How to force a figure to appear if it's preceded by \pause?

Question

I have a slide divided into two columns. The columns on the left contains a list of item that appear one at time whilst the columns on the right has a figure. To make the items appear one-by-one, I am using \pause. Nevertheless, since the image is placed in the code after the last \pause, it does not appear until the last item in the list has been called, which is not my intention. I want the figure to be there since the start of the slide and the items to appear one-by-one.

I have tried forcing the placement of the image with [!htb] but it doesn't exert any change. What can I do to make the image appear since the beginning?

My code now looks like this:

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{My title}
\begin{columns}[T]
\begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
    \begin{itemize}
        \pause \item Item 1
        \pause \item Item 2
        \pause \item Item 3
        \pause \item Item 4
    \end{itemize}
\end{column}

\begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
    \begin{figure}[!htb]
    \centering
        \includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{My_figure}
    \end{figure}
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

Answer 1

The \pause command does exactly what it says: pauses the slide at that point. For any more complex set up you need to use the flexible overlay 'action' specs:

\documentclass{beamer}
\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{My title}
\begin{columns}[T]
\begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
    \begin{itemize}[<+->]
        \item Item 1
        \item Item 2
        \item Item 3
        \item Item 4
    \end{itemize}
\end{column}

\begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
    \begin{figure}[!htb]
    \centering
        \includegraphics[width = \textwidth]{example-image-a}
    \end{figure}
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

See Relative overlay specification in beamer? and also \pause does not not work with \only for more on this.

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By the way, note that figure is not required in beamer as there are no floats and as captions are strongly discouraged in talks.