Have you heard this one before? I bet you have. I also bet that you’ve had a bucket list of things that you would like to do someday for a long time. Yet, you don’t seem to mark many things as done.

You are not alone.

There is a good explanation why we keep on running with dreams or ideas we are passionate about, inside our heads. When something is vague or too big, it is difficult to make it happen.

I remember having a dream about building my own tech startup. I was working as a software engineer. I was still an employee.

I had no idea where to start. I just knew that one day I wanted to be my own boss. The more I talked about my idea, the bigger the desire became. Although, I still had no clue what running my own business would mean.

I kept on running with this dream in my head for almost four years. Thinking and strategizing. Until I bounced on an advertisement for a business start-up accelerator program. This was my trigger to finally take action.

However, I was too late with my business idea. There was already another team of people working on the exact same problem, with an almost similar solution. So, I decided to quit. It felt like a failure. I had wasted four years doing nothing. While I could have started making my dream a reality.

I learned a lesson. I decided that I would attempt to make more dreams a reality by having more action. I started doing small experiments that would show me whether the idea was worth continuing or not. Although, it took some time to learn how to do that.

The reason why I tell this story is that if you have a vague idea, then it’s more difficult to start with action. Especially when it’s overwhelming, like starting a business. Without action, it can stay an idea. Never to become reality. Even with small experiments, we can learn a lot.