Before you experience something it is almost impossible to know what is going to be important knowledge and what is not. It is only by experiencing a thing they we gain some understanding of what is involved.
The person who prepares, prepares, prepares and then prepares some more usually discovers when they finally do start (if they ever do) that what they have been preparing all this time is actual the wrong thing.
People who become successful take a completely different approach. The get an idea and then they immediately start working toward that idea. They often have no notion of what is the right thing to do to succeed or of what knowledge they will need to acquire. However by following their gut instinct and starting to do something, they soon discover what works and what doesn't and they discover from practical necessity what knowledge they need to seek out.
Once, after I had finished giving a two hour talk on residential property investing, a man came up to me and announced proudly that he had been studying property investing for 18 years and that he had read over one hundred and fifty books on the topic and that he agreed with almost everything I said in my talk.
I thanked him for the compliment and asked how many properties he had. He told me that he was in the process of negotiating his first one. The truth is that if he had read absolutely nothing and just bought virtually any house in any major city on day one, then it would have been worth at least four times what he paid for it at the time he was talking to me.
You have to be in the game to have any chance of winning the game!
The other reason why the successful people are the one's who jump in and learn of the go is that the psychological side of winning can only be developed by doing.
Take the stock market as an example. Many people study the stock market and then paper trade in order to learn the principles. If you are not familiar with the term "paper trade" it means that you do everything you would do in trading, except actually buying the stock.
These people often get good at analysis and at making the right decisions. They get good at knowing when to enter into a trade and when to exit that trade. Then they start investing for real and totally mess it up. They discover that when their hard earned cash is on the line the psychological pressure suddenly becomes the major factor in decision making.
They would have been far better off to have started real trading on day one, using very small amounts of money and then gradually increase the size of their trades over time. Nothing can prepare you psychologically for the game like actually being in the game.
Whatever you have been thinking about doing start it today and then be mindful of what is happening. By all means read and study everything you can but do it while you are playing the game, your results will prove the wisdom of what I am saying.
