Meet Tony.

Tony earns a pretty good salary. He’s 28, married and has two little kids.

Tony wants to start a business. But it seems that he doesn’t have time and energy to make that happen. He’s busy with work and family.

Every night he logs in on Facebook sharing his plans on starting a business. Some of his Facebook friends give advice and share articles they think useful — and this makes Tony motivated.

But despite all of this, for Tony, starting his lifelong dream still seems impossible. He just can’t find time.

The question is, “When will Tony start?” 

Because even though the advice or information Tony gets from his Facebook friends may help in a way, if we look at the bigger picture it doesn’t push him forward. It only overwhelms him, and as a result, he can’t move into the direction he intends to be.

In this context, social media only distracts Tony from starting a business.

Here’s an important thing to remember:

When pursuing our dreams, sometimes we don’t need the opinions and advice of others. All we need to do is just start.

Whatever it is, just start.

It’s not going to be perfect. And it’s not going to be smooth. But it’s better to start and fail than not to try at all.

Yes that’s just a goddamn cliché. But like it or not, clichés are often true and worth remembering.

Start small: Whatever you want to pursue, spend at least 15 minutes working on it every day (instead of lurking on social media). Do that for 30 days. Then build momentum.

15 minutes * 30 days = 450 minutes

That’s 7.5 hours — 7.5 hours working on that one dream for a month.

Now imagine if you minimize social media. Imagine how many hours you can add to that.

And imagine how it can change your life.