There’s one excuse that I hear most often from my clients who say they want to either make more money, or just want a better work/life balance.
And it usually starts with “I just need to…”
As in, “I just need to…
Do a bit more research on the Internet…
Read another book (or take another course), or …
Wait until the day job calms down a bit
There always seems to be just ‘one more thing’ that needs to happen before they get started. It’s so easy to do, and yet it’s so destructive to your real ambitions.
Because the worst thing about using the “I just need to…” excuse is that you’ll be able to use it forever if you really want to. It’s an infinite loop of procrastinating… and doing nothing.
There will always be more research to do
There will always be another book to read
Work is never going to calm down
No window of opportunity is going to magically appear out of the blue in which you’ll be able to miraculously do everything you planned all at once.
The best way to find out if a particular business-building idea works for you is to jump straight in and do it.
Don’t let perfectionism and procrastination hold you back.
You can always adjust and tweak your strategy as you go.
Look at the big tech companies out there. Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM… any of those. They’re always releasing updates for their products. Always!
If those guys waited until things were “perfect” before launching a product of any kind, they’d never release anything ever again. (And of course, their businesses would die as their “less perfectionist” competitors ate them for lunch!)
Sure, it’s tempting to think you need to wait until you know “everything” before actually putting your toes in the water and starting to swim.
But approaching the task with that kind of attitude means you’ll only get bogged down in the planning stage. You’ll never reach the point where you actually do anything.
So you don’t need to know it all. You just need to know enough to get the ball rolling.
In fact, you’ll learn “the rest” of what you need to know by taking action. The act of “doing” it will do more for your learning than “planning and thinking” about it ever will.
Now, I’m not saying that you should never plan. Because a good plan is important.
Simply, don’t let your fear of trying out your plan stop you from implementing it. There will always be unknowns you have to face when making something happen.
Those unknowns might seem scary (even when they’re really not), but remember that no one — not even me — ever knows absolutely 100% about everything they try to do in life.
REMEMBER: You never stop learning!
A good plan will point you in the right direction. But that same good plan is meaningless if you don’t actually take the first steps and ‘just do it’.
So, next time you find yourself saying the words “I just need to…” stop, take a deep breath, and let go of what you were about to say.
Take action instead.
Stop procrastinating and start doing!