thinking | The Caleb Barney Collection

Taking action – doing, not just thinking about doing

“You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it.” – Carlos Castaneda in “A Separate Reality”

Take action today. It’s great to read, listen to podcasts, and brainstorm ideas, but at the end of the day, if you don’t take action on all of that knowledge, you’re basically in the same place as someone who didn’t spend (waste?) that time learning. There will be no measurable difference between you and that person. The main differences will be that you might be able to offer some input to others who are looking to take action and also that you’ve wasted a lot of time not doing something actually productive.

Protect your thoughts

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Protect your thoughts. If you let negativity seep in, you will become a negative person. Be conscious of your thoughts and if they are what you do NOT want to become, change your way of thinking.

Is this helpful?

Ask yourself, is this helpful and at what point will it stop being helpful? It’s good to prepare, but at what point are you over preparing? Where are your diminishing returns? When is it better to just relax and stop compulsively doing something because you’re anxious?

You can have too much of a good thing.

Strategy is the determining factor for dreams and nightmares

“Without hard work, a great strategy remains a dream. Without a great strategy, hard work becomes a nightmare.” – James Clear

Nothing will get done without someone rolling up their sleeves and making it happen.

Reading about ideas isn’t very difficult, although not nearly as many people read as they should.

Thinking about ideas is a little harder, as you have to give yourself time to think and permission to think of ideas that may fail on the first several iterations.

Actually working to complete an idea is the hardest. A lot of people read about ideas or talk about ideas, but never act on them. Taking action is the hardest of the three and usually requires the most effort.

But, while I agree that working hard will help take you far, what if you’re working towards the wrong thing?

If you don’t have the right strategy, your work ethic can only take you so far. You are only as good as your strategy.

For example, say you want to build a business. You can work really hard at building your website, making a logo, looking into forming an LLC, and interviewing an assistant, but if you haven’t come up with a strategy to find customers, you’re going to fail. In this scenario, you can easily put in 40, 60, or even 80 hours per week and not see any results that are helping to keep your startup in business.

Figure out what is important to you (what your goals are) and then come up with a relevant strategy to help support those goals. Otherwise all of your hard work will become a nightmare.