13 Apr 2026 · 5 min
George Kao spent years waiting for inspiration before creating, which stalled his business. His fix: schedule a creation session and start anyway, even imperfectly. Motivation and flow show up after you begin, not before. He calls it "uninspired but willing."
Do you often wait for inspiration before you create? Do you feel like you have to be ready before you take action? Well, I have been like this for most of my life, and when I started my business 16 years ago, eventually I realized that it would delay me taking action and making progress on my business so much if I waited until I got inspired. Because— and I wouldn't have been able to sustain my business for much longer if I waited until I felt ready before I took action. I mean, before I started recording this video, I didn't feel ready either, and I didn't feel inspired either. But I said, you know what, I've scheduled to make a video right now, and if I don't make a video right now, I don't know if I'll ever feel inspired and ready. If I do, maybe I'll be in the shower and I can't make a video at that point. Or I'll be outside walking and I can't make a video at that point. Right now, when I've scheduled to make this video, I'm not particularly inspired, but then I know I need to make the video, and once I start recording, the motivation and the inspiration tends to follow. So don't wait to be motivated to take action. Take action first, and then motivation follows. I've seen this again and again and again and again, which means that you need to be willing to say, "I'm going to take really imperfect action right now." What is perfect action, by the way? No, really, if you think about it, how do you know your action is perfect or polished enough anyway? Have you ever looked back on something that you thought you created that was really good and you're surprised that people didn't find it brilliant or they didn't find it highly engaging? That happens to me all the time. So I know to not trust myself in the way to know, "Well, this is really good. This is going to be— people are going to love it." No, I just know that, "Hey, I scheduled to create something, so I'm going to show up now and create it." I don't know whether it's perfect, imperfect. I'm going to set those judgments aside. I just know I'm going to create something. I know I'm probably not going to feel inspired. Probably not gonna feel ready, but I'm gonna show up and create something. Now, I did some planning in advance. I had some idea of what I'm going to say, but I didn't rehearse it as much as I could. I didn't pre-produce this as much as I probably wanted to. I did what I could in the time allowed, and then I showed up and simply started to record. And I encourage you to do the same thing with whatever it is you need to do to move your business forward, whether it's writing a blog post, recording videos, preparing a launch, reaching out to a potential client, doing some strategic planning, whatever it is that you need to do, just know that you probably won't feel the adequate motivation before you start doing it. And then the secret is Once you start doing it, setting aside, "I'm doing this right, I'm doing this wrong," I'm doing it however I know I need to do it right now. That's all. I'm just doing what I need to know, what I know I need to do right now. That's all. I'm gonna learn more in the future for how to do this better. But right now, what I know how to do is this. You show up, you do it, and guess what? Sometime 10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, maybe 30 minutes later, you'll find yourself in some kind of flow that wasn't there before you started. I do— I find this all the time, and this is an illusion that I have to remind myself is an illusion all the time. Every day I still don't feel like showing up. I still don't feel inspired to create, and I, and I just know from experience that, okay, if I just I know if I just get going, the inspiration tends to follow. So normalize creative discomfort. Normalize creative discomfort. It's supposed to be there, and once you get going, the discomfort starts to fade because you're building muscle, you're building skill, you're building exposure to working without needing to be inspired. So this— I'll end with this mantra I often say to myself: uninspired but willing. Uninspired but willing to show up. I hope this is helpful. Thanks for joining me.
"Be of good cheer. Think not of today's failures, but of tomorrow's successes...”
