Making time for fear.

If we believe that fear will not show up as we work on our project, we are not being serious about the work. Any project worth pursuing will have its component of fear accompanying it.

And if don't make space for the fear, it will show up at the worst possible moment, the moment when we are about to get the project done, the moment we are about to ship. And it will stop us from moving forward, it will derail or distract us with one thing or the other.

Instead, we can make space for fear at the beginning of a project. When the project is raw, when no work has gone into it,  and when we are not yet totally committed. We can write down every possible way that fear might show up later, the things that fear might say to dissuade us from completing the project and we can take all of them seriously. Once we do that, we can decide whether we want to commit to the project or not.

There is a dip phase in all projects, a time when fear will try its best to make us quit, but we can thwart it if we make time for fear earlier in the game.