Want to get started? Just get started!

This is a message for all business owners, entrepreneurs, project managers… and basically anyone else out there who has a big task to accomplish. I know you have it tough. Projects are big and unwieldy. It’s hard to start. It’s hard to gain momentum. It’s hard to maintain momentum. It’s hard to juggle everything and get the project successfully completed. But projects ARE completed successfully even though they looked daunting at the beginning.

So, how can you give your daunting, unwieldy project a fighting chance at success? I’ll give you one of the top secrets to make it happen: “Just get started”.

That’s it. That’s the secret. Okay, I know it doesn’t sound that profound but in my coaching and in the project management and business development work I do, you’d be surprised how little that secret is employed. Most people spend more time thinking about the work than doing it. It’s action and not cerebral activity that gets projects moving.

To borrow some principles from physics, it takes more energy to start moving an object than it does to keep it going. Or, as my science teacher, Dr. Harris, said, “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion”. The idea here is to just create critical mass. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be the most obvious place to start, but you need to create something. You need to do something to get it going.

Projects are often delayed or stall early in the process because there wasn’t enough critical mass built up. Project members end up dwelling on the details or acquiring “analysis paralysis” because those things seem important they are often easier than rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.

Want to write a book? Just start writing. You might not start at the front and, the truth is, you might end up scrapping most of what you write by the time you’re three-quarters of the way through, but you’re more likely to get to that three-quarter mark sooner by just starting somewhere.

Want to create a new marketing effort for your business? Just dive in. You may not have all the details finished and you might not have all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed in your plan, but having something started will make a difference to getting it done. Otherwise it will sit on the backburner for months or years.

Want to start a business? It can be tempting to spend time doing the research and reading up about the marketplace and visiting the competitors, but you’ll be closer to success by minimizing those things and instead creating a website and marketing your product or service.

Want to get started on Twitter? Forget thinking about the best way to do it or how it might impact your business. Sign up. Start Twittering. Figure it out later.

I’m not saying that you should blindly rush into these things or that there is no place for preliminary thought. But I am saying that there comes a point when your thinking becomes less advantageous than any action you take.

Related posts:

1. The Fastest, Easiest, Most Efficient Way to Get Stuff Done
2. Top 5 Project Management Lessons from Moving
3. Why Loading the Dishwasher is the Right Thing to Do