🧭 What would you start if you didn't have to be sure?

Before we start – I’m cleaning up my subscriber list this week. There’s a short note at the end about it, and what to do if you’d like to stay.

Last week I asked what would help most if you wanted to start something small online. Half of you said knowing which idea would fit you. A third said knowing it was safe and honest. Of the people who answered, nobody picked “a clear first step.”

I sat with that for a while. I think it’s true, too: you’re not stuck on the stepping. You’re stuck on the choosing.

I’ve got a black Lab named Bradley who has never had that problem in his life. New room, new person, new commotion behind the television – he just goes, fully committed, every time. He’s wrong about the television most days. Doesn’t slow him down at all. I’m not suggesting you live like a Labrador. But there’s a bit of that worth borrowing, and it’s today’s subject.

By the end of this you’ll:

When you say you don’t know which idea suits you, it sounds like a research problem. As though somewhere out there is the right answer, and you simply haven’t found it yet.

It usually isn’t a research problem. It’s that the question can’t be answered from where you’re standing.

You can’t tell whether something suits you by reading about it. You can only tell by touching it a little. Whether you enjoy writing, whether fiddling with a website drains you or wakes you up, whether talking to strangers online feels fine or awful – none of that is knowable in advance. It’s knowable after about two hours of actually doing it.

So the plan you’re waiting for can’t be written yet. Not because you haven’t looked hard enough. Because the information it needs comes from starting.

There’s a loop behind this that psychologists describe plainly. Perfectionism stops you starting, and then the not-starting becomes its own reason to keep not starting, because now the thing is late as well as imperfect. Psychology Today calls it the three Ps – perfectionism, procrastination, paralysis.

The engine underneath is all-or-nothing thinking: the belief that there’s one right answer, and picking wrong would be a real failure that says something about you.

I want to say this gently, because I lived in that loop for years. Picking wrong doesn’t say anything about you. It’s how everybody finds the right one. The people who look like they chose well mostly chose several times.

And you’re in better company than you think. AARP’s research on lifelong learning found 55% of Americans over 45 are actively learning something new right now.

Here’s the whole method, and it’s smaller than you’d like it to be.

Pick the idea you’d be least embarrassed to spend two hours on. Not the best one. Not the most promising one. The one that, if it went nowhere, you wouldn’t feel foolish about having tried.

Then give it two hours. That’s it. Two hours this week.

Two hours isn’t a commitment. It’s a test, and the thing it tests isn’t the idea – it’s you. How did it feel? Did the time go quickly? Did you find yourself thinking about it the next morning, or were you relieved when it was over?

That’s the information you’ve been trying to get by reading. There isn’t another way to get it.

Since choosing is the hard part:

Whatever comes back decides what I make next. That’s the only reason I ask.

If you spend the two hours, you’ll know one thing you don’t know today. It might be “that’s not for me,” which is a real answer and worth having. It might be “I’d do that again,” which is the beginning of something.

If you don’t, nothing bad happens. The choosing just stays where it is. It doesn’t resolve on its own – it waits for you to touch something.

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This is how I support this newsletter.

Here’s my one ask, and it’s a small one.

Reply to this email with the one thing you’d start if the plan didn’t have to be right. Not a paragraph. A few words is plenty – “the photo thing,” “selling Mom’s books,” “writing something.” You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to explain it. I just want you to say it once, in writing, to one person.

Naming it out loud is most of what makes it real.

And there’s a second reason to hit reply this week. I’m cleaning up my list, and a reply is the one thing that tells me there’s a person at this address rather than a company mail system. More on that on Saturday.

Any word will do. If you’d rather not, nothing bad happens – you’ll just stop hearing from me.

Talk soon,
Bob

A quick tip from my place – the one phone setting that makes everything easier to read. No sales in it.

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This link goes to my own review on my site, which includes my affiliate link. I use Wispr Flow myself every day. I am a slow typer who makes plenty of typos, and it saves me a great deal of time. There is a free version, and if you ever move to a paid plan through it, I may earn a small amount, at no extra cost to you.