Turning thoughts into action

Here are some neat insights from Do Lectures founder and co-pilot David Hieatt. The new year is a good time for focusing on action for the year ahead. These tips might help:

The path of a Doer.

Set yourself a goal.

Set yourself a deadline.

Define success at the start.

Make a plan to make it happen.

Build a team to help you.

Get the team to sign up, head and heart, to the plan.

Understand there will be hurdles, barriers. Accept them. But defeat them.

Work each day toward getting things done. A little can do a lot.

Keep the end goal in your mind at all times.

Understand the importance of your energy. Your stubbornness. Your persistence.

Half way through a project is always the lowest point. You are neither at the start, nor at the end. Energy dips, morale is low. Have a day off.

The next day remind yourself why you started it in the first place.

Focus. Focus. Focus. But focus on the most important thing.

Tell the world what you are doing.

Tell the world your deadline.

Celebrate progress. Any progress.

Never give up.

Look back at how far you have traveled. It will surprise you.

It will also tell you that you are closer to your goal than ever before.

Keep going.

Then one day, after many, many days, you will complete your goal.

You got there in the end.

Your words and your deeds are one. Most people in life are just talkers. But you are a doer. Well done.

The Richest Room on Earth

A space deep beneath the ground, surrounded by metre-thick concrete walls. Airtight vault doors with electronic passwords protect access, with further heavy steel doors inside. Protective clothing is essential for access to the Richest Room on Earth.

The room is 50 square metres at minus 20c - a space that contains the seeds of 25,000 plant species. It’s humbling to share space with the richest biodiversity on the planet. Kew have a billion seeds in their care and have systems in place to protect them for a couple of thousand years. Maybe then, civilisation will know how to look after them in a restored natural environment.

Fellow Doer Giles Hutchings had invited me to spend the day at Wakehurst in Sussex, meeting the custodians of the Millennium Seed Bank, the impressive, knowledgeable and passionate botanists and scientists on a mission to collect and preserve for the future, seed samples from 25% of the plants on the planet. It’s a job of importance beyond words, with a ‘business as usual’ path that’s pointing towards the loss of half of life on earth by the end of the century. Careless.

Waking people to take action and reverse at least some biodiversity loss is going to take some doing. Doing like running Do Lectures next year at Kew Gardens, Eden and the Garden of Wales, and engaging hundreds of thousands, and a million or two more, on a journey of change a . Drop a line if you want to play and get involved. There’s a lot to Do.