how to convert ideas into actions?

Are you a talker or a doer? Being the right role means a huge dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure in almost any call­ings. And you guessed what the right role is, the doer.

So how can we trans­form from the super­flu­ous talker to the prac­ti­cal, suc­cess­ful doer? That is easier said than done, and it cer­tainly doesn’t just involve the mere talk­ing about it. Becom­ing a doer in itself requires action, not just talking.

Talk­ers don’t real­ize the fact that ideas are worth dime a dozen. Let’s face it, no matter how good your idea might be, there’s a pretty good chance that some­body else on this very pop­u­lated planet have thought of it before. Then, why haven’t you seen it before? That’s because nobody else has exe­cuted it. Talk­ing about how great your idea is will not make the idea exe­cute itself. In fact, the mere talk­ing about it and at the same time imag­in­ing how it would turned out suc­cess­ful is just mental mas­tur­ba­tion. That feels good because all you need is invest is vir­tu­ally no energy and you can get the feel­ing of suc­cess from within. Have been talk­ing about losing that extra pound for years and still haven’t suc­ceeded? Then there’s a good chance you’ve been talk­ing too much and doing too little.

Listed below is my to-​do list for get­ting out of the “talk zone”:

1. Solid sched­ule of actions

I delib­er­ately avoided the word “plan” in the title because that’s just another talk word. A sched­ule is dif­fer­ent from a plan in that it has a def­i­nite time of exe­cu­tion included. So instead of “I’m going to learn to play the guitar” you say “I will prac­tice play­ing the guitar from 7 – 9 pm every Wednes­day, Friday and Sunday”. Treat your sched­ule with respect as you would if it was an exam­i­na­tion ses­sion. Don’t aban­don it for your friends’ party.

2. Vivid vision of your goal

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remem­ber. I do and I understand.” – Con­fu­cius. From the ancient wisdom of China we can see that the next step to “remembering” your cre­ative ideas is to “see” it. This can be achieved by writ­ing them down in big let­ters where you’ll see them every day, to draw­ing pic­tures of you per­form­ing your actions and hang them in places such as the toilet, bed­room ceil­ing so you will remem­ber to do your actions. Living in this age and soci­ety full of dis­trac­tions it is all too easy to forget about our goals, or dreams even. Ready to get out for a jog and then you see the pre­lude of a drama show on TV? You’d prob­a­bly decide you can “relax today” and watch that show which serves you no true pur­pose. Counter that with your own “shows” by stick­ing vivid reminders of what you want to do.

3. Start small, but realistic

One thing most talk­ers do in common is they’ll describe in every detail how their plans will work out in the ideal sit­u­a­tion. While those ideas might the­o­ret­i­cally very viable, they’re worth 0 when the talk­ers have major trou­bles get­ting their butts to per­form the sim­plest actions, let alone their “marvelous plans”. Many talk­ers might have tried to become a doer but failed, all because they faced fail­ures right after they started. Start­ing small but real­is­tic means gath­er­ing momen­tum for your plans. For exam­ple, instead of saying “I’ll start study­ing for 2 hours every day start­ing tomorrow” and feel­ing mis­er­able in the middle to finally giving up 45 min­utes in, settle at “I’ll study for 30 min­utes a day start­ing tomorrow” and cel­e­brate your vic­to­ries. Before you know it, you’ll find your­self enjoy­ing a 3 hour study fest!

Enough talk­ing, I’m gotta get my ass moving to do some­thing. Think about the plans you’ve been thinking/talking about and haven’t been really doing and start becom­ing a doer right now!