Monday isn’t a start date. It’s where plans go to wait for a version of you that never shows up.

Setting a start date in the future feels productive because deciding hands you a small piece of the satisfaction that doing would. The trouble is that the plan quietly depends on someone more rested, more motivated and less busy than you, and that person never arrives. When the morning comes you are the same one, holding the same phone, with the same amount of energy. So it slides another week.

Take whatever you have scheduled for a future start and do the smallest possible version today. Two minutes counts. Starting badly now beats starting perfectly never, and it puts the plan in reach of the person you actually are.