Sketchy Ideas 37 — restarting is hard to do 😮‍💨

Welcome to the new home of sketchy ideas

(Belated) Happy New Year,

Yes, I know I’m late and that’s the topic of this week’s visual.

You see the closure of Revue (which I previously used to host this newsletter) affected me more than I thought.

• I debated where to move to

• EVERY writing UI felt worse

• so I lacked motivation and put off restarting

I could explain each part like how every other email platform has a trade-off, or how I’m finally just writing this in a note app and will paste it into convertkit substack later, but I’m really interested in the last point.

You see getting started often has a tone of resistance.

There’s so much unknown and we don’t have the motive to “keep the streak going” (although that can be a poisoned chalice too). But my experience has shown that whenever I do start (or restart) even with a small action, the resistance quickly fades.

Action is a keyword there. It can’t be more ruminating or planning, it’s got to be action.

I told my friend Chad about my struggles and he suggested making this newsletter about it (and starting with just this point so it was easier to get started).

He’s a wise guy so you might want to check out his new newsletter (try saying that five times in a row). It’s called Presence and it’s full of his coaching wisdom.

This week’s creative assignment

If you’ve been delaying starting or restarting something, what’s the smallest action you can take this week?

Feel free to reply and let me know what it is and I’ll check in on you this week.

See you next week,

Chris