It takes time to start

Should it take so long for us to start pursuing our objectives?

We sometimes worry about how long it will take us to "get there" – the overall time to our destination, whatever it may be.

But today, I want to reflect on how long it's taken me to truly start – whether in my career progression, personal goals, or habits.

In summary, starting is hard and takes time, and that's okay. Starting often means reflection, preparation, and, most importantly, getting up each time we fall.

Starting my startup job

I learned a lot during my first startup job as a software engineer: Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, CSS, Git, Emacs, etc.

But despite learning valuable skills like Ruby and Rails, my first startup job was the wrong mix of hard and easy, as first jobs often are – more like chores than puzzles.

I knew I had learned enough in that role and needed a different challenge, so I started looking.. or at least told myself I would.

Except I didn't.

As you probably know, changing jobs is hard: deciding what you want, finding companies, reaching out, prepping for interviews, interviewing, and handling rejection. Going from "I should start looking" to "I started looking" can sometimes take years.

Then something really funny happened: I interviewed, got a much higher job offer, my manager offered to match it, and ... I stayed.

Again, changing jobs is hard. This one involved moving, changing personal plans, impacting my family, etc. It was easier to stay, so I stayed.

About a year later, I finally took another opportunity. I remember realizing soon after starting the new job that I should have moved on from my prior role much sooner.

My challenge wasn't wanting to change jobs and being unable to – it was wanting to and knowing I could but still not doing it.

This kind of resistance has shown up in other areas of my life. A personal example is my journey with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

My flaky BJJ journey

I was really excited about BJJ when I first started. I was training for close to 2 years when suddenly that new job opportunity I was just telling you about asked me to move (oh, the irony!)

In hindsight, I should've found a new BJJ gym right after moving. Instead, I gave the typical excuses: I didn't know the area, I was too focused on my new job, I'd have time once settled, I wasn't sure about the new gym. You know the drill.

Fast-forward a whole year, and I still hadn't returned to training. A family situation then led me to move back, and I had wasted a year of BJJ practice.

But now that I was back home, I could just start training right? Wrong! It then took me another 3 years(!) to beat the resistance of being sidelined and going back to training.

I loved training. I loved BJJ. I knew the area, the gym, everything. But now I had new excuses: I was out of shape, my back hurt, my father was sick, my family needed me – again, you know the drill.

My situation wasn't unique. In BJJ, we joke about the "eternal" white belts and "eternal" blue belts: the people who have been training for several years but haven't had the consistency necessary for progression.

As fate would have it, just yesterday, a BJJ student showed up at our school during my private class with that exact spiel: "I was a blue belt; I stopped 3 years ago when I moved to this city; I'm looking to come back."

My advice to him to break out of the resistance?

Pull the trigger.

Pulling the trigger

I'm a big fan of metaphors and using words as guides for action.

When it comes to starting, my favorite one is "pulling the trigger."

Pulling the trigger is already a part of our colloquial vocabulary, and it conveys a specific set of conditions: you are rock and loaded, pointing at your target, and just need a small movement to do what you intend to do.

Most resistances we run into aren't trying to find our target, or aiming, or choosing what to do. It's often just about pulling the trigger.

But why don't we easily pull the trigger? Why is it hard?

My theory is that we resist pulling the trigger because we're afraid of missing.

Even though change can be hard, like switching jobs, sometimes it's relatively easy, like paying a monthly fee and spending a few hours a week at the new gym.

But we're typically afraid of making a mistake, of being wrong. Afraid of betting on the losing horse, we watch the race without picking any horse.

You gotta pick horses. Place bets. Be in the game.

That's what Jeff Bezos talks about on his concept of one-way and two-way door decisions:

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions.

But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.

Jeff Bezos's letter to investors, 2016

Many of your starting decisions are two-way doors – if you go through it and it's not what you expected, you can often return to something quite similar, given a little time and effort.

So pull the trigger and don't worry about missing.

Take more shots.

How to get better at starting

To summarize, I think there are 3 important lessons around the challenges of starting.

1) Starting is hard, and that's okay.

Don't assume starting is going to be easy because it's not. We're often stuck in situations we could get away from and resist doing the thing we want to do – just because.

Because it's hard.

It's okay.

2) Thinking we should "pull the trigger" helps

"Pulling the trigger" conveys that all the prep work we should do has been done.

It's about the minimal motion of taking that first step, having the conversation, or making the change.

It is hard, but thinking "I just have to pull the trigger" can help.

3) We resist pulling the trigger because we're afraid of missing

A big reason why we're afraid of starting is that we're afraid of making a mistake.

But of course, we all make mistakes. And often times, not pulling the trigger is a bigger mistake than pulling it.

Instead, think of your decision as a two-way door – you can always iterate or reverse it if it's not what you expected.

So that's my takeaway, and I hope it helps you too:

Pull the trigger, don't be too afraid of missing, and trust your ability to adjust as you go.