Even so, several cognitive biases inflate the pre-start moment. The planning fallacy (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) underestimates effort; affective forecasting errors (Gilbert and Wilson, 2000) misjudge how bad discomfort will feel; and the Zeigarnik effect (1927) keeps unfinished tasks looping in mind, turning hesitation into rumination. Add catastrophizing—a target of cognitive therapy since Beck (1979)—and the threshold can feel insurmountable. Yet these distortions weaken rapidly under feedback. As soon as we begin, real constraints replace imagined ones, duration estimates sharpen, and the mind stops rehearsing disaster in favor of handling what is actually present. [...]
