“Excellent ideas are not enough. An only fair idea acted upon, and developed, is 100 percent better than a terrific idea that dies because it isn’t followed up.” —David J. Schwartz, PhD from The Magic of Thinking Big (see book summary here)
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Plenty of people have excellent ideas, but only a few are able to turn their ideas into action.
In his classic book, The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz divides people into two categories: “activationists” and “passivationists.”
Activationists come up with ideas and execute them without waiting.
- They decide to take a vacation and they take it.
- They decide to reach out to an old friend and they do it.
- They decide they’re going to be successful… and they become successful.
On the flip side, passivationists might have just as many ideas, but they execute none of them.
- They postpone the vacation.
- They think to themselves that the old friend they want to reach out to won’t have any time to see them.
- They procrastinate and rationalize themselves out of ever doing anything, including achieving success.
In order to break ourselves of the passivationist habit, we must break the perfectionist habit.
Perfectionists put things off because they fear doing something wrong. However the activationist goes ahead and does things, and then deals with any problems that arise along the way.
This also includes waiting for the “perfect” time to do something.
There is no perfect time, and every minute that you wait makes it that much more likely that you’ll chicken out of the whole thing.
NOW is the magic word of success.
Get rid of tomorrows. Get rid of laters. Get rid of sometimes. And stop should-ing all over yourself.
Buck up and take action.
Become a doer now.
