Ways to stop procrastinating: I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start.

It also leaves your real question untouched either way, because nothing in that 1996 research compares the months you spend preparing where nobody can answer you against the months you spend somewhere an answer is possible. As far as I can find, nobody has run that comparison directly. I'll tell you when a thing has been tested and when it hasn't, and this one hasn't.

From chapter 3: What counts as started

So stop trying to grade the preparation. Nobody can grade it, including you, including the people who followed 223 Swedish ventures for thirty months and still disagree with the people who followed 396. What you can do instead is something much smaller, much duller and considerably harder to argue with, which is to check whether the activity in front of you has a door in it. Does tonight's one have a door? Not the project. Not the business. Tonight's activity, the specific one, the file you already know you're going to open.

From chapter 5: Preparation and its stop condition

That is how the book looks at “ways to stop procrastinating”: 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 “ways to stop procrastinating”.

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: How to Stop Preparing and Find Out 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: Fourteen Days to a Real Answer
• I Want to Start a Business: Preparing Is Not Progress
• But I Never Actually Start: Preparing Is Not Progress
• I Want to Start a Business: Why Preparing Feels Like Progress and Isn't
• I Want to Start a Business: Stop Getting Ready and Let a Stranger Answer You
• But I Never Actually Start: Eleven Chapters on the Gap Between Wanting and Doing
• I Want to Start a Business: One Question, One Stranger, Fourteen Days
• I Want to Start a Business: For Everyone Who Has Meant to Start for Years
• Why Do I Never Actually Start?: Preparing Is Not Progress
• I Never Actually Start: Why Preparing Feels Like Progress and Isn't

See all 43 titles. Go to the book page.