4. Schedule It to Make It Real.

My beauties!

This is so important, because—despite what you’ve heard—knowledge is not power. It’s only potential power, if you use it. None of this that I’m writing to you in these lessons will make any difference at all unless you act on it. That’s what this letter is all about.

Schedule it to make it real .

This is a fundamental fact that I want you to know. It’s the reason I include this topic in the introductory lessons, because it is of universal importance.

Nothing changes until it becomes a part of your schedule. If you learn a new skill, if you have a brilliant idea, this is not going to make a difference for you until it’s part of your everyday life.

There’s a quote that I love by Anthony Robbins, who says:

“If you talk about it, it’s a dream; if you envision it, it’s possible; but when you schedule it, it’s real. ”

And that’s what this is all about—it’s actually where the rubber meets the road. When you take your big ideas, your big dreams, or your big plans and you actually put them down on your calendar to know exactly when you’re doing them.

Education and knowledge are fairly useless if you don’t put any of it into action somehow. Therefore, you must turn your thoughts and your ideas into clear, concrete actions. Actions that you can see, that you can do, and that actually make a difference in your life.

One of the biggest common denominators of successful people is that they will take action immediately. A lot of times, it’s imperfect action. Action that is more along the lines of “ready, fire, aim.” These people just get started with something, rather than waiting for the perfect plan to come along later, and they iterate and optimize as they go.

Another one of my favorite quotes by Tim Ferriss on this subject goes like this:

“The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

Putting something into your schedule to work on your plan, to work on your business, to work on a relationship—that is where the change actually starts .

One of the things I’d like to impart to you—and this is again something that Tony Robbins talks about—is to never leave the scene of a good idea without taking an immediate first step toward its completion.

If you have an idea that strikes your soul, that you have to accomplish right then and there, you need to do something to make it real . That could be as little as scheduling a phone call or just taking the time to think about it. The important thing is that you do something to start it immediately , or it will be lost forever to what Jim Rohn called “the Law of Diminishing Intent.”

The same thing happens when you’re reading a book. I don’t want you just to think, “This is the most amazing collection of lessons in a book by a brilliant and freakishly handsome dad!” Instead, think of how you’re going to use this information, and then implement it into your life.

Have a way to put that piece of knowledge into a place where you can reference and use it again and again. It can be notes that you take on Evernote or it can be your journal, but it needs to be a place where you can retrieve it when it’s needed. My friend Ari calls this “the external brain.”

So let me ask you now . . . have you scheduled your ideas?

Advice in Practice:

• Get a calendar and use the heck out of it! It can be digital on your phone/computer, or a dry-erase board, or even a yellow notepad. The key is to use one and only one calendar. If you use more than that, things will get jumbled and meetings will get lost. If you use that one calendar and schedule in your time for working on your life, there’s a much better chance that you’ll actually do it.
• I want you to get into the habit of doing one tangible action toward the accomplishment of your goal the moment that you set it. Make a call, schedule a meeting, order the thing you need to do it, or write that specific time you’re going to do it in your calendar. Actually stick to it. Something I like to do is use my phone to set alarms for the time I’ve scheduled to work on my ideas and life.
• Set up your “external brain.” You need a place to reference your ideas and grand plans for the future. Compare Evernote, your journal, your planner, Trello on the computer, or whatever it is you can carry—what works for you?
• My last piece of practice for this is that when you get a great idea—something you have to follow, something you have to actually put out into the world, something that “sings that siren song”—write an Idea List of at least ten things you can do to immediately breathe life into it.

I’m a great starter, but not necessarily a great finisher. So, for me to finish something in the past, I’ve had to have a spectacular start. I’d need to get a good 50 to 75 percent of it done on the initial push, or I’d fall prey to the law of diminishing intent and not finish things. The Idea List has to be a list of ways you can get a lot done on this very quickly and to make it happen. Get into the habit of doing Idea Lists to make your dreams, your goals, your projects, or your relationships flourish quickly.

• I love you so much, my sweethearts, and I can’t wait to get the rest of these lessons to you.