We’ve all been guilty of it.

In fact, I have been one of the worst offenders.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about needing to see the whole picture before getting started.

We all want to know the route ahead of time, to put the address in Google Maps, and to have to do nothing else except follow the directions and get to your destination by the planned route. But unfortunately, life isn’t always that easy.

But we don’t do this with everything, right? Say you were leaving in the morning to go to school or work, and you step outside and find out it’s a foggy day. You might not even be able to see the end of your driveway much less the streets to get there. Do you sit in your car waiting for the fog to completely clear before making your way? No, that would be silly right? I’m not sure your boss or teacher might appreciate that either. But instead, you pull out of the driveway and onto the road and make your way trusting that the next patch of road will appear from the fog. The point is, we can’t wait for the fog to clear to start moving ahead, or we’ll never get out of the driveway and onto where we’re supposed to go in life.

This is actually one of the biggest things I’ve seen come true in the first three months of my entrepreneurial journey. When I first started out, I had general ideas for where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t really see how they would all tie together or how to completely achieve the vision I had set out on. I spent a lot of time strategizing, but eventually I decided to just get started building up the pieces and go from there. Along the way, and especially the last few weeks or so, the major thing I’ve found is that some of my best ideas have come while working on something else. I’ve seen pieces of my vision come together and new exciting ideas come to life only after getting started on the original pieces of the plan. I didn’t have any of these ideas when I left my former career and started the business 3 months ago, but they only came after I started getting in the trenches and moving forward. Had I sat and strategized everything out ahead of time, I probably would have never come up with these ideas, and I would’ve wasted a lot of time idling.

I’m not saying it’s not good to plan and have a direction for where you want to go. Trust me, I did plenty of that. But there’s a limit. At some point we just have to get out of the design room and into real life and seeing how our designs work, and adjusting from there.  

So what are you hesitating getting started on? Where are you waiting for the fog to clear, or for the route to be shown before getting started? How long have you been waiting? The worst thing you can do is stand still. Move towards the areas that feel right, or the areas you can at least make some discoveries or progress in. Even if you realize it wasn’t the right path or direction, that information is at least now clarified, and you can take your focus off of that and onto something else. And odds are you’ll learn something from that closed path that might help you on another path. But you’ll learn nothing standing still.

So get out there and start taking some steps. And let me know how I can help you.

– Jason