Preparation or Procrastination?

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What's up, gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

We're going to talk about preparation or procrastination,

because this is something I think gets blurred lines.

Is preparation is necessary, of course.

But it also should have like a deadline to it,

because I watch a lot of people think that they're preparing,

but really what they're doing is they're overthinking things.

And so at some point, the research has to become execution,

and that a lot of the things that you're going to learn

needs to be on the job and just getting to it.

Planning, all the planning that you do, I love the plan.

But the planning has to turn into some type of action.

You know, learning, you can only learn so much before you

got to apply those things.

So the learning has to become application.

You know, I saw a message the other day,

and it was said something along the lines of people

are addicted to education, but they're allergic to execution.

So there's a lot of educated people out there.

There's a lot of people that read books, business books.

They go to all the conferences.

They go, but then they don't execute.

And so you ask yourself, what am I preparing for?

And if you're acquiring a specific skill set, gathering

necessary information, or if you're reducing a legitimate risk,

or whatnot, that's preparing.

But if you're endlessly researching and tweaking and planning

or waiting for the right time, you might be procrastinating.

Perfectionalism or perfectionism, shall I say,

can disguise itself as, you know, I'm just trying to be prepared.

I'm just trying to make sure that I'm prepared.

But overdoing that stuff, over analyzing that stuff

could just cost you a lot of your dreams that come through execution.

I just need to learn a little bit more.

I need to plan a little bit more.

I need the website to be perfect.

I need more experience.

Sometimes those aren't reasons.

Those are quiet excuses that sound like the right thing to say.

And so you don't need to be ready all the time.

You need to be ready enough.

When in business, I've looked at successful entrepreneurs

that I've been around and studied, they don't have every answer

before they get started.

They start things, and then they encounter some problems.

They learn, they make adjustments, and then they keep on moving.

Action creates information better in a lot of ways than preparation can.

You've got to get to it.

For example, you can't watch videos on somebody playing basketball

or study basketball and think that's going to be enough.

And then you're just going to be a great player.

You got to get out there and go to practice.

You got to miss some shots.

You got to make some mistakes.

You know, you got to put all those things into application.

So you could plan the perfect sales strategy,

but making the calls will expose what actually needs to improve.

There's a difference between reducing risk and avoiding risk completely.

Preparation can reduce unnecessary risk, if you say,

but procrastination tries to eliminate all the uncertainty together.

And that's just not a real thing.

You're never really going to go anywhere.

You're going to be frozen in life if you just continue to procrastinate that way.

And so you can't eliminate uncertainty when you're pushing something

that you've never done before.

There's no way to eliminate all the uncertainty.

Have 100% clarity.

Know exactly what's getting ready to happen.

Be careful when you're getting ready.

Starts to feel productive.

Productivity isn't measured by how busy that you are.

It's measured by whether you're moving closer to the goal, to the outcome,

you know, whatever it is that you're looking for.

You can spend eight hours preparing and still be exactly where you were at yesterday

if we don't start to get to work and apply those things.

The first version is supposed to be imperfect.

That's the rough draft.

That's why you're not a pro yet.

You're an amateur.

It's not supposed to be perfect.

Your first sales car, your first sales presentation won't always be perfect.

Your first video won't always be perfect.

Your first attempt at whatever sport is not always going to be perfect.

Your first attempt is supposed to teach you what your next attempt needs so you can improve.

Don't confuse thinking, like overthinking things, thinking about the goal.

Don't confuse thinking about the goal with pursuing the goal.

In action.

Thinking about it feels safe because failure hasn't happened yet.

And that's where all the growth starts to happen.

Action creates the possibility of failure and it's really the only way to success.

You know, so if you're going to have success, you're going to have to go through levels

of failure.

And so really until you start to fail, you're not going to make a bunch of progress towards

greatness, towards success.

And so I think the suggestion would be the actions that would be set up point where preparation

ends.

Like give yourself a deadline.

This is it.

And we're going to get the work after that.

What you actually need to know, whatever's like basic skills you got to have, okay, then

let's start taking the shot.

You know, we're in Pittsburgh, you know, big hockey town.

And so, you know, quote, I have that's coming to mind is, you know, by Wayne Gretzky,

you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take.

So not every shot that you take, you know, shots on goal in hockey, you ain't going to be

100%.

You usually ain't going to be 80%.

But you're going to miss 100% of the shots that you don't take.

And if you discover something that you didn't know, the national opportunity to adapt, that's

part of the game, that's part of the process.

Sometimes you're not waiting for the right time.

And I think people sometimes are waiting to feel this overwhelming confidence.

And the issue with that is the confidence doesn't come before action.

Confidence before action is usually arrogance or, you know, entitlement because you're all

confident you didn't really do anything.

It's the action that creates the confidence.

You don't become confident and then you take the leap.

There's some point in there where you're going to have to take the leap and become more

confident because you survived.

The question isn't always, you know, am I ready?

Am I 100% ready?

It's what's the next action that I can take?

What's the next step towards where I want to go that I can take?

Take the first step, build momentum, learn, and then adapt.

And then you, you know, you tweak things.

Preparation can get you to the starting point, per se, right?

Get you to the starting line.

But action is what's going to get you to the finish line.

There's always going to be, you know, one more book to read, one more course to take,

one more strategy to maybe research, one more thing that you feel like you need to improve

on.

But at some point, you got to stop preparing for the life that you want and start to go

out and build it and take that action.

And so ask yourself right now, have I been procrastinating?

What have, what specifically have you been procrastinating on because to grow, you got to have levels

of honesty where you could look yourself in the mirror?

What do you need to do right now?

What is something that you should already be progressing towards that you're procrastinating

on because you're telling yourself that you're getting prepared.

You're getting, I'm getting more prepared.

I'm getting more prepared.

And the goal would be to set a deadline on that preparation of, all right, I got two

weeks and then I'm getting an action or I got one month and then I'm getting an action

or whatever it is.

You got to give yourself a deadline on taking that next step if you truly want to start

making progress and you don't keep stopping the progress by a word called procrastination

that gets hidden behind the word preparation, thinking that you're getting prepared and

really what you're doing is holding yourself back by over analyzing, all right.

So that would be the message this week is let's go out there and get to work.

Let's take steps towards our goals and dreams.

Don't worry about failure.

You know, you get over that fear, do it anyway and get prepared, just prepared enough and

then let's get to action and that's where all the learning is going to happen and that's

how you're going to start moving towards your end goal, all right.

So as always, you know, two things if this helped you in any way, do us a favor, share the

message with somebody else that we can impact and then the other one is just know that we're

grateful.

We're going to do this at this time doing anything else and you chose to spend it with us today.

So we appreciate you and as always, we're looking forward to talking to you again, seeing you

again next week on another episode of the Grand Caz Get Ready.

God bless us with a new day.

We got another day.

Let's get it.