--- title: Just getting started created: 2024-11-18T09:18:12 modified: 2025-10-20T05:47:15 --- > _“Start before you’re ready. Don’t prepare. Begin. Don’t think. Act.” ― Steven Pressfield, [Do the Work](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/15554094)_ > _“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe_ > _“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” — Rumi_ > _“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” — Zig Ziglar_ > _[“Whether a decision is good or bad can change based on how you act after the choice is made. **You can't learn all the lessons beforehand.** You learn a lot about what you want in a marriage after getting married. You discover what type of career you enjoy after doing a lot of work. And so it goes in nearly every area of life. **In many cases, what you wish you knew ahead of time can only be learned after the decision is made.**” — James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/february-13-2025)_ > _[“You can act your way into feeling long before you can feel your way into action. If you wait until you feel like doing something, you will likely never accomplish it.” ― John C. Maxwell, How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1158022-you-can-act-your-way-into-feeling-long-before-you)_ > _“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.” — Ivan Turgenev_ > _[“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.” — Mark Manson](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11945271-action-isn-t-just-the-effect-of-motivation-it-s-also-the)_ --- > _“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”_ 種一棵樹最好的時間點是十年前，其次就是現在。 --- 只要開始就不嫌晚，沒有什麼叫太晚， 只要前進就不嫌慢，沒有什麼叫太慢， 我們都有恐懼和害怕，但我們永遠不會太遲。 --- The most difficult thing is the decision to start/act, the rest is merely [tenacity](every-single-day-chop-wood-carry-waters.md). --- By the time I hit my second or third workout, I start wanting to exercise more. But if I miss two or three sessions, I lose all motivation. **It’s all about momentum.** --- [The scariest moment is always just before you start.](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/150292-on-writing) Start before you feel ready, avoid _chicken-and-egg_ — a situation where you feel stuck because **you believe you need X to do Y, but also need Y to get X**. Like the classic paradox: _Which came first, the chicken or the egg?_ --- # Ready isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision. Don’t wait until everything is perfectly prepared or until you feel completely “ready” — because if you do, you might **never start**. You’ll get trapped in a loop of “_I need experience to start, but I need to start to get experience._” --- Start even if you can only [do a little](Always%20start%20small.md). Once you get started, it is much easier to continue going. [Make that decision to get started.](https://youtu.be/TQMbvJNRpLE) --- # Everything above zero compounds positively * Running one mile has more in common with running a marathon than sitting at home. * Investing $100 has more in common with being a millionaire than being broke. * Writing one sentence has more in common with writing a book than never writing one. Every race starts with one step. Every fortune starts with a small deposit. Every book begins as one sentence. --- # The Ovsiankina Effect = The Hemingway Effect ## Definition * describes that once we start a task, we feel a drive to complete it—even if we’ve only made minimal progress. * refers to the innate human urge to finish tasks we’ve initiated. --- > _[“You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.” – Dr. Jerome Bruner, Harvard Psychologist](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11683801-you-more-likely-act-yourself-into-feeling-than-feel-yourself)_ * Fake it until you make it * Act as if --- # 萬事起頭難 > _“Begin now to be what you will be hereafter.” — St. Jerome_ > _“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain_ > _“The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.” — Ed Latimore_ [^1] * Well begun is half done. * It’s easier to steer a moving ship than to put a stationary one into motion. * [My yoga teacher always starts class with this line: “Congrats. The hardest part is over. You showed up.” I feel like that mindset applies to most other things. Worrying about a task often is far worse than the task itself. Starting is the hardest part.](https://mariandrew.substack.com/p/100-things-i-know) * The Scandinavians / In Norwegian, they have a phrase dørstokmilla ([The Doorstep Mile](https://sketchplanations.com/the-doorstep-mile)) * Meaning that the first mile away from your front door is the hardest of all. * It is the psychological threshold that we have to get over in order to go outside, to leave the comfort of the house behind, and set foot into nature. * The Latin proverb “Initium est dimidium facti” [^2] reminds us of the importance of simply beginning a task. It translates to: “_Once you’ve started, you’re halfway there._” [^3] --- Work has a sort of _[activation energy](why-is-it-so-hard-to-just-do-the-work.md)_, both per day and per project. It’s just about matching the required [activation energy](why-is-it-so-hard-to-just-do-the-work.md)—overcoming that initial hurdle. * [用謊言幫助自己冷啟動](https://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html#:~:text=It%20will%20probably%20be%20harder%20to%20start%20working%20than%20to%20keep%20working.,How%20hard%20could%20it%20be%3F) > 一切事情最難的是開始，開始可能比堅持還要困難。有時候，你需要透過「自我欺騙」才能跨過第一道門檻。但別擔心，這是自然現象，並不是你的錯。 > > 無論是開始一天，或是開始一個專案，你都需要一定的能量才能啟動。既然「開始」比「堅持」需要更多的能量，那麼我們可以稍微欺騙自己一下，告訴自己：這兩者需要的能量其實並無太大的差別。 > > 在大部分的情況下，自我欺騙在做成大事的過程中是錯誤的，但這是個例外。當我在早上因為懶惰不想工作的時候，我會騙自己說：「我只是來檢查一下目前的進度。」五分鐘後，我就會發現自己的錯誤，或者需要改正的地方，自然就開始工作了。 > > 同樣的自我欺騙，也可以用在開始一個新的專案。欺騙自己認為一個專案所需要的工作量與實際情況沒那麼大。很多偉大的成就都是從一句「這事情能有多難？」開始的。 * [“The Physics of Productivity” by James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/physics-productivity) * [@abdaalFeelGoodProductivityHow2024] * **Newton’s First Law of Motion**, often called **the law of inertia** :[^4] ‘_An object at rest stays at rest, while an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted on by an external imbalanced force._’ In other words, if an object is still, it will remain still; if an object is moving, it will continue moving, unless another force (like gravity, or air resistance) prevents it from doing so. * As Newton recognized, it takes way more energy to get started than it does to keep going. When you’re doing nothing, it’s easy to carry on doing nothing. And when you’re working, it’s much easier to carry on working. When you feel like you’ve tried everything to properly motivate yourself but you’re still [procrastinating](procrastination.md), you need one final boost to get started. * I like to think of the principle of inertia as a literal hump on a road. Imagine you’re about to cycle down a hill. You’ve got your helmet on, your gears are well oiled, and you’re itching to get started. There’s just one problem. You need to cycle uphill a little before you get to the long slope down. It’s going to take a burst of energy to get over the hump, and exerting that energy might not be the most pleasant thing in the world. But once you’ve overcome it, you’ll be cycling down-hill, the wind in your hair, feeling better than ever and gliding on home. [^1]: The hardest part about going to the gym is GOING to the gym. [^2]: from Horace, the Roman poet, in his work Epistles [^3]: = “_He who has begun is half done._” [^4]: from _[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica 自然哲學的數學原理](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica)_