A lot of people want to learn about something as much as possible before actually getting started. The easiest way to determine whether you still need to research and learn more or just get started is at the point that when you’re continuing to research something and everything coming up is stuff you already know.

This is how dieting works, real estate, or anything for that matter. There’s a point where you learn a ton because everything is new, and then finding new info tapers off as you start to already know more and more, then it’s probably time to move forward.

What’s something you should have just started sooner than later but you wasted time b/c you ended up researching the topic endlessly?

“Find something your good at and make a business out of that!” – Random bad guru.

If you’re good at digging ditches, that doesn’t mean you should be a ditch digger. A lot of people that don’t want to have kids have people say things like, “You should have kids – you’d be a great parent!”

But just because you’re good something doesn’t mean you should do it. – Truth Cake.

Figure out if you’re good at something you want to do, and if not, then get good at something else and do that.

What’s something you did solely because you were good at it only to realize it was a mistake?

“Burn the bridges and go all in!” – Random bad guru.

Sometimes people will be hesitant to burn all their other options, or to try a new workout routine that requires them to eat perfectly and workout 2 hours a day. They think that if they can’t have the perfect diet, then there’s no point in going to the gym. They think that if their sleep isn’t perfect, then there’s no point to taking supplements. They think that if they don’t have the best YouTube studio, then there’s no point to posting a video.

Most goals require a myriad of tasks to be completed. Some tasks are far more important than others, and usually the most important tasks tend to be the hardest to execute. People feel like if they don’t do the most important task, then doing the others is pointless.

Doing some of the things initially, even if not the most important, gets you positive momentum – Truth Cake.

Doing everything, the small and big tasks, is clearly the way to execute on a goal. But a lot of people simply don’t operate like that and won’t start off doing the hardest / biggest task. For those people, there’s still value in getting the other things done to get some momentum such that the bigger more daunting task can be more easily overcome later.

What’s something you wanted to do that you never started because you thought that all the other easy steps were meaningless, and didn’t execute the larger step NOR got any momentum by executing the smaller easier step?

“Don’t give up hope!” – Random bad guru.

A lot of people hope for better opportunities – ones that have faster results, are easier, are safer, are more fun. A lot of good opportunities take time to get through – whether it be schooling of some sort, working as an apprentice for peanuts, and so on.

People feel better doing nothing and hoping for a better tomorrow for 2 years with no clear outcome, than to do something that they know will be grueling for 2 years but has a clear positive outcome.

If they simply gave up hope that there’d be something better, they’d focus on one thing and start moving forward. – Truth cake.

If you can see that there’s a solid chance that doing something unpleasant for a period of time will result in something positive, it’s probably better to go for that than to keep hoping that another better opportunity will show up. If you know that it takes a year of working as a Realtor will not make much money but after that it has a high likelihood of paying off, it will likely be better to simply do that than to search for another year to find something that only takes 3 months of grueling work for it to pay off.

Time is your enemy when it comes to decisions, time is your friend when it comes to the grind. – Truth Cake.

So, consider 2 options:

1. Start something now that takes 12 months before there’s a pay off.
2. Search for an opportunity that takes only 3 months to pay off, but it takes 12 months to find that opportunity.

In this scenario, even if you do find something better in a year that takes 75% less time for a pay off, you’re still WORSE off because it took so long to find it. It’s usually far better to just start than to find better opportunity.

Deciding is often slower than the initial pain point of most opportunities. – Truth Cake

How many times would you have been better off to just start executing an opportunity with a slow ROI than spending the time trying to find a better opportunity with a faster ROI?

“I can provide the step by step process to making you rich!” – Random bad guru

The problem with step by step guidance is by the time you’re making through the process, things have changed so dramatically that the steps aren’t relevant any more. Unless you’re making a cake and need a step by step recipe, this process isn’t going to work because long term goals have the landscape change so much in the process of going through those steps.

Mapping out an exact plan should only be done to test the viability of a goal – Truth cake.

If your goal is to make $500,000 a year, and you can’t figure out how selling worms is going to get you there when you try to lay out a map to get to that goal, then you know your goal is probably not viable. Mapping out a plan to get to your goal will simply tell you if your goal is rationally possible.

For goals that can be achieved faster than the possibility that the environment changes (like making a cake), then figuring out the precise steps is a fine idea.

However…

It’s far better to be adaptable, know where you’re going, and know that the goal is viable via a potential plan (that will never go as planned), than to try to anticipate every potential thing that may go wrong and have a perfect preplanned response to everything. – Truth Cake

What’s something you wanted to do where you tried to plan every step of the process, only to find that the economy / environment / etc had changed midway through the executing, rendering the plan far less valuable?

“Winners take action and move fast!” – Random Bad Guru

Partially true advice, as always. However, our desire to optimize for speed compromises nearly everything that’s actually important.

People think things like:
“I want delicious food, but I want it fast.” – Now you get McDonalds, b/c it’s fast but now not so delicious.
“I want to get rich, but I want it fast.” – Now you waste time with get rich quick schemes or take too much risk.
“I want purified water, but I want it fast.” – Now Brita is the market leader, but filters far worse than the slower filters.
“I want to buy a great business, but I want to buy it fast.” – Now you don’t evaluate the business thoroughly and you get scammed.

Lewis Howes in his podcast is always doing the same thing to his guests where he tries to push them to achieve their goals faster.

FASTER IS NOT BETTER – Truth Cake.

Lewis Howes tries to get Alex Hermozi to “get to 100 million faster.” But Alex doesn’t want that – Alex wants to remain in lower risk behavior that will allow him to weather economic storms. Same thing for Grant Cardone where Lewis pushed him and Grant is talking about how it takes time to find proper deals.

You can screw up any endeavor by going too fast. – Truth Cake.

Usually speed comes with bad decisions, higher risk, higher stress, and other highly undesirable things.

I’ve talked before about determining what part of a goals attainment that you’re optimizing for. All attributes that you optimize for come at a sacrifice of other attributes inherently. However, optimizing specially for speed tends to seriously harm the other attributes of a goals attainment.

What’s a goal you had where when you tried to go fast, you realized that was the cause of serious problems?