#PositiveVibes - Go Do Something

By John R. Nocero

The VIBE: Don't consume today. Do instead.

Trent Hamm writes an interesting piece on doing vs. consuming. Early in his blog’s history – The Simple Dollar – he went through a period where he reviewed a new personal finance book each week. Believe it or not, between general personal finance, investing topics, frugality, and other related areas, there are plenty of books coming out all the time that makes such a review cycle easy.What he found is that the more he was reading about personal finance topics, the worse he actually was in terms of making good financial decisions. If I was spending a lot of time reading about personal finance, I would invariably find myself making more spending mistakes and not actually taking care of my own finances. Over time, he came to the realization that I was most effective with my finances when I was reading personal finance books and other materials less regularly.

I found that if I dipped in occasionally for inspiration or came in with the intent to read about a specific subtopic, I would actually see much more success in my financial life than if I read extensively on personal finance issues every day. This is interesting to me. I have noticed the same phenomenon with other self-improvement topics. If I constantly read books and watched videos and read articles on that specific topic, I would often make little or no progress on improving myself. Instead, if I read a lot to get a baseline knowledge and then moved on to just reading or watching a tiny bit of information each day – a devotional of sorts – and only dove in again when I was confused on an issue or struggling for motivation, I was actually far more likely to take action and actually improve myself.

There is something about taking action in here. There are times when you need to read, but you then also need to do something. It’s almost the analysis paralysis principle. You read so much that you think you accomplish something, but you accomplish nothing. I am better when I get in and just do something. Worry about the consequences later. Keep moving. Things that are in motion tend to stay there.

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