Most of my best ideas arrive fully formed and wildly inconvenient.
I’ll be unloading the washing machine when something clicks. Within minutes, it’s not just an idea — it’s a nested framework, a five-phase roadmap, a collaboration brief, a positioning strategy. I feel compelled to honour it. And yet, I don’t move. Not right away.
There’s the rub.
Before you can do the thing, you have to start the thing. And starting is rarely simple. It’s behavioural inertia in its rawest form — like pushing a stalled car: you know once it moves, you’ll be fine. But in that first moment, it’s just you and the weight of everything.
Initiation deficit isn’t about laziness — it’s about disconnection
For people with ADHD (diagnosed or suspected), the barrier isn’t usually the doing. It’s the activation.
That early-phase spark — the one that made the idea feel urgent and meaningful — quickly gets drowned in a sea of invisible decisions. Where do I begin? What’s too early to start with? What if I waste my time choosing the wrong anchor point? What if someone asks what I’m working on and I can’t explain it yet?
It’s an executive function traffic jam. You can see the route ahead, but every lane is blocked. Not by effort, but by ambiguity. And ambiguity is kryptonite to action.
Starting exposes you to the risk of care
That email you haven’t sent? That doc you haven’t opened? That call you keep avoiding? It’s not always apathy. Often, it’s the opposite.
Starting means putting your stake in the ground. It means declaring your direction before you’re ready to defend it. It means translating the intimate fog of thought into something legible — to yourself, and possibly to others.
And that’s where vulnerability kicks in. Because beginning something meaningful makes the possibility of failure feel real. It’s no longer abstract. You can’t fantasise your way to mastery. You have to step in, unfinished. And that’s rarely comfortable.
Momentum flips the equation — but it has to be earned
Strangely, the pain doesn’t last. Not usually.
Once you’ve taken a single meaningful action — renamed the file, written the first bullet, spoken the first sentence — the panic dissipates. Your brain reclassifies the task: not a mountain, just a path. And once you’re walking, you’re less likely to stop.
This is the momentum paradox. Starting feels harder than finishing because the start carries all the psychological weight. Finishing rides the wave of clarity, direction, and progress. But you can’t hack your way to that wave — you have to break the surface tension first.
Conclusion: Starting is leverage, not failure waiting to happen
So next time you’re stuck at the starting line, remember: the discomfort isn’t a sign you’re weak, flaky, or uncommitted.
It’s a sign the task matters.
It’s the psychological drag of friction before flight. The price of entry to your own momentum loop. And once you’re in, the weight lifts. The resistance drops. And all that’s left is the doing.
Start small. Start messy. But start.