The Key to Getting Things Done
I recently had a chance to interview a gentleman named Joseph Ratliff, who’s an internet business expert, about various strategies for entrepreneurship and success in general. And he mentioned a few things that I’ve been trying to say for a while, except that he put them much more clearly than I have. And so I wanted to pass them along and expand on them a bit, if possible.
You might remember some articles I’ve written in the past about getting organized, putting together a clear plan with achievable goals, and then starting at step one. Well, all of that is still recommended, but there’s also a point where you might be overdoing it. And those are the beans that Joe spilled for us.
I’m a firm believer in planning, don’t get me wrong, but I’m also a believer in taking action and achieving the goals that your plan should have included.
You see, some of us have a tendency to keep planning forever until everything is absolutely perfect. I call that the curse of perfection. But there’s no way to plan for every possible contingency. So since it’ll never be perfect, that means that there’s always an excuse for not getting started.
So, yes, you want a good, solid plan, but you also want to get to work at some point. You could change and update your plan a limitless amount of times if you really wanted to, but that’s only going to keep you from achieving any of your goals.
So the key is to be smart about it. The key is to be able to recognize when it’s time to stop planning and start doing. The key is to be able to accept that if you start right now, then you’re going to make some mistakes and have to make adjustments along the way. Yes, there is more than one key.
In a different interview that I held with Neil Patel, who also helps entrepreneurs, I asked him to give us some advice for the best way to get started, and he said, “You just have to get started.”
Which sounds kinda zen, but if you think about it, it’s really just common sense.
So think about things that you want to change in your life. If you want to quit smoking, then quit smoking. If you want to lose 50 pounds, then lose 50 pounds. If you want to get a new job, then get a new job. Etc.
I know that it’s not as easy as all that. There are steps to be taken, and plans to be planned, but at the same time, you’re going to need to take some responsibility, and get to it if you want it to happen. There’s no magic button that you can press that will take care of it for you.
Now, having said that, there’s a condition to add to all of this. Simply taking action is not exactly right. You need to take action, yes, but as Joe put it, you need to take focused action. In other words, you need to do the right things to accomplish your goals in the right order at the right time.
Just doing any old thing whenever doesn’t get the job done. For example, applying for jobs before you’ve updated your resume is backwards. That probably makes perfect sense, but you’d be surprised by how often we do things like that. Especially when we see how much there is to do to achieve our goals, we get a little overwhelmed and start doing things at random and screwing it up.
Think of it like any given day at a busy job. You might walk in in the morning and see a ton of stuff to do that day, and rather than starting from the beginning, you start at step 5 or 6, and then do step 1 and then do step 10 and then do step 3, or whatever. In most cases, that’s going to lead to getting the least important things done first, and getting the most important things done never.
So clear focus is as important as much as taking action. And having a clear plan helps you with that focus, but over planning gets nothing done, and under planning doesn’t do the job either. So this is all very confusing, right?
It sounds like it, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re smart about it, and if you’re willing to work on it, and if improving your life is important to you (manipulative statement), then you’ll be able to figure it out pretty easily.
Think of it like anything you’ve ever learned to do well. You learned by doing it. You made some mistakes, sure, but you eventually got there. Well, this is the same thing. Or you can think of it like moving to a new house. It’s nerve racking and stressful as hell, but once it’s done there’s usually a feeling of “that wasn’t so bad.”
A lot things are like that. A little scary before you’ve started, but not so bad once you’ve done it.
So I guess what I’m really getting at is focus. Focus is the key. Yes, another key.
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