Start before you're ready. Readiness is mostly a feeling, not a state.

I've never felt ready for anything that mattered. Not the first product I shipped, not the first time I spoke in front of people, not the first time I had to make a real decision with real consequences. The feeling of readiness, I've come to think, is mostly about familiarity — and you can only get familiar with something by doing it.

There's a version of waiting that masquerades as preparation. It feels responsible. It feels careful. But most of the time it's fear wearing sensible clothes. The preparation that actually matters usually happens after you start — when the problem is real and the stakes are visible.

So I try to start. Not recklessly, not without thinking — but before the feeling of readiness arrives, because it often doesn't arrive at all until you're already in the middle of something.