This morning, I discovered something strange: I spent more energy avoiding writing than it would have taken to write this entire newsletter.

45 minutes of staring at a blank document. Checking email. Reorganizing my desktop. All while my brain invented increasingly creative reasons why I wasn’t “ready” to start.

But here’s what most productivity experts get wrong: This wasn’t procrastination. It wasn’t laziness. In fact, my brain was doing exactly what millions of years of evolution designed it to do.

Have you ever experienced this?

That paralyzing moment before you begin? When everything in your brain screams "not yet" or "not ready"?

This isn’t just procrastination. It’s your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do.

Protect you from uncertainty.

Your brain treats new beginnings like physical threats. That resistance you feel? It’s the same circuitry that kept our ancestors from wandering into unknown territories.

But here’s what nobody tells you about starting:

The resistance isn’t the problem. Fighting the resistance is.

Think about pushing a car. Push against a stationary car, and it barely moves. But once it’s rolling? A gentle push keeps it going.

Your brain works the same way. The key isn’t to overwhelm the resistance. It’s to make that first movement so small that resistance becomes irrelevant.

Your brain processes a blank document the same way it processes walking into a dark cave.

Here’s the neural play-by-play:

1. Your threat detection system floods your body with stress hormones
2. Your amygdala can’t tell the difference between a predator and a presentation deadline
3. Your prefrontal cortex frantically tries to predict every possible outcome (and mostly imagines disasters)
4. Your survival calculator goes into overdrive
5. Your brain treats energy like a prehistoric human treats food. Hoarding it for emergencies
6. It automatically multiplies the size of every obstacle (that small task? Now it looks like climbing Everest)
7. Your focus betrays you

Instead of zooming in on the first step, your mind zooms out to show you every possible way things could go wrong

It’s like trying to drive while simultaneously seeing every possible route on the map.

Here’s the paradox: The same brain that fights so hard against beginning is actually designed for momentum. Think about it, once you’re in flow, your brain actively resists stopping.

We don’t need to overpower our brain’s resistance. We need to slip under its radar.

I’ve developed what I call the "Micro-Start Method." It’s based on a simple premise: Make the beginning so ridiculously small that your brain’s threat detection system doesn’t activate.

Here’s the Micro-Start Method in action:

Step 1: Choose a “laughably easy” first action

• Instead of "Write a newsletter" → "Write one terrible sentence"
• Instead of "Start exercising" → "Put on one running shoe"
• Instead of "Learn Spanish" → "Say 'hola' out loud once"

The key is to make your first step so ridiculously small that your brain’s usual "but what if…" response doesn’t have time to kick in.

Step 2: Harness the "Already Moving" Effect

Once you complete that tiny first action, your brain switches teams. It stops fighting against you and starts working for you. Why?

• You’ve given it proof of progress (the brain loves that)
• You’ve shown it the task isn’t actually dangerous
• You’ve created a "completion high" it wants more of

The key is giving yourself permission to stop after that first tiny step. Ironically, this permission makes you more likely to continue.

The secret isn’t motivation or discipline. It’s understanding that beginning doesn’t require either.

Yesterday, I watched my five-year-old next door neighbor learn to ride a bike. She fell seven times in five minutes. But here’s what fascinated me: Each time she fell, she got up and started again before her brain had time to process the fear.

She wasn’t succeeding because she was fearless. She was succeeding because she was moving too fast for fear to catch her.

That’s the counter-intuitive secret of starting: Speed beats courage. Taking tiny actions before your brain notices beats waiting for confidence every time.

Now, you might be thinking: "But don’t I need to think big to achieve big things?"

Thinking big is essential for vision, but deadly for action. Dream as big as you want about the destination. But when it comes to the first step, think smaller than you think necessary.

Your brain can handle big dreams. It’s the big first steps that shut it down.

So tomorrow, when you face your own blank document, remember this:

Your brain isn’t broken when it resists starting. It’s doing its evolutionary job. The trick isn’t to fight millions of years of survival programming. It’s to work with it.

Start so small your brain doesn’t notice. Start so fast fear can’t catch up. Start before you feel ready.

The path to big achievements isn’t through big brave leaps.

It’s through steps so tiny they seem ridiculous.

Steps so easy they feel like cheating.

Steps so small your brain doesn’t even bother to resist them.

Stay Curious and Keep Starting Small,

John

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