Why Starting Is The Ultimate Strategy
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Act Now, Plan Later
The idea that you need a perfect plan to start anything is destroying your future.
I see it every day.
People waiting for the stars to align before they launch that business, write that book, or build that audience.
Endlessly researching, planning, preparing, until their dreams become nothing but folders of notes and half-baked ideas collecting digital dust.
You're afraid of messing up, of wasting time, of looking stupid.
But here's the brutal truth: waiting for the perfect plan is the biggest waste of time there is.
The most successful entrepreneurs, creators, and innovators throughout history share one common trait—they started before they felt ready. They understood that action creates clarity, not the other way around.
Let's break down why starting imperfectly now beats waiting for the perfect plan later, and how you can use this mindset to actually achieve something meaningful with your life.
The Perfection Trap
Perfection is a mirage.
It's something you can see in the distance, but when you move toward it, it keeps shifting further away.
The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. This creates a never-ending cycle of "just one more book" or "just one more course" before you're ready.
But knowledge without application is just mental masturbation.
The dopamine hit from learning something new tricks your brain into thinking you're making progress when you're actually just spinning your wheels.
Think of it like a chef who only reads cookbooks but never steps into the kitchen. No matter how many recipes they memorize, they'll never understand how ingredients actually interact, how heat transforms food, or how to recover when something doesn't go as planned. Real cooking wisdom comes from burned meals and failed soufflés, not perfect recipes.
This is what we might call the "library trap" — filling your mind with information while your hands remain idle.
Here's what happens when you get caught in the perfection trap:
Your anxiety grows with every piece of information you consume Your confidence diminishes as you discover "everything you don't know" You start feeling overwhelmed by all the possible paths Analysis paralysis sets in, and you end up doing nothing
I spent years in this cycle. Reading business books, watching course after course, taking notes I never reviewed. All while telling myself I was "preparing" to build something great.
The reality? I was hiding from the discomfort of actually starting.
As James Clear puts it: "You don't need more information. You don't need a better strategy. You just need to do the work."
The irony is cruel: the perfect plan you're waiting for can only be discovered through action, not contemplation.
So how do we break free from this trap? By embracing imperfect action and letting the results guide our path forward.
The Power of Imperfect Action
Imperfect action beats perfect inaction every single time.
When you start without having everything figured out, something magical happens: the path reveals itself to you through feedback.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, famously said: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."
He understood a fundamental truth that most people miss: the market will teach you more in one day than months of planning ever could.
When LinkedIn first launched in 2003, it had bare-bones functionality.
No news feed.
No messaging.
No content publishing platform.
Just a simple way to create a professional profile and connect with others.
Had Hoffman waited until LinkedIn could do everything it does today, someone else would have captured the market while he was still perfecting his plan.
Instead, he launched quickly, gathered user feedback, measured what worked, and iteratively built the platform based on real-world data rather than assumptions.
Today, LinkedIn has over 900 million users and was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion.
This isn't just a tech company story. It applies to every field, every endeavor, every dream.
Think of this as "evolutionary creation" — where your idea evolves through contact with reality rather than emerging fully formed from your mind.
Think about how evolution works in nature. Species don't plan their adaptations in advance. They make small changes, test them against the environment, and either thrive or fail based on the results. The successful adaptations continue and build upon each other. Your ideas should evolve the same way—through interaction with their environment, not in isolation.
Walt Disney's first character wasn't Mickey Mouse—it was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. When he lost the rights to Oswald, rather than giving up, he made adjustments based on what he'd learned and created Mickey. His willingness to start, lose, learn, and iterate eventually built one of the largest entertainment empires in history.
The feedback loop of start → test → learn → iterate is the most powerful engine of progress ever invented.
But how do we build this engine in our own lives? We need to create a system that generates consistent feedback.
Building Your Feedback Machine
The key to successful action is creating a system for rapid feedback.
Most people think feedback is something they get at the end of a project, but that's backward. Feedback should be built into every step of the process.
What you're creating is essentially a "feedback machine" — a system that automatically generates information about what's working and what isn't.
Here's how to construct your feedback machine:
1. Minimum Viable Everything
Break your grand vision down into the smallest possible unit that can be tested.
If you want to write a book, don't write a book. Write one article. If you want to build a business, don't build a business. Get one paying customer. If you want to become a creator, don't plan a content empire. Make one post today.
By thinking smaller, you paradoxically achieve bigger results. Why? Because you actually finish something, get feedback, and can build on that momentum.
Jessica Alba's Honest Company, now worth over $1 billion, didn't start with a full product line. She tested market demand with just 17 products, focusing on non-toxic baby products first. This allowed her to validate her core assumption — that parents wanted safer alternatives — before expanding into hundreds of products across multiple categories.
2. Set Tight Deadlines
Time expands to fill the space you give it. If you give yourself a month to create something, it will take a month. If you give yourself a day, it might not be perfect, but you'll get it done.
This works like the "oxygen principle" — just like how humans breathe more efficiently under mild oxygen deprivation, creativity thrives under reasonable constraints.
Try this: For your next project, cut your timeline in half. If you think it will take two weeks, give yourself one. The urgency will force you to focus on what truly matters.
3. Build in Public
One of the most powerful forms of feedback comes from building in the open.
When you share your work-in-progress, you not only get valuable input, but you also create accountability and build an audience of people invested in your journey.
Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List, built his entire business in public. He shared daily updates, revenue numbers, and even failures. This transparency not only helped him refine his products but also built a loyal community around his work.
"The biggest mistake people make when trying to change careers is to delay taking action until they have settled on a destination. My research suggests that successful career changers don't follow this approach." - Herminia Ibarra, organizational behavior professor at London Business School
4. Define Success Metrics
You can't improve what you don't measure.
Before you start anything, define the 1-3 metrics that will tell you if you're moving in the right direction.
For a content creator, it might be engagement rate rather than follower count. For a product, it might be retention rather than initial sales. For a service business, it might be client results rather than revenue.
This isn't about vanity metrics. It's about finding your "North Star" — the one measurement that, if it's improving, means you're on the right path regardless of other fluctuations.
By focusing on the right metrics, you ensure that your iterations are moving you toward your ultimate goal, not just random changes.
Of course, gathering feedback is only half the battle. The real skill is in how you respond to it.
The Art of Course Correction
Here's where most people get stuck.
They take imperfect action, get feedback, but then don't know how to use that feedback to improve.
Course correction is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed with practice.
The first rule of course correction: Your initial direction matters far less than your ability to adjust.
Think of it like sailing a boat. You never set your sail once and expect to reach your destination. You constantly adjust to changing winds, currents, and weather. The best sailors aren't those who pick the perfect initial heading—they're those who can read the sea and respond accordingly.
This is "responsive navigation" rather than "perfect planning."
Building anything worthwhile works the same way.
Consider the story of Slack, now one of the most successful workplace communication tools in the world. It didn't start as Slack at all.
Founder Stewart Butterfield and his team were actually building a video game called Glitch. After realizing the game wasn't gaining traction, they looked at what was working—the internal communication tool they'd built for their team.
They pivoted the entire company to focus on this tool, renamed it Slack, and the rest is history. The company sold to Salesforce for $27.7 billion in 2021.
This wasn't failure. It was masterful course correction.
Your ability to recognize what's working, what isn't, and adjust accordingly is far more valuable than any initial plan could ever be.
Instagram began as Burbn, a complicated app with check-ins, gaming elements, and photo sharing. Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger noticed users were primarily using just the photo-sharing feature. Instead of forcing their original vision, they stripped everything else away, focused solely on photos, and created what would become a billion-dollar company.
The genius wasn't in their initial idea. It was in their willingness to watch what users actually did, rather than what they thought users should do.
As Jeff Bezos puts it: "We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details."
Even with these examples, you might still feel paralyzed by the blank slate in front of you. Let me offer a simple way to break through that initial resistance.
The 24-Hour Test
If you're still frozen by the thought of starting without the perfect plan, I have a simple challenge for you:
The 24-Hour Test.
In the next 24 hours, take one tangible step toward your goal that will generate feedback.
If you want to start a newsletter, write the first issue and send it to 5 friends. If you want to build a product, create a landing page and share it with potential customers. If you want to become a consultant, offer free advice to someone in your target market and gauge their response.
This isn't about making massive progress in one day. It's about breaking the cycle of endless preparation and entering the cycle of action and feedback.
The 24-Hour Test forces you to focus on what actually matters right now.
The key is taking what we can call the "microscopic milestone" approach. Rather than setting distant, intimidating goals, identify the smallest possible action that still moves you forward. These tiny wins create momentum that builds upon itself.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't try to build the full Airbnb platform when they started. They simply took photos of their apartment, put up a basic website, and hosted three guests during a design conference when hotels were full. That tiny experiment gave them the confidence and feedback to build what would become a company valued at over $100 billion.
When you have only 24 hours, you can't worry about what you'll do three months from now. You can only focus on the immediate next step.
And that's exactly where your attention should be.
As Marie Forleo puts it: "Clarity comes from engagement, not thought."
The Paradox of Planning
Here's the ultimate plot twist in this story: action is actually the best form of planning.
The most effective plans emerge from action, not the other way around.
Let's use what we might call the "fog walking methodology" for navigating uncertainty.
Think about it like this—if you were trying to navigate through a fog, would you rather:
A) Stand still, trying to map out the entire journey before taking a step, or B) Start walking, using each step to gather information about what lies ahead
Option A sounds logical but is practically impossible. Option B seems risky but is actually the only way to make progress in uncertain conditions.
Building anything worthwhile is like navigating through fog. You simply cannot see the entire path from where you stand.
Your choice is not between planning and acting. It's between planning based on assumptions versus planning based on evidence.
Every action you take gives you evidence. It clears a bit of the fog. It shows you what works and what doesn't.
"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." – Dwight D. Eisenhower
The planning process is valuable not because it produces a perfect map, but because it prepares your mind to recognize opportunities and navigate challenges. But the actual plan itself should be written in pencil, not carved in stone.
This is why the most successful entrepreneurs often say their businesses look nothing like their initial plans. They allowed reality to shape their plans rather than forcing their plans onto reality.
So where does all this leave you, right now, reading these words?
Your Next Step
You've read this far, which means you're serious about escaping the perfection trap.
But reading about taking action is still just preparation.
So here's what I want you to do right now:
Identify the smallest possible next step you can take in the next 24 hours.
Not the entire project. Not the five-year plan. Just the very next step that will generate feedback.
Adopt the "MVP mindset" — where you approach each day asking not "What can I complete?" but "What can I start learning about today?"
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin shares a critical insight about their early days: "We had no idea what we were doing, and we made it up as we went along." They went through multiple iterations—from cryptography on Palm Pilots to becoming a payment system for eBay—all by starting, learning, and adjusting.
Then do it. Today. Not tomorrow. Not when you feel ready. Now.
Because the perfect time to start was yesterday. The second-best time is today.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." – Peter Drucker
And remember—the goal isn't to get it right the first time. The goal is to get it started so you can make it right along the way.
– Scott