Living legend Kevin Kelly turned 70 last week. Kevin is the founding executive editor of era-defining magazine WIRED (and a bunch of other stuff before and after that). To celebrate the occasion, Kevin published 103 pieces of advice he collected over the years. It’s definitely worth reading his list in its entirety, but Kevin starts his list with:
About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.
I have written about this idea and approach here before. When in doubt, begin. When not in doubt, begin. In the vast number of cases, you are better off for beginning, rather than waiting for the time being “right”.
Beginning though must not mean that you drop everything you do and get started with the new thing right away. This would be foolish — as it leads to “squirrel brain”, the seemingly random and rapid switching of priorities and tasks. Sadly, a rather common occurrence for startup founders — as there is always a new, shiny objective to conquer. Combining “shiny new objective” with “begin” easily leads to not getting anything done.
Rather than simply “beginning”, I prefer to think about the best first step (and most of the following ones) towards my objective in the context of my overall objectives, and then do that. Every so often that literally means “drop the pen and get this done”, and often times it means “schedule time in the next few days to complete the first step”.
The time certainly is right now to get things squared away.