Something I didn’t predict has happened: the more regularly I talk about finishing, the more conversations I have with people about starting. In the last month, I’ve been approached (separately) by three people who each want to begin a new project. They have an idea they’ve been steeping or otherwise quietly working on and they’re debating if they should make it “real” by committing to it publicly. The subtext of two of these conversations was: how do I know when I’m ready?
There’s no universal answer to this question. Readiness depends upon any number of individual and contextual factors. Still, I’m going to throw this out there: if you keep wondering if you’re ready to start something, you’re ready to start. If you’ve been watching others who started something and you feel excited (and a little bit jealous) as you watch, that too means you’re ready (enough) to begin.
Why “ready enough”? Because you don’t have to feel completely ready—and what’s more, you don’t need to be ready technically either. You really only need to feel restless and impatient to find out what would happen if you did begin. Impatience is readiness in disguise.
Here’s a close-to-home example of what it looks like to be “ready enough to begin.”
My daughter, who doesn’t yet know how to read, has started reading books to us. She’s not reading in the technical sense, but she’s reading in every other sense. She selects a book, has us sit close, and won’t begin until we’re paying attention. She tells the story, from memory, from beginning to end, moving from page to page, her eyes darting around the illustrations for cues to plot points or dialogue. That she can’t read the words doesn’t slow or discourage her. “What’s that say?” she’ll sometimes ask, interrupting herself to point at a line. And then I feed her the line, sotto voce, because she is, after all the lead actor here. She repeats it, not skipping a beat, and the story flows on.
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