if you even get to it.
And I’m saying this with love as someone who loves to over analyze, do research and procrastinate! These habits are hard to break.
When you realize that these habits aren’t serving you then you can take steps to start taking action on your goals today!
Now that you know why you should start before you’re ready I want to hear from you. Let me know in the comments if you used to love procrastinating like me.
