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The gap between thinking and doing is killing your potential.
I see it everywhere.
People who pride themselves on being "idea people" or "visionaries" while treating execution as beneath them. They've created a false divide between conception and creation.
A mental caste system that's pure fiction.
Here's the raw truth:
The greatest breakthroughs in history came from people who got their hands dirty.
Leonardo da Vinci didn't just imagine the Mona Lisa.
He crushed his own pigments, experimented with new painting techniques, and dissected human bodies to understand the interplay of facial muscles. His genius wasn't just in his mind; it was in the marriage of thought and action.
Steve Jobs nailed this when he said the real innovators are "both the thinker and doer in one person."
(read full quote below)
Steve Jobs on why thinking without doing is incomplete:
“My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers.
The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years x in the future what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it?
Of course not. Leonardo was the artist, but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy. And combining all of those skills together, the art and the science, the thinking and the doing, was what resulted in the exceptional result. And there is no difference in our industry.
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers.”
Would the iPhone exist if Jobs only sketched concepts while delegating all execution?
Would Edison have invented the light bulb if he merely theorized about filaments without running thousands of physical experiments?
The magic happens in the mesh - where thinking and doing become one continuous flow.
I've watched countless "idea people" fail because they treated execution like it was beneath them. They wanted to be the "visionary" while someone else handled the messy details.
But those details aren't just logistics. It’s everything. It’s what sets your thing apart from the rest. “The devil is in the details.“
The ancient Stoics had a saying: "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
The same applies here:
Waste no more time theorizing about great things. Build them.
Your ideas mean nothing without your hands in the clay.
Your vision is worthless without the willingness to fail in its pursuit.
Your thoughts are just mental vapor until you give them physical form.
Remember this: When you are starting out, you’re the one who’s gonna be doing everything.
Stop limiting yourself to the skill you’re comfortable with and good at.
Stop hiding behind pure intellectualism.
Stop waiting for the perfect moment when thinking magically transforms into reality. There is NO such moment.
The next time you catch yourself lost in endless planning and theorizing, remember:
The greatest thinkers in history were also the greatest doers.
They didn't separate conception from creation. Neither should you.
The world doesn't need more armchair philosophers.
It needs builder-philosophers.
Maker-dreamers.
Doer-thinkers.
Be both or be neither.
Godspeed, and have a great week. ⚡️
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