A good word from Sahil Bloom, August 21, 2024…
Advice is overrated (and action is underrated).
There’s a famous story about Mozart that I love:
A young man asked Mozart how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You’re far too young to write a symphony.” The young man then said, “What? You were writing symphonies when you were 10, and I’m 21.” Mozart smiled and replied, “Yes, but I didn’t go around asking people how to do it.”
You can read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, but ultimately, you just have to figure things out for yourself. Advice gathering can quickly become procrastination in disguise if you let it.
Prioritize action: Take some advice, act on it, adjust accordingly.
…
The beautiful thing about life is that no matter where you are today—no matter how deep in the darkness—you are always just one good decision away from being in a better place tomorrow.
Focus on that one decision in front of you. Don’t worry about the hundreds or thousands of decisions that you still have to make to get to where you want to be—just focus on the next decision.
Just start walking. – Sahil Bloom
It’s good counsel. On balance, of course. It’s always good to seek counsel, but not interminably. I just talked with a friend whose former pastor couldn’t make a decision and wouldn’t even act on decisions allegedly made by the board of elders. I told a young friend who has just been appointed to a leadership position, “Don’t be that guy.” As Sahil wrote in another newsletter, which I quoted a few months ago:
Stop gathering more information and start acting on the information you already have.
Keep traveling steadily along his pathway… (Psalm 37.34, TLB)
Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work. (Nehemiah 2.17, 18, ESV)