Trying Something New Doesn’t Take Much Time
Most of the time, I feel like trying something new will take a lot of effort. If I don’t have experience, something as simple as learning how to set up a WordPress website feels like a huge commitment.
Yes, trying new things takes a high-level of focus and requires you to apply all of your mental energies. But the truth is that these tasks usually take very little time, much less than you expect and sometimes practically no time at all.
I feel resistance all the time when trying new things:
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Running my first advertisement on a new ad platform.
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Clearly articulating all the fine details of a new product.
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Filming a video of myself saying something important.
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Figuring out how to use Mechanical Turk for the first time.
Fortunately, I keep track of how I spend my hours, and what I find when I track these ‘Trying Something New’ tasks… they take almost no time at all!
I may be mentally exhausted having extending myself to make a new discovery or learn a new skill, but when I check the clock I’m surprised to see that only 45 minutes have passed!
I laugh at myself because very often I have discovered something really valuable, or learned a new skill… and yet I left a note to ‘try that new thing’ unfinished on my to-do list for weeks!
My Brain Doesn’t Accurately Compare The Relative Effort-To-Output Of Different Activities
Trying something new is usually not a big commitment. The real obligations are the tasks I’m comfortable with that fill up my entire day, or my entire year!
What’s scary to me, is that the necessary result of an abhorrence to high-value tasks, alongside an adherence to familiar ones, must lead to missing out on a large number of lessons and opportunities.
If you’ve had a similar problem, do what I’ve done. Time yourself when you try something new. Usually, you will finish up in less than 1 hour, and have laid a foundation or learned a new skill that you can use for years, or perhaps your entire life.
Most importantly, you can laugh at yourself for having waited so long, and worried so much, about trying something new.