beginnings
Beginnings are messy. Always. And that’s how they should be.
If we waited for perfect, we’d never start anything. Ideas don’t arrive fully formed; they evolve through iterations and stumbles. Like a sculpture, they take time to shape and refine.
Action takes courage? Not necessarily. Inaction occurs when expectaions are too high.
Action requires lowering the stakes. Shoot for the first sentence of the first draft of the first version. Treat the project as a work in progress rather than a defining moment. Start so small that it feels laughable and take actions that are so tiny they hardly register as progress.
Perfect isn’t the goal — progress is. And progress only happens when we accept the mess and take the first step.
favorite beginnings
- first rust commit - Lays out the vision of the language
- first git commit - A meta-commit that sets the stage for git
- first node commit - A heavily commented v8 processor
ritual
Here is my current ritual for starting something new. Helps gets me out of a block into a flow of work.
- open up notepad
- write down goal
- list every substep
- open environment
- copy substep into page
- complete substep
- repeat until done
algorithms for progress
These algorithms are similiar ways that organizations have measured progress. You can see how this feedback loop can be applied in different ways.