The kids were on break last week and we took a 300 piece puzzle out of the library (because that's what you can do in my mother-in-law's awesome suburban library!).
My ten year old daughter and I labored together for hours to bring to life a picture of a general store and assorted old-timey bric a brac. We wasted only a minimal amount of time arguing about the best way to tackle a puzzle (finding all the edge pieces and organizing everything by color/pattern—yes; trying to put together random pieces you think might fit and then leaving them semi-attached even when they clearly do not go together—not so much).
We finally emerged from our puzzle stupor victorious. It had been hard work, involving a lot of trial and error and the haunting suspicion that the puzzle might never actually get finished, but we did it!
My daughter was so proud she decided to lift the entire puzzle off the table—by its top two corners.
Shockingly, she only lost two pieces of the puzzle in the process. I was about to help guide it safely back to the table when my fourteen year old chose to test out his karate kicking ability, exploding the puzzle immediately and sending pieces flying in every direction.
SO not cool.
The three of us then spent the next fifteen minutes organizing the puzzle pieces into thirty piles of ten, which somehow left us with four extra pieces. I then started re-counting each pile and was up to seventy pieces when I got distracted by what was surely a very important question I felt compelled to answer and completely lost track of where I was with the piles.
At that point I decided there was only one intelligent solution: Do the whole puzzle again.
This is when I discovered how much easier it was to do the second time.
It's a good thing to remember any time you're working on a new venture—a workshop, program, course, book, live event; it always takes longer the first time.
Photo credit Hans Peterr Gauster on Unsplash
When you hold onto that knowledge, it shores you up to keep going because you know it will be easier the next time—the copy will already be written, or the format will already be established, or the content will already be created.
Then all you'll have to do is tweak it. Or you'll be able to move more quickly because you’ll be creating something new in a format you’ve already used. You'll know how to work the technology this time, you’ll know who to hire to help you. You'll give yourself more lead time if you need it, or prepare less content so you don't overwhelm your people (ahem), or simply not make the same mistakes you made the first time around.
It should feel less intimidating. You'll be able to use your energy for creating and sharing rather than worrying and struggling.
When I ran my first online workshop I had to figure out Zoom, learn to use Google forms, set up a new link in my my online calendar, create countless emails, build a landing page... It took for-e-ver. I was so scared about sharing my screen on Zoom that I basically avoided ever teaching anything that required screen sharing. And don't even ask me about breakout rooms.
By the time I came up with The Implementation Lab for Entrepreneurs it was almost effortless.
I had the vision and simply went about putting the pieces in place.
I didn't need to expend energy on being scared of the unknown or spend time ramping up with new systems or processes. I'd done enough similar things before that I could just knock it out. I also knew what I wanted to hand off (like all the email automation) and could trust someone else to make things happen without my having my hands on everything.
It's easier the second time.
I remember my cousin, a pediatrician, telling me that we should try to treat our first child like a second child and not worry so much. By the second one, she said, we wouldn't even blink when we saw it licking the stroller wheels.
Try approaching your next new project as if you'd already done it before. Of course there will be new challenges and it will take time to solve them. Of course new fears will pop up and it will take energy to handle them.
AND perhaps you can trade some of that first-time anxiety, frustration and doubt for a more chill, it-will-be-fine approach and see what that opens up for you.
And remember, the next time you do it it will be even easier.