A lot of the books and success education I’ve invested in over the years have emphasized how:
* You don’t have to know everything in order to get started,
* People use thinking as an excuse to procrastinate and delay taking action,
* Better to do something and make mistakes than not at all,
* Ready, Fire, Aim, etc.
I agree with all of the above, as fear can keep us from setting our sights high and so this deserves to be repeated. A regrettably high percentage of people who consume articles, books, and courses do not end up applying what they learn.
So how do you know when you’ve thought about something enough, and when you have enough initial information and strategy to commit and get started?
Finding the Balance
Here are my thoughts about the balance between spending more time thinking and planning what to do vs more time taking action:
1. Action-oriented people tend to make more money and make it faster than thinker-brained folks.
2. Action-oriented people, while making more money, tend to be constantly busy and overwhelmed with business (because they are doing deals, which is a good problem to have compared to an empty planner and matching bank account.
3. At some point, though, you will have to start thinking and planning your next initiative, or how to keep the higher workload running smoothly. Until then, be willing to have the world’s messiest process and desk space—as long as you spend most of your time marketing and promoting your business. The rest can wait.
4. This, then, will require someone to balance meeting today’s needs and goals (action) with planning and creating processes and systems (thinking).
5. This is hard to do, as most folks are either one or the other, but must be done and with the right proportions.
The pathway to progress is, then, to FIRST become used to taking action without having all the facts or everything in place (unless you already are), and THEN learning how to force yourself to take a few hours per week and EXAMINE the way you’re doing things and devise ways to do things better.
Personally, I spend about 10% of my working time on planning, learning, and goal-setting. The rest is effectively spent carrying out those plans myself and managing the results of others on my team.
But for now, I just want to emphasize that action is good, thinking is good, and doing both in the right proportions is the key to getting free of your business.
Leave a Reply