Success is Doing
Dreaming is fun, finishing is crucial, but doing worth celebrating.
If you’re in the middle of a project, you have permission to feel successful. You have surpassed the hardest part: starting, beginning, staring at the blank page or silent microphone or empty canvas.
If you have something, it’s more than nothing. Something is usually easier to improve on than nothing. Nothing is at the starting line, but something is on your way, down the road, in progress.
You get paid for finishing, but doing means you’re on your way to finishing … at least you’ve started.
Dreaming, planning or strategizing might take years or even decades. Doing can take minutes or decades, maybe a little of both. Finishing might never happen, but it’s more likely if you get to the doing stage.
Doing also brings about possibilities that aren’t available to those who don’t get to this stage. Unless you’re in the middle of it, you can’t know what happens at stage B if you’re, for example, going from A to C. You just can’t know, by definition, what might happen at B if you don’t get past A.
Celebrate B. Rejoice in progress. Toast to doing. Then keep doing.