Start Before You’re Ready: Begin Before You Feel Ready

Over the holidays, I watched Moana 2 with my family. There’s a point when things quieted down, and Gramma Tala spoke up on screen. We were scattered around the living room, a mix of empty plates and leftover cookies, half-watching, half just being together.

I didn’t know the risks ahead, but curiosity and ambition pushed me forward—and that was enough. There wasn’t some moment when everything lined up—I had to begin before you’re ready and learn by moving. If I’d waited for certainty, I’d still be waiting.

Six months ago, I stumbled on an old backup file named “final-final-v2” and realized I’d started more projects than I ever finished. I still don’t know where the best place to draw that line is. Now things are different. I bring experience instead of blind faith. Lessons learned—some painfully, some gratefully—have changed what I consider risky.

Still, the journey hasn’t changed much. Whether you’re a fresh engineer wondering how to ship your first AI prototype or you’ve shipped dozens of products, the cycle repeats: you think you need more knowledge, more polish, more proof. But momentum and feedback don’t show up after the fact. They come when you actually launch, even if it’s just a rough, small experiment. Waiting for permission? That’s how great ideas get stuck and die. Most people don’t realize how much progress comes from getting out the door, even if you feel unprepared.

So let’s cut to it. Stop waiting to feel ‘ready’—you already are.

Why Builders Wait—and What Waiting Costs

You know the feeling. Staring down a promising idea, you struggle to overcome analysis paralysis because it doesn’t feel “finished.” It happens all the time, even for seasoned engineers. You’re waiting to ship, prototype, or try something new because you want everything to feel certain. This urge to keep waiting isn’t rare—procrastination is a work issue for almost 20% of people and it’s only growing. I still catch myself doing it, even after years of practice.

Here’s what I’ve learned over time. Readiness isn’t something you earn by gathering more knowledge or spotting the perfect window. It’s something you create by starting small, then responding to what happens. Even rewarding actions can stack up and have a powerful impact as they build over time (link). That feedback loop is simple, but powerful. You ship something, get a signal, adjust. The momentum is real. You feel it immediately.

But when you wait, you pay for it—especially in domains where things move fast. Missed learning adds up. Uncertainty compounds. Deadlines slip, or worse, opportunities slip by that you didn’t even notice. There’s a moment in early January when you realize what got left behind last quarter. Those wins were learnable.

Here’s a simpler way. Ship something small and low-risk right now. Test a prototype or share an idea before it’s shiny. Even a rough experiment advances progress over perfection, creating real signals you can use and proving how often “good enough” is all it takes. Wherever you are, what you have is enough to take the first step.

That’s the practical shift—not waiting for a sign, but making progress first and letting feedback do the rest. That line from Gramma Tala keeps echoing. Readiness waits for action, not permission. And that applies, whether you’re starting out or starting again.

Action Builds Readiness

A quick story—last winter, the garage was a disaster and I convinced myself that the only way to deal with it was to reorganize everything at once. Halfway through, I found a hot glue gun I borrowed from a neighbor three years back—and spent half an hour texting them about overdue house projects instead of clearing boxes. After all that, I’d only actually fixed one shelf, but the whole task suddenly felt less impossible. Sometimes it’s messy like that. The momentum doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet.

Here’s something I didn’t recognize until later. Our strongest traits aren’t fixed. They shift as the seasons do. Early on, I relied on stubbornness and risk-taking. These days, I pull more from patience and pattern recognition. Like Moana, we all carry unique strengths in each season of life.

So, wherever you’re at—fresh with energy or seasoned with caution—the invitation’s the same. Youth fuels bold leaps. Experience guides thoughtful action. The key? Start before you’re ready.

The 24-Hour Shipping Playbook

If you’re picturing some all-night grind or a heroic sprint, stop right there. A 24-hour ship doesn’t mean breaking yourself. It’s about shrinking the challenge until it’s manageable, low risk, and honest about your actual bandwidth. Let’s keep this grounded. The goal here isn’t a perfect launch. It’s a real signal. You want something concrete in the world, with clear edges and constraints you respect, in less time than it takes to second-guess yourself. Even if that means dialing the scope way down, that’s part of the process.

Here’s the simple playbook I’d use (and I recommend you try it straight, no embellishments). First, pick a tiny slice of your idea. Not the full system, or even “a working prototype.” Just one piece. A model trained on a single dataset, a UI widget with one user interaction, or a backend script with a single functionality. Next, define what “success” is in this context. What signal are you hoping to get? (“Did it run? Did someone use it?”) Timebox yourself tightly; literally set a timer for everything—an hour here, three hours there. Then, instrument for feedback: add some logging, metrics, simple user prompts—anything that gives you data when it’s done. Ship or share it—internally, publicly, or just to a trusted peer. Finally, collect whatever comes back, even if it feels underwhelming.

This method lets you skip the endless swirl. The point isn’t to impress, but to move, and let reality give you a nudge. It’s awkward to admit, but half my favorite launches were flaky, incomplete, or didn’t work the first time. And they still created momentum. Frame your experiment clearly; framing cuts down back-and-forth, which stabilizes outputs.

What does this look like for real people in tech roles? For ML folks. Try retraining an existing model on a toy dataset and check for output drift. If you’re doing frontend: redesign one micro-interaction, like a loading spinner or error toast, and run a quick usability check. Infra? Script a backup routine for a single service and log the runtime. Each one is small enough to start and finish before lunch tomorrow.

Don’t expect glowing reviews or full clarity at first. Your early feedback is a mix of signal and static—critical bug reports, confusing user clicks, blank stares, stray error logs. Focus on what’s actionable. A thumbs-up means you’re on the right path. Confusion means you need clarity. Outright failure—what didn’t work—is just the next iteration’s to-do list. Treat early feedback as learning, not as a verdict.

Make the Leap: Sidestep Fears, Build Momentum

Let’s get honest about what drags your feet. Time worries, perfection anxiety, the fear it’ll blow up or flop in public. I know all three. You’ve probably thought, “I just don’t have the hours,” or “This needs to be airtight before anyone sees it,” or even “If this breaks, what will people think?” Here’s what’s helped me and clients get unstuck: carve out a safe testing space.

Use a sandbox or a feature flag to keep your experiment hidden from users until you’re sure. Ship with a staged rollout, hand-pick your first testers, or wrap risky code in a toggle. That way, you’re not betting the whole farm—just learning in a low-stakes way. It’s not about rushing; it’s about making small risks that teach you quickly.

Back in the first section, I mentioned how being “too young to know how much you have to lose” gives you a certain boldness. I sometimes miss that, even now. There’s a tension for me—I know the value of caution, but part of me still wishes for the clarity and impatience of those first naive steps. Maybe I’ll never resolve that completely.

Momentum is its own power source. Over the holidays, watching Gramma Tala’s scene, I saw how a single nudge forward loops into the next. Real feedback stacks up—one signal, then another—and all those moments start compounding, faster than you expect. A week later, you’ll look back at what you shipped and realize you’re working from real ground, not guesses.

Pick one experiment—no matter how small—and ship it within 24 hours. That first move, driven by a bias toward action, is how you break free; let action create its own readiness.