My Wake-Up Call
Why You Need to Stop Being Casual
Recently I was given a wake-up call. It happened when I was looking back at the year and noticed that I although I have done a lot of work toward my goal of becoming my own boss. That I have not produced even half of the content that I had planned earlier in the year.
The Secret Downfall of the Planner
Planning should be just that planning. Generally, it is good to plan for multiple timeframes — meaning that we don’t just set up a goal for the year; we lay out steps along the way. A popular method is the 90-day sprint. Then each week you plan that week to move you closer to the sprint goal and each day you work on accomplishing the tasks for that week. It all seems so simple… that is until you get caught up in the weeds and details of planning.
You or someone you know likely has the same problem. You start a plan and then you list out more and more details. More and more ideas. Wow, you think look at all that I am doing. But wait because at the end of it all you only have a bunch of lists of things to do. You have the beginnings of tons of great ideas. But there is nothing to show for all your work other than those brainstorming ideas and lists of tasks to accomplish.
Sooner or later (and hopefully sooner than later) you must take action. And this my friend, I am afraid, summed up much of my year. Yes, I have tons of ideas, tons of lists, and have started on so many great things, but each idea added put another on the backburner.
The Pain of Endless Planning
While I could say that it was a lack of planning, the truth is that I did tons of planning. I probably even spent too much time planning and too little time executing. There is a strange phenomenon that happens when you start planning. You start to become excited and dream big, but you can often get stuck in the planning stages. Why? The answer is that planning allows us to have the perception of working toward our goal, while actually doing very little that sets us up to achieve our goal.
This is true both in starting a business and in out fitness journey, or any other aspect of our lives. Too much planning can hold us back. It is a way for us to casually pursue our dreams without truly making the sacrifice of our current status quo or comfort.
Approaching anything casually is a recipe for failure. By approaching a task casually, you send a message to yourself (and possibly others) that you do not intend to put a lot of effort into the task. This messaging will cause you to take the task less seriously and eventually give up when
things get tough. You may never even reach the point where the task gets truly tough because by approaching the task casually you will not prioritize it meaning that you will not work on it enough to reach the real obstacles that must be overcome. The task is doomed to be dead in the water the moment you decide to approach it casually.
Stop Planning and Take Action
Anything that is worth doing. Anything that you want to succeed at needs to be done with intent. You need to set time aside and approach any obstacles seriously and urgently. Focus is a key to success and the problem with planning too much is that our ideas expand and branch into new ideas before we even get a real solid start on the first idea.
The solution is to stop planning. Stop obsessing over all the little details and how each new idea will work with the others. Stop thinking about connecting all the dots and take action that moves one idea forward. Focus on that action and follow it through. Your execution does not have to be perfect; you can course correct after you have started. But the point is that you must start. There is no course to correct if there is no action taken.
Taking action takes away the casual nature of jotting down ideas, brainstorming, and connecting non-existent actions. Until you take massive action and set yourself out there you can easily dismiss the urgency to do more. It makes it easier to put off tomorrow what you should be doing today or should have done last night. Remember the adage that actions speak louder than words? Well, this is true not only to the outside world, but also to our psyche.
My Advice to You
Why would we focus our time and energy on something that has no deadline? No urgency? No commitment from us? This applies to success in business, fitness, relationships, really anything that you can think of.
Therefore, I encourage you to take action now. Stop planning to write that article, film that video, or get to the gym tomorrow. Do it now! Start now with some type of real tangible action so that you can hold yourself accountable.
