When I started this blog I had one goal in mind. Test out different side hustles, fitness routines, and other practices to see what works and share my results with you. With all the different ideas in mind, it can be difficult to pick just one. I spend lots of time thinking of ideas, researching, and planning how I would execute an idea. However, right now I am struggling to act on most of these ideas for a couple of reasons. Let’s talk about these reasons and what can be done to counteract them.
Reason 1: Too Many Options
I often find myself watching videos or listening to podcasts about good side hustles to start. They all seem so exciting and interesting which makes it so hard to pick just one. It makes me think that I could be missing something by picking one thing and leaving the others.
An important realization I’ve had is that making a decision and taking action is much more important than what you decide. The more time you spend thinking about all the options the harder it becomes to choose something. This is commonly referred to as analysis paralysis.
The best way to avoid this is simple, and it’s to just pick one and put all your energy into it. You can do eenie meenie miney mo if you want. Learning how to make small decisions quickly is an extremely valuable skill, and you have to be okay with taking some losses to keep moving forward.
However, this alone may not be enough to get you to take action, so let’s talk about the second hurdle to overcome.
Reason 2: Fear Of Failure
Once you get over choosing the right thing. The fear of failure is another big cause of inaction for many people including myself. Starting something new can be scary, exciting, or both. What helps me is realizing that if I fail and learn something, then the experience would be worthwhile.
Another helpful way to decrease your fear is to do a cost-benefit analysis. Think of the worst possible thing that could happen, and think about how you could minimize the damage. Most of the time damage control can be done in a worst-case scenario and it won’t be nearly as bad as you think. Then you can think about the best possible outcome, and decide if getting there is worth the risk.
Reason 3: Goal Too Big/Vague
Another reason you may feel unmotivated to work on a project could be that what you want doesn’t have a clear path or it may be such a big goal it feels unattainable. Maybe you have a goal to start a million-dollar business. Well, that sounds difficult on its own, but if you break it down into individual actions or steps and make a clear vision, it will become much more doable.
A practice I learned from Dr. Alok Kanojia from HealthyGamer is to imagine you are paralyzed from the neck down and you have someone that will do whatever you ask. They aren’t very smart so you have to tell them exactly what to do every step of the way. This forces your brain to get specific about what tasks need to be done and helps develop a step-by-step plan to reaching your goal.
After you do this, you can make a list and start from the beginning. I would say that most things that seem like big projects can be broken down into tasks that take only a few minutes or less.Â
Another small piece of information that I find useful is something called The “Do Something” Principle. This is the idea that motivation comes from action rather than action coming from motivation. I’ve sort of come up with my version of this principle called the “Easiest First Step”. The idea is to trick your mind into starting by giving yourself a super easy task to do. Once you’ve started then you should become more motivated.
For example, if you have a 5000-word essay, you may procrastinate and not start until it is too late. By applying this rule, you could task yourself to do something as small as writing one sentence. I can almost guarantee that when you have written the first sentence, you will be inclined to write more. The hardest part was just getting started.
What I’m Doing
For myself, the original plan was to do DoorDash and try some different strategies for a while and see what kind of income I could make doing that while writing this blog on the side. However, yesterday my Prius completely shut down while I was driving and it is still in the repair shop, so for now I have to prepare for the worst, and think of other ideas. I am interested in e-commerce and print-on-demand businesses, so I will try and see if I can make that work.
Conclusion
Writing this post felt like the perfect way to express how I feel about my current situation. I thought it might be useful to write out my thoughts and what I know for myself and anyone else out there who may be having the same problem.
I hope this helped some of you!
Thank you for reading,
-Eli
