How to Start When You Don’t Know Where to Start

The best productivity advice I’ve ever heard, from How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living by Rob Bell.

Way too often, we don’t start things because we can’t get our minds round the WHOLE thing. We don’t take the first step because we can’t figure out the seventeenth step.

But you don’t need to know the seventeenth step. You only need to know the first step. Because the first number is always 1.

That’s where you start. With 1.

It’s too overwhelming otherwise. It’s too easy to be caught up in endless thoughts: what if step 4 doesn’t work? Or what if there isn’t money for step 11? What if people don’t like the results of step 6?

You have no idea what the answers are to any those questions .

The only thing that wondering and speculating will do is separate you from the present moment.

When you begin, the seventeenth step is sixteen steps away. You don’t have to know how to do it, or what it is, or even when it is.

Because the first number is always 1.

It’s not 5, then 8, then 24 then 62.7