Have you ever been intimidated by something you have not done before? Is this something you have kept on putting off because you felt like you needed to learn more about it or simply lacked the confidence to start the work?
Today, I encourage you to just do the work that needs to be done — even if you haven’t done that specific task before. By doing so, you will discover that the best way to learn is to take action.
Overview & Episode Content
- Build Things for Your Family to Enjoy
- Do Not Be Afraid to Learn by Trial and Error
- Learn It Once and You Can Do It Faster Next Time
- Start to Learn Doing New Things and Grow your Business
Build Things for Your Family to Enjoy
As of this recording, I am trying to build an above-ground pool for my family. My wife is about 7 weeks out from having our new baby — as of this recording.
Now, I am trying to build an above-ground pool so she can enjoy it with our kids.
Because of this little project, I had a guy come over to help me with the building pads for it. His name is Andrew.
Now, If you are wondering what building pads are for, building pads are necessary things in construction because they make an area flat. Any type of structure that you build needs to be level and flat.
I had no idea what a building pad was before, too. So, Andrew specializes in these types of things.
Hee brings out his heavy equipment and starts to make building pads. I live in the hills and the area that I am at has a pretty rugged terrain.
Despite that, there are a couple of areas where I wanted to fill with dirt from other places. I even found a great middle-ground spot to put up a huge building pad for a workshop.
One day, I want to build my own little workshop so that I can do my own carpentry. Another thing that I want is to put up solar panels. I just have so many ideas!
Anyway, Andrew comes over and he is just a super nice guy. He is willing to spend so much time, especially during this fire season — trying to get out and help put out fires.
So, for the building pads, he uses everything from skid steer loaders, to front loaders, and bulldozers. All these different heavy equipment. Andrew came over and we started talking.
Do Not Be Afraid to Learn by Trial and Error
I told Andrew, “I wish I could do what you do.”
And he was such a nice guy. He said, “Oh, it’s not that hard. All of these things, I learned them by doing. You can’t learn how to run heavy equipment just by reading something or watching Youtube videos. You have to actually get on the thing, utilize it, play around with it, and have fun with it.”
And I said, “Really? You just figured it out?”
He replied, “Yeah! I mean, you just get a piece of equipment — whether you rent it or anything like that — and you start bringing it up to your place and start messing around. Just start moving stuff and you will see that it is not as hard as you think it is.”
So, here I am, barely building cat houses and garden enclosures, thinking, “Really? That guy was able to run these huge heavy machineries and it was not that big of a deal?”
I do not know about that, I am a little bit overwhelmed but he was dead serious when he said that there was no way to learn it other than doing.
So, I flashed back to when I started building my cat house and when I was helping my father-in-law build our chicken coop, and when I built the 2,000 square-foot garden fence.
And I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh! Every single time, with one of those, I had no idea what the hell I was doing and I learned by trial and error”
Learn It Once and You Can Do It Faster Next Time
There was really no way that I would have been able to learn how to build different structures just by watching a Youtube video.
Even though I did, however, watch Youtube videos. All I remember was watching those videos and realizing that I had no idea what the speaker was saying.
“We have to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the slope of the roof?”, said one of those videos.
I did not know how to do that! And then, the speaker on the video started showing his solutions and I ended up totally miscalculating.
It was a huge mess. But in the end, I was able to build what I wanted simply by doing it and messing up along the way.
It was funny because I started building a retaining wall around the building pad to keep the dirt in that particular area. There was no way around it because I had to raise the ground a little bit.
I remember the first retaining walls I built. It took me two to three weeks to complete and it was frustrating because I could not get anything leveled, it was hot in the middle of summer, it sucked!
But this retaining wall was done in a day. The difference between how I build the two retaining walls is experience.
I did not know how to build a retaining wall before — I did look into the different ways to get it done, but it was not until I started doing it and felt the pain and completed the task.
Once that was done, I knew I could do it again and cut the time to finish it.
Now, I can build a retaining wall quickly. But the improvement was only possible by doing the work.
Start to Learn Doing New Things and Grow your Business
A lot of the things that push our life and business forward are things that we have never really done before.
When I talk to people who want to have Virtual Systems Architects on their team through ProSulum.com, I notice two types of people who are most interesting to me.
One, there are people who know that they have to create systems and need to delegate but have too much to do. And so, they end up not doing the initial work needed to build their systems.
Then, there are people who know that they need to build systems, they know that they need to delegate, they know that a Virtual Systems Architect would be an awesome way to get the assistance that they need. They know that it will be uncomfortable and they might need help from me or my team to figure things out. But ultimately, these people will do it anyway.
And once they start doing the work, they realize that it was much easier than what they initially thought. They get rolling and create system after system for their business.
Because they learned by just doing, these customers were able to grow more than they ever expected. So, I really want to emphasize that sometimes, you just have to go and do something because that is the only way you will learn and get better at it.
Start doing it.
Conclusion
What is something that you have been putting off simply because you have never done it before and you feel like you do not know where to begin?
Think about that one thing in your life or business right now that if you could just learn it and go through the pain, you just know that it is going to be beneficial.
I challenge you to do that thing right now. Do not wait, just go and do it. I know that it will make a huge difference in your life.
Resources and Links
This is Dean Soto. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.