Just start writing

Whether it's writing code or a technical design document, diagnosing an issue, or working on a blog post or a presentation deck, sometimes, the hardest part for me is getting started.

When this happens, I try to find the smallest thing I can do to start the task and get the ball rolling.

This could be just opening Neovim or Notion and finding the smallest task I can do to get going.

In code, it could be making the smallest change to start on the task or committing a small refactoring on another part of the code to get into the flow.

With a technical design document, once I've written the first heading, "What problem are we trying to solve?" and started to describe the problem, it's easy to continue writing the rest of the document.

For a blog post or presentation, I've found that writing the headings first is a good starting point, adds structure and makes it easier to add the main content.

Things are great once the ball is rolling; the question sometimes is, "what is the simplest thing I can do to start it?".