How To Start Taking Action Today
Procrastination Traps
“I will do it later.”
“I’m going to scroll on Instagram for once and then jump straight into my task.”
“I’ll try to watch motivational videos to start working.”
“Maybe I’m tired. I’m going to scroll on social media until I feel rested.”
“I hope motivational videos show up right now while I’m scrolling. So I can take action.”
Those are the traps of waiting for something or waiting for motivation to come and make you start taking action. There are a lot of gurus and YouTube videos that can motivate you to take action. All of that can help you feel better about working and start taking action.
However, there’s no action in it. It’s only “procrastination” in a better way.
You are still procrastinating. Your task is still unfinished. You still haven’t achieved your goals.
Your anxiety and doubt are still there.
There’s no waiting
All of that because you are not taking the proper action towards your goals.
There’s no waiting, and then magically, your task is finished. You can’t spend your time thinking for 24 hours straight and then hoping that your article will be finished.
You need to take action, even if it’s only a small step.
You need to start getting yourself up and moving.
You need to open your book and read the chapter you are in.
You need to start taking action!
The problem of waiting
A lot of people, especially me, are falling into the trap of waiting.
We thought that by waiting for motivation to come, we would feel better. We thought that by scrolling until we felt satisfied, we would start to get motivated to take action.
Those are traps.
Social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, etc. are built to make you stay on them. The videos that you are scrolling through will become much more engaging and make you feel more lazy to start taking action or leave the app.
So, don’t think that you will be much better if you keep scrolling.
False hope of scrolling through social media
I know that you might find motivational videos and then start taking action, but do you want to be that person?
Do you want to be the person who scrolls on social media first and then hopefully takes action? Do you want to spend 3 minutes or 15 minutes unfocused because you’re changing content every reel by scrolling?
That would be a disaster in the future because you would become much more addicted to that app than to taking action.
Waiting too long will make you more stressed and more likely to procrastinate.
You will feel overwhelmed by your own mind because it will make you overthink the consequences, problems that could occur, the plan, etc.
Start taking action
So, you need to start taking action as soon as you can before your mind takes over.
I see that a lot of successful people start with action rather than waiting for action. They may talk about what idea they want to pursue, but most stories would probably continue with the action they have taken.
It’s because they have implemented their mind to take action every day. They don’t want their plan to disappear because they’re talking about their own plans.
They don’t want other people to know about their biggest business plan, so they let the talking take over the energy to achieve their plans.
It’s because speaking correlates with taking action
“The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.”
–Ryan Holiday from Ego Is The Enemy
The more you talk, the less you will take action.
Talking about your plan and what you want to do in the future will empty your energy. Then you don’t have enough energy to start taking action.
That’s why scrolling on social media and waiting for something can lead you to not take any action. It’s because you took the time to scroll on social media and overthink the plan.
Remember that you don’t have to plan that much. Sometimes, the best way to achieve your goals is to take action and plan the way ahead while taking action.
Don’t become the talkers. Start becoming the doers.
Start action now!
Taking action as soon as you can could give you the confidence and energy to start taking action. If you start taking action just for a little bit, you will start gaining more energy and power to take another step. You gain much more confidence because you just accomplished the first step.
So, in order to start action, you can try to:
- Plan the smallest action in the first step.
The smaller the action, the more you will do it.
It’s better to take action, even if it’s just for a little bit, because it could make you much more aware of what the first step feels like.
If you just think about the first step without taking action, your mind will take over, and then you will feel the first step is a big one.
- Don’t talk about your plan.
Don’t fall into the trap of talkers.
Focus on the action. Focus on becoming the doers. If you keep it secret, your mind will start saving energy for that particular plan. You will have much more confidence to take action and start making progress. So, keep it secret.
At least don’t tell people the plan most of the time.
- Detox yourself.
If you want to make it easier to take action, you might consider doing a detox for some of your bad habits.
Find something that makes it hard for you to start taking action or makes you want to procrastinate. For example, if you find it hard to take action or stay focused because of social media, start focusing to detox that bad habit.
Dopamine detox could help you become much better in the future.
30 days of detox is enough, but don’t take it too far. Give yourself some rewards. We all feel pain, but we do not need to suffer unnecessarily.
Sometimes our own reactions make us suffer more than we ought to.
Start becoming the doers.
Most of the time, we are what we do, not what we think. Our mind is so powerful that it can imagine a lot of things that are not real. Start controlling your mind by taking action because you are focusing on something that is real.
Not just from something that you think about.
Keep grinding and take action. If you find yourself procrastinating taking action, analyze the cause of that problem. Then start taking action to deal with that problem.
You might find yourself making a big first step.
It’s okay if you can take that step, but if you are procrastinating too much with that, you might want to change it into small steps.
All this takes time. Enjoy the process, and eventually you will arrive at that finish line!
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