The willingness to take action or take a practical step forward is life-changing.
Successful people favour action over inaction. They know when to act, how to act and what to do when they have to keep moving.
In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos said:
“Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more detail in last year’s letter. Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.”
Time spent making or finding excuses, worrying about being wrong and wishing for something different without taking some form of action will do nothing for your life.
I have learned more from publishing and sharing in public than I could have ever learned by reading about becoming a better writer.
Whilst you wait for inspiration, others are launching, creating, writing, designing, investing, recording, building, coding, publishing and selling.
Today, right now, if you are procrastinating, you are missing out.
The courage to start or take practical action is a skill. And successful people have mastered it. The good news is, like every skill that can be mastered, you have to start somewhere. You have to take a step.
First, get started, then get going, and become good. Just enough to keep taking action. Not perfect.
Perfection is a mindset that makes you stall. You don’t want that.
Every successful person you know made a decision to start first. It’s the basic foundation you need to iterate, change, improve or reinvent.
Lessons learned is the key to accelerating growth.
“The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not,” says Abraham Verghese.
You can only push boundaries if you take action.
Action defines your trajectory in life
“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” ―Thomas Jefferson
There will always be a reason to delay, postpone, stay put, overthink or skip the necessary action. If you want anything bad enough, you will find a reason; otherwise, you will make excuses.
Any action comes down to choice.
“It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide,” says Seth Godin.
Decide to take responsibility for your own success or happiness. Don’t believe your doubts. The obstacle is always the way.
Taking a step is scary, but it’s the only way forward. Starting badly is a better option than waiting for a perfect time.
You learn more through personal experience than overplanning.
By all means, make plans, ponder over your ideas, think through your option, consider the first, second and third-order consequences of your choices, but you can only make real progress if you take a step.
And finally, remember what Dale Carnegie once said, “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
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This post was previously published on Thomas Oppong’s blog.
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Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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