Next Best Step

Bring Visions to Life Through Action

I’m an obsessive planner and visionary. I want to know every single step, how everything works, and have the guarantee that everything will work before I commit to it. But what will actually bring my visions of grandeur to life?

Without any kind of action, VISIONS ARE USELESS.

Visions are great. They’re important, UNLESS I’m hiding behind them with excessive planning and daydreaming. My visions will never come to life: they will remain a dream and nothing more.

The supplement to any vision is ACTION.

Just the next best step.

What can we do RIGHT NOW to move the needle forward or get the ball rolling? Who do we need to contact? What do we need to create? What message do we need to write? Where do we need to go? How can we help? What must we DO?

Choose from all of you possibilities and take a step towards the one that makes the most sense for your vision in this very moment. Even if it’s small.

Plans can be useful, but don’t let them be the only thing you do. If we don’t make the call, send the email, ask the question, fix the problem, create the product, or whatever is useful for your vision, that vision will only remain as a figment of the imagination.

For me, planning (to an excessive degree) was just a tool to procrastinate and not do the actual work. Too many of my lists were never revisited and acted upon, only to be re-written and re-organized the next day.

“Look at how AMAZING it COULD be!”

No. It’s not amazing. It literally doesn’t even exist yet because I haven’t done a damn thing with it. It’s an unmet promise.

Planning and action have to work in unison to make a venture successful. It’s possible to take action without a lot of planning: it might be messy, but you can adjust as you go.

But you will NEVER get anything by planning alone.

I have to learn how to plan just enough to get a direction and vision “on paper,” but to take action as soon as possible to get the ball rolling.

Just the next best step.

Whatever it is. Sometimes it really IS planning. Just keep taking the next best step. Planning, brainstorming, emailing, connecting, calling, asking, fixing, creating … until you’ve taken so many next best steps that you’ve brought your vision to reality.

Action allows you to discover the truth of your pursuit and new elements you couldn’t have conceived beforehand.

Even the best laid plans become unhinged. The more steps we have, the fuzzier the later steps are, because any one alteration can affect all of the following steps. The step with the most clarity is the next step.

Yes, have a plan and know what to look for, but don’t obsess over the 5th, 10th, 100th step. Just focus on the next best step and do the best you can.

Then ask yourself if the next step is the best step?

Yes? Great, take it.

No? Adjust the course, then take the step.

You’ll create a chain of steps and actions that are bringing your vision to reality, and likely not the exact way you planned. And that’s a good thing. How lame would it be to know every step of the way?

You would have no room for improvement, no room for flexibility when things go wrong, no room for the beauty of surprise and mystery.

Take the next best step. See where it takes you.