By Sidra Knaus

My Backstory

As a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist, I’ve always struggled with the concept of “just starting”. Sure, I understand it, but putting the actions behind those words has always felt just out of my reach. That is, up until 2019.

For a week in the summer of 2019, I went to Maine to visit my cousin on her 3-acre homestead. This visit was truly pivotal to the way I think about going after what I want. My cousin, Maija, didn’t have the know-how to run a homestead, and yet there she was, doing it anyway! She and her boyfriend had chickens and ducks and pigs and goats (oh my!). They were growing rows and rows of their own produce. They had electricity thanks to their solar panel and warmed their home with wood they cut themselves. Their sink had no running water, but they had rigged a water bag up above the sink and used gravity to create running water. The bag could be filled periodically from their neighbor’s well that they paid into (we love a sense of community). They had built their own composting outhouse, set on an enclosed platform to make it easy to collect and compost the waste. I was so in awe of Maija’s go-getter attitude. She thought it would be nice to have a small guest building for when family and friends came to visit, so she built a small A-frame room near their one-room cabin. With very little experience, she built a small guest building with an attitude of “I’ll try my best and if it doesn’t work I’ll learn from that and try again”.

Staying with Maija for a week in Maine completely shifted my mentality around going after the things you want to do, even if you aren’t sure how to do it.

In the fall of 2019, I went through a pretty awful breakup. So bad, in fact, I wound up dropping out of school due to my mental health (shoutout to Dan Purdy and Cat Armstrong in Western’s Marketing Department for listening to me and offering advice and tissues while letting me cry in their offices, a kindness I will never forget).

I had absolutely no direction. The 2019/2020 school year was my senior year – I was on track to graduate in the spring or summer, and go on to find a “big kid” job. Now I was a heartbroken college dropout, barely able to get out of bed.

Thanksgiving rolled around, and my aunt reached out to me with an internship opportunity. She’s a college professor at Minnesota State University – Moorhead, and she offered their home to me for the internship. I figured “what the hell” and applied with no experience, my only connection to an Education Internship at a zoo being that I love animals. And guess what? I got it!

I drove to Moorhead, MN January of 2020 and began my internship at the Red River Zoo writing lesson plans, helping with the childrens programs, and caring for our education program animals (the coolest bugs, reptiles, birds, and amphibians ever!).

Looking back, this internship was a pivoting point in my life. It showed me that even if I feel like I’m not at all experienced or prepared, I still have valuable skills that translate into any situation. Empathy, compassion, enthusiasm, communication, listening, the ability to ask for help or clarification when needed – these things are imperative in any aspect of our lives. I had no idea how to write a lesson plan, but I had experience writing business reports (thanks to the Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor at WWU). Moving to a new community, not knowing anyone but my aunt and uncle – the professors at MSUM – forced me to make the decision to either spend the entire internship in their basement, or put myself out there and make new friends. I would go to a local brewery and read or journal, and one night I happened to be accepted into a group of friends who were out. They took me in and from then on I had a little community of peers.

The point I’m trying to get at is that I took the “jump”. I moved halfway across the country to live with my aunt and uncle for an unpaid internship I had no experience for. I didn’t feel ready. Also did I mention it was January? In Minnesota? That combo means blizzards – of which I got pretty used to.

That experience taught me to just jump. When facing a situation where you feel that tugging at the back of your mind begging you not to jump, ask yourself “what’s the worst that could happen?” and remind yourself that the part of you kicking and screaming at you to not jump is the mayor of your comfort zone – if you leave it, he’s out of a job. The mayors of our comfort zones are selfish little creatures. They want to stay in power, but their power is directly correlated with our lack of growth.

The worst thing that could happen to me from moving to Minnesota was, let’s face it, dying in a car wreck in a snow drift. Unlikely. I could just as easily die in a car wreck in Bellingham in the snow. So. That point no longer held any sway.

I could do the internship and fail completely. Have the internship cut short because I suck that much. Also unlikely, unless I just refused to ever show up and try. And even if I did show up and my work was unsatisfactory (which did happen at the beginning, because I didn’t know what I was doing), and I was fired without a chance to improve (unlikely, that isn’t how internships work) no big loss. It was an unpaid internship, I was living with my aunt and uncle rent free (something I didn’t take for granted then or now, not everyone has that privilege). I would just move back in with my parents (yet another privilege I appreciate to this day) and pick back up working at the local Starbucks I worked at in high school.

As I thought out some of these “worst-case scenarios”, the fear of failure began to diminish. I was fortunate enough that failing at this would have little-to-no impact on my life long-term, or even short-term. So I decided to jump.

Now, three years later, I’ve come back to Western to finish my marketing degree, and I still don’t feel prepared. But that’s the point. If I knew what I was doing, what would be the point in spending thousands of dollars to take these classes?

I’ve learned some really helpful tools and tips that have made me more confident in my ability to just jump and figure it out, and I’ve outlined them below. Let’s get into it.

Planning

Obviously it takes some level of planning before jumping in any situation. The planning doesn’t have to be extremely in-depth, but you’ve got to have a plan to help you move forward.

Whiteboard Calendar

First off, I have a desk in my house that is reserved for schoolwork. My brain knows that when I sit down in that chair, it’s focusing time. While the rest of my house often looks like a clutter-bomb went off, my work desk is always relatively clear and ready to be used.

I have a huge whiteboard calendar on my desk that I got from my manager at my workplace (they were getting rid of it and I love me a whiteboard anything). I write all the due dates for my classes on it (color-coded, of course) and I have sticky notes along the top with a random assortment of information, from my personal brand elements to things on my to-do list to passwords.

Having all my due dates right in front of me is so important. It helps me keep an eye on what’s coming up so I can prioritize my work and do my best to not get behind in any of my classes (full transparency, though, it still happens).

Kanban

A Kanban is a visualization of a to-do list. Generally there are four columns: Backlog (to do), Work In Progress, Pending, and Done. It’s best to have a maximum limit per person for the Work In Progress column so as to keep the overwhelming feelings to a minimum.

We use Kanbans in Dan’s class all the time. I’ve adopted them into my personal life – I use Trello for my classes and I make physical Kanbans out of sticky notes at home for cleaning the house. My husband and I use a Kanban of sticky notes to keep track of what needs to be done and what is already done. We keep the tasks really small and specific (think “clean toilet”, “clean mirror”, “clean sink”, “clean bathroom floor” instead of just one task of “clean bathroom”). This way, instead of sitting there paralyzed with how big each task feels, we can grab a random sticky note and have a starting point.

It’s a hard habit to get into, moving tasks in the Kanban as you go, but once you are using it on the regular it makes life so much easier, especially when working in a team. An updated Kanban allows the entire team to stay on the same page about what is being done and what still needs to be done, all without having to spend a bunch of time catching everyone up in a meeting.

A Kanban is also your checklist to ensure you have everything you need to complete your project. If you are building a shelf, do you have nails, a hammer, screws, a drill, the wood, and pads for the bottom of the shelf legs to keep your floor from being scratched? Do you need to run to the hardware store for anything? If you are filming a YouTube video, do you have your camera, microphone(s), back-up batteries, lighting, script, shot list (all the shots needed to film in order for the video to be stitched into a complete and cohesive video), music picked out, guest(s) contacted, and do you have a rehearsal and an equipment check scheduled? The Kanban helps you keep track of everything done and everything that’s left to do.

Jump In

Planning is so important, it can help you prioritize your tasks based on when they are due or how long any one task or group of tasks will take. Once you have an idea of what all needs to be done and by when, it’s time to jump in.

Task Selection

Picking a task can be daunting, especially when you have a backlog that looks to be miles long. Once your Kanban backlog is created, give yourself 5 seconds to select a random task to complete. If you are doing things such as cleaning the house, it usually doesn’t matter too much what you start with. If you are working on a project that requires somewhat of a specific order that tasks need to be done in, pick one of the tasks that falls early in your process (for example, if you are writing a book, you may want to start with what genre your book is going to be, followed by a story outline, then the characters).

The Timer Method

Once you have your task chosen, it can be hard to feel motivated to actually start.

A few years ago, a friend of mine shared a method with me that I’ve used ever since, when I’m having a hard time starting. You set a timer for 20 minutes and just start whatever task it is you’re having trouble starting. Can’t focus on reading a textbook chapter? Set the timer and read as much of it as you can in the 20 minutes. Dreading cleaning the house? Set the timer and start with clearing off surfaces or washing dishes. Have a big project to work on? Select a random task from your Kanban, set your timer, and start writing out whatever comes to mind.

Once the 20 minutes is up, stop doing whatever it is you are doing. Even if you’re in the middle of a task. Set your timer for 5 minutes and take a break. Look at your phone. Pet your dog or cat. Drink some water. Stretch. Then set the timer for another 20 minutes and jump back into the task you were doing.

The Timer Method helps by setting a clear end in sight. Throughout the 20 minutes, you’ll find your rhythm and get into the work, and being forced to take a break often makes you want to keep working that much more. I love using the Timer Method, especially when I’m feeling less than motivated. I’ll throw on some lo-fi music and start my timer. It tricks my brain into being bummed when a break comes up and excited to get back to my work.

If you are working on a project, this system allows you to get a “shitty first draft” on paper. Once you have your draft, you can go back to edit and refine your work.

Until Next Time

I hope these tools and systems will help you jump in and start whatever it is you’ve been putting off. Remind yourself – what’s the worst that could happen? Failure is generally the answer people give to that question, but failure is just an opportunity to learn. Our failures do not define us, it is what we chose to do in those moments of failure that means the most.