If you’re struggling to start…. Just continue.

Do you have a hard time starting tasks or projects? We all do, especially when we're not sure how or where to start.

So what happens? We procrastinate; we work on things that feel urgent or timely or flee to our devices or email or ANYTHING that will take us away from what needs to get done.

Often, we don’t want to start because we don’t know if our work will be good enough and we would prefer to avoid it. Plus, STARTING feels like a big undertaking, doesn’t it?

Let’s reframe things. Instead of thinking you have to START something, think of it as CONTINUING something you’ve already started.

• Got to start on sales outreach emails for the day? You’re just continuing from the emails you sent yesterday.
• Have to work on that presentation deck? Even if you haven’t typed one word, you’re continuing from what’s in your head, or from the team meeting discussion and are putting it into slides.
• Need to prepare an analysis? You’re continuing to address a problem statement by putting some numbers together to answer questions.
• Have to call the insurance company because they denied a claim for a pre-approved procedure? Sorry, I can’t help you. My hack only goes so far and I can't prevent this soul-crushing experience. Unless this is the second time they’ve denied the claim… then you can pretend you’re continuing the conversation with the agent who tells you they’ll take care of it (just like they said last time).

Aside from the last (definitely not personal… this has never happened to me) example, there are many situations where you can use the “continue not start” approach.

Since we’re basically telling ourselves that we’ve already started, all we have to do is keep going. Right?