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Three, three, two, one. Welcome to Jim's Take. I hope everyone's doing very, very well.
Another episode 155. I've been doing this for way too long, but we're going to keep, we've got plenty of stuff to talk about today. We're going to talk about this illusion of being ready.
You are never going to be ready, so you might as well just start taking action, right? This kind of socially acceptable form of procrastination, the lies and workshopping we tell ourselves for all the things that you wanted to do that you're just not doing, whether it's launching a business, whether it's writing a book, whether it's running a marathon, whether it's, I don't know, whatever it is, fill in the gap here. You do, you do that kind of work. That's on you.
A lot of times we don't take the action we want to take is because we're just not ready, right? And we don't feel ready. And we, we, I would argue that being ready is this socially acceptable form of procrastination. Now I'm a big procrastinator, but it's always with a hard deadline so that I'm forced to kind of just crank at the end of it.
And I'm always thinking about things like procrastination. Some science will tell you that some procrastination is really, really good. But if you have no end date to actually take the action or deliver what it is that you're going to do, then you're just procrastinating forever.
And it's always going to be this nugget in the back of your mind. That's very frustrating that you haven't gotten to where it is that you want to go. And so you're never going to be ready.
And what you're not really waiting for in terms of being ready, you're not really waiting to be ready. What you're really waiting for is I want it to be safe. And it's never going to be safe.
Nothing is ever going to be safe. Whether it's your business launch book, marathon, whatever it is that you want to do, it's never going to be truly safe for you to just do it. So you have to take that action.
And the people have figured it out. Plenty of people have figured it out, right? The person who's got an entrepreneur, who's duct taped together some kind of prototype. He's convinced investors because he took steps to do it.
The, the, the woman who took a leadership position, even though she wasn't qualified, but she figured it out on the way. And, you know, it's been incredibly successful because she played the game of figure it out and she was able to do it. She didn't wait until she was ready.
She just did it. And there is something that you are dealing with because everybody has one that you've been getting ready for, for years. And I would argue maybe 2025, 2026 is the time to just take action onto it.
Like think about this, this movie showing the training montage, right? You've been training and training and training and there's this like flawless launch, but in real life, it's messy. It's very improvised and everything is going to change as you go in motion. That's the way life works.
And so let's go into why this kind of readiness thing is, is a bit of a myth, right? So the, the brain likes to operate in this way that prefers things to be predictable, right? We like things to be predictable. We want, it's like the safety bias and I've got, I'm dealing with, for some reason, they all came at once. All these clients at once are very good in the technical aspects of work, right? Because they have rules, right? Do this and this happens, right? Engineers and tech and all of these other types of things.
But what they need to work on as they get into these leadership positions is this ability to deal with people, which is very unpredictable. And when we're dealing with something that's very unpredictable, it's very easy to ignore it until it's a safe time to focus on it, but it's never really safe time to focus on it. So they ignore the relationships, they ignore the talking, they ignore the kind of difficult conversations that they need to have.
And they put their whole focus into this one area, which is very technical and rules-based and predictable. And that's where their comfort level really lies to their own detriment, right? And that's why many of these people don't accelerate into the relationship-based kind of leadership positions that they really want to be in. There is also this challenge we have with this fear of social rejection, right? So one is it doesn't have rules, you know, this kind of taking action on whatever it is that you want to do.
There are no rules. But two is this fear that we have of social rejection. I've talked a lot about this on the podcast is, you know, we're not afraid to speak in public.
We're not afraid to launch a business. We're not afraid of failure. What we're afraid of is what people will think when we fail, right? We're afraid of social rejection.
And so we naturally, this fear of kind of pain and embarrassment and all these things is this kind of, we want it to be safe. And so we don't want this kind of unpredictable kind of reaction and everything else. We're never going to get those negative reactions for the most part.
And so it's just a reason why we aren't able to take the action. So we're not ready, right? We're still waiting for things to be ready. And when we think about life in general and the history we've come through, whether it's school or work, or, you know, even your parents, we've been trained for this type of permission-based advancement.
Study for the test, take the test, pass the test, and then you can move forward, right? So it's that kind of iterative process, this linear kind of progression on where things are going to go. You work hard, you put together this big business plan and you take a look at every angle and you do that and then you can launch the business and then you do that and then you do this. And life doesn't work that way.
Life is not a linear kind of, it's chaos theory in life. Everything comes at you from multiple directions. Every single person I've known, and you
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can ask any business owner and myself included, the business plan they put together looks nothing like the business they had a year later, right? Ever, right? The market dictates changes, clients dictate changes, the difficulty of just running administrative types of things within your business makes you make these different types of adjustments and all these things and you have to go with the flow and you have to figure it out.
And so a lot of the things we do instead of being ready and taking action is we have to start taking action so we can learn it and then we can start to adjust on the fly and that's part of the kind of figure it out game that we all like to play. Planning, doing this kind of planning and workshopping in our minds and all of this type of stuff, it feels really productive. But at a certain point, you're at the law of diminishing returns, it's just not doing anything other than distracting you from doing the things that you wish to do, right? And so we use this planning kind of feeling of productivity as like a really big stall tactic, right? Oh, well, I have to rewrite this chapter of my book and it's just not ready to be released or whatever.
And over-preparation rarely, very rarely removes the risk of taking the action that you want to do. So in a book example, you want to write a book, right? And say, oh, I'm just not ready to write the book. But you have to write chapter one, you have to write page one, right? And you have to do that and you do that and do that and then you're rewriting and rewriting.
But at the end of the day, you still have to launch the book. At the end of the day, you still have to get past that emotional kind of horror that we have of how is this going to be received and what kind of rejection are we going to get? You still have to launch the business and tell people you're actually doing it. All this over-preparation really does is just delays your leap, but you still have to take the leap.
And so at a certain point, you have to sit there and say, am I going to take the leap or not? Otherwise, I'm just wasting time, right? And there are so many kind of couch experts who will tell you, right, as they've done the preparation, oh, it won't work because of this or it won't work because of this and won't work because of this. And if you were to sit and listen to those people, and a lot of those people are in your mind, you're never going to get past whatever point it is that you are today. There was a president, I don't know, I think it was Eisenhower, maybe Eisenhower, let's just call it like it was, planning is everything, but the plan is worthless, right? So you do have to put together some kind of plan, you have to think about it, but ultimately the plan doesn't dictate where it is you're going to go, right? You're entering war into a battle and you've got this plan, it never goes the way that we think it's going to go.
Think about every difficult conversation you wanted to have, and you've had
it 15 times, you know, with your spouse or with your kids or with your parents or with your friends, and you know the way that it's going to go in your mind, and then you start to come out, and the conversation takes a left turn, right? But you still need to have that conversation because it's a difficult conversation. And so no matter how many times you do it and you're thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it, and then it just bubbles up and boils up and all these things, and it never happens because you've thought about it so many times, it's never going to go the way that you thought. And so we're never going to be ready.
And so what I would tell you is, and this is something I've learned being in my mid to late 40s, we'll round up to 50, why not? Action before clarity. There's a big case to make with taking the action before you actually get full clarity. Small steps.
Readiness is earned in motion. You have to take these small steps. They enforce fast learning, they solicit information from other people, having these conversations of, I'm going to start this business, and I'm starting it next week, and what have you done, and do you have advice on this, and all those other things.
Waiting leaves you blind because it doesn't allow you, it doesn't expose reality, right? Waiting just sits there, and the market's going to change, and the world's going to change, and then all of a sudden there's another reason why you can't start, and another reason why you can't start, and there's another reason you can't learn French, and study French, and do something which has been on my list for years, and it's just not going to happen, right? When you start doing it, it reveals a different type of reality than the one that you've been imagining in your head. So taking action, those first types of steps, the first time you write, if you're doing a book, the first time you run, what is so difficult about the writing process? What is so difficult about the running process? What is this? And as you do it, think about the people, you know, as an example, let's do three examples. We're going to do an example of the founder who launches a business, the person who starts training, like an athlete training for an event, and then a person who takes a promotion they're ready for, whatever.
Like, let's do those three. Number one, the person who launches a business. When you start your business, you are going to change everything about that business within the first quarter.
Just about everything, right? Maybe not your product, but the way that you approach marketing, the way that you approach business development, the way that you approach administrative stuff, all of those things, the market's going to dictate what it is that you're going to do. The reality of running your business makes you, forces you to make these different types of changes that you could not foresee in your planning process. An athlete in the middle of, let's say an Ironman, right? We are going to enter this triathlon.
I trained a bunch, but I just don't feel ready. But you know what? It's here. Today's the day.
I spent all this money. I'm just going to do it. You got to figure it out in the moment.
The chain breaks on your bike. You get a flat, you've got to fix it, and you got to keep on going. That's the way it is.
If you keep waiting until you're ready, you're never going to do the race, right? The person who gets the promotion, who isn't ready for the promotion, they don't feel ready. They're afraid people are going to figure it out. They've got this imposter syndrome.
They've got all this stuff. They may have this gap in a skill set. You learn so much about the dynamics of human potential, the dynamics of the way that people like to work, the dynamics of management by actually managing people.
That's the way it works. You learn about the conversations in the C-suite by being in the C-suite, right? That's how you do it. You get exposure to these different types of things, and there are levels to it.
You have to expose yourself to these different types of things and take different types of actions so you can see what it's actually like. Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. Went off on a nice little tangent there.
Let's talk about the reality. That's all theoretical stuff. I know that you've got – I'm big into practicality.
I'm big into actual steps. I want you to pause for a second and think about the one thing that you haven't done that you've always thought about doing that you want to do. Deep down in your gut, it feels right.
You just aren't ready. It could be any of the examples I have. Launching a business, writing a book, running a marathon, becoming a leader, asking for a raise, whatever it is.
This is everywhere in your life. There is a launch small, adjust fast kind of approach that we do. They teach this in business school.
It's misinterpreted a lot, right? Minimal viable product. You find the minimum type of thing that you can do, and you just kind of put it out and do that. I don't want to think about that.
I want to think about what's the minimum. When I have a struggle with not getting something done, I ask myself two questions. What is the smallest thing I could do right now that will progress me forward is one.
If there's nothing there as I explore that, the other one is what am I afraid of? That's usually a bigger type of discussion. Is it social rejection? Is it I'm afraid of whatever? It's usually one of those two things. Usually the smallest viable action is maybe sending an email, putting a meeting on the calendar with someone, launching a test just to see how it comes back.
See what you can learn from. All of those things solicit learning. Sending an email to see what kind of feedback you get, you're learning from that feedback.
A meeting for a discussion, you're learning from that meeting. Launching a test, you're learning from that test. How does that dictate what
your next steps are going to be? We always have to take a little minimum thing.
There is this idea of a 48-hour rule. I almost want to go 24-hour rule. Let's go 24 hours.
When you think about something, do it within 24 hours. Take some kind of step. If you think of it, take a step toward it within that next day.
There's a way, like if you've got this long list of things to do and we've got these productivity lists of 500 things on it, which is nice kind of administrative. It's safe. It's easy.
I do these little things, but I'm not doing the big goals. I'm not doing the big things. We have to find something that takes less than five minutes for you to do in the next 24 hours on this big dream and just do it and see where it takes you.
That's part of the journey. Each thing is going to take you to a different spot. Once you get to a different spot, you have a different perspective.
You have a different idea on what the next step is going to be. You take that next step and that next little five-minute thing and that thing. When we sit and think about, do I have the skill set versus do I have the courage? Those are two different things.
Am I capable and am I courageous enough? We have to think about those, differentiate those two things. Is this fear? Courage cannot be preloaded. Courage can only be exercised.
You can only do it. If it's a fear thing, then you're not going to prepare enough to take care of fear. Preparation does not take care of fear.
Action takes care of fear. That's it. You can only look fear in the face and then just take some kind of action and then realize nothing is ever as bad as you think it's going to be, but you learn from it.
Skills are different. If you need to take a skill, yeah, train a skill. That's action towards progress, but you cannot just constantly focus on skills without actually taking steps, without that courage component to take an actual step.
That's that. Practical steps. Some areas of things you always want to do, I recognize, demand high preparation.
You're not just going to go out and just hijack a plane and just go drive a plane. You're not going to just become a doctor. You can't just put out a shingle and say, oh, you know what? I'm going to be a doctor today.
That's not what I'm talking about. Those are not the things I'm talking about. I'm talking about the realistic things that you wish to do for some reason, because you have an interest, because you want to try it.
You want to knit something. I don't care what it is. There are plenty of these things that we are not doing because of some kind of safety procrastination, and I want to challenge you to not do it.
If your delay is about fear, give yourself a deadline, a legitimate hardcore deadline to get it done, and then give yourself a five-minute rule within the next 24 hours to take progress towards it. Permission is not coming for you to do whatever it is that you want to do. We don't live in this permission-based advancement world anymore.
Safety isn't coming. The world is not kind. In order to do it, you got to pick the world up, life up by the scruff of the neck.
I was going to use a more inappropriate analogy, but who knows? Kids may be listening in the car. You just got to take the control of it. You got to figure it out.
You got to take an action and address the fear. If you're not willing to do that, then stop talking about it. Take it off your list and put it towards something you are going to do.
It takes up this mental clarity. It impacts your ability to do everything else. The signal is never brighter than now.
If I'm not making the progress I wish to make, and it goes too long, then I'm just not going to do it. I'm almost at that point with the next book. I just haven't done it.
I've been talking about it for a year and a half. I just need to sit down and do it. I'm going through it.
Now, I've taken steps. I'm starting to take steps. I got myself through this kind of thing.
I wrote the one book. Now, I got to write the other. I just got to sit down and do it.
Readiness is not a myth. Action is truth. If you wait until you're ready, you're already too late.
Those are the things to do it. Nobody's going to come and do it for you. Just like that guy, my future self told me on the top of a mountain, if you wait for somebody to do anything for you, you're going to be dead in a box before it's done.
That's it. Preparation is good. Overpreparation is just fear in disguise.
Get out. Be brave. Be courageous.
Rock and roll. Have a wonderful week. I'll talk to everybody soon.
Thanks. Bye.