Life’s Rodeo: How to Start on the Right Foot, Cowboy Style
You’re burning with impatience to start! You can barely keep your mouth shut because you’re eager to tell everyone about your project. You feel enthusiasm; it’s a perfect state to begin a project. Rodeo!
Your project can represent various goals or dreams. It’s like starting a battle in which you’ve decided to be the winner! You’re kicking off a rodeo!
This “rodeo” can be any of the following goals:
- Completing a work project successfully
- “Hunting” for a better-paying job
- Learning to play tennis, cook, dance, play the guitar or piano, ski (the sky’s the limit)
- Losing a specific number of kilograms
- Sticking to your workout routine
- Participating in a marathon
- Writing a book, painting a picture, composing a melody
- Getting rid of debt or saving a specific amount of money soon
- Starting a business, having your first revenue on your business, or increasing your current business turnover
Obstacles and Failures
Failure and obstacles are part of the process and can offer valuable lessons. Heroes fall and rise in their journey. They learn their lessons and move forward.
Denzel Washington, a double Oscar winner, said in a speech in 2011:
“At some point in your life, you will fail; accept that! You will lose, embarrass yourself, and be extremely bad at something, there’s no doubt about it. But if you don’t fail, in reality, you haven’t even tried!”
It’s part of the “game” to accept that the path may be filled with obstacles or criticisms, and it’s possible not to succeed.
The Map Sometimes, we are simply paralyzed by the desire to “get” the result! We don’t want to fail. It’s natural that when we plan our “path” and do research, we tend to overthink.
Don’t overdo it!
When you overthink before taking action, the chance of moving forward decreases exponentially.
When you decide to act, it’s crucial to take action within 48 hours. Otherwise, the probability of actually taking action drops below 80%.
Planning and creating a map toward the goal are essential. Divide the goal into stages and “milestones.”
If you have trouble defining milestones, take an A4 paper and draw three large squares:
- In the first square, write: The first stage
- In the middle, write: Second stage
- At the end, write: Third stage
It may sound like a bad joke. But the idea is to take action without wasting time on unimportant matters.
When starting a new business, most of the time is spent defining a logo and designing business cards. This is when the product isn’t defined, and you haven’t even met a potential client.
Your initial goal is to start defining these stages. Their sum gives you the “big goal.” Then, you define what you do in the first stage. You’re not interested in the other two stages for now.
How to Eat an Elephant? What About a Bicycle Wheel?
The elephant is consumed bite by bite, just like the bicycle wheel. Okay, they’re not very tasty. I’d prefer lasagna. Pizza is fine, but no pineapple!
Focus initially on the first stage and move on to the next as you progress.
Three military strategies have inspired me:
Rommel, who wreaked havoc on the African front in Hitler’s name:
“It’s useless if you have 2 tanks, and I have only one if you let me attack them and destroy them one by one.”
Napoleon, every time he faced a superior army, his top priority was to divide the opponent into multiple groups so he could attack them one by one.
Subodai, another famous Mongol general, Genghis Khan’s right hand and probably one of the most successful military leaders in human history, used the same tactic. At one point, when outnumbered by several Slavic leaders, he ordered his army’s retreat but just enough to keep contact with his enemies. The pursuers were so divided that following Subodai, there wasn’t just one army anymore; there were 5–6 smaller ones, each at a distance from the others. All he did was turn his army around and attack the armies behind him, one by one.
Action
Action is more important than understanding the details in the initial phase. Another famous general, George S. Patton, said:
“A good plan executed violently now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
If you’re like me, you might not like the word “violently.” The idea is to get moving now!
Strategy
Pragmatism and strategy are about knowing what not to do. You can become known as a pragmatic and strategic person at the same time.
When people talk about “strategy,” they talk about it as if it were the ability to draw up an action plan. It’s a set of coaching questions:
- What’s easiest for you to start with?
- What can you start faster?
I draw three squares, write what they represent on them, and decide which one to start with.
Strategy, for me, means knowing what NOT to do. So, a strategic decision is a decision to give up. In the end, when you’re at a restaurant and choose a dish, the choice implies giving up the other dishes. Every choice involves a sacrifice!
Starting from small to large, everything that’s easy to do to get moving, I put in the first square. Everything that seems too complicated, complex, hard to understand goes into the second and third squares.
If what’s in the second square is too complex, it becomes a stand-alone project, and I draw three squares again.
Learn from failures and take action.
There is no failure, in fact; there’s only feedback.
