The conversation
you've been putting off.

Start with the most obvious one: the conversation you've been putting off for weeks.

Not the only one you have pending. The one that, right now, as you read this, came to mind first. The one you recognized in the second you read the sentence.

That one.

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Let's do something concrete before your head takes you somewhere else. Grab a piece of paper, open a note on your phone, whatever.

Write the name of the person you have that pending conversation with at the top. Just the name. No context.

Ready? Keep going.

Now, below it, write in a single line what exactly the conversation is that you haven't had. What the concrete thing is. One line.

If more than one line comes out, stop and keep the first. What follows is your head trying to explain. We don't need that yet.

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What you've just written is very useful information. For two reasons.

One: it tells you what weighs, not what happened. And those are different. What happened can be complex, full of nuance, with its history. What weighs is always one thing. And what matters today is what weighs.

Two: it tells you how little you need to start. You don't need a whole script. You need the first sentence. And the first sentence, almost always, is that line you wrote turned into a question or a heads-up. For example:

• I have to tell him I don't want to go on like this → first sentence: "There's something in how we are that isn't working for me anymore. Can we talk?"
• I have to admit to her that she was wrong → first sentence: "There's something about Thursday I need to talk to you about."
• I have to tell them I'm going to quit → first sentence: "I've been turning something important over for a while. I need us to sit down."

Good first sentences share a pattern. They're specific (not "we need to talk"), they open a door instead of closing it, and they acknowledge you've been mulling it over instead of pretending to be spontaneous.

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The next note in the series looks at why your head, just when you try to have the conversation, tells you the opposite of what you meant to say. It's one of the most common effects, and the least talked about.

That's enough for today. If you did the paper, you've already done half the work. If you only thought about it, do it tomorrow. The difference between thinking it and writing it is bigger than it seems.

Miguel