I’m quite sure you’ve seen the movie and you remember the character. You can remember it for many things. How goofy the character is, how adorable the store is, the jokes, etc. What I am focusing on here is one particular element that I’ve remembered a few weeks ago, and this is the part when he decides to go for a run. I could very much relate to this in my personal experience when I started running a few weeks ago.

Forrest starts running

I’m not a runner. I’m actually far away from that right now… In the last 30+ years of my life I could never force myself to run more that 2km at once. I’ve just never felt like I should force myself to go outside and run for seemingly no reason. Then I’ve started to follow a work-out application (Sweat app that I recommend for everybody), which forced me to go for a run twice a week. The first run I went for was about 1,6km with a few stops to find my breathe. Then I started running like Forrest Gump. I went out one day and told myself to run until the end of the street. When I was there, I told myself “If you are here already, you might as well run until the end of this street.” This continued until I’ve reached 3km, which I’ve kept for two weeks. Then it became 5km, which is where I am at currently.

How is this applicable to anything else?

You might say my story about running is cute, but not really applicable to business or finance. Let me give you another example. When I started up this blog, I first told myself: “Let’s just buy the domain, it costs only 20$”. Once it was done, I told myself: “Let’s just write the first post” (which is this one I’m writing at 6AM on 20th June, 2020.). We will see how it goes, but right now I consider myself to be at the end of the first street in Forrest’s example. I don’t know how long it will go, but I already enjoy the journey.

I do something very similar at work. When I start a new project that seems to be really difficult, or introduce a new multi-country business model. I just create a Teams group and choose a cool logo for it. Having a good logo is already a good first start, because you will always want to return to it. Then drop in a few ideas without any specific order. Sketch a potential structure for it, write maybe just the headings. Fill it up with a few numbers, just to play around with the business model. Then format is so that others will find it easy to use.

A colleague of mine always dedicates the first 20 minutes of any model building to formatting. It is similar to painting a room that you will be living in. Or setting up your office environment. It’s important to have it right from the beginning. Once that’s done, it is easier to make the first step. Then a hundred more.

So just by starting up something instead of thinking about how difficult and complex it might become, you quickly get into a flow state, which can drive you through the difficulties of the project.

Conclusion

When you have a difficult task to complete or a complex project that you don’t feel like starting at all, just do the first step. Don’t commit yourself to end results, don’t envision the final outcome, just start. then a small second step would be quite easy to make. Then the next and the one after. Soon you will reach the initial goal or go even beyond that.