I remember writing my first post for this blog. I wasn’t sure what to write. There was so much I wanted to cover. Should I do some grand announcement stating my intentions to the world? Should I talk about how I want to change lives, create masculine men, and renew the world in the process? Should I write about attraction? Wealth? Mindset? Masculinity? What? I remember sitting there shaking my head thinking about all that I wanted to get down (of course I still haven’t gotten down all I want to and probably never will, not until every man is living the life of his dreams).
Then I told myself to shut the fuck up and just write. So I did and I came away with “You Have Two Choices”. Was it my best piece of work? I don’t know but that’s not important. No what’s important is that I took action. I took a move forward toward accomplishing my goals of helping millions of men across the world and making my living off it in the process. I took action and the rest as they say is history. Hundreds of posts and three books later I’m still taking action. I have found out that perfection is the enemy and action is my ally.
Paralysis & Perfect
I’ve heard about information overload or paralysis by analysis (though I think it’s mostly bullshit) but never had any trouble with it. What I never heard of and have trouble with is paralysis by perfection. You end up not moving forward and standing still because you want to do something better. You’ve probably heard about the author who read through his book twelve times making sure everything was “perfect” before publishing it. Not me. I know that trying to get things perfect only leads to failure.
This isn’t to say I do things by the seat of my pants or that I don’t put time and effort into things because I do. What I’m saying is that trying to do something perfect will screw you over. If you publish ten posts when you could have written one hundred because you were so focused on making those posts “perfect” you’re going to be left in the dust by those who are hustling and moving forward. First off perfection isn’t possible in the first place. Good enough is what you need to shoot for, then take action and adjust as you go.
Have A Bias For Action
There are many things about the successful that I’ve noticed over the years. One thing in particular that stands out is that they have a bias for action. They are action takers. They are more prone to action then they are to trying to get something perfect or spending time thinking about it more. That’s not to say that they don’t think because they do. But they think as they go. They don’t sit back and ponder. They move forward, attack, and adjust. They as I’ve said have a bias for action.
One of my heroes General George S. Patton put it like this “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week”. Patton had a bias for moving forward. Good now is better than great later. Execution is where the value lies not in thinking of something. Execution is all that matters. You could have thought of the Iphone ten years before Jobs did but unless you took action on that idea (and sold others on it) it wouldn’t have matter. It’s not the thought that counts, it’s the action.
Consistent Work
You gain success by taking the right daily actions day in and day out. You mine goal by swinging the pickax again and again and again. That’s the way forward, keep taking action. Take blogging for example. It generally takes about 1,000 posts for a blog to start growing on its own. Every successful blog (meaning the owner lives solely off the profit from it) I’ve seen has hit that number if not hire. Yeah sure there are exceptions and maybe you or I will be one, but it’s not something I count on.
The path to success isn’t complicated, it’s just not sexy. It’s kind of boring actually (and we now how unsexy boring is). It’s doing the same things (the same right things) over and over and over again. If you’re caught up with being perfect you’ll never take enough action to get to where you want to go. You have to fail your way forward. Success is not a straight line but a bunch of zig zags eventually reaching where it is you want to go. Do the boring things over and over to get success and don’t worry about perfect. Focus on taking action.
Summary
Perfection is a trap, a trap that keeps most people from ever getting where they want. How many people do you know that are focusing on making that one novel perfect only to die with it not being picked up or barely published before they went. Instead they should have published hundreds of books during that time. Always have a bias for action. Take action consistently. Remember the motto of the successful is to jump and then look down or put another way ready, fire, aim….best of luck.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it. You can follow me on Twitter here.
-Charles Sledge
