Every journey starts with a single step
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Crappy advice you find on LinkedIn™
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Every journey starts with one step
- An inch is better than a mile in the wrong direction
- —Bill Wyman, New Fashion, 1982[1]
- Don’t just stand there. Do something!
- —Carry On Abroad (1972)
- Oh, the grand old Duke of York —
- He had ten thousand men:
- He marched them up to the top of the hill,
- And he marched them down again.
- —Traditional
It is hard to unpeel any truism without the lesson it promises evaporating before your eyes, and this one is no different: unless offered to support the contention that any movement is better than none — good advice for sharks, we gather — intoning that every journey starts with one step will only wear shoe leather. Especially if, like the JC, you’re in the habit of setting out even for fruitful destinations without your wallet or a sensible carrier bag.
In any case, it isn’t deciding to set off that’s the trick, but where to go. Journeys — to the dentist, to visit the mother-in-law, or back into the spare room to look for the car keys for the fourth time today — these all start with a single step as assuredly as do pilgrimages, ascensions of an Olympic daïs and excursions upon all-conquering holy wars.
So if your only guide to action is to take some, without pausing to assess its likely wisdom, expect to spend more time than you need dropping through open manholes, in exasperating dialogue with those no-one else seems minded to engage and, generally, retreating from as many spicy opportunities as you walk towards.
References
- ↑ Okay, not the greatest motivational guru I grant you and in fact he said, “an inch is better than a mile in the right direction”, which makes no sense at all, and even less in the context of a barking mad lyric.