One of my interests is reading biographies.
A lot of entrepreneur biographies. I actually like the entrepreneurs from the late 1800s, early 1900s and then the mid to a little bit late in the 1990s.
And also some biographies of entertainers. Singers, producers and folks like that. I don’t know why this group interests me, but there are definitely some similarities to them and to entrepreneurs.
Anyway, over time I’ve noticed a few similarities amongst them all. Maybe not 100% in all cases, but definitely some common threads and there is a big one that stands out…
Action.
Successful people generally take action. But, as with many things in life, there are two sides to the story. Successful people aren’t necessarily taking every action possible. But they’re also not being so deliberate that they’re not doing anything.
I would say for many people in the world in all areas of life the common thread is not taking action. Humans seem to have a real fear of not being right about something. And new things require us to not be right. We have to be vulnerable to try something new. And the older we get the more this bias seems to take hold.
I keep reading these biographies and these successful people seem to be more willing to take action than the normal person. They’re willing to try something new. They’re willing to take action and keep quiet about it. Maybe because they don’t want to be vulnerable or feel foolish.
But also because they’re taking action for themselves. Not to impress others. That seems to be a big thing in the world today. We like the feeling of telling others about our ideas, but not actually taking action on the ideas.
That seems to give us a little thrill. But when it comes to the action we feel it’s too much or too risky or too foolish or whatever. So we just keep talking and talking about things without ever doing them.
So the takeaway I’m getting is that if you want to be successful you should consider taking more action. It seems that the habit of taking action, any action, is better than not doing anything and just kind of waiting for things to happen.