Successful people are not necessarily the smartest people, but they are 100% all action takers.
Instead of wasting your time trying to make a perfect plan (which doesn’t exist) just start taking action.
Imagine your task for the day is to climb a mountain.
You are at the bottom of the mountain in the morning, as expected, but halfway through the day, you are still at the bottom of the mountain. This seems irrational but people do this with their life plans and business plans all the time.
Before you know it it’s noontime and you are still debating which way is the best way to the top of the mountain. You are still analyzing and wondering.
There are several names for this condition, but it’s most commonly referred to as analysis paralysis. It manifests in the form of overstudying and overthinking which approach is best.
It stems out of a perfectionist mindset, which is ultimately the enemy of progress.
Where does the perfectionist mindset stem from? To go deeper, that stems from not trusting yourself and not being sure you can handle things no matter what happens.
It’s far more advantageous to operate with the confidence that if things go wrong you will be able to figure it out. It’s not about making perfect decisions, it’s about making sure that the decisions you do make will always turn out right. Why? Because you know that no matter what comes up you can handle it.
On the trail up a mountain, you could take wrong turns, you could encounter dangerous wildlife, your GPS could fail, a blizzard could happen, any number of things could go wrong, but does that mean don’t climb the mountain? No! At some point, you have to take risks and live your life to the fullest.
Here are 10 Truths About Taking Action
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Action is more cost effective because you only have so much runway
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Inaction is scarier when you think about it
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Belief in success follows action like day follows night
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Action is why we are here in the physical world
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Action generates new courage
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Knowledge and novel wisdom follow actions
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Action circumvents whatever the odds are
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Action makes you humble
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Taking action is what professionals do
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Action creates stability and it creates momentum
Next time you are embarking on a new business or life plan, it’s far wiser to jump in and start learning lessons than stay stuck in the theoretical world.
“Progress over perfection” is one of the sayings to anchor back to when you find yourself or the team you are managing spinning its tires. Most entrepreneurs have been there before, debating with the team for hours on the best approach and then coming to no decisions and no action plans.
Entrepreneurs have to make exceedingly more decisions than the average person and not only that… each decision can have lasting implications of success or failure for years to come.
It makes sense why so many entrepreneurs fail. They get caught in the clutches of perfectionism rather than just attacking their objectives through raw action.
Keep showing up and keep taking action. Focus on your wildly important goal for the quarter and what the actual weekly real-work objectives are for the week that will help you get closer and closer to the wildly important goal for the quarter.
Think big with your goals but be nimble with your actions. Knockout the weekly objectives. Hit singles, doubles, and triples every single week, multiple times a week rather than hitting home runs every once in a blue moon.
It’s far more advantageous to be mediocre all the time and to be consistent with putting in the real work than to be perfect some of the time.
Watch out for being an information junkie. You will gain far more knowledge from actually climbing a mountain for a day than reading 3 books on how to climb mountains.
Now go take action!