Psychology
Stop Waiting to Feel Ready
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Why the feeling of being ready never comes, what waiting really costs, why confidence comes after action and not before, five simple ways to start while you are still scared, and what to do when things don't go well at first.
Key takeaways
- The calm, sure feeling of being ready comes after you have done something new many times, not before you start. Fear only means you are doing something new.
- In research by Gilovich and Medvec in the 1990s, people looking back over their whole lives regretted the things they did not do more than the things they did.
- Twenty minutes a day adds up to about 120 hours a year, or about 600 hours in five years. Waiting a year pushes your best years a year further away.
- Albert Bandura found that the strongest source of confidence is doing it yourself: you cannot think your way into confidence, you act your way into it.
- Start scared: make the first step tiny, count 5-4-3-2-1 and move, let version one be bad, remember people watch you less than you think, and pick a day, time and place. Start small and safe; don't borrow money for an untested idea.
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Full video
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Full video chapters
Sources
Original from: Cypher original
Gilovich & Medvec (1995), The experience of regret: What, when, and why, Psychological Review
Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2012)
Bandura (1977), Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change, Psychological Review
Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987)
James Clear, Atomic Habits (2018): the Two-Minute Rule
Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule (2017)
Gilovich, Medvec & Savitsky (2000), The spotlight effect in social judgment, JPSP
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis
Ira Glass on the gap between taste and skill (interview)
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