The more new things I try, the more I realize that everything works the same way. Whatever you do, it’s not the doing that’s difficult—it’s the starting.
When you want to write a book, reaching 60,000 words feels like an impossible mountain to climb. But all it really takes is sitting down and writing the first sentence. Then, somehow, the next ones follow. Before you know it, you’ve finished your first page. If you keep at it every day, writing a full novel in a month or two no longer seems like a huge challenge. It becomes the natural result of habit.
The same thing happens when you look in the mirror and notice your belly is a bit bigger than it was in your twenties. “Oh, boy, I’m getting fat. I need to start hitting the gym.”
That moment—the choice to get off the couch and move—is what separates people who never lose the weight from those who get in shape. You don’t need to spend three hours a day in the gym. All it takes is committing to five minutes of exercise daily. Once you start, those five minutes often turn into a full 30-minute workout. Again, the habit then creates the result of being fit and in shape.
Writing (and publishing) this blog post took me half an hour. At first, I hesitated. I have a novel to finish, a mailing list to update, a YouTube video to produce, a workout to do, clients to deal with, and my apartment to clean. But as soon as I opened my word processor and typed the first sentence, the rest appeared almost effortlessly. The inner voice telling me to procrastinate and write that post tomorrow went quiet.
With everything I ever did, I realized that doing is easy—once you’ve done the hard part: starting.
