The Secret of Getting Ahead

Tomorrow is an odd concept, if you think about it.

On the one hand, it makes total sense that we’d have to have some way to communicate the idea that there is some unknown quantity that has yet to occur, some future time and place that we’ll soon be interacting with. We as humans are planners by nature, and we like to know what the future holds so that we can make those plans accordingly.

But tomorrow is an illusion, make no mistake about it. We’ll never arrive there, because it doesn’t exist outside of being an abstract concept, a way to put off until tomorrow what we don’t want to do today.

If you want to get something done, the best way to start – the only way to start, in fact – is to just do it.

We all fall victim to the paralysis of analysis. I’m as guilty of it as you are. How many times have you said to yourself late in the day, “It’s too late to start this now – I’ll do it tomorrow”? Or when organizing the coming day first thing in the morning, you find yourself rationalizing yourself out of starting that tough project because you know you won’t be able to finish it in a day?

We waste so much time and energy talking ourselves out of doing what needs to be done – time and energy, ironically, that would be better served in rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. I fall into the same trap myself – I spend so much time convincing myself that I shouldn’t start some task that I literally could have finished the task in the time it takes me to decide to put it off until tomorrow.

The answer is a simple one – just do it. The secret to getting ahead is getting started.

Instead of over-analyzing, over-thinking, over-rationalizing a decision, I challenge you the next time you are faced with such a decision to set aside your indecision and just do it.

You may surprise yourself.

And if you do this again, and again, and yet again – don’t think, just do – you’ll soon find that you have adopted a habit of taking action. Your days of inaction and inactivity will be behind you, and you’ll feel like a whole new person, one who gets things done.

And those are the best kind of people.