Achieving Personal Goals

The ability to take action, to turn ideas into effort and motion and progress makes the difference every single time. Every strategy, process or methodology for time management or productivity all ultimately come down to taking action, and the person who takes action consistently in the direction of their goal always makes progress.

Another interesting (make that fascinating) observation on taking action is clearly and wonderfully described in Malcom Gladwell’s latest work “Outliers”. This book is a fascinating look at those who have achieved extraordinary success, not only in the current generation but in generations past. The theme of action is unmistakable, and well worth learning about. If you’d like to know more, you can get it here.

Please pardon the following list, but I just thought it would be fun to demonstrate just how unanimous the consent is around the importance of this idea:

• Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.  – John F. Kennedy
• He who has begun is half done.  – Horace
• I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. – Frederick Douglass
• I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson
• An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. – Jack Welch, General Electric
• I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at the moment. It’s, like, let’s only have goals that we can go after.  – Bono (U2)
• “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.”  – Les Brown
• The major difference between the big shot and the little shot is the big shot is just a little shot who kept on shooting. – Zig Ziglar