5 Reasons to Take Action NOW
One procrastinator’s thoughts on making your dreams a reality
Do you ever find yourself more likely to dust behind the TV instead of sitting down and just doing the things that have been on your ‘to do’ list for 3 weeks (or 3 months)?
Hope I’m not the only one.
If you’re anything like me, you might write something down that you need to get done, put a post it reminder on your computer, send yourself and email reminder and then finally, two weeks later, realize that whatever you needed to do actually took 5 minutes to complete.
Lack of action does not just apply to the mundane tasks we face in life.
The tendency to procrastinate can lead to a serious block in taking action towards things that actually matter to us. I’m talking about the big goals you have that could totally transform your life like a career change or passion project.
There are many reasons we may not take action on our big goals. We feel our creations have to be perfect, we’re indecisive, we have an idea but a lack of momentum, or, and this is my personal favorite, we’re letting fear stop us.
I’m here to tell you that what you create does not have to be perfect, that indecisiveness is a hurdle you must jump if you want to get anywhere and that the snowball effect of action can give you the power you need to barrel through whatever fear is holding you back.
Once you understand that the most important thing you can do to transform your life is start taking small actions now, you’ll find that changing your life from one of default to one of design is that much easier.
Here’s why you should start taking action on whatever it is you’re dreaming about today.
Time is not waiting
We all know this. Our time here is limited and we can’t stop it or reverse it or control it. And sometime down the road, we’ll look back and wish that we had taken action on something sooner.
For me, it’s small things like wishing I would have paid off debt sooner, saved more money, flossed my teeth more and frickin used sunscreen. But it’s also big things like wishing I would have thought more about a career path, gotten out of that relationship and started exploring my creativity sooner.
Ask one of your grandparents (or anyone for that matter) what is one thing they wish they would have acted on sooner in life and I’m sure they’ll have a quick response.
Perhaps the trickiest thing about time is that it seems to go faster and faster as we grow older. We become so busy with work and family and other obligations that the weeks seem to fly.
Use your time wisely. If there’s something you’re dreaming about, actively make it a priority.
Just get the ball rolling
Let’s borrow Dave Ramsey’s “debt snowball” concept and apply the same thought to taking action.
The idea is that with one small action you create a spark of energy. After taking just one small step, you start to see progress. You start to feel the triumph of getting something done. That feeling gives you the energy you need to keep going and take a second step of action. More action produces more results which gives you more energy to keep accomplishing.
In Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of not Giving A F*ck, he talks about this same concept. We may dread getting a project done, like a PowerPoint for work. But once we get ourselves to open the template and give the deck a title, we feel momentum. Once the title page is done we start the skeletal outline of what we want to say. Soon, we’ll find ourselves effortlessly working on the deck for a few hours and making some real progress.
Apply this same concept to whatever you’re working towards in life. If you have a goal that seems monstrous, drill it down to the smallest action you can take.
For example, I’m currently practicing writing. Even though I have all sorts of ideas and a desire to explore writing, sometimes making myself sit down and write is incredibly difficult.
I told myself one afternoon to just write 5 sentences. That’s it! Just sit down and write 5 sentences and then if you are too tired or distracted, move on. Well, 5 sentences eventually turned into an article over the course of a few days and now I’ve moved on to trying to write something every morning. It doesn’t have to be a full article, it can be a post on Instagram or an entry in my journal if I really have no motivation.
The point is to start building a habit and building momentum.
Test it to trust it
Sometimes the reason we delay taking action is because we lack the confidence we need and instead allow fear to hold us back.
The only way to break through this kind of block is to start doing something now so that we figure it out later. The great news is, you don’t have to know what the hell you’re doing when you get started on something.
Let’s take another example from my past. In college, I spent a year abroad in Spain. During the first two weeks our housing was arranged for us through the university. But that’s all we got, two weeks. After that, we had to figure out where we were going to live all on our own.
“Terrified” doesn’t even begin to describe how our group of 20 year olds felt as our dorm room safety net came to an end. In addition to us being in a new country and speaking another language, many landlords in Spain didn’t want to rent to foreign college students. Needless to say, calling around for apartments was intimidating.
One of the best pieces of advice our program manager gave us was to find houses we didn’t want to live in and start practicing. Find a crappy apartment, give the landlord a call, and put your best Spanish accent forward. She knew that the first few times we called a landlord, we’d get scared. We’d get flustered, our nerves would take over and we’d forget how to introduce ourselves.
Inevitably, we all fumbled a few times and then began to get the hang of it and started calling apartments we were actually interested in.
If you’re in a place where lack of confidence or fear is holding you back. Find a safe space to start testing your skills, a space where the outcome doesn’t matter. Test yourself until you trust yourself to make real progress.
Fail your way to the top
I’m going to make a broad generalizing statement here and say that nobody was a success at something on their first try. Just scroll through Instagram on the hashtag #failforward or #keepgoing and you’ll see what I mean.
If you have to fail at something 100+ times in order to see success, then you better hurry up and get the failures out of the way now so you quit delaying your success.
Whatever you do is not going to be perfect and there is no point in striving for perfection. If everything you did on the first try was perfect you would learn nothing (and honestly that would be pretty boring).
Through failure, we are forced to critically look at what we’re doing and find ways to improve. Failure teaches us the resiliency we need to keep trying, to be bigger than what went wrong and not let setbacks permanently impede our progress.
Not only are you going to learn and receive feedback as you start to take action, but you’re also going to change your mind along the way. If companies are constantly rebranding and re-imagining their mission, then so can you. Your colors and your fonts don’t have to be perfect, they just have to get out there.
What is the point of having a painting or a song or an app that is almost perfect but has not been seen or heard or used by anyone? Get your work, in its imperfect condition, out in front of an audience and see what they have to say about it. You will course correct along the way.
What if your dream isn’t actually a good fit?
How often have you thought you wanted to do something, only to end up doing it and later realizing it was not the right fit for you? This could be a job you wanted or a city you wanted to move to or a relationship with someone you thought was “the one.”
So often we get stuck in our heads romanticizing something from an outsider’s perspective, thinking it is something it’s not.
The reason this idea hit me so hard when I heard it was because I realized I do this all the time.
For example, I used to look at professionals who travelled a lot for work and think how glamorous their life must be. I was jealous and I wanted that lifestyle. Yet, when I landed a role that required me to travel on a monthly basis I was exhausted, out of my routine and did not enjoy constantly being on the go.
There is no way we know whether our dreams are really meant for us until we start doing them.
What is it that you’re dreaming about right now? Do you know for certain that when you realize that dream, that you’ll feel as fulfilled as you expected?
I’ve been listening to podcasts for entrepreneurs a lot lately and thinking how wonderful a lifestyle it must be. To make your own schedule, exercise your creativity and have unlimited earning potential would be amazing.
On the flip side, the work is hard, most people describe it as a grind, there are constant challenges, tons of competition and you have to be incredibly self motivated. I have no idea if I would enjoy that lifestyle until I actually try it.
If there’s something you’re dreaming about, do yourself a favor and try on that hat. If it fits, fantastic, you’ve found something fulfilling in life. If not, even better, you can stop pretending that there is an ideal situation out there that will make you happier than where you are today.
If you keep dreaming and never take any action, you’ll never know.
The fact of the matter is that it takes a long time to get good at something. Studies show that it can take up to 60 days to build a habit and 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. With that amount of time and energy needed to make progress towards your goals, you have no time to waste.
The time to start taking action is now.
