Take Action


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We’re launching the blog with the single most important piece of advice anyone could ever offer you: take action.

As a writer, believe me I understand the temptation to think yourself into a hole, or out of trying something. But there comes a time when writing and planning only serve as a means of procrastinating.

But here’s the deal: if you don’t get off your butt and try something, you’re never going to make it…and where’s the fun in that? So here’s the rule I had to give myself regarding planning my next moves:

1. Come up with an idea, write 500 words on what the accomplishment will mean to you if you’re successful.

2. Come up with the five core steps that will get you there.

3.  Determine the steps required to accomplish the first step–one of which can be performed right now, and another that must be performed within 24 hours.

4. Perform that step right now. You don’t get to write any more about this until you’ve taken that first step. It doesn’t have to be anything big: make a list of prospects you can call. And go ahead and schedule a time tomorrow to take the second action.

You’re free to come up with as many ideas as you want. And you can write about what making those ideas real will mean to you until your pen runs dry. But once you do that, you can’t write anything else about it until you’ve taken action.

Why? Because we’re phenomenal at coming up with an idea, then writing about that idea, then writing a plan for that idea, then writing about that plan, and then remarking on that writing about the plan, and then writing about what we’ll do after that plan succeeds…and then we make plans for those ideas, and then we’ll write about those plans, etc., etc., etc.

In the end we have journals filled with grand ideas, and absolutely nothing to show for it. Anyone could walk in off the street, grab a journal and make ten fortunes off of the ideas inside just by taking action. But we…we’re off writing about that NEXT great idea.

Stop.

Have the idea. Come up with the framework for a plan, and get going.

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One Response to “Take Action”

  1. A great way to start the week. : The Copywriter Survival Guide on March 24th, 2008 8:13 am

    [...] fits in with the very first post I made on this blog: take action. You can’t insulate your way to success. Read, then turn off [...]

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