The noise before defeat
“The bold move is the right move, except when it’s the wrong move.”
action
100 posts
You have to get it done
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that, if you want to get a lot of things done quickly, you have to slow down. It feels counterintuitive. We can easily think that, in order to achieve a lot, we must do a lot—and fast.
The Worry List: Utterly unglamorous, incredibly important
This week’s newsletter builds on last week’s to demonstrate how to use and maintain a Worry List. It’s time to go full flashlight on our worries.
More before they are counted
Worrying can paralyze us. It can keep us from getting our marketing work done, from stretching ourselves beyond our current capabilities, and from experimenting with new strategies and techniques.
That which you actually do
Eleanor Roosevelt once said that “action creates its own courage.” Moving forward makes continuing on easier. Taking action builds confidence, and getting what we want is its own motivation.
When in doubt, land long
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong had a decision to make. The Lunar Module’s onboard computer was guiding the craft toward a crater’s edge, and a field of boulders “the size of Volkswagens,” according to biographer James R. Hansen.
Do less, better
Seneca once wrote, in On the Shortness of Life, “certain tasks are not so much great as prolific in producing many other tasks.” The essay’s general point is that we have plenty of time in our days—in our lives—but we spend too much of it doing things that simply don’t need to be done.
Wishes feel good and rarely come true
Entrepreneurs are full of ideas. It’s what inspired us to start our business, create our products or services, and sell them to the world in the first place. But, over time, we can start to think that the valuable part is the idea, and not the action that follows.
Anything is better than indecision
“With a ton of charts and a wondrous plan, he comes, behold, the Research Man. Give him four and twenty scholars, give him twenty thousand dollars, and in two months he’ll bring to view, the facts that you already knew.”
You can positively unenjoy it
“You can make people feel guilty enough to do something,” advertising legend Howard Gossage once wrote, “but you can’t make them enjoy it. As a matter of fact, you can make them positively unenjoy it.” Many business owners positively unenjoy doing their own marketing.
A perfect sensibility of danger
Successful strategy requires being different. When you focus on what everyone else is doing, when you try to fit too well into your industry, you become more and more like everyone else—with less and less for a customer to base a choice on other than price.
The only way under high heaven
Unless we have an external accountability, if there’s something we should do but don’t want to do, chances are we won’t do it. At least not for long.
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