Oftentimes, the hardest thing about a task is the process of getting yourself started. Many great potential achievements and opportunities have been left on the drawing boards and in the minds of people who didn’t have the drive to get started. They may have been too self-critical or perfectionistic or passive, or they may have lacked the confidence to share their ideas with the world. It’s impossible to know how many great ideas never saw the light of day, but we can be certain that there are plenty of them.
Make no mistake about it. Getting started doesn’t ensure that a project will be easy or that it will be successful. What it does guarantee, however, is that the project will take place. How successful your effort will be will largely rest on its merits. The same principle applies to both small and large tasks.
In my own history, I’ve had job applications languish while I was waiting for the right time to fill them out – and then then deadline for submissions had passed. I’ve allowed warranties for defective products expire before I got around to complaining and asking for a refund. I have sometimes been slow in getting my ideas out into the world by waiting until after it was too late to submit presentations to certain conferences, and I could have impacted more lives much earlier if I had written and completed my book, REJUVENAGING®, when I first started thinking about it.
It’s easier to think about something than move an idea into action. While thinking is a legitimate part of any preparation process, thinking and preparing are not ends in themselves. Doing leads to accomplishing. Something that’s accomplished that’s imperfect has a chance of being successful, whereas something that’s intended but only exists in your mind can’t be successful until it leads to action and accomplishment – no matter how imperfect that accomplishment may be.
The first step is the process of bringing an idea to fruition is to avoid over-thinking and other excuses, and GET STARTED!