You Don’t Need a Plan to Start

Reserve a spot at your favorite restaurant. Pick up your date and enjoy a good dinner. Execute every step with a carefully crafted plan. 

From calling the restaurant to picking up your date and the time you are going to leave the place and arrive home, plan everything at a certain time. Plan what you are going to order, right down to the dessert and drink and how much you are going to spend on dinner. 

It is not a complicated task. Just a simple night out with someone.

Even with this simple plan, there is a high chance that 30 percent of what you planned won't go as planned. You will be late or early for at least a couple of minutes; some of the things your date may order may change the budget you prepared for the dinner. 

If we can't even make our simple dinner plan stick to our schedule and calculations, how is it possible that people with colossal success planned their life and became lodestars of our society? We usually invite them to talk in the hope that they will inspire some of us. We are especially amazed at how disciplined & organized they are. Sometimes we call them geniuses and masters at strategy and planning. Everything they achieved requires extraordinary degree of smart strategies and careful planning, right? Wrong.

What we actually see as a success story in accomplished figures is the completed puzzle, not how many tries and mistakes players made while stitching pieces of that puzzle together. 

What people call strategy is in fact the cemetery of wrong plays, countless mistakes, and misplaced ideas. This doesn't make them genius; it makes them disciplined. This degree of discipline is the only distinguishing factor between the people who succeed and those who dwell. 

Everybody in their life tries to a some degree. But not everybody has enough conviction not to surrender easy. Professionals are amateurs who didn't give up. Call it passion, strong will, or determination to move forward. It is the only way. 

If every throw was a catch, everyone would be a quarterback. If every shot is a hit, everyone would be in the NBA. And if every ball hit the hole, golfing would be the most boring game. It is the hardship in everything we do that sets us apart from the rest. The rightful path usually has too many bumps.

Leaders in every walks of life reached the peak not because they are smarter than you. It is because they have enough discipline to create tiny habits that make up their days.