Taking Action

In today’s day and age the lifestyle of the entrepreneur is more romanticized than ever. We all have been inundated by dreams of quitting our mundane day jobs to go off and create a successful startup overnight. I know several of my peers who love to do nothing more than talk about all the wonderful ideas they have. But, I took a step back and realized that’s exactly what the problem was -  all they were doing was talking.

The reality is that it is far easier to discuss our ideas than it is to take action. We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that there is only a small gap between talking about an idea and realizing it. I’ve seen far too many cases where the same individuals who loved to share their “awesome” ideas with me gave up after a week of trying to implement them.

The point here is that the difficult part is not idea generation -  I believe that everyone is innately creative. Our imagination is a very powerful thing and  it doesn’t take much effort to come up with useful ideas. However, the real challenge is finding the time to transform these thoughts into something tangible despite the obligations of everyday life such as work, household chores and your significant other. It’s not the first step that’s the hardest - it’s actually the second.  

This is a problem that I’ve recently been struggling with. For the past month now, I’ve been planning to write a novel and, as such, have been spending my free time brainstorming ideas for it. At first, I felt like I was making decent progress because I was able to generate a lot of interesting plotlines. But I soon realized that I wasn’t really making much headway at all. Every time I sat down to actually begin writing I found myself unable to focus for long. I would make up excuses to myself because I didn’t want to face the difficult problem of transforming my idea into a real story. Ultimately,  I was  really just going around in circles because I was never able to motivate myself to get beyond that first step.

The bottom line is that I was too focused on the initial stage of the creative process. I thought just because I was able to come up with an idea it meant that I was almost done or further ahead than the average person. But that’s clearly not true. After thinking about it, I believe that what distinguishes  a successful person is  not the quality of their ideas but their determination and, hence, their ability to execute them. We are all capable of generating great ideas but very few of us have the determination to follow through and act on it. That is why most people just get stuck in this cycle of merely discussing their ideas but being unable to move beyond the confines of their everyday life and act on them.

So, my advice to everyone is to focus more on implementation instead of on idea generation. When you come across an idea that’s interesting don’t hesitate to take that next step towards success.