"Get started first" and you have eliminated more than 50% of your competitors

A famous domestic novelist came to the school to give a lecture.

During the question-and-answer session, an audience member asked: How should an ordinary person become a novelist? How should we strike a balance when our financial income cannot support our ideals?

The novelist gave him the following answer:

"Today, when you return to your dorm, turn on your computer, double-click something called a word document, type the first word, and you are already a novelist."

This sentence is simple, so simple yet profound.

Those things that we think are out of reach are actually very close to us.

Those roads that we thought we had to go through many twists and turns to see can actually be stepped on by us at any time.

In the summer of 2011, I wanted to set up a campus fruit delivery platform with a few classmates. I hesitated for half a semester, but the conditions were not ripe in all aspects, so I did not start. In the end, they were almost suffocating and reached a consensus: Never mind, let’s just do it first.

After a series of efforts, I borrowed a classroom to hold all-night meetings, wrote a business plan, looked for a cheap venue, solicited people to invest money, and applied for venture capital projects in the local university town.

In the end, the project failed, no one was interested, and it came to nothing.

The result was terrible, but I felt good.

After all, I have done it, I know what happened, and I will admit my defeat.

This incident greatly improved my "execution ability". At that time, I added these four words to my code of conduct in life:

Get started first.

When you want to do something, no matter what it is, just do it.

After the failure of my entrepreneurial project that year, I had nothing to do all day.

I'm like an idiot all day long and don't know what to do. I stayed in the dormitory playing games, and my Dota skills improved significantly.

One day, I suddenly had an idea and thought that it would be interesting to open a restaurant in the future.

At that time, the life creed of "getting it done first" influenced me again.

But the problem is that I am a loser college student. It is difficult for me to open a barbecue stall, let alone a restaurant.

So I started looking for opportunities and decided to work in a few restaurants in the city center to understand how restaurants operated.

I went to the school's career center and asked the teacher to help me find a part-time job in a restaurant, but the school didn't have any relevant resources in this area.

At that time, there was no reliable website for part-time jobs for college students.

Later, I got excited and decided to go out and look for it myself.

The so-called going out to look for someone on the streets really means going out to look for someone on the streets, asking people from house to house.

At first I was too embarrassed to push anyone's door, but later I became as thick-skinned as a city wall.

"Hello, do you accept part-time workers?"

Basically, 5 out of 10 restaurants will have it. After all, the turnover of restaurant employees is high, and dishwashers, kitchen helpers, and waiters can all work part-time.

During the month I was looking for a job, my average daily step count was 35,000, and it never got that high again.

Yuyuan Road, Huashan Road, Sinan Road, Huaihai Middle Road in Shanghai... I remember that in 2012 I worked in several restaurants on these roads.

I know a lot of restaurant owners. Besides chatting with them on a daily basis, I always ask them questions about opening a restaurant.

Sometimes my questions were too specific and they even suspected that I was an undercover agent sent by the Food and Drug Administration.

I didn’t open a restaurant later, but this experience became part of my life experience.

There are countless parts in the process that benefited me.

Many people go through a long period of psychological struggle before they decide to do something. Time slipped away during the struggle, and the initial enthusiasm died from chronic consumption, and was finally worn out to nothing.

Many people don’t realize that just thinking about not doing it is a sure-fire loss. It is a waste of time and energy, but there is no benefit in return. Even everything else you do will be affected by this mental struggle.

Then you might as well just do it. Success or failure is not the key.

The key point is that you are on the road.

You are on the road, instead of just standing on the sidelines watching others run.

2

There is a plot in "Bright Sword". Li Yunlong discussed with Zhao Gang about setting up a special team and selecting soldiers who knew martial arts. Zhao Gang said, "Okay, do it as soon as possible!" Li Yunlong said, "No need to do it as soon as possible, I'll go right away!"... Communists do what they say and don't talk nonsense.

Liang Jianzhang of Ctrip has outstanding performance and a tough approach. Other leaders’ meeting style is, “You two departments can discuss this after the meeting.” Liang Jianzhang never does this. He demands that the problem be solved on the spot.

I have a private enterprise client whose meeting style is like this: until a result or plan that is acceptable to everyone is discussed, no one is allowed to go to eat... I have never seen a meeting more efficient than theirs.

The most impressive “just-do-it” player I know is a female leader. She built the subsidiary from scratch and made it the profit pillar of the group in just one and a half years. She is an absolute master of execution and cost killer, and also the queen of decisiveness in the company.

Once, the Queen invited a teacher to talk about new media operations to the company's middle-level employees. The teacher is talking at the top and everyone is listening below. The Queen was very inspired after listening, and wrote an email while listening - this was a project activity plan written in combination with the lecture content. There were more than a dozen people in the audience, and the work content and time nodes of each person were detailed.

After the teacher on the stage finished speaking, the email was sent from the audience. The Queen walked onto the stage, exchanged some thanks and greetings, and said, "I think everyone has received emails on their phones. Go and deal with them!"

Make a decision on the spot and execute it immediately. Once it’s done, move on and don’t dwell on the past. Others advance ten things a week, while the Queen advances a hundred things a week - that's how the gap arises.

Sometimes I always struggle with what to eat for lunch, but later I figured it out: In fact, eating McDonald's is right, and eating Yoshinoya is also right, but it is wrong to waver between the two.

Those who do great things don't worry, and those who achieve great things don't procrastinate.

3

The behavior of "getting it started first" is a sure win in 99% of cases.

Most people will fall into a black hole of thinking, that is, "do it" or "not do it".

I am entangled in this contradictory dual emotion all day long, and it seems that one wrong step will mean destruction.

In fact, as long as we change our way of thinking, everything can change.

Don’t think about “doing” or “not doing”, just think about “doing”.

Because what we can dwell on and think about over and over again must be what we truly want to do, otherwise it will not exist.

Once we focus our thoughts on "doing", our brain begins to switch paths, no longer struggling, but turning to process thinking about "how to do it".

For example, I once had a boss who was very busy and his wife was also busy, but they also had to take care of the children at home. My boss is fat, but he wants to work out. However, going to the gym is obviously impossible for someone as busy as a dog like him. I had a little bit of previous fitness experience and he asked me what to do.

First, I told him to do it.

Make up your mind to do it first, then think about the solution.

Finally, I came up with an idea: invite a fitness coach to my home after get off work, convert the storage room at home into a small fitness space, and purchase a small amount of equipment. This is enough for his fitness needs.

For my boss, time and space are scarce resources, and money is the least of his problems.

Let your brain switch paths and skip the “if” directly, and focus on the “how” instead.

Once this happens, your brain's powerful regulatory ability will tell you how to respond.

It is better to cut off one finger than to hurt ten fingers; it is better to implement one idea than to have ten ideas. You listen to a hundred people talk about the benefits of physical exercise, and feel "very shocked and benefited", but it is really better to go to the playground downstairs and walk ten laps tonight.

The Spurs are my favorite NBA team, not only because it has been thriving for more than a decade (in this century alone, it has never missed the playoffs and won five championships), but also because it has the team culture and philosophy of life that I admire: solid technology, team first, strict discipline, and down-to-earth.

One detail is this: In a crucial playoff game, the game was intense and tense. Coach Popovich urged his players during the timeout. He did not emphasize "winning", but kept emphasizing "handling the next pick-and-roll, off-ball screen and rebounding positioning"... Basketball is not rocket science, you just have to do things one by one.

Knowing some "successful people" in the traditional sense, their financial success is usually passive. Most of them focus on doing one thing and then suddenly find themselves becoming rich. Those who plan for themselves "how much to earn in the first five years, and then add a zero every five years" often achieve nothing. Just like in a golf game, the champion focuses on every shot, and those who always focus on their position on the leader board will never win.

Talking too much about ideals is just being unrealistic and unrealistic. If you do the task at hand seriously, think about the right way to do things, maintain rapid growth, and don't need to think about the future, you will be able to grasp the future better than others.

In many fields, hard work is not an ups and downs, exciting process, but a boring process - a process of achieving goals through mechanical operations. We just have to follow the plan, recipe or formula.

Most of the time, hard work is not "a sea of ​​fire and swords" or "hell on earth", but boring training, continuous output, "holding on a little longer" when you are tired, and a little more execution.

As I wrote this post, I gave it some more thought.

I was not prepared for all the achievements, big or small, that I have achieved since I was a child.

The only difference is that I did it.

As long as you do this, you will be able to eliminate more than 50% of your competitors.

Let’s do it first. I have been training myself to think in this way over the years.

If you can finish it in 1 minute, don’t spend 2 minutes.

Whatever you want to do, immediately find a specific, achievable way to do it.

This is even more important for people who are confused and have a weak sense of purpose.

As you keep doing it, you will find what you really want.

Now I have found what I really want to do. Although it is far from what I wanted back then, I am still happy about it and grateful to myself back then.

I am grateful that I have done a lot of things and walked a lot of roads in the past.

At least I did it and didn't hold back.

They seem not calm enough, and even seem to be an extremely wrong and impulsive path.

But it is precisely because of their existence that I am extremely sure:

The path I am taking now is the right one.