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Do you know anyone who writes for a living?  If you do, read this Greek proverb and watch as they nod their head.

“The beginning is half of every action.”

The writer will nod his/her head as they know the first step, the beginning of the writing is far and away the most important step.  Far more important than the fraction of actual time it takes compared to the rest of the work.  For e.g. if a writer has to write 10,000 words, the first sentence is half the project.  Even if that sentence is only 20 words long, it’s still half the work.

The reason is because the momentum of beginning carries you through at least the first half of the task.  Momentum, getting over the inertia of beginning is half of every action.

Sometimes when we look at a project that has 21 steps, we think: “after I’ve done the first steps that I’m 1/21 of the way done.  I still have 20 out of 21 steps to complete.  So, I still have 95% of the task still to complete”.  However, the proverb and reality tell us this is not true.  Beginning the first step is actually 50% of the action and the remaining 20 steps are simply another 50%.  The momentum of beginning is half the effort you need to exert to get the to the level of success you want to achieve.