The Courage to Act Before Feeling Ready
Created at: August 30, 2025
Great people do things before they're ready. — Amy Poehler
Readiness Is a Moving Target
Amy Poehler’s line—great people move before they feel prepared—exposes a quiet truth: readiness is often something we declare after the fact. Confidence, in other words, trails experience. Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy shows that belief grows primarily through mastery experiences, not before them; we act, we gain feedback, and only then do we feel “ready.” Thus, waiting for certainty tends to stretch into a perpetual delay, while small, early moves create the very competence we think we lack.
The Mind’s Readiness Illusion
Psychology helps explain this hesitation. Clance and Imes (1978) describe impostor syndrome, where capable people doubt their legitimacy despite evidence, inflating the threshold for feeling prepared. Likewise, Buehler, Griffin, and Ross (1994) name the planning fallacy: we misjudge time and complexity even with past data in hand. Layer on the status quo bias (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988), and inaction feels safer than it is. Because our minds misread risk and readiness, mere waiting rarely fixes the problem; action recalibrates our intuitions.
Action as the Engine of Learning
If miscalibration is the issue, learning-by-doing is the remedy. Kolb’s Experiential Learning (1984) shows how concrete action, reflection, and iteration create knowledge loops that planning alone cannot. Relatedly, Anders Ericsson’s research summarized in Peak (2016) demonstrates that deliberate practice—structured attempts with feedback—builds skill faster than passive preparation. As these cycles unfold, the feeling of readiness catches up to reality, not the other way around.
Prototypes Over Permission
Entrepreneurship operationalizes this principle. Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectuation (2001) advises starting with the means at hand and shaping goals through action. Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup (2011) similarly advocates a minimum viable product to learn in market. Dropbox’s 2008 demo video validated demand before a full build, while the Wright brothers’ wind-tunnel experiments (1901) and successive glider tests culminated in flight (1903). In each case, early, imperfect action generated decisive information faster than waiting for certainty.
Improv, Comedy, and Creative Risk
Poehler’s own craft dramatizes this ethic. Improv training—rooted in Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater (1963)—teaches the “yes, and” stance: move, accept, build. The Upright Citizens Brigade, which Poehler co-founded, institutionalized this momentum as a learn-in-public pedagogy. Her memoir Yes Please (2014) distills the lesson: commit onstage before you feel ready, then discover the scene through commitment. Comedy, like innovation, rewards bold starts more than flawless plans.
Practical Ways to Leap Safely
Acting early needn’t be reckless. A project premortem (Gary Klein, 2007) imagines failure in advance to surface risks before moving. Time-boxing and “small bets” (Peter Sims, 2011) limit downside while preserving motion. Amazon’s “two-way door” framing—reversible vs. irreversible decisions—encourages quick trials when stakes are recoverable. By shrinking scope and accelerating feedback, you buy affordable insight and the confidence that follows.
From Personal Habit to Team Culture
Scaling this mindset requires shared norms. The Agile Manifesto (2001) privileges working increments and customer collaboration over exhaustive upfront plans, turning action into a team-wide habit. Retrospectives, short sprints, and tight feedback loops normalize imperfect starts and continuous correction. Consequently, organizations that ritualize small, early steps compound learning—proving Poehler’s point at scale: readiness is earned in motion, not awaited in theory.