Hat tip to Jeff Goins, who posted this on his Twitter feed this afternoon:
How to create inspiration: place butt in chair.
It was exactly what I needed to hear today. See, I came up with some great ideas this weekend: all about how to grow this blog, how to tie it in with my book (and the books to follow), how to share my words and my message with as many people as possible on the off chance that somebody out there needs to hear what I need to say. The ideas flooded into my head on my drive back and forth from New Orleans to Dallas, and by the time I got home I had everything figured out.
But I forgot to do one thing: start. For two evenings now I’ve sat in front of my computer, trying to figure out how to put all my new ideas into practice. And I’ve accomplished exactly nothing, except maybe to put a couple of lists together. The sheer volume of stuff I want to do–more accurately, the stuff I want to accomplish, which is different–held me paralyzed. I couldn’t figure out what to do first.
Jeff’s tweet reminded me to start. There’s a lot on my list I don’t know how to do yet, but I know how to write. So about twenty minutes ago, I set my timer for an hour–and I won’t be getting up until the hour is over, or I finish this post. Then I’ll set the timer for another hour and spend that time working on my outline for the sequel to A Square Foot of Calfskin.
At the end of this hour, I won’t have any more readers. I won’t have a mail service. I won’t have a guest post up on any big blogs. I won’t have a free ebook to give to folks who subscribe. But I’ll have one more post up here. That’s one thing I didn’t have an hour ago.
And in the end, that’s the only way to accomplish anything. You take one step. Then another. Then one more.
Eventually, you look up and find yourself in a completely different place. Or you find yourself a completely different person. Or both.
What have you been putting off starting because you can’t figure out what to do first? If you had to pick one action, take one step toward your dream, what would it be?