Just Do It: Why Nike Is a Productivity Guru

“The gap between ignorance and knowledge is much less than the gap between knowledge and action.” -A wise person

Just Do It. Who knew a sportswear company could utter 3 brilliant words on productivity? Stop over-thinking and planning and just do it. You’ll accomplish your goal much quicker, and you’ll learn more too. Learning is 90% experience, 10% studying.

You can plan all you want but what matters is results, not your notes. People care about getting your stuff, not your planning behind it. The sooner you start the faster you’ll get results.

Plus, you’ll never find your unique life path by sitting around thinking about it. So go out and start doing and trying.

Choose the Most Important Thing and Just Start

Choose the most important thing you need to do to accomplish your goal and just start doing it. Yes, it’s important that you have a clear idea of what you want to do. But don’t worry about details. They don’t matter much anyway, especially in the beginning. Apply the 80-20 Rule: focus on the 20% that will bring you 80% of the results.

And forget about an ideal moment to start: it doesn’t exist. Everything will never be perfectly aligned. So the best time to start is now. Besides, once you start and just do it, you’ll learn and figure out the rest along the way.

You won’t become a good basketball player by reading and planning how to dribble and shoot; you have to go practice and play to get better. Drop the book, pick up the ball and just do it.

I Started This Website by Just Doing It

When I was in the electronic duo Falynx, my first marketing steps were planning and researching. What order to do things in, who to contact, what to send, and so forth. I also spent time tweaking the website design and graphics. I was secretly afraid of starting, so I set up an illusion of effectiveness by preparing everything rather than just doing any marketing. After a month, all I had to show were a handful of MySpace plays and a plan based on speculation rather than experience.

A year later, I co-founded the audio recording information website Audio Throttle. Rather than planning details, my friend and I agreed on the initial website goal and just started doing our first steps. I wrote articles and he marketed the site. We figured stuff out, fixed any kinks and improved along the way.

What a difference it made for me to just do it. In a month we went from 0 to 100 unique visitors a day, and the ads started generating money. We got results and fast. Plus we learned a lot about websites and fine-tuned our goal through experience rather than speculation.

I started this website by just doing it. I quickly decided my goal and started creating, posting and marketing content. I focus on the 20%: writing articles and making tunes and mixes. The sooner I can get great content up, the faster you can read or listen to it and I can build a following.

All the details—the 80%—like search engine optimization (SEO), design and layout tweaks, page and subheading text, font selection, and social media buttons, I’ll worry about later. Those things don’t affect you liking my stuff, and if I spent time laboring over those and planning other details, my articles and music would take much longer to get posted.

I just do it. I create great content (or strive to), post it, and market it. The sooner I do it the faster you get quality stuff and I increase followers. All those details I’ll figure out as this site grows, if they’ll still be important (most won’t).

What Do You Want? Decide and Just Do It

What do you want to accomplish? Decide and just do it. The most important thing is to start as soon as possible. Today, tomorrow, early next week, whenever. But just start doing it, now. The sooner you start the faster you’ll accomplish your goal and the more you’ll learn.

What are you waiting for? There’ll never be a perfect moment. So choose the most important task to accomplish your goal and just do it.

“Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” -Thomas Edison

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(Image: Tony Taka)

Useful Stuff Elsewhere

Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work – Great talk about just getting started on a project that matters to you. Hilarious and helpful.

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