Start More Than You Can Finish

September 19, 2022
Business consultant Blades (Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone) provides tips for pursuing one’s passions in this animated guide. “The value in acting on our ideas is not measured in grand, planned finishes. The value is in each and every start,” Blades contends, encouraging readers to act on ideas even if they don’t follow through because uncompleted attempts can inform and improve later projects. She recounts seeing her growth as a writer in her unpublished writings from her 20s and suggests that false starts can inspire new ideas, “exercise” creative muscles, and offer a “healthy diversion.” Extolling the benefits of collaboration, she urges readers to partner with someone whose skills complement theirs and recommends finding a cohort to develop a new recipe or launch a co-op. She entreats readers to keep their imagination active and tells how the founder of a company that sells socks bearing inspirational messages conceived of the idea after learning that the brain is “most open to the power of words” at the time many people put on or take off their socks: while waking or falling asleep. The fun line drawings, also by Blades, nicely complement her peppy prose (“Starting makes us happy. But that’s just the beginning”). The result is a spunky case for not following through.