START BEFORE YOU’RE READY

 

Author: Joan Nakagwe

The most successful people in the world have one thing in common: they started before they felt ready. While everyone else waits for the perfect moment, perfect plan, or perfect circumstances, those who build wealth and achieve extraordinary results take action despite uncertainty, fear, and incomplete knowledge.

We’ve all been there. You have a brilliant idea for a new project, a career change, a personal goal—and then you stop. You tell yourself, "I'm not ready yet." You need more information, more skills, more time, the "perfect" moment. So, you research, you plan, you procrastinate, and before you know it, weeks, months, or even years have passed, and you're still standing at the starting line.

The truth is, you will never feel 100% ready.  There will always be one more course to take, one more dollar to save, one more skill to master, or one more piece of information to gather. But while you’re preparing, life is happening, opportunities are passing, and compound growth that could be working in your favor is sitting idle. The perfect moment is a myth, a comfortable illusion that keeps us from taking the leap.

 The most successful people aren't those who waited until everything was aligned; they are the ones who dared to start before they were ready.

Starting before you’re ready isn’t about being reckless or unprepared. It’s about understanding that readiness is often an illusion, and that real preparation happens through action, not endless planning.

Here's why embracing this principle is one of the most powerful catalysts for growth and achievement.

1. Action Creates Clarity

Waiting for clarity before taking action is like waiting for all the traffic lights to turn green across an entire city before you even start your drive. It's impossible. Clarity doesn't come from endless planning; it comes from doing. When you start, even imperfectly, you immediately gain feedback. You learn what works, what doesn't, what you enjoy, and what adjustments need to be made. Each small step illuminates the next, turning a vague idea into a tangible path.

2. Overcomes Perfectionism and Procrastination

Perfectionism is often procrastination in disguise. The desire for everything to be "just right" before you begin is a paralyzing force. By telling yourself to "start before you're ready," you give yourself permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes, and to learn along the way. This freedom from the pressure of perfection is incredibly liberating and allows you to bypass the endless cycle of planning without execution.

3. Builds Momentum

Starting is the hardest part. Once you take that initial step, even a tiny one, you create momentum. This momentum is a powerful psychological force that makes it easier to take the second step, then the third, and so on. Think of a snowball rolling down a hill: it starts small, but it gathers mass and speed as it goes. Your actions work the same way. The key is simply to get the ball rolling.

4. Reveals Your True Capabilities

You don't know what you're truly capable of until you're challenged. By starting before you feel fully prepared, you push yourself into situations where you have to adapt, learn on the fly, and tap into resourcefulness you didn't know you possessed. This process builds resilience, confidence, and a deep understanding of your own strengths. You become comfortable with discomfort, which is where true growth happens.

5. Reduces the Fear of Failure

Fear is often the real reason people wait to start. Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of not being good enough, fear of wasting time or money. These fears are natural, but they’re also often overblown.

The fear of failure often keeps us from starting at all. But when you start before you're ready, you inherently accept that things might not be perfect. You embrace the idea that the first iteration will likely be messy, and that's okay. This acceptance changes your relationship with failure. Instead of seeing it as a catastrophic outcome, you view it as valuable feedback—an inevitable part of the learning process.

How to Start Before You’re Ready

Starting before you’re ready requires a shift in mindset and approach. Instead of trying to plan for every contingency, focus on taking the smallest possible first step that moves you toward your goal.

1. Start with Minimum Viable Action

Identify the smallest action you can take that would constitute real progress toward your goal. If you want to start investing, that might be opening a brokerage account and buying one share of an index fund. If you want to start a business, it might be creating a simple website and getting your first customer. If you want to write a book, it might be writing the first page.

The key is making the first step so small that resistance to taking it seems irrational. Once you’ve taken that step, the next step becomes clearer and easier to take.

2. Embrace the Beginner’s Mind

Accept that you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s not only okay—it’s necessary. Mistakes are tuition in the school of experience. The faster you make mistakes, learn from them, and adjust, the faster you’ll develop competence.

Successful people often have more failures than unsuccessful people because they attempt more things. The difference is that they view failures as learning experiences rather than permanent setbacks.

3. Set Learning Goals, Not Just Outcome Goals

Instead of focusing solely on end results, set goals around what you want to learn and experience. This makes starting easier because the goal isn’t to be perfect—it’s to learn and grow.

For example, instead of setting a goal to “make $10,000 from my side business,” set a goal to “learn what it takes to get my first paying customer.” This shifts focus from pressure to perform to curiosity about learning.

4. Use Time Boxes

Commit to experimenting for a specific period—30 days, 90 days, six months. This makes starting feel less permanent and overwhelming. You’re not committing to do this forever; you’re committing to try it for a defined period and then evaluate.

5. Find the Right Amount of Preparation

The goal isn’t to start with zero preparation—it’s to start without perfect preparation. Do enough research to avoid obvious mistakes and major risks, but not so much that you never begin.

A useful rule of thumb: prepare enough to get started, then learn the rest through experience. For most endeavors, this means days or weeks of preparation, not months or years.

The Time Is Now

If you’re waiting to feel ready before pursuing something important—whether it’s investing, starting a business, changing careers, or any other significant goal—you’re likely waiting for something that will never arrive. Readiness is earned through action, not through preparation alone.

The most successful people in any field share this trait: they started before they felt ready. They took action despite uncertainty, learned from experience, and adjusted course based on results. They understood that perfect timing is a myth and that the best time to start is usually right now.

This doesn’t mean being reckless or ignoring obvious risks. It means understanding that you’ll never have perfect information, perfect conditions, or perfect preparation. It means accepting that some learning can only happen through experience, and that experience requires starting.

The opportunities available to you today may not be available tomorrow. The time you have to let compound growth work in your favor decreases with each passing day. The confidence and competence you seek develop through action, not through endless preparation.

Whatever you’ve been putting off until you feel more ready, ask yourself: What’s the smallest step you could take today that would move you forward? What would you start if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you attempt if you didn’t need anyone’s permission or approval?

The answer to those questions is probably what you should start working on right now, before you’re ready, because readiness is a destination you reach by starting the journey, not a prerequisite for beginning it.

Your future self—the one who has built wealth, achieved goals, and created the life you want—started before they felt ready. The only question is: when will you join them?

Written by Joan Nakagwe