It’s shockingly easy to sit still and fret over your next move. Everything is still unknown in your head. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but your brain is working overtime to model it all out — trying to anticipate every possible outcome.

I know there’s value in planning, and I think it’s important to do. But I think it’s more important to actually do. You can spend a lifetime in planning mode. You can try to anticipate everything that could happen, and by the time you finally move forward, something random and unpredictable happens anyway. What then? Was all that planning time worth it?

If I had to draw a line in the sand between planning and doing, I’d say I’m 60% on the side of doing. You will learn so much more by taking action. You’ll start eliminating unknowns because they become knowns.

Think about that for a second — it seems obvious, but it’s worth calling out. If you were presented with 10 identical doors, and your goal was to figure out which one led to the best path, would planning really help? There are no hints in this room. Just 10 identical, unmarked doors.

You can sit and plan for hours, but you’d still be sitting in that same room, no closer to knowing which one to open. No closer to moving forward.

Or — and you’ve probably figured this out by now — you can start opening doors. Pick one. Any one. Open it. Just like that, you’ve eliminated 10% of the unknowns. You’ve learned something.

If it’s a dead end? Great. Move on to the next one.

That’s the point — action takes everything that’s swirling around as a “maybe” and turns it into something concrete. You stop worrying about what might happen and start responding to what is happening.

This all might sound a little ridiculous, but I know you’ve done this too. I definitely have. I remember when I wanted to start a podcast on self-help topics. I read about podcasting. I listened to other podcasts. I read self-help books. I followed creators online. I thought about what I’d say.

I spent forever in that planning stage. It felt like progress, but in reality, I was just sitting in that same room with 10 closed doors — too scared to open any of them.

All that content consumption felt productive, but it didn’t actually get me closer to launching a podcast. At best, it inched me forward. But the truth was: I didn’t have a podcast. I just had the idea of one. A desire. And ideas are cheap. Desires are cheap. They can get you rolling, but you’ll lose momentum fast and find yourself stuck just a few steps ahead of where you started.

So what finally helped me move forward?

I grabbed my microphone, went into a quiet space (a closet), and hit record.

That was it.

I edited the audio and sent it to a few friends and business partners for feedback. Had I launched a podcast yet? No. But I’d opened a door. I’d created something. I took electric impulses in my brain and turned them into something real in the world. My voice, recorded and shared.

That first scary step made everything else easier. I signed up with Buzzsprout. I named the show. I made cover art. I wrote a description. Another door opened.

Then I picked a launch date, uploaded the episode, and hit “publish.” Another door.

And the more I moved, the more I learned: what length of episode works best, how I like to pace things, what format I prefer, what topics excite me the most. The podcast has mostly stayed the same, but it’s grown and evolved, and I’ve grown and evolved with it. I’m so much more comfortable now — even recording video and posting on social media, something I was way too scared to do in the beginning.

Now I’m doing, not just planning. And it hasn’t stopped. I’ve launched my first digital product. I’ve grown my newsletter. I’ve built momentum — because I started.

And none of this would have happened if I’d stayed in planning mode.

If I hadn’t hit record in that closet, I wouldn’t have published 70+ episodes of my show. I wouldn’t have built this audience, grown my reach, started this newsletter, or renamed the whole project The Forward Theory. None of it would exist.

But I took action.

I moved forward.

And I learned everything else along the way.

So how can you do the same?

1. Check in with where you’re at.

Do you feel stuck? Like you want to be further along but can’t seem to move? No shame in that — it’s my default state sometimes — but name the gap. One trick I love: take out a blank sheet of paper, draw a line down the center. On the left, write “Where I am.” On the right, write “Where I want to be.” Then draw an arrow between the two. Write out what’s true today, and what you want to be true. That’s your map.

2. Take one small step.

If you want to start a podcast but feel frozen, what’s the tiniest move you can make? Sign up for a hosting platform. Pick one quickly — Spotify, Buzzsprout, whatever. Once you’ve done that, name your podcast. Write a rough description. None of it has to be perfect — it just has to be done. You can always refine later.

3. Trust the clarity that comes through motion.

Things become so much clearer when you pull them out of your head and into the world. Seeing your podcast name on a screen makes it real. Listing it in directories makes it official. You’ll get more ideas once you’re rolling — that’s the fun part. Momentum builds as you go.

That’s it. Repeat that cycle often. Make small decisions constantly. And one day, you’ll look up and realize how far you’ve come.

This is forward.