We all have stories about how things began. Beginning is half of the way to completion.
If you want to achieve a specific thing, just begin it. Beginning is the most important part of the progress to achievement.
I will tell you about my stories. But I’m pretty sure that my stories are very similiar to yours. Having read lots of articles on personal growth, I’m now able to understand that we all have common failure and success points.
Waiting for the ideal time to come or ideal circumstances to occur, you just lose time and motivation. Perfectionism does nothing better. Rather, it delays the “good” to happen.
As a child of a soldier, I was grown up with the ideal of perfectionism. I spent years to make things get perfect before I put them on the stage. To tell the truth, this was hard work. And that was why I always avoided beginning and producing new things. I was not feeling comfortable. I needed to work harder and harder. So at last, I gave up.
My forties
In my forties, I came to a threshold. I knew that I was hardworking. It was also obvious that I was talented. I was good at school, good at work, good at relationships. That was not all: I was also lucky. With an optimistic insight for life, I mostly attracted the good to me. But. Yes, but… I deeply had a fear to start new things. What I achieved until now was what I had to do. I had no other choice than achieving to survive in life. And that episode came to an end.
I was now at better conditions. I had more freedom than ever. The time seemed to be OK to start new things. But, I did not know how.
Years passed dreaming. I dreamed that I played an instrument. How about being a blogger? I dreamed that I had a cafe that I ran on benefit of the people in need.
But I was not still starting.
Observing the world around me and getting into more relationships with people, I realized that there was an other way than perfectionism. Creating a new product, starting a new hobby or work didn’t have to be that much difficult.
If you have the will to work on something, just begin it and make progress. It doesn’t have to be completed. Completion itself is a relative concept. And the journey is more important than the destination.
Beginning means breaking into smaller pieces, prioritizing and doing the first task
Working as a project manager, I began to learn breaking huge epics into smaller stories and stories into smaller tasks. Second hint was setting priorities. Beginning the first task started the project. It’s OK not to cover all the details at the beginning. You can’t. Because you learn as you go. You have to adapt to changes. You have to fix bugs. Most of the time you have to add features that you were not aware at the beginning. As you go, tasks complete into stories and stories complete into epics. That is how living projects are created. I saw lots of them. This was the way. Step by step, one by one.
Coping with real life is very similiar to project management. In fact, project management simulates real life issues. Best practises involve real life cases.
The right time is the first time you started dreaming. The right circumstances is the environment you are totally in. The perfect way of doing is breaking the huge scenario into a group of epics which are large meaningful stories. Please do it. Practise working on your whole scenario by breaking epics into stories and stories into tasks. Finally, select the most important step and just do it . Congrats. There you are. You began.
Keep tasks as small as possible. Do them periodically. Have a rhythm. This will let your brain work on the process continuously, even when you are in sleep. So the more you work on your little tasks, the more they will gather to turn into a bundle of useful achievements… As the time passes… And enough of the work is done.
Of course, this is hard work. But it is no more stressing. You’re just exploring the joy in life.
The power of beginning
The hardest step is beginning. Because we are busy and can’t find time. Or we can’t proceed because of the circumstances. May be we don’t have enough money though the work requires it. Or sometimes we wait until we gain the right skills.
This is all perfectionism.
You can learn anything if you spend enough time and effort on it. Not so surprisingly, most of the skills are gained as you practise. To talk for money, if you don’t have enough budget now, say for your hobby, why not starting reading about it? Why not reaching out people who practise the hobby and be part of the community? This keeps your mind busy on your dream. Believe me, you’ll find ways to your dream not so later on. Perhaps this is the power of your brain. It’s showing you the foot steps. Or perhaps this is selective perception. We’ll talk about it more.
So, let’s just begin.
