"One single idea acted upon is far more powerful than a thousand contemplated!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
This was a photo taken Saturday night after our 'proof' copy arrived - and it looks fantastic. We just made some minor fixes, and so we are good to go. We're in print!
Buy my book!
You can do that right now at https://mediocrity.jimcarroll.com.
I'd be thrilled to see a few orders come through! Seriously!
You can get it on Amazon - in Canada, the US, Germany, Japan, and a few other countries. Ships in just days!
Or, if you like, you can buy it directly from me. Send me your mediocre message with the order, and I'll personally write that into the front and sign it for you! Shipping might take a little bit longer since I'm doing my bulk print order later this week,
And thinking about this fun little project - that's the genesis of today's quote. I know I preach the idea that the future belongs to those who are fast.
We need to think big, start small, and scale fast.
That we should always be ready, set, and ... done!
Because the future belongs to those who are fast!
Do you think I have a theme at work here?
Living a career that has involved me preaching the importance of action and speed is one thing - but even I am wildly surprised at how quickly my wife and I moved with this book. Not only that but how quickly I'm already working on the sequel - known as Escaping Mediocrity!
Look, I'm a big believer in what I say in today's quote - people do far better if they act on one single idea, rather than thinking about a whole bunch of ideas and NEVER acting upon them.
The future doesn't wait for those who ponder - those who wait - those who debate - and those who dream but never act.
It rewards those who move forward!
And the fact is, it rewards those who have organizational skills. That would be my wife, who I refer to in the Foreword of the book as the "Fifth Beatle." I might be able to conceive of a project and get it started, but I lack the skills to often see things through to completion. That takes a unique set of skills - and so I will share with you just a few of the pictures from inside our skill chalet over Christmas week as we took the ideas I had compiled in a wild rush just before the holiday - and turned them into a real project.
First, we had the text. I worked on that, with the assistance of a fellow in Sri Lanka, Gamage Janaka Ariyarathne. He is someone I found via the global freelance site Upwork quite a few years ago, and who does excellent, fast work. (Recommendation: If you need someone to take on a unique type of project, involving images, documents, or other types of work, seek him out on Upwork. 11 stars out of 10!)
That got us to this point - 125 individual ways to be mediocre, including a little bit of text as to why it matters.
Then we had to pull together the images - all of which were rapidly generated via ChatGPT, MidJourney, and Ideogram.
All of these had to be matched and organized to fit the theme of the particular point - a skill in which I am quite definitely lacking!
And on my team, the ultimate organizer at work!
What a fun little project!
This was an idea that involved a blog post I wrote Dec. 15 - realizing I had the basis for a book on December 17 - working feverishly to pull together my content by December 23 - generating several hundred images to choose from from December 27th to the 30th - and then the hard legwork of getting all this into a printable format.
The fact is, it would have happened quicker, but my wife is the Treasurer of a young adult special-needs charity we are heavily involved with, and several very important projects took her priority! That being the case, the time from conception to print could have been far faster .... and I was advised to be patient several times during the intervening time.
Look, the future doesn't wait for those who analyze; it rewards those who anticipate and act.
Futurist Jim Carroll is already hard at work on the companion book to this one, titled Escaping Mediocrity.