PSSS: Excuses For Not Trying – Time, Education, and Money

We make excuses for not trying our “stupid” ideas.

Most of us have something that gets us really excited, something that lights our fire.  For me, it’s writing, recording, and performing music.  For you maybe it’s something fun like horseback riding, surfing, research, film photography, eating ice cream, or crafting pillow cases.  Whatever it is that makes you lose track of time or become extremely focused, you probably have some amazing idea, something that you’ve dreamed of doing since you were a kid, but just haven’t mustered the courage to get started.  You likely have some excuse why haven’t started.  Maybe you’ve even told someone about the idea and they called it stupid, killing your spirit.  In my previous post I mentioned Richie Norton‘s upcoming book, The Power of Starting Something Stupid (PSSS).  In the book he says most of us make three common excuses for not beginning our greatest ideas.

The three most common excuses for not starting our “stupid” ideas are that we lack the time, the education/experience, or money.  Richie calls this the T.E.M. Gap in chapter 5 of his book.  He argues that we will NEVER have enough time, education, or money – and understanding that point should be liberating.  The stars and planets will never be align as we’d like, so there’s no point in waiting.  Start now.  “You can overcome your circumstance or you can let your circumstances overcome you.”  To learn more about how you can start your own great ideas and why you should start now, get the book here.  I’ll give you a peek at what Richie says to do to overcome these excuses we make.

How to Overcome Your Excuses For Not Trying

Time, Education, and Money. The three most common excuses for not trying.

Time:  You have to prioritize and MAKE time.  Time will always be hard to find and this will only get harder the more you put it off.  If you want something bad enough, you won’t be able to not make time.  You can either start now and make the time or you can continue to hope that you will have the time in the future.  (Hint: Let me save you the suspense, you won’t have more time later).

Education/Experience:  The legendary Stephen Covey told Richie during an interview, “Experience is overrated.  Some people say they have twenty years’ experience, when in reality, they only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”  If you are really passionate about something and it causes you to have deep creative stirrings and desires, you can learn the majority of what you need to know as you go.  It is far more important to have the innate characteristics of diligence, passion, and a desire for continuous learning than to wait to have all the knowledge before pursuing your dreams.  Very similar to the First Who, Then What principle by Jim Collins I’ve mentioned in a previous post.

Money: The lack of money is the fuel of creativity, not the reverse.  If Oprah, Steve Jobs, and others have taught us anything it is that greatness does not always start with a huge amount of investment capital.  Richie writes, “…the necessity of pushing hard against those less-than-ideal circumstances is partially responsible for their vast success.”  Money comes as a result of your passion and diligence, it does not create them.  In other words, stop waiting to have enough money to start.  Start with what you have now and the money will come as you grow.

There is so much more to PSSS, like my next blog post about Living in Beta, but you’ll have to preorder your own copy to learn it all!