“Just do it!â€
You hear that a lot. “Wanna make something happen? Just do it.†Act. Don’t spend so much time thinking, planning, preparing. Just go for it. Don’t ask questions. And yet, it’s also said that the successful people are learners. They’re hungry for new information. Always growing. Always learning.
So which method is right? Should we be thinkers? Or doers?
Here’s the key: You need to do both, but never at the same time. Our brains (to simplify things) are wired to be in one of two modes: the thinking mode, or the doing mode. When you try to do both at the same time, THAT’s where you start running into problems. Maybe you’ve done this before:
- Start a project
- Make headway
- Realize you’re not fully sure what you’re trying to accomplish
- Start thinking
- Get confused
- Don’t make any progress
- Get Frustrated
- Check Facebook
Isn’t that the worst? When you TRY to get stuff done… but just CAN’T seem to? The solution here isn’t to “just do it.†You CAN’T just do it when you don’t know what you’re doing! The problem is that you mixed up thinking and doing. You started doing… before you thought through what you were trying to do. And then you tried doing both at the same time. And that didn’t work.
Get clear on what you’re doing before you start. THEN just do it. When you do that, you can blaze through work at lightning speed. Make sense? The go do it.