You're Not Getting Ready. You're Hiding.
By Derek Neighbors on November 28, 2025
Early in my career, I discovered Extreme Programming and Agile. Took the courses. Read the books. Absorbed everything I could find on this revolutionary way of building software and leading teams.
Then came time to actually apply it.
And I froze.
I started lightweight. Tentative. Dipping toes instead of diving in. Running small experiments while telling myself I needed to understand more before I could really coach others.
The truth? I wasn’t willing to choose action over comfort. I knew what needed to be done. I simply wouldn’t do it.
So I kept preparing. Kept studying. Kept not fully committing. Every time an opportunity came to go deeper, I found another book to read first. Another course that would fill the gaps. Another expert whose validation I needed before I could trust myself.
Then I went to an Open Space conference. Sat in sessions with practitioners who were doing this work at scale. But the breakthrough wasn’t in the talks.
It was in the hallway conversations.
Listening to other practitioners describe their challenges, their approaches, their questions. And realizing something that changed everything: I already knew more than most of them.
The gap wasn’t knowledge. It was the choice to act on what I knew.
I’d been hiding behind “I just don’t know enough” when the real issue was I hadn’t chosen to be bold. Courage isn’t a feeling that arrives. It’s a decision made in the face of fear.
After that conference, I went full bore. Stopped hedging. Started doing and solving at scale. Within months I’d learned more through application than years of preparation had taught me.
The competence I’d been waiting to feel? It only came after I stopped waiting and started doing.
The Loop That Keeps You Stuck
The preparation pattern is seductive because it looks like action.
Consume information. Identify gaps in knowledge. Consume more information. Repeat. You’re choosing preparation over action while telling yourself you’re being responsible.
You never reach the threshold of “ready enough” because readiness is a myth. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know, which justifies more learning.
People say they want to achieve something. Then spend all their time preparing to achieve it instead of attempting it. They claim preparation reduces risk. But the biggest risk is never starting.
The Greeks understood the difference between dynamis (potentiality) and energeia (actuality). Preparation keeps you in potentiality forever. Only action moves you into actuality.
You will never feel ready. The people who achieve things didn’t feel ready either. They just started.
None of this dismisses legitimate preparation. The surgeon needs training before operating. The pilot needs hours before flying passengers. Foundational competence matters. But here’s the threshold: can you attempt the thing and learn from the attempt? If yes, you have enough to begin. Everything beyond that point is just stalling. Most people reading this crossed that threshold long ago.
The Certification Collector
One more certification before launching the consulting practice. One more course before writing the book. One more workshop before leading differently.
Certifications are stalling. You already have everything you need to begin. You’re choosing not to.
Aristotle taught that virtue is developed through practice, not study. You become courageous by doing courageous things, not by reading about courage. You become a skilled practitioner by practicing, not by accumulating credentials about practice.
The credentials aren’t building competence. They’re protection from having to do something that might fail.
The Research Rabbit Hole
Forty-seven books on starting a business. Zero conversations with potential customers.
Endless management theory. Zero difficult conversations with the team.
Ask yourself: do you have enough information to take one meaningful action and learn from the result? If yes, more research is stalling.
Phronesis, practical wisdom, can only be developed through action and reflection on action. You can’t think your way into wisdom. You have to act your way into it, then reflect on what happened.
The research rabbit hole mistakes information accumulation for progress. Confuses knowing about with being able to do. You could read every book on swimming ever written and still drown in the shallow end.
The Perfect Plan
The business plan revised twelve times but never tested with real customers. The life plan beautifully documented but never lived. The strategy refined endlessly while competitors ship.
Planning past the point of basic clarity is procrastination in a suit.
The Stoics taught that we control our choices and actions, not outcomes. Obsessive planning is an attempt to control outcomes, which is impossible. You can’t plan your way to certainty. You can only act your way to learning.
The complexity of planning becomes the justification for the delay of doing. “We need a more detailed plan” is often code for “We’re not ready to face the judgment that comes with execution.”
The Perpetual Student
Three years of “learning to code” without building anything. Years of writing classes without writing. Decades of studying leadership without leading.
Staying a student keeps you safe from being judged as a practitioner.
Ergon, your essential function, your work, can only be discovered and developed through engagement. Not observation. Not study. Engagement.
The identity of “learner” protects you from the exposure of “doer.” Learners get grace. Doers get judged. So you stay in learning mode indefinitely, accumulating knowledge you never apply.
This isn’t an argument against the pursuit of wisdom. The philosopher who contemplates truth and lives according to reason is engaged in the highest form of action. But reading about courage while never being courageous isn’t philosophia. It’s just hiding. Does your learning change how you live?
What Actually Works
The only preparation that matters is the preparation you can’t avoid: the learning that happens through doing.
Real competence is built through iteration, not accumulation. Shipping something imperfect teaches you more than years of studying what perfect looks like.
When I finally stepped into coaching teams at scale, I learned more in six months than in all my years of preparation. The skills that mattered couldn’t be learned from books. They could only be learned from doing the work, making mistakes, adjusting, and doing it again.
If you want to escape the preparation loop:
Set a forcing function. A deadline. A commitment. A public declaration that makes endless preparation impossible. When you have to show up, you figure out what you actually need versus what you’ve been hiding behind.
Ship before ready. Whatever you’re preparing for, cut your preparation time in half and start. You’ll likely discover that much of that remaining preparation was unnecessary, things you could only learn by doing. The skills that actually matter can only be developed through the work itself.
Learn through iteration. Replace “study then do” with “do, reflect, adjust.” Action alone produces nothing. Action followed by honest assessment of what worked and what didn’t, then adjustment toward better execution, that cycle is where growth happens. Theoretical preparation skips the only step that matters.
Ask the brutal question. “Am I preparing, or am I hiding?” Be honest. If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that’s information.
The Honest Questions
When was the last time you shipped something you weren’t “ready” for?
How many books, courses, and certifications have you consumed in the last year? How many things have you actually built, shipped, or done?
If preparation were banned tomorrow, what would you be forced to attempt?
What are you really avoiding by staying in preparation mode?
Why have you not chosen to act on what you already know?
Final Thoughts
Preparation feels responsible. It feels like you’re taking the goal seriously.
But if the goal mattered as much as you claim, you’d be willing to pursue it imperfectly. The willingness to fail publicly is the price of admission to anything worth doing.
Energeia, being-at-work, actuality, is the only place arete can be developed. Excellence is not forged through action alone, but through action, reflection, and deliberate adjustment toward the mean. You act. You assess honestly. You adjust. You act again. This cycle, repeated over time, is how virtue is built. Preparation skips the entire mechanism. Every day in preparation mode is a day your potential stays unrealized.
Pick the thing you’ve been “preparing” for. The business you’ve been researching. The skill you’ve been studying. The change you’ve been planning.
Give yourself 48 hours. No more preparation. No more courses. No more reading.
Start.
Ship something. Anything. A conversation, a prototype, a first draft, a single step.
What you feel is irrelevant. Act anyway. The growth happens in the doing, not in achieving some emotional state first.
That’s where arete is built. Not in preparation, but in action, reflection, and adjustment.
Breaking the preparation loop is hard when everything in your environment rewards looking busy over being effective. MasteryLab creates the accountability structure for action over preparation: daily progress on what matters, community support for shipping before ready, and a framework for learning through iteration instead of accumulation. If you’re ready to stop hiding and start doing, join the community.
