ILAN PERSING - Blog

But first...

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 10:24:02 GMT

But first I will get everything else done. Then I will have a clean slate from which to work on my art, on my projects, on my business, on my passion.

It turns out this is a myth. After years and decades of having many jobs and experience of many days on this earth I’ve learned, and refused to learn, and learned again that there will always be another work project, Someone will always want another thing from you–which isn’t a bad thing by the way.

The higher up you go the more people there are for you to become the lynchpin or the gatekeeper to their needs. Relatively speaking, at my job I’m not high up- I’m no CEO or president and I like it that way. That said I’m learning the hard way that the more demands on my time and life energy the stronger I must be in my ability to start the day with creating something.

Something is always more than nothing, even this poorly worded unspell checked somewhat boring blog post.

So, don’t fool yourself with “someday”, don’t fool yourself with “I’ll just get these three things done first.” sit down and make the thing. Even if it’s fifteen minutes, even if it’s five.

There will always be more work.

Are you hiding from your own power?

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 15:05:19 GMT

Those who can’t ‘do’ teach.

This like many sayings is of course an oversimplification.

Can’t isn’t really an appropriate word. “Can’t” implies that there is one way to do something, if you can’t be a famous movie star, you end up teaching improv? Well, perhaps you’ll choose to teach improv, that is of course a choice.

Teaching can be a place to hide. From what!? From your own greatness, from your potential, from turning potential energy into kinetic energy.

It is not always the case of course.

I personally have ended up teaching many things - not as a teacher, which is a position you need certification for. I have reverence for teachers. I’ve been an educator for many years. Educating in various areas. The problem was not in my educating, but in letting this be a shadow appeasement of my dreams and desires to create art. Music. Movies. To Act.

Those who are afraid may hide in plain sight. This is less simple than the above statement, but I believe much truer.

Are you hiding from your fear or maybe your self?

Daily Creative Practice

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 19:00:00 GMT

Daily practice prevents resistance. I don’t personally know anyone who doesn’t encounter the resistance. Although if you’re out there let’s talk.

I feel resistance to writing this post, this I believe is fully founded on a self conditioned patterning of thoughts.

Wow that makes me sound quite high falutant- So I’m smirking because I’ve never typed *highfalutin before, and had to look it up. I’ll be leaving in the above mistake.

The resistance: the practice of doing something every day will recondition you to overcome the resistance on a regular basis just as you conditioned yourself (or others did) to believe you needed some special magic in order to create something.

The act of writing and publishing here on this blog is one of my ways of practicing daily practice. It’s getting too meta in here so let’s go to some examples.

I’ve got a dream, a goal, a long lost interest in acting. I love that I’m writing about this here in 2021 because by 2031 I’ll be able to look back on this blog post and say: “Look at when that was just a dream.”

So how can I parlay a dream into a daily practice? This is a question I’ve wrestled with. Now there are of course important things to consider: taking classes, networking with other actors. These are important no matter what your interest or field.

I’m in the process now of figuring out what daily acting would look like. Keeping the main thing the main thing:

it would be way too easy for me to complicate this. I know how to create videos. I know how to shoot and edit them. This will likely play a role in daily acting BUT - How to keep acting the main thing while adding as few steps as possible? Some of this will be trial and error of course. A “not to do list” will also help.

A minimum viable practice will also help. Currently I’m toying with a daily 60 second video of me acting. Something with one single shot, perhaps simple music and posting to my youtube channel under a playlist.

What about writing? I’m not aiming to become a writer (although I like it a lot) Perhaps there will be some small amount of writing. There will also be some amount of avoiding the cleverness trap.

Well this is the end of part one of this idea. This post will be updated with part two as the evolution of this idea unfolds.

Saying No.

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 13:00:00 GMT

Ahh saying no--not always a fun activity and yet...very containing, affirming, helpful.

“No” gets a bad rep I think. Saying ‘no’ is associated with being uncollaborative, being negative, being unwilling.

All the times we say no however, are paving the way for our current and future yesses. When I was in my early 20’s I thought I was supposed to say yes to every opportunity. Don’t close the doors of opportunity! Say yes to friends, say yes to plans, say yes to options.

This however is a huge recipe for unhappiness. This is directly tied to that quote about pleasing everyone is a recipe for being unhappy. The issue with no and yes is partially an issue of binary thinking.

Sometimes we need binary thinking. The issue for a lot of people can come when we are starting out, because we are encountering new situations where we haven’t decided in advance what to say no and yes to.

For example - you’re offered your first job, and you’ve been searching for months and finally somebody says yes to you. So your answer is an automatic yes-because you’ve been on yes mode and waiting and waiting. Then you realize you didn’t stop to figure out what saying yes to this meant really- and you’ve got to do a lot of back pedaling and say no in reverse. It would be easy to say this could be prevented, but to a large extent we need to make mistakes - because they are part of having experienced life and give us ways to figure out our next decision.

Saying no will keep you sane. One issue worth noting is that the best no doesn’t always sound like a no. It sounds often like a yes to something else.

I can’t meet at 9am tomorrow but I could do 1pm.

This is a very boring simple sentence...and yet… Let’s go behind the scenes and add in all of the parts that are none of the other person’s business:

I can’t meet at 9am tomorrow but I could do 1pm.

Oh hell no I can’t meet at 9am tomorrow because I will be working out, or sleeping, or scrolling instagram, my circadian rhythm is such that I’m just no good at that hour, I’ll be busy drinking coffee, I’ll be busy working on a videoyes to.

but I could do 1pm.

This seems easy, but some of you reading this-especially those who struggle to say no, like I did, may not even realize you have this option. I sure didn’t when I was starting out. The only times I would say a sentence like the above was really if I had another meeting with another person-and I’d go on about justifying myself that I had to be at that meeting etc. and so on. The thing is - most people want you to uphold your own boundaries and say your own ‘no’s’
Don’t make others do your work for you. Say your no’s.

Some no’s are of course harder than others because of all the emotions that get mucked up in the middle of them. Feeling guilty about saying no - well, that’s something to suss out with yourself, a trusted friend, a therapist perhaps.

A good process can turn “I can’t say no and I don’t know how” to
“When I say no I feel guilty.” or maybe “If I say no, other’s won’t want to be my friend.”
to eventually “I love saying no, because I’m saying yes to this other thing.” (and if that other thing is sitting on your couch with personal pizza, that’s generally nobody’s goddamn business.)

“...BUT WHY?”

People will ask you “why?” sometimes, Why don’t you want to? Why is that the policy? What if we do xyz?

To a degree this is part of the game, and you need to become somewhat expert at knowing when and to whom you need to give up your why. This can become a tricky area, but on some matters it’s fairly black and white. If it comes to your own body for example, you owe nobody any ‘why’ answers. This is called boundaries.

If it comes to something like your schedule, you may need to give some ‘why’ answers.

I do have a specific and deep hatred for people who will try and use your why to negotiate. There is a time and place for negotiation and much of life is a subtle negotiation, among colleagues among friends, spouses, family etc.

I’m not talking about that though, I’m talking about a conversation where you have said no, the other person asks why, and upon hearing your ‘why’ then tries to argue with your why. This is when you will likely need to state a stronger no and then move on with your day. Some people have not earned the right to ask you why.

An easy example is strangers on the street - Do you have a moment to save the penguins? No. I don’t. Why? Nope. (It’s none of this person’s business how many moments you do or don’t have and if you’ve spent any of them saving penguins.)

You’ll notice who the people you really want to work with and be around don’t spend much time trying to ask you why and negotiate your ‘no’s’ they tend to accept your ‘no’ at face value. If they are asking you ‘why’ it tends to be about understanding you better and not about an impending negotiation.

What does saying no look like?

It actually looks so many ways that it’s enumerable.

Some possible examples though:

“I’d like to but I can’t.”
“That’s not something I’m interested in.”
“No Thanks!” Said cheerfully
“No thanks.” Said kindly
“No thanks.” Said with no affect.
“This one’s a pass for me/us” etc.

These are simple examples and yet, if you haven’t used these you may need some practice.

The silent ‘no’

Here’s a way of saying no that I’ve seen used a lot. I’ve seen managers do this, it’s painfully annoyingly potent.

They say nothing. They just wait for the other person to volunteer to do the work. Oy vey. I mean, I suppose that’s one way to do it, and there is a lot of subtext and pre-agreement in this, but I have to admit it is quite effective.

For example. Sitting in a meeting, a project is brought up, lots of discussion is happening, ideas flowing. Then the conversation starts to turn to who is doing what. Suddenly, the most eager to please people are volunteering to send a follow up email, call the client, take the notes, and so on and so forth.

Who leaves the meeting with action items? Who leaves the meeting having gotten something done through other people?

To a degree, again, if you’re in charge you may have this luxury of silence on the action items-maybe you’ve earned that power or right. Maybe it’s not really your project. This is why I think consulting is a genius field of work: Here ya go, here’s all the work I think you should do.

I digress.

Point being - silence is an effective way to say no, sometimes. Sometimes you need to say no and get back to the important work you were doing before everyone called a meeting about some reactionary thing.

Default Settings

It can be immensely helpful to have some default settings. Things you say no to in your everyday work. I am for example toying with the idea of saying no to all requests for a letter of reference. This may seem selfish, but the truth is, there comes a point when the sheer scale of people who I’ve led out numbers the hours I have in my day to write letters for other people.

I can feel myself even now feeling selfish in toying with this rule - this is actually a good sign, because this feeling means I’m on the edge of a potential discovery. If it were easy and comfortable it would mean I’d already learned this lesson.

Other People’s Agendas:
As a general rule, I say no to answering email until later in the morning. Which is a larger prioritization of taking care of my important work first and only then responding to everyone else’s agendas.

If I can save you from spending a decade of your career answering emails as your default, god please tell me I did, because it will make me so happy. I think email, slack, messenger, and all of their variants are necessary and helpful in their places, but if you zoom out to see that a lot of it really is someone else's agenda’s for you then you realize that you need to lower these on your priority list and do something meaningful before you check email.

Checking email and running your day based on other people’s agenda’s is a really convenient way to hide from your own power, your own will, and your own meaning.

No. It can be a beautiful thing

When I look back on all the things I’ve said no to, I feel a lovely sense of accomplishment. Like bathing in a warm soup of opportunity. I feel like Pam in The Office yelling out “No More Meetings!” I feel the power and weight of all the yeses are ushering me forward.

What are you saying no to today?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 12:00:00 GMT

The title of this post is taken from the poem The Summer’s Day, by Mary Oliver.

How do we know what to focus on? Day to day, week to week, hour to hour? The tough thing about this is that it’s taught in school as
“Here, I know what you should focus on, I am the teacher.” Or “This is the Curriculum.” This is good for certain purposes.

I haven’t really found it useful as a modus operandi in my daily life as a working professional though. Not when it comes to getting things done and what to do with my one wild and precious life.

The key problem is that if you bring the same attitude to work as you do to school it’s essentially: Do what the boss says and you will move forward.

Now, this is true. To an extent. Then you reach a point where in daily work, well you don’t actually know what to do because a good boss also wants you to think for yourself and be creative. That’s as it should be. In the larger picture of your life as you gain more freedom of time and perhaps remote work, you also gain more decision making power over what you focus on, what you do, and of course how you do it.

So how do we know what to focus on and work on?

Having read the Four Hour Work Week, the The One Thing and Essentialism. I can tell you this, a great failing for me has been in not knowing how to answer the questions posed in these books on a consistent basis. On top of that, the answer to this big question should not come as a reaction to what you are currently dealing with. Meaning, I spent many years making decisions in hopes of earning lots of money, because I had spent many years growing up poor and worrying about money.

I wasn’t necessarily trained to answer my own questions-to think creatively. For many adults there is a re-learning of our creativity, and also of deciding what matters.

Sometimes you need to spend some time asking yourself on the larger scale of life: What matters to me?

This is good for helping steer the freight liner that is your life over time. it can also inform more day to day week to week decision making.

If for example you decide that family comes first, this is going to change how you look at work.

Health definitely is near the top of my personal list, and informs many decisions about what I eat and how I eat.

Getting back to work/creativity, and what you work on though.

How do you know or figure out what to work on?

Well, sometimes you have to spend some time reflecting, writing, thinking, bouncing ideas off people and beyond.

This is something I don’t know every second of the day, and is one reason I’m putting it into blog form-because as I’ve said, I write this blog to discover what I think.

As you read this you are reading an attempt on my part to really finally answer this question with clarity.

Right now for me, I have my main job and within that there are many directions I could take.

One framing question I ask often is “What will be the highest leverage?” or “highest impact action?”

Be prepared to dislike the answer. For example, in my job that involves planning and coordinating experiences I am in a leadership role, so the highest leverage for me in many areas is to train and empower those I work with-as they are the ones who are directly doing that work.

This involves a fair amount of meetings. I do not like this answer. A quick disclaimer: I really enjoy working with the people I work with, they are thoughtful, driven smart likeable people - I just dont’ think meetings are generally a great use of time.

This is my greatest leverage - at least for now: to meet with, empower, mentor and activate my team. So it is.

There is a lot of creativity that can go into how this is done, and perhaps some amount of streamlining. This is one of the highest leverage activities.

Now within the groups of people you work with, I guarantee there are those who will take less chasing, and are proactive. If given the choice, work with these people. Spend little time chasing if you can. Sometimes you just have to chase someone down and see what’s up.

Another answer to the question of what do I work on? Well since a lot of my job involves working with others towards our mission, one answer to “what do I work on?” is rapport, presence and/or charisma. This is a skill - it enables me to empower others to do their work.

I find it nearly impossible to achieve this without some level of charisma, presence and rapport.

So, this is something to work on-and it’s something that will always be valuable.

What else to work on? Of course this largely depends on what you are trying to do.

One phrasing - I think Tim Ferriss mentions this is:

What is one thing that if I do it will render everything else easier or unnecessary?

This question. Damn this goddamn question.

I find this question to be somewhat overwhelming because it has so many possible answers.

I think a very subtle but important tweak is to add the project or task you are working on:

so “What is one thing that if I do it will render everything else easier or unnecessary?”

becomes

“To finish this specific video what is one thing that I can do that will render everything else easier or unnecessary?”

On the specific video I’m working on today...the answer is...actually to decide that it really has a clear deadline - because I have been overthinking this specific video for two weeks now and it’s been sucking a lot of my energy.

So. I’m making it due by close of business tomorrow. The answers will of course vary.

-----
On the whole, I think that one of the things that really hinders someone like me is this:

I love to learn - and therefore I attempt to do it all myself. Which is impossible.

When I set out to create my first podcast, I told myself I would outsource parts of it. I have definitely not yet succeeded in doing this!

The truth is I wanted to learn the process. This is not the problem. The challenge is two fold:

Cataloguing processes
Paying for someone else to do those processes

I feel too lazy to write down the steps...but there’s not much reward for me in getting someone else to do it--except the high high value in learning to outsource.

Perhaps though, someone else has already catalogued these processes (they have).

Paying someone else to do it...well that’s actually another story for another day!

When it comes to deciding what to work on people will generally write about starting at the highest level and ask you “What’s your life’s vision!?” Then they will make an arch with their hand and a bright shimmering light will appear and turn into a rainbow and the words “Life’s Vision” will appear. At which point you will stop reading because you’re probably just trying to figure out how to get through the week, or do things more efficiently, or spend less time deliberating.

So this would be a confusion of priorities. Sure having a big vision is important, but I haven't found that question very useful at least not yet.

I think in deciding what to focus on, two important things come to mind: Priorities, and saying no.

Priorities generally can be done by making a simple list for your day/week, and then rearranging them in order. The next step might be to say: can I just not do 10 of these 20 things with no adverse consequences? The answer may surprise you. At any given moment there are plenty of things you are not doing already, so a few more will likely make it onto your list because your brain thinks they need to be there-they may not.

Saying no. More on this to come, but saying no begins with yourself: do you say no to a great idea so you can do the work you’re doing already? Can you say “No, that’s not important right now”? Saying no to things keeps your path clear. How to know what to say no to is really up to you. You’ll need to train yourself to have some rules about what to say no to--especially since it’s easy to fool yourself into staying in your comfort zone.

So, as far as knowing what to work on, for now, I don’t have a concise answer, but looking above I’ve got some answers.

In lieu of Meetings...

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 11:30:00 GMT

...Let's...

Connect and leave the work for solo work, Or work together on the work. but not do a midway version between the two
Do as much of the work as we can on our own, write down our questions and come together.
Have a 5 minute quick call
Write down our questions - google the answers - tell each other what we found. (Now we get to have a deeper level conversation)
Do a lot of activities that are not all talk
Build our skills
Use the “Unless I Hear Otherwise” technique
Separate rapport building from meeting
Use asana, use slack,
Re-train ourselves to think for ourselves
Get crystal clear on the objectives
Set the plan a three months in advance - check once per week to see if we’re on target.

Tending to doubts or being pulled into the jungle?

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 13:00:00 GMT

Some days you wake up and you feel like writing, you feel like working out, you feel like taking on everything. Some days you wake up and are kind of, somewhere in the middle. Today I am somewhere in the middle.
Feeling “fine.”
The real power is choice. I still wrestle with the idea of a long ingrained behavior for me (and many others): The behavior is something around, you’ll feel like it and you’ll do it.

I think this has been a hindrance for me for years. The truth is you start doing a thing and you’ll cultivate the feeling of doing it. This is more on the day to day basis that I’m talking about.

After enough days and weeks, it’s no longer a question of “do I feel like it.” It’s just something you do. The question goes away.

Sometimes you’ll be knocked out of your routine consistently enough by a worldwide pandemic, an injury or what have you.

I’ve now though, gone enough days without working out consistently that the question has returned. “Do I feel like it?” “Do I want to work out?” “Why do it today if I won’t do it tomorrow?” and so on and so forth.

These questions, they need to be tended to, but they need not really be given much answering because they are the type of questions that will pull you off the path and into the wild jungle of useless doubting and thinking, and away from doing and momentum.

So, it’s not about denial, or burying your feelings and thoughts about something, those are there for a reason, you do need to tend to those thoughts. Tend to them after putting yourself into a good frame of mind. Maybe after a nice cup of coffee, or a walk, or a call with that friend who has the same sense of humor as you?

Momentum.
A great idea. I hear it mentioned and talked about a lot. I think momentum is quite simple. An object in motion stays in motion (and object at rest stays at rest).

Now of course, an object in motion will be slowed down by friction. For us humans friction can manifest in many ways, daily friction of schedule, agendas, the need to look at social media, and on and on and on.

Yet, getting into motion is simple-difficult sometimes but simple: Do.

Beautiful Distractions

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:00:00 GMT

Something that I find difficult currently is the long view and the time and energy it takes to build something slowly and consistently.

If you type anything related to “How to start…” “A blog” “A business” “Your career” you will get many results around the ten mistakes you’re making, or the top ten things you need to do first, or the shiny thing you need before you start.

These almost always come with a sales pitch for something.

This pen, that course, this way, that way, this way.

Stop.

It has taken me years and many wasted resources both time and financial to internalize an important key concept: There will never be a substitute for doing the work.

Yes, there are shortcuts, yes there are life hacks, yes there is outsourcing. This is all great.
It does not replace the work, it simply amplifies and often complicates the work.

If you are starting out as a carpenter and someone were to tell you “Hey bud, you gotta buy this twenty four carat golden hammer.” You would call bullshit.

If you’re starting out as a blogger and someone tells you that you need a $2000 macbook pro? Bullshit.*

There’s a lot of talk in the video creator community about “Gear not mattering.” A great and lame debate is forming.

A lot of it is hypocritical because the same people telling you that gear doesn’t matter, the pen doesn’t matter and so on, are also realizing they want to make a living at their craft so they turn around and want to sell you a pen, or an affiliate link to a pen or computer or camera.

It’s not that the pen or the computer or even the golden hammer don’t matter. They at some point do matter (well - except the golden hammer, gold is actually really soft I believe).

It’s rather that they are very much beside the point. You can start making videos with a smartphone or a $100-200 camera, and eventually buy a shmancy camera. You can start writing with a goddamn crayon if you want! (and you probably did if you were ever a kid at one point)

The domain name for this blog does not matter. It’s a preference, I like having my name at the top, and I decided to pay for it - but it was absolutely unnecessary as a first step in writing. The two are not connected, and they are barely loosely related.

Sure at some point, you may want to upgrade things, paint the walls of the studio, add some photos to the blog posts, but so very very much of what is out in the world today is a distraction, a beautiful, compelling and endless distraction from simply putting in consistent time and energy.

*The number of people using a macbook pro when all they need it for is microsoft word and to answer emails is astounding. It’s like hitting a tiny nail with a sledgehammer that costs $2000. Save your money!

The Smallest Next Step

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:30:00 GMT

When you can’t think of what to write, write. I’ll be very blunt with you, I have no plan for the words that will come next from my brain to the keyboard. I just know that sitting and staring at the page well, that’s called staring at the page and what I’m doing now is called writing (typing).

“Just punch the damn keys!” as Sean Connery’s character says in Finding Forrester. It’s damn true. It’s true of so many things. Punch the damn keys, start moving, get going, make momentum. This is true for so much of life.

Want to write poetry, start writing poetry. Want to make a song, start making a song.

What is the next physical action?

David Allen talks about asking yourself “What is the next physical action?” (On this project or task) This is just so true it needs to be tattooed on most of our hands to remember to ask it all the time.

What is the next physical action on starting a business? (It’s not buying a domain name that’s for sure!) What’s the next physical action on your job application?

Well, I’ll tell you what it isn’t: “Apply for job.” This is not an action, applying for a job is a series of actions and steps.
Here’s a series of next actions: Open laptop, open google drive, search for “resume.” These are things you can physically do. Essentially if it’s not as specific as that, then our brains will not be able to tolerate it. ESPECIALLY not at scale.

Everything is at scale these days. To do lists, content coming at us from all sides, alerts, spam phone calls and on and on. Your brain needs you to treat it as it is, not as you wish it were.

What happens when your brain sees the words “Apply to job”? Your mind probably starts breaking that into smaller tasks, but sometimes this turns into overwhelm because all those tasks (physical actions) can not be done ALL AT ONCE!

So ask “What is the next physical action?”

So here’s the thing, you might say “When I go for a run I don’t write down on my to do list ‘put on running shoes’ I just write ‘Go for a run.’”

Yes of course, this makes sense if you have gone for a run numerous times before, then your brain knows what to do. It doesn’t need you to write the next physical action.

What if you are going for your first run ever? Or your first run in a long time? Then you may well need to write down: “Look for my running shoes in the closet.”

This helps with creative tasks, this helps with overwhelm. You’ll also be surprised by how many actions you can learn to no longer do in order to get things going.

I Don't Feel Like It

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 17:00:00 GMT

“I don’t want to” is very different from “I don’t feel like it.” They are often confused.

I want to be healthy and in shape.

I don’t feel like avoiding sugar, eating spinach, protein and lifting weights.

I want to have plenty of money.
I don’t feel like working hard all the time.
Desire generally for me when it comes to goals is more about wanting something on a more generalized scale: I want to get in shape.

That does not mean I will feel motivated to work out. These two are not the same. They are more like cousins who’ve met once and are cool with each other, but they then go their separate ways.

This is an important thing to know though. You’re not going to feel like going for that run necessarily. You may feel like it. You may build up a streak of running daily, and then it’s not necessarily that you feel like it, but more likely you just have far fewer hang ups about just doing the darn thing. Then you’re doing it, and not worrying all the time and debating and playing mind games. Do I feel like it? Do I want to? Am I motivated?

The thing is sometimes you will really feel like it and that’s great. The other thing is that often you likely won’t feel like it but for one reason or another you need to do it.

We often reserve this “doing” for our “musts” I “must go to work” “I must pay my bills” “I must shower” and so on. What happens with those things? WE DO THEM!

We don’t spend hours deliberating about whether to go to the meeting or not, you don’t ask yourself all the time “Do I feel like paying the bills?” No, you do the things you must do in order to function and keep the groceries coming in.

So what I propose is that you expand your circle of musts, and worry less about what you feel like doing.

To be clear, I don’t approach writing a blog post the same way I approach going to a meeting for my day job. They feel different.

BUT there is a thing here, and that thing is that you start.

You start the thing, and then it kind of takes on its own force, suddenly you’re not questioning and umming and oohing, you’re doing. It can even feel like magic (maybe it’s flow) and you look up and sometimes it’s done! Or it’s at least partially done.
So, what can you start on? That you don’t feel like doing?

Can you text a friend you’ve been meaning to?
Can you look up that class you’ve thought about 100’s of times?
Can you start to write that blog post?
Can you start jogging?

Starting isn’t the point, but if you start, you may find you more often than not keep going.

What can you start?