Why everybody tells you to “take action”

We were raised to plan shit.

“Think about what you want to say, before you say it.”

“You need a plan first.. Don’t just do something.”

“Plan first, then execute.”

Try to count how many times your parents, teacher, bosses have told you this. I’ll just stand here and eat cake.

Interestingly, in the last couple of years you’ve heard everyone preach exactly the opposite.

“Become an action taker.”

“Reference experience is king.”

“Perfectionism is killing you.”

“Enough listening, start doing shit.”

“Just do it.”

These phrases have become so common in the self development realm that you could legitimately call them cliché as fuck. Every guy who ever read something about pickup on the internet will, no later than ten minutes into conversation, drop one of these lines or a variation of them.

Despite these sayings being totally worn-out, they are more important than ever — not least because outside of the self development community, the first way of thinking is still predominant.

An example from the world of nerds

One concept in Computer Science that keeps getting hammered into us is to structure our projects as far as possible before any line of code is written. There are many processes that evolved over time, for example the spiral model, that guide the development of software projects. Planning through a project like this is really useful when you have a huge team of developers: every programmer writes individual pieces of code which need to fit together at some point, so you better make sure you unambiguously set up your interfaces from the beginning on.

While we Computer Science students get prepared to think as abstract as possible like this, the first time we write code, this approach is rather counter-productive. Having some idea how to structure your source code is not a bad thing. Planning too much on the other hand just feels like reading a thick book on how to ride a bike before you actually sit on the saddle.

When I started writing and adapting code, I took the mindset of thorough preparation to heart and in my plan considered all future use cases and requirements that I could come up with. In the end, I didn’t have time keep an eye on what needed to be done still, let alone finish writing the code. My piece of software grew in width so rapidly that it got more and more impractical to go into depth. Sometimes I even rewrote huge chunks of code that were just fine, because they didn’t fit my ever-changing standards.

What I learned from this is that if you never wrote a piece of code before, thinking about these advanced concepts will just make your head spin and deter you from gaining the first baby step experiences that you desperately need. In the beginning, it’s better to just do something and unveil the big picture bit by bit.

In the last decade, with the fail fast mentality, there’s been a shift towards thinking less and doing more.

‘Doing’ over ‘thinking’

When I first heard people tell me to “just take action”, I was dumbfounded: in the spectrum of “throwing yourself into it head over heals” to “planning everything in minuscule detail, but never starting” a lot of people (especially in the academic realms) have a great tendency to the latter.

I know people (including me sometimes) who try to figure out every single problem with thinking. Problem is: if you haven’t built a website, started a business or picked up a girl on the street, you’re not going to solve the problem by sitting in your room and thinking through something that you never experienced before. Sure it’s great to do some reading beforehand and to have at least a vague plan of action, but once you have an approximate direction, it’s time to figure that shit out by doing.

This is why we have to “acquire” the action bias again. Start with the first steps first, then create and adapt a plan for the long term as you progress. Trying to figure out everything beforehand feels safer, but can dramatically stifle you. Your brain collects more and more information and thus you think that you can already practice the skill. In the worst case, you develop an ego around it before you’ve even set your hand to it. Then, when you actually start, you feel like shit because you’re actually nowhere near the level that you imagined you’d be at.

When children learn how to count, they use their fingers. If someone tried to give his advice on linear algebra to those kids, we’d all call him an idiot. Yet as grownups, we like to consume all the abstract concepts before making the first step, the bigger the better. You’re better off skipping all the theory for now, and just starting at the beginning.

Pickup

Developing social skills without knowing where you want to go will take you really, really long. In reality, the exact opposite is a more serious problem though: most people (like myself) tend to over-consume videos on pickup before we make our first approaches. We do this because it feels good to be prepared for the wild, chaotic world outside, and secretly we hope that reading more will make it more smooth and easy with the ladies by itself.

Then, when we step outside your door, we tend to notice that we can’t even ask old ladies a simple question. Different skill, same game: reading pickup advice and theorizing does not make you better, and sometimes it even makes you worse. Because of countless hours watching instructional videos on YouTube, we think that we should be able to take girls home the same night easily. Now it has become even harder because of the high expectations we set for ourselves.

What most guys need to do instead is ignore all high-level advice and learn how to talk to people first. While everyone thinks he knows how to do this, in reality I can count funny conversations between strangers that I witnessed on one hand. People just don’t talk to people, why would you know how to do it?

Once you learned how to have casual conversations with strangers, you can start worrying about the sexual part. Learn how to be a cool guy first, the getting-into-her-pants part will be a lot easier then.

Implementation

You came this far reading this article, you now maybe logically realized that you should take more action. Awesome! Just keeping this in the back of your head for the future is not enough though. You’re missing an important puzzle piece: taking action in new areas will feel uncomfortable and take some amount of willpower. For sure you can plan to pick up chicks next time you’re out. Once you’re in the bar though, you’ll realize that you a long day today and you’re too tired and you need to take a pee right now anyway and she’s ugly anyway… And you won’t do it again.

This is why being fully awake and well rested will make the job a lot easier — it’s not enough to just set aside some random time in the week. Compare it to riding a bike for the first time in your life: doing it with something else in your mind, you’ll fail and not learn anything.

Once you made your first baby steps, eventually momentum takes over. The good emotions you’ll feel advancing in your new skill will outweigh any frustration arising from your newbieness. This is when fucking up when trying something new stops affecting your self-esteem and your mood.

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