Once, when I was thinking about renting a small office to write in, I looked at a space being vacated by another writer. The place was perfect — lots of light, and just big enough to stand up and stretch your legs every so often but not big enough for a comfortable sofa, which is a thing I find impossible to resist after lunch. I need to rent a place to work, I told myself. I’m already renting a place to sleep.
The place was empty except for a single index card, taped solidly to the wall at about the height where the writer’s desk was. On the index card, he had written this:
9AM START in big capital letters. 10:30 Stretch, do 15 push ups. 12:00 LUNCH, do notes, emails. 1PM START again in big capital letters. 3PM Break, coffee, calls. 4:30PM notes on fixes, revisions. 5:30 workout.
I don’t know who the writer was, but I really, really hate him because he’s clearly figured out the secret to getting things done. He already knows what a million self-help books and productivity gurus claim to know and charge big money to teach.
And I don’t mean the specific silliness of the entire schedule. It doesn’t really matter when (or, in my case, if) you do pushups in the morning or return your calls in the afternoon. All that matters is one word: START, in all-caps.
The only way to do something great — write a script, start a business, start a family, doesn’t really matter — is with a lot of preparation and planning and dedication, and that’s not even the hard part. The hard part is: First, you have to start.
Starting, for a writer, means confronting the blinking cursor and the blank screen. But every task has its own specific kickoff moment that people instinctively postpone. I have friends who have been married for a decade and have been putting off starting a family for a constellation of very thoughtful reasons. They don’t have enough money in the bank, they’re waiting to buy a house, they need to figure out schools, they haven’t decided on names, that sort of thing. But all of those issues come later. What they need to do right now is START.
I have a friend who has been researching the tax benefits to homeownership in Portugal. Apparently, it’s a great place to retire to — great food and wine, nice people, very affordable — and he’s made up his mind to move there, just as soon as he learns Portuguese. Which he will never do. What he needs to do right now is COMECAR.
When other people are involved with a project, any delay is their fault. They’re the ones with the lazybones attitude and the enabling delays. They’re the first ones to suggest knocking off for the day. “We got this, right?” And who keep noticing gaps in the schedule a few days from now. “What’s happening on Thursday, again? Is there a sense that Thursday would be a better day for this?” And they’re the ones who always have a rosy view of the future. “If we all promise to get a good night’s sleep, I mean, seriously, now, I mean really really just come in tomorrow early, big pot of coffee, we’ll all just focus.” This is why there’s such an emphasis in corporate America on group projects and teamwork: All nonproductive behavior can be someone else’s fault.
There is something in us that resists doing that big thing or jumping in with both feet. We — okay, I — always find a reason to put off the big move, which is why you sometimes need to tape index cards above your desk that tell you to START in all caps.
“So, do you want to take it?” the guy renting the office asked me, after I’d looked around a bit. “Sure,” I said. “As long as you get rid of that thing,” I added, pointing to the index card.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and a co-founder of Ricochet.com.
