85% Rule

Sep 24, 2009 by benwhitehair    2 Comments    Posted under: Attitude, Resources, Thousands of Stories

Want some actionable advice to forward your career and life? Listen up. This friggin’ works.

I stole this concept from Ramit Sethi’s incredible book on personal finance. Basically, the point is to take action. Your success as an actor, believe it or not, is totally based on your taking action. Sounds simple, but hard to do in practice sometimes. To improve this, a simple paradigm shift has done wonders for me. The key:

Just do it, even if it’s only 85% of the way there.

That is, whatever you’re working on take the plunge. Put up the website even if it’s not perfect. Print out that postcard and mail it to the Casting Director (CD), even if it’s “not ready.” Go ahead and schedule a date for the webseries you’re working on, even if you don’t feel 100% ready. For example, I really wanted to spend a good 45 minutes on this blog post, but it’s better for me to at least put something up now. I can always come back and edit it, but going 85% of the way is far superior than doing nothing.

85% is WAY better than 0%!!!

You can always get whatever it is closer to 100%, but for now. Just do it.

Ben Whitehair is the Los Angeles contingent of this blog. Find out more information and view his materials on his website, or read the rest of his blog posts.

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