take consistent action over prolonged period of time

The “point yourself in a direction” method of success has one enemy and that is the fear of not being perfect. When you are paralyzed by the fear of it not being the perfect time or the perfect circumstances for you to take action you are less likely to take the small actions that will send you on the road to your goals.

Here are some phrases to help you beat the habit of waiting till everything is perfect to do small tasks.

Good enough is good enough
A little bit is better than nothing
It’s a start
It’s worth a try!

And here’s one from my Dad great for describing when you do a fast cleaning around the house – “A lick and a promise.”

My plan for success hinges on some very simple concepts:

1. Point yourself in the direction you want to go in.

2. Take small consistent steps in that direction.

3. Over a long period of time you will move in the direction of your goal and each small step will build on the other small steps you have taken.

4. As you reach mid-point goals and your life situation changes, correct your course as needed. A small course correction today will map out into a large change over time.

As an example – I have a goal of making money with my blog. Each day I take a few small steps towards that goal. I started out by creating a blog. Then each day or few days I would write a small blog post. Over time my blog got picked up google and got some traffic.

Then I started joining pay per post and payu2blog type organizations. Now I write paid posts and make a bit of money each day. Some small intermittent steps I took along the way were to get my own domain on godaddy.com, and create a second blog. A while later I created a third blog. I have added advertisements and experimented with Amazon affiliate program and other ways to make money.

Basically, each day after work I write a blog post, and research one or two small things I can do to try to make a few dollars from my blog(s). I jokingly call this my “plan to take over the world” but really its just a small side project I do for fun.