If You Wait Until You Know Everything, Opportunities Will Pass You By

It can feel intimidating to go after something we want because things seem unclear. We want to make sure that we know more and have a clear path to make the right decision. While it is important to have the right information to make a good decision, what many of us don’t want is to make a wrong decision that will hurt our confidence in ourselves. Being burned once can make us think twice about getting close to the fire. In waiting to have more information and clarity to make sure we are doing the right thing, it will lead to more opportunities passing us by. That business, work, or investment opportunity will not wait around to see if you’re ready. Inaction comes at a high cost that limits your potential.

To get anywhere significant, someone has to guess, and guess right over and over again without enough information to make a logical decision. Everything we do comes with some level of uncertainty, especially if it’s completely new to us. What is great about doing things we don’t know everything about is it erodes at the uneasy feeling we have with risk and uncertainty. Eventually, we develop composure in the face of the unknown that allows on to take on greater experiences. The truth is we will never know everything anyways so we might as well learn it along the way. Aim to learn enough to get going and eventually you will build momentum to keep learning. By getting in and learning along the way you condition yourself to continuously getting better and not appearing to be better. This will help you handle failure because your identity is not tied to what you think you know, but what you need to know. Failure won’t seem as devasting but more as teacher redirecting your focus for the next time. Sometimes, the drawback of thinking you know it all is it builds a false sense of needing to be right and having all the answers. This can lead to a closed mind that restricts growth.

If you are thinking about trying something new and waiting until you know everything about it, it will be too late. Others will capitalize while you sit on the sidelines until you know more, where you will continue to search for more answers until you feel confident enough to start. This will leave you behind to play catchup. Look at how the food chain Subway was started by Dr. Peter Buck, a nuclear physicist and 17-year-old Fred DeLuca. Both who did not run a business or make sandwiches prior, agreed the potential that submarine sandwiches had and formed their business partnership. Blimpie, another sub sandwich restaurant was already in business a year before Subway began and both Peter and Fred would not let that stop them. They refined their business making several mistakes along the way to make it what it is today. Waiting to gather all the information about how to make the right sandwich or what business model was best before jumping in would have limited the growth of the business. They figured it out along the way and you can do the same.

Choosing to jump into something without knowing much can be a great way to accelerate learning. We tend to remember about 90% of doing the real thing as opposed to 10% of what we read. So, if you want to grow your own food or start your own business, go ahead and figure it out along the way. Remember that mistakes and failures will happen and that should not discourage you from continuing. Let it fuel you to be better for the next time. We tend to learn more by our failures than from our success and it builds us to handle the rough times.

Simply choosing to wait around to gather more information and wait to see how things play out can cause you miss out. Blockbuster was once a prominent leader in video rental industry in the late 80s and 90s. They had to opportunity to form a partnership with Netflix when it first started but declined the offer. Netflix then became a growing competitor and Blockbuster was too late to invest in its own digital library to compete. Eventually Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and Netflix became a huge success. What worked well in the past is not guaranteed to work in the future and it is wise to continually seek new opportunities to stay ahead as opposed to doing the same thing and getting left behind.

Many times, it is not the lack of knowledge that can lead to a downfall but the lack of being able to see the big picture and how it is all connected. Once you are able to piece the connections together you can build a team that will help you accomplish great things. You don’t have to know everything but recognize how to leverage your strengths and ask for help on your weaknesses. Similar to what a CEO does to run a business efficiently and effectively, they have a team that handles the accounting, sales, research, etc. Even then, the CEO still does not have all the information that will clearly outline what decision to make. They still can make a blunder with relevant information.

Do the best you can with what you have and pursue what you truly desire. All our journey’s will be uncertain and waiting for things to become clear is when it will be late to seize the opportunity. It’s too easy to think once I have all the knowledge and experience is when I will purse my aspirations. Most of us know what we want but spend too much time waiting for it to happen. We should instead focus on figuring out how to make it happen today through our daily actions. Great opportunities arise when everyone else wants to wait and see how things play out. Get out there and make it happen. Mistakes and failures will occur but work to figure it out. Ready or not, just get started.