Forson said it on a whatsapp chat today, almost as a throwaway line.
So many plans, no execution.
He was not being harsh. He was describing both of us, accurately, and we both laughed because there was nothing to argue with. We have been talking about the same research papers for over a year. The same business ideas. The same collaboration that both of us genuinely want and neither of us has started.
The conversations are always good. That is the problem.
What makes it strange is that neither of us is a person who does not execute.
Forson was a military man. He ran a team at a hospital in Takoradi, which is not a setting that rewards people who talk about doing things. He has since moved to the States and rebuilt a life from scratch, which is its own kind of execution. I run a team and ship things that have deadlines and consequences attached.
Between us, there is no shortage of evidence that we can take something from nothing to finished.
So it is not a general inability. It is specific to this category of thing. And once you notice that, the usual advice stops being useful. I do not need to be told to start before I feel ready. I know. I have given that advice to other people.
Something else is going on.
Nobody is waiting for it.
Everything I execute at work has someone on the other end of it. A date, a reviewer, a meeting where its absence would be noticed. The research paper I need to work on with Forson has none of that. No one will ask me about it on Monday.
And anything with no one waiting loses to anything with someone waiting. Every time. Not because it matters less, but because urgency is louder than importance and it shows up daily.
The things I most want to build are the only things in my life with no external pressure attached. That is not a coincidence. It is the whole mechanism.
The idea is still perfect.
While it lives in conversation, the business is excellent. The paper is important. The argument is clean. Nothing has gone wrong with it yet because nothing has happened to it yet.
Start, and it becomes a real thing with real flaws. The scope is messier than it sounded. The data is harder to get. The first draft is embarrassing, as first drafts are.
Staying at the talking stage protects the idea from becoming ordinary. I do not think either of us would admit that is what we are doing. But a year of good conversations and no bad drafts tells its own story.
Talking feels like progress.
This is the part I find hardest to look at directly.
A two-hour conversation about the business produces almost the same satisfaction as two hours of work on it. You end the call energised. Something happened. You both feel closer to it than you did that morning.
Nothing moved. But it felt like it did, and the feeling is what we keep going back for.
That is why this can run for years without either person sounding the alarm. We are not avoiding the work and feeling bad about it. We are doing something that feels like the work and feeling good about it.
And with two people, nobody owns it.
This one is particular to a shared plan.
When it is just me, the failure is mine and I know it. When it is the two of us, there is always a version in my head where I am waiting for him, and presumably a version in his head where he is waiting for me. Neither of us is stalling. We are both being considerate. The result is identical to both of us stalling.
A shared plan without a named owner is not a plan. It is an agreement to keep discussing something.
I am writing this without a solution, because I do not have one yet and I would rather say that than perform one.
What I have is the observation, which is at least new to me. The things I have not done are not the things I care least about. They are the things with no one waiting, that are still perfect, that I get to keep enjoying in conversation, and that neither of us has agreed to own.
Every one of those conditions is comfortable. Together they are a trap you can sit in for years.
Forson and I could have another call anytime soon. I suspect it will be a good conversation. This time I would like it to be a short one on talking and more on execution.
