How to overcome procrastination: I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start.

Now go back and tick every condition that actually arrived. You did finish that course. The laptop did turn up. The kids did start school. Against each tick, find the sentence that came next in time and draw a line joining the two of them.

From chapter 4: The number that keeps moving

The authors call their own evidence "suggestive". That is their word rather than my summary of it, and it means what it sounds like. These are correlations. Nobody handed out licences at random, so the paper cannot separate a rule that caused something from a rule that simply sits alongside whatever else is true about the people who do not hold one.

From chapter 7: The licence you do not need

That is how the book looks at “how to overcome procrastination”: one idea at a time, with a step you can take right away. Of course, this is only one idea from the book. So, if this passage speaks to you, the full chapter goes further, and it ends with an exercise you can do the same evening.

In short, the book has 11 chapters, and each one ends with a practical exercise. Therefore, you can read it in order, or you can go straight to the part about “how to overcome procrastination”.

1. The gap between wanting and doing
2. The three-month window
3. What counts as started
4. The number that keeps moving
5. Preparation and its stop condition
6. The course that never ends
7. The licence you do not need
8. Why later always wins
9. Nobody chooses the day they start
10. The unfinished task
11. Fourteen days

Finally, you can get I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: The Evidence on Plans, Courses, Licences and Waiting in the stores below. Because every title of this book shares the same text, you can simply pick the one you like best. Also, the book is available in 19 languages.

In addition, each title below highlights a different idea from the same book.

• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: What Counts as Started, and How to Get There
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: Count the Years, Not the Months
• But I Never Actually Start: Preparing Is Not Progress
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: The Attempts That Died Took Longer
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: How to Stop Preparing and Find Out
• But I Never Actually Start: Eleven Chapters on the Gap Between Wanting and Doing
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: Fourteen Days to a Real Answer
• I Want to Start a Business: Preparing Is Not Progress
• Why Do I Never Actually Start?: Preparing Is Not Progress
• I Want to Start a Business: Why Preparing Feels Like Progress and Isn't

See all 43 titles. Go to the book page.