Lights, Camera, Action
In a follow-up to last weeks post about ideas being worthless, this week I wanted to talk about why you need to take action on your ideas and why it’s so important. If you don’t take action on an idea you may be squandering an opportunity. The idea will always move you forward from your current situation. No matter if you fail or not. You will learn something from your experience that you didn’t know before you started.
If you find yourself generating new ideas everyday. Ideas you believe could be great. Something that hasn’t been done before. Something that has a place in the world and solves people’s problems. Of course you do, everyone has ideas. Ideas are worthless, you need to take action. Action breeds success.
There are people who have ideas but don’t have the capacity to execute on them straight away, and there are people who have ideas and the capacity to execute on them as soon as they generate the idea. But no matter how skilled you are in being able to execute, you can always take the first steps to get you closer to the end goal. You don’t have to be skilled to start.
Take the first step, start something today. Make your idea into actionable steps, something that you can work towards in the long-term.
It’s easy to say ‘start, take action and do the work’. But there are deep-rooted reasons as to why we don’t drop everything and takes action on ideas we just generate every few hours. The idea needs to be feasible, you need to calculate the risks involved and plan the steps you need to take to reach the goal of having your idea brought to fruition. You need to set goals, you need to plan, you need to know if you like doing this thing so you can dedicate your time to it everyday for the next couple of years.
Are you passionate enough to pursue it everyday for the next 2 years?
In order to take action on the idea, you need the capacity, in order to get the capacity, you need to prioritize. To prioritize, you need to say no to other things in your life to create the space you need for your idea. If your going to pursue the idea and dedicate yourself to it, your idea deserves space and time.
You may be thinking that you may not have the time to stat the idea, or you may not have the money you need to start. Make time. We make time for the things that are important to us. If you don’t feel like you want to make time for it, then you’re not passionate enough about it. Make time for it, say no to client work, more importantly, say no to the ‘wrong’ clients. Sacrifice temptations, or hobbies (for the time being). Is there something you’re not doing now that would be a better use of your time?
It’s going to be hard, success is never easy, it will take a lot of hard work, sacrifice and failure in order to success. You need to focus your time to achieve your goals.
If you have the time, but don’t have the money. Start. It doesn’t matter what tools you have, or what course you need to invest in, or assets you need to buy. These things come by saving up and prioritising which one you need to invest in so you can take the next step. You can always take the first step towards your goal completely free.
You have a €200 camera, but you wish to invest in a €2,000 camera before you start. As you believe this is what your idea will need so it will be successful. You can never be sure if an idea will work out. What if you aren’t sure if your passionate enough about the idea and it may fizzle out or the passion dissipates when you realise you don’t like the action of doing the idea, it was just the final, romanticized result of the idea that you liked? Then you are out of a lot of money.
Make it a gradual process, the tools you start with don’t matter. Evolve into the better equipment, as your passion and your idea grows, you can then invest and increase the quality of the output. Start with providing the value.
The fact that you are taking action on your idea sets you apart from the majority of people who aren’t. As long as you are thinking about what problems you can solve and how you can help people, be it entertainment or educational. This sets you apart from the people who are only consuming this type of content. Your work is valuable. Your actions are valuable. Your time is valuable.
Your ideas are in your mind, no one can read your mind, what worth can you give to something that doesn’t exist. Stop over thinking. Make a choice to do something. Take the first step. Stick with it. Start producing.
Think about how much content you consume. The world needs more creators.
If you’re not going to take the first step today, then when will you?
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