Get Out Of The Planning Trap

What is planning? It is laying out a strategy for taking a specific action. Planning is a good and necessary first step to taking action. In fact, you should form the habit of planning every important action. Let me say that even a short trip in your car should be planned before you set out. You should plan your route before you get to the next intersection so you don’t arrive there undecided, and create a little confusion or even an accident because of your indecision. Planning enhances focus and targeted action.

Necessary as it is, many have turned planning and preparation into an escape from ever taking action—they are stuck in that mode. Others spend too much time analysing their options until they get confused and frightened by what they find.

Jim Rohn warns that life doesn't get better by chance, it gets better by change. Planning doesn’t change anything. It is action that does. While we should plan as a routine, we must exercise ourselves in actions daily if we are to accomplish anything significant. “Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action,” says Walter Anderson. Action puts the mind to rest. People who take action live better and longer. You see, planning is a complete waste of time if we are not going to take action.

Prolonged planning magnifies obstacles and actually builds and sustains anxiety until it boils over; then we give up. Nothing intimidates like knowing all the frightening dimensions of a problem—that is what tedious planning and analysis does.

That is why the longer we analyse a good prospect, the more difficult and impossible it appears. John Mason says, "One action is more valuable than a thousand good intentions." John Lubbock further enthuses, "A day of worrying is more exhausting than a day of work." Personal experience has taught me that nearly all the things I ever worried about never happened. What a complete waste of time worrying is! What an unnecessary sapping of the human energy!

In closing, I advise that you never consider any task impossible until you have had a go at it. How dare we classify an idea impossible when we haven't had a go at it? The scientists who landed man on the moon did not begin by thinking it was impossible—they would never have started on their purpose. Todays inventions and breakthroughs are the possibilities that were thought impossible yesterday.

Right now some idea is incubating in your mind. Let me end by telling you this: In all probability, any idea that registers itself strongly in your mind is a possibility. That is why God planted it there. Get out of your dillydallying. Take that action!

(This article is culled from my book Take That Action! You can buy it from https://www.chrisekpekurede.com/books or simply get in touch)