I had a realization going through my old journals this morning:
Time moves at the speed of reality.
Our minds don’t.
You can sit with a journal and imagine an entire business in an afternoon.
You can see the products.
The marketing.
The website.
The customers.
The extensions.
The whole empire.
In your mind, it’s already finished.
But reality has an annoying limitation:
It can only happen one thing at a time.
I remember seeing a documentary about Woody Allen’s process.
He was constantly coming up with ideas for movies and writing them down on yellow pads.
Then he’d put them all in a drawer.
When it was time to make the next movie, he’d open the drawer, spread the ideas out, and choose ONE.
The rest went back in the drawer.
Then he made the movie.
Dan Sullivan has done something similar for the last 12 years.
One short book every quarter.
One idea.
Finish the book.
Then move on to the next.
Four books a year doesn’t sound particularly dramatic.
Until you do it for 12 years.
Now you’ve got 48 books.
That’s the part I wish I understood better 30 years ago.
You don’t need fewer ideas.
You need a completion cadence.
Pick one.
Bring it out of the theoretical world and into reality.
Then pick another.
Because an idea sitting in your journal has potential.
A finished idea has value.
And only finished things can compound.