Would you like to travel the world and be a free, creative spirit like a lot of the social media stars of today? To make art — be it music, painting, embroidery or even documentary YouTube films — and have brands like Nike, Liquitex and BMW sponsor all of your travel and material expenses?

Who wouldn’t?! But a lot of us may not see the whole picture of what it really takes to have a successful Etsy store or a 100k Instagram account or YouTube channel that can actually give us the means to live such a lifestyle.

I used to consume so much content from people, telling me how to “hack the algorithm”, how to “get 10k followers in a month”, but when push comes to shove none of those methods worked as I expected. But they did teach me a valuable life lesson.

In reality 99% of us probably won’t get to do freelance creative work while sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere in Bali — not because it’s impossible, but because of a much bigger problem. 

The thing is, if you’re like me, you cherish knowledge; you enjoy learning about new things and just constantly push to know more about life. This curiosity about how things and people work leads you to read loads of books or consume thousands of hours of video and audio programmes — trying all the time to get that edge to be better than you were yesterday, even if just for a little bit.

But the problem is, no amount of knowledge ever leads to success if it isn’t backed by massive action. And this fact tormented me for years. Even though I knew so much, even though I worked so hard, I just couldn’t seem to get any results. My problem was that what I thought of as work was actually comprised of tiny actions and enormous amounts of learning. So no wonder nothing happened.

I used to read or (more likely) watch or listen to content till 1 or 2 in the morning, and sleep long into the day. Now I wake up at 5:30 and write this blog, everyday. I used to whine about how unhealthy I was and then end up spending over a month in front of my computer, learning various (and sometimes extreme) dietary or lifestyle approaches to getting healthy without ever going for a long walk, let alone run or go to a gym more than once a month. Now I run everyday and actually feel healthier than ever!

I’m not saying stop reading and learning new things — I still listen to about a book a week, sometimes two, when I run (god bless audiobooks). But let’s stop hiding our procrastination or fear of doing the necessary things behind such virtues as knowledge and theory. 

Because being knowledgeable, smart and curious is beautiful. But not acting on that knowledge, not taking massive action on the smallest of curiosities and insights we encounter throughout our daily lives is absolutely stupid and is doing nothing more than wasting our potential. 

Truth be told, most of us know enough to be able to do the things we always wanted to do, but just don’t do enough to actually know this to be true.