Start Now

A lot of people I know procrastinate when it comes to important things they need to do. They wait. They think about it. They analyze. They worry.

While research and analysis is important it is more important that we start moving. We can’t sit back and wait forever. We can’t tell ourselves that we are waiting for the perfect time because there is no such thing as the perfect time.

Instead of the perfect time, there is now or “maybe eventually”. Those are the two options.

The problem is that when we bypass doing it now, we fall into the “maybe eventually” state. When we are that unsure of when we will attack something, we often find that we wait too long. Instead of waiting for the perfect time we run out of time and find that the best time already passed.

This might make it seem like we should rush into everything we want to do it without doing any prep work. This also leads to failure. Instead of being ready to tackle problems that will surface, we charge in blind. If we build a habit of this, we will keep jumping from one thing to the next rather than seeing anything through.

So, what is the answer? How can we get past procrastination yet avoid acting in a rash manner?

The solution is simple. The solution is to change how we see the problem. It isn’t about when we do all the work. Instead of a now or never philosophy we start to realize that it will be now AND later. It stretches out over time.

This changes the process. Instead of jumping all in, we can start with a simple first step. We can start immediately, but not have the full scope of the project on day one.

I used to lead a team of software developers to improve the web properties for a Fortune 1000 company. We used the Agile Project Management structure. This forced us to cut the project down into smaller chunks.

We would plan for the future. But we also knew that the criteria for the next steps would change based on what we learned during this iteration. This meant that we could start and work through parts of the project without having the full scope of the project detailed out.

It sounds like this means we were traveling without any sort of direction but that isn’t the case. We made sure we had a strong, unified vision of what we were trying to achieve. We just didn’t worry too much about steps 25 and 26 when we were at step 1.

We put all our focus into that first step. Then when we finished that step, we took a moment to review what we learned and what we need to do next.

The Agile method has been instrumental for software development teams. But this mindset can also help you get started now on your personal ambitions.

Determine the future vision that you are working towards. Then, get started.

This allows you to start making progress towards your goals. You start to gain ground. You learn. You gain experience. You start to build confidence.

As you do this you will be improving and growing while you chunk away at the important tasks. It will allow you to avoid procrastination without becoming rash. You will find the balance that is necessary to make sure you get started. While you do this, you will also remain flexible enough to change when the circumstances change. In effect, you stop waiting for the perfect time to start and begin to make progress instead.