I had a coaching call with a client recently and it was a trainwreck. I’m trying to get them to create content and they keep peering into the future. Instead of creating content they’re obsessed with:
Sales Funnels
When to monetize
How to convert inquiries into customers
What camera to use when filming videos
Writing a whitepaper
I told them this:
“Screw all of that. The key to success is in the doing.”
Your Ideas change over time.
When I first started blogging in 2014, I was doing interviews with entrepreneurs and turning them into blog posts. I had no idea what I was doing or even why I was doing it.
The blog posts sucked and sounded like press releases.
I hated the process.
None of the blog posts got any engagement at all. Hearing entrepreneurs talk about raising money and selling widgets was boring to me.
Then, one night at around 8 pm I wrote a blog post about changing my life. It was all the lessons I learned from studying personal development and it was nothing more than a brain fart.
It took about 45 minutes to write and was published with spelling and grammar errors all the way through it. This post got shared 84,000 times on Facebook alone.
All of a sudden, through focusing on the doing, I found something I liked.
“What starts as an idea changes over time and you’ll never predict where things will end up. Trust in the process”
Your beliefs change too.
I told my coaching client that his beliefs would change too. What he believes right now will change in the future. This will shape his creative side and his content most of all.
“Trying to predict where you’ll be in the future is like trying to predict when you’re going to die - it’s impossible to know”
My beliefs initially about what I was doing came from a very self-centered view of the world that was all about the cliché version of success.
I thought the nice car, suit, house and bikini babe was what mattered. Pretty quickly, as I produced lots of content and began reading, after not touching a book for more than ten years, I saw a different side.
My beliefs about the world changed and the idea of money went to last place. Add on a couple of near-death experiences like a cancer scare and my beliefs are now completely different.
I’m no longer trying to figure out how to suck out as much value from the world as I can for my own benefit. What I do daily is about a purpose far bigger than myself.
I told my coaching client this story because I believed the same was true for him. He’s trying to impact people’s lives by getting them to fall in love with the work they do.
Whenever he starts talking about this topic, I feel inspired. I told him that I say no to so many clients because I don’t believe in what they do.
I believe in what he does and that’s why I’m obsessed with getting him to focus on the doing.
You learn as you go.
People have this obsession with the idea that you have to do a course, be mentored, study for years (insert excuse) before you can start doing what you love.
This is a ridiculous idea and I challenge you to a duel if you think this way. As you continue the doing aspect of what you love, you’ll learn at the same time.
Even if you’re not conscious about the learning side, the doing will reveal way more than waiting for accreditation, permission or a mentor’s approval to proceed ever will.
Everything I know about social media, blogging, inspiring people and entrepreneurship came from the doing. Yes, there was deliberate learning along the way but that was always a distant second to the doing itself.
Consuming vs. creating.
My coaching client also suffered from the battle that is consuming vs. creating. He spent too much time watching what everyone else was doing and he didn’t spend enough time creating his own art.
He’s currently posting one video a week and I told him that’s not enough. He has it within him to do at least one video a day if he quits consuming everybody else’s content.
He also told me that he feels the need to respond to every comment he gets on social media. I told him this is nuts!!!
You cannot respond to every comment or email you get online. This time is better spent creating than it is pumping up your ego with “thank you’s” and “yes I know I’m so smart.”
The tools change.
I started blogging on WordPress and now I do most things on Medium and LinkedIn. If I’d become too obsessed with the tools, then I would have wasted the time I could have been spending refining my craft.
All the tools you use to execute on doing what you love will change, so treat them secondary to creating your unique art.
You can’t preplan the doing 9 times out of 10.
Your best work is often done when you’re spontaneous. For example, today is a public holiday in Australia and I wouldn’t normally write on a Wednesday.
I felt inspired this morning though, so I decided to jump on the computer and do some creating. Some of my best work (if I look at the stats) has been done on public days and times when I didn’t plan to create anything.
Over planning is a trap you need to avoid if you want to get down to the doing which produces results.
The doing is the hardest part.
The reason why many of you reading this are so obsessed with mentors, education, online courses and consuming someone else’s content is because all of these things are easy.
The doing is the hardest part. Being creative takes up all of your energy and putting your work out there to be judged is hard on your ego.
“Creating truly inspiring work takes every ounce of your emotions. You need flow states, time, resources and the belief that you’re enough to do the doing”
What stops us from the doing is either procrastination or fear. These two evils prevent you from the doing without you often realizing.
My coaching client wants to make a massive impact and he’s scared that he doesn’t have the ability. As his coach, I know he does and I’ve seen it.
The battle that exists in your mind daily is whether you should be doing the doing or settling for something easier (often this looks like the same thing but it’s not!).
Spending time doing the very thing that is hard, is how you leapfrog everyone else that never gets what they want and never lives a fulfilled life.
How do you win so frequently?
That’s what my coaching client asked me. He wanted to know how I produce so much content and have so many people watching online.
I told him the truth: I just spend as much time as I can doing the doing.
Everything else seems to take care of itself when I embrace this simple hack. You must become obsessed with the doing.
Spend a disproportionate amount of time doing the doing and you’ll produce the results that are 10X of what you think you’re capable of.
Are you ready to win?
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
Read more: addicted2success.com