This is a post I wrote that originally appeared as a guest post on The Polyglot Dream website. I though it might be useful to many of you, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. I've also shared in on Tynan's blog. Enjoy!

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Bob and Jack were two lumberjacks, each given an area of about 10 acres of thick, old growth forest to cut for the year. They were each paid a fixed amount of money for each tree cut, and both had the same equipment and experience in this field of work. Incentives to finish the work faster included a bonus pay for the person that could finish cutting down all 10 acres of forest first.

At the beginning of the year, in early January, Bob was motivated and full of energy, ready to cut down these trees faster than anybody else. His axe was slightly old and rusty, just as Jack’s, but it had served him well for many years. Although Bob was a lazy man, just as the average Joe, he knew his motivation could get him far. And so he began working in earnest, cutting down his first little tree in a matter of minutes. Bob liked to start with easy tasks first, build up his momentum, and keep going strong for long periods of time. It had worked fairly well for him in the past. On the first day, Bob managed to cut 10 trees, and proceeded to earn a fairly decent sum of money. Bob was, for the most part, willing to work hard when he could see immediate results.

You probably get a lot of cool ideas, thoughts that juice you up and feel Just Right for you and your circumstance. I am willing to bet you typically write down the idea, talk about it with friends, think about  it for a few days, then.... nothing. You forget about it or it loses its lustre. You move on. You probably have a mental shelf full of never-wases and could-have-beens, ideas that sparkled for a short while but never made it.

The idea is a seed. You need to plant it and germinate it before it's too late. If you don't - if you leave the seed on the shelf - it will start to lose its life and take rot. An idea not acted upon will seem dull two weeks later.

Whenever you feel juiced up by a brilliant new idea, immediately open a text file and dump everything you can think.of pertaining to that idea. Pack that initial inspiration into solid ground.

Paradoxically, this will rob you of that initial juice. You will feel "meh" about the idea for a little while. BUT... and this is big, you now have germinated the seed and over the coming weeks you will notice it growing. You will receive more and more inspiration and follow-on ideas and your text file will fill up. People will start suggesting things you could add.

This is when you go public with your idea and start saying self-concept building things like "I am currently writing a book / programming an app / starting a blog / etc". Because it will be true then, and it will fuel you.

"Language rules the world. Fates of nations and empires rest soundly upon the word, and the written word reigns above them all. Becoming a better writer means becoming a better thinker. It means advancing your career prospects. And -- most importantly -- it gives you a way to connect with yourself and others in a monumentally creative fashion.

Today's deal puts you on a path to mastering prose with a personal session and writing workshop with Vasily Andreev.

Writing workshops can be quite expensive for people to attend, and opportunities to get free critiques on their writing can be difficult once you're outside of the academic world. How many of us are surrounded by authors and scholars?

And yet, being able to write better can change your life.

I have always loved the idea of achieving goals and becoming successful in life. Success can mean lots of different things to different people but to me it's about setting a goal, working at it and more importantly finishing it. You might think, “duh...obvious isn't that everyone's goal?” Well no, I think most people have dreams of becoming successful, but it's a general idea to them. It's like being wealthy or maybe famous, but with no clear direction on how to get to that point in their lives. That is why, at least to me, success is about goal setting and goal achieving. Doing what others don't want to do.

Of course this is easier said then done. However, for me it was a VERY hard thing to do. Sure, I had a clear idea of what I wanted and needed to do ,but when it came to putting in the hard work I lied to myself with excuses. I put work off till later (meaning never), and I went to watch TV or played video games, even though I was VERY upset about my life and really wanted it to change. I was just too lazy to do anything about it.

I realized that I was trying to be a person like Sebastian, a goal crusher...a goal terminator...a goal (okay you get the point). But that just wasn't me, and in fact when I did try to work like Sebastian it actually caused me to get more depressed and play video games even MORE! You see, how can you be expected to run a 5K when you have never put on a pair of running shoes and gone for a run? So, what I did was build systems to deal with this lazy problem.

So I've crossed off two of my five goals for this month (http://sebastianmarshall.com/community/what-are-aiming-to-get-done-in-october), and I'm working hard on the third right now.

That goal is to start a consulting business. (My long-term goal is still to build a product business, but I realised for someone in my position, a decent chance at building a $million company is better than a 1% chance at a $billion company). Anyway, since many in this community are successful entrepreneurs (and unlike Hacker News, it seems like there's more consultants here), it'd be awesome to get some advice from you clever people :)

So far, I've built a basic website: http://thectonetwork.com/ (note: please don't link this elsewhere just yet, I'm not ready to publicly launch), and recruited some of my smartest friends. Right now my focus is on testing out the concept with potential clients.

Some questions:

1. Does the basic concept make sense? (Allowing business guys with money to 'rent-a-CTO'). Is it something you'd use?