Learning is easy. And, personally, I love learning. It’s like watching TV, but it feels better. It feels virtuous.

It’s like eating a vegetarian meal. I feel like I’m doing the right thing even when there’s lots of cheese involved. Do you know what I mean?

Today, learning is fun. Between online courses, videos, cool presentation software, and the gamification of everything, I’m massively entertained when I’m learning. I don’t mind propping up my feet and learning all day. Can I have a slice of the vegetarian pizza with that?

Maybe it’s just me? I don’t think so. I suspect you enjoy learning too. You’ve self-identified by reading this far, right?

But learning isn’t useful on its own.

As the legendary inventor Thomas Edison famously said,

Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.

You’re a genius when you build your business. You’re a genius when you take home some money to invest in your family and your future. You’re a genius when you figure out how to take your education, training, and experience and use it to serve others while producing an income. Genius takes some sweating.

There’s not much sweating involved in eating pizza and watching online educational videos. Well, that’s not entirely true. Yesterday, I sat next to a guy eating pizza who was sweating up a storm. What’s that about?

But most of us don’t perspire much when we’re learning. We’re having a pretty good time. We’re especially sure to enjoy it when we fly to a seminar on a tropical island, sit in the meeting room with a view of the beach, and kick off our flip-flops as we listen to the speakers.

Thomas Edison got it right. It’s not about inspiration. We’re inspired. We already want the outcome. We’ve got creative thoughts. We’re stimulated to make things happen. We know what needs doing. Inspiration is abundant.

It’s perspiration that’s in short supply.

It’s Go Time

Are we going to do something with what we’ve learned? Are we going to implement, execute, follow up, and drive projects to completion?

I love learning. I love for you to learn. But this is a time-limited game. The clock is ticking. The scoreboard is counting down. You know what you need to do. Now it’s time to do it.

Start. Go. Perspire. Make something happen.

Don’t worry about knowing it all in advance. Don’t worry about failure. Don’t worry about how you’ll fix it when things go wrong.

It’s a tent in the backyard with no instructions. Pick up a pole, stick it in a hole, and see whether the fabric starts to look like a tent. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, then stick the pole in a different hole. Hammer in a stake. Unzip a flap. Push, pull, tug, tie, and keep sweating. Eventually, you’ll have a tent instead of a smelly pile of canvas.

In that tent, you’ll find happiness when the kids crawl in to play. In that tent, you’ll find adventure when the wind kicks up. In that tent, you’ll find contentment and warmth when the rain starts to fall.

It all starts with you picking up a piece and making something happen. It all ends after you’ve worked up a sweat.

Learning is easy. It’s the other 99% that determines the outcome. Today, right now, this minute, it’s time for some perspiration.