“D” is for Doing. Stop Thinking And Start Doing! anamtahir.com /stop-thinking-and-start-doing/ Anam Tahir
I could hear my heart pounding all this time. My ears would go deaf in one second and then revert back to normal the other second as the water droplets oozed down my ears. I couldn’t open up my eyes as the water gushed out of the shower’s mouth and softly splashed on my face. My legs were going numb. I couldn’t figure out how could I be possibly standing upright. Although I had left it out, I don’t know how it could still haunt me. My heart started pumping even harder as every bit of lather rinsed off my body. Something whispered into my ear. It was waiting for me. Suddenly I felt the heat under my skin. My body was burning in water. I was drowning in flames. The editor had been opened up for three days in a row. Each day I would spend hours in front of my laptop staring at the blank screen. My fingers were paralyzed. I could not vomit a single word on that virtual sheet of paper. I had recently started my business and it was my third failed attempt to write my first blog post ever. I was frozen. Stuck in time. I could feel my stomach falling into some bottomless pit. I was riding on an emotional roller coaster. I was overwhelmed. I feared the unknown. I wanted my first write-up to be perfect.
1/5
I just kept thinking and thinking for days. I had no clue how to instruct my brain to stop thinking and start doing it. Did you feel a tinge of what I felt that day? If yes, then you too are going through overwhelm. Let me tell you. Just…
Stop Thinking and Start Doing! I will tell you how
Being an entrepreneur, overwhelm strikes you often, very often. If you don’t get it treated right away, soon it will infect your business and before you know it, your business will die. Foreword: Whenever overwhelm pulls you from your teeth and traps you in the downward spiral of negativity and inaction, just go back to your “why”. Just thinking about your ‘why’ will boost your energy level by (red-bull)^99! 1.Information is good. Information overload is bad. Keep things simple. Know that you don’t have to know everything. 2. Write down whatever comes to your mind that you need to get done with. Don’t worry about getting it in the right order. Just write it down! 3. Identify the top critical activities that will have direct impact on your business. Turn your blinders on and zoom your focus on those things.
2/5
4. Hold yourself accountable by giving yourself deadlines. Allot time slots to each of the critical activities. However, it is important that you assign a realistic time bracket to each one of them. For example, if you haven’t written a 1000 word blog post in an hour before, then do not beat yourself up. Go a little easy on your brain and give yourself two or maybe three hours to get done with it. Gradually work yourself up. Keep tweaking. 5. Do not try to do everything that’s on your list (that you just made in #3) on the same day. Spread it out. Once you have identified the critical activities, make sure to do these activities each day whilst spread out the remaining. It will cushion your brain and you won’t be struck by overwhelm and anxiety. 6. Take baby steps. Don’t try to do too much work in too little time. Take small steps, one at a time in the chosen direction. It will ease you up psychologically and you will feel less burdened. 7. Divide your work into small doable chunks. As you get done with each part, slashing them off your list will comfort your mind. 8. Don’t overload your SD card. Just puke things-to-be-done out of your memory onto those colored sticky notes that you have placed right next to your laptop. Stick them right in front of you in your work space – on your desk, on that front wall, or wherever you want to. The bottom line is your to-do’s must be directly visible to you all the time. That will help your mind to register them. 9. Do not get stuck in education mode , what I call, analysis paralysis. No amount of information can ever be a substitute for the practical knowledge that is gained from experience. When you are busy gathering tonnes of theoretical information, you are dwelling in an illusion. You are hallucinating. You think you are moving forward where as in reality you are just spinning the wheel, moving in circles and not going anywhere.
Learning can be a crutch that supports inaction” – James Clear
Doing is the best way of learning.
Practice is learning, but learning is not practice.” – James Clear
3/5
Jump in and learn as you swim along. Only an imperfect action makes a man perfect. 10. Do not compare yourself with others. Do not compare your chapter one with someone else’s chapter twenty. Be fair to yourself. Your only competitor is you! Each one of has their own pace of learning. Each one of us has their own unique journey. You don’t know what their journey was all about. Just concentrate on your actions, where you have been before, how much progress you have made over time and give yourself a virtual pat on the back. 11. Be patient with yourself and give yourself some time. Learning new skills and achieving mastery in them takes time. Not days. Not weeks. Not even months. Years! So be patient. 12. Think in long term. There is no such thing as get-rich-quick. There are no short cuts. Do not think of getting results in ‘x’ number of weeks or ‘y’ number of months. Think in terms of years. Three years, five years or ten years from now. Focus on the long-term goals that will keep the fire burning. 13.Do not focus on the end result. Focus on taking action that produces that result. It’s not thinking about getting the results that will get you the result. In fact, it is taking the actions that produce results that will actually give you the results.
Success boils down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction.” ~ Lolly Daskal Don’t be upset with the results you didn’t get with the work you didn’t do.” – Anonymous
14. Keep your plan simple. It’s good to have an action plan but if the planning itself stops you from taking action then it’s a curse. Getting into excessive planning slows you down. Don’t get into nitty gritties. You are just taking off. Don’t get trapped in the spell of perfectionism, finding hypothetical solutions to hypothetical problems. Just get down the basics on a piece of paper, get started and you will discover the rest of the “how-to’s” on your way. Don’t wait for the things to be right. Jump in and learn as you swim along. 15. Have insurmountable faith in yourself. Do not underestimate your potential. You already have 99 percent of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. It’s okay if you don’t know how to do any certain thing. You can always learn it!
4/5
Kick the fear of failure off the shelf. Just do it and screw it! Remember, the only thing that stands between you and your goal is that leap of faith.
Where you are right now is a direct result of what you have been doing but where you go depends on who you choose to be and what actions you take from this moment on.� ~ Anonymous
Okay. Enough said. Now get your butt up, stop thinking and do it! ***Hold on for a sec*** If you enjoyed reading this or if you have a friend who needs to crush overwhelm, please hit the share button below. Not only your friend but I will be thankful to you for that as well! :) If you know of any other way to get rid of overwhelm, jump straight into the comment box below and share how did that help you. As always I would love to listen to your stories! :) Ciao, Anam Want to know more about me?
5/5