Back to basics

The success of any venture, be it a project, a goal or your entire life depends entirely on your ability to successfully execute the actions that will produce the result. Action will create success far more than planning, creativity or inspiration can even approach.

A beautiful idea, strategy or goal is worth only as much as the action that can follow it. Complex plans are far more likely to fail than a simple strategy.

Similarly, it is the most fundamental and basic tools and ideas that really affect the quality of our lives. Focusing on the improving the irrelevant minutia is not nearly as significant as improving the key things we do every day. Success, therefore, comes from mastery of the basics.

Reducing complexity and emphasizing a simple and easily executable strategy is the smartest way to operate. In all of the goals and trials I have conducted I can almost chart their success and failure based on this exact principle.

Complexity has killed more of my goals than any other factor including fear, apathy or laziness combined. Plans are far easier to execute in the mind than in the real world.

Similarly to a simple strategy for success is mastering the basics that go into that strategy. Once your strategy is isolated down to a handful of continuously used and repeated skills, mastering those skills to a high degree makes your planning even more effective. Mastering all of the minor concepts in a very diverse and complicated strategy is almost impossible which makes pursuing those ideas even riskier.

I can attest to the necessity of finding a simple strategy and mastering the basics involved. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am currently working on an interactive program for goal-setting.

Although the program is almost at a release, it took far more effort and dead-ends to achieve even a very simplified version of what I had originally planned. Nearing the end, the program has worked out well, but there were a lot of stumbles because of a plan that was too complex.

Comparing that project to this blog and the difference is quite noticeable. With less focus and time, this blog has grown and shown more success.

Although comparing two different mediums for rate of success has flaws, I believe that many of the differences lie in the completely different level of complexity. My strategy for this blog has been very simple and easily executable.

Although it has taken me a few bumps to learn this lesson, keeping things simple is critical to the success of any strategy. If complexity is unavoidable, it should be added incrementally.

Starting off with a simple strategy and refining the details later will ensure that the execution is smooth. For example, if you wanted to start a new healthy diet and lifestyle, creating an elaborate and detailed diet and workout regimen might be too complex to start.

Just working on exercising for a certain amount per week and limiting your diet to narrowed down categories is a more simplistic strategy. Worrying about particular vitamins and different workout patterns is likely to bog down your progress.

Source:www.scotthyoung.com