Editor’s note: Kyle Eschenroeder’s “10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action” is one of our favorite articles ever published on the Art of Manliness. And based on its traffic, it’s one of yours as well, becoming one of our most popular articles of all time. If you enjoyed that, you’re going to love this new book written by him. In the same inspiring and motivating vein, it contains 116 short, punchy “devotionals” on the nature and importance of action. If you’d like to read these meditations at your leisure, including offline, you’re going to want to download the book in PDF form. Grab your FREE copy simply by signing up for Kyle’s and our email newsletter.
“Precept is a very good thing, but to my thinking an ounce of practical energy is worth any amount of precept without action.” –Theodore Roosevelt
There’s a kind of listless, restless, low-grade anxiety permeating our society today. There are many causes from a culture-wide perspective: over-stimulation, declining levels of trust in those around us and our institutions, the displacement of human workers with machines at increasing speeds, lack of central values, proliferating lifestyle options (and social media to toggle through them all), collapsing narratives, and many, many more.
It seems impossible to have a worthwhile idea that others haven’t had already. It seems impossible to say something that hasn’t been said. It seems impossible to have a strong opinion on things that matter. It seems impossible to decide on which course to take. It seems impossible to find purpose — to find meaningful work and meaningful relationships. So we focus on TV shows and sporting events. (Or we turn our politics into something as trivial.)
The way out of this feeling of confusion and meaninglessness on a societal level is difficult. It involves shifts in our economics, collective narratives, and politics that are nearly impossible to envision, much less implement.
Luckily for us, individuals have a much simpler solution: action.
We’ve lost sight of what it means to take action. Not to mention what it means to take right action.
Taking action is not flailing around purposelessly or keeping yourself busy while avoiding the real problem.
What it is…well, that’s what the rest of this book will explore.
To begin reorienting to a life of action requires something which at first appears to be non-action: meditations. We have to contemplate what action is and understand how it plays out in our lives.
We have to learn not only its more direct, “blunt force” expressions with which we’re most familiar, but also the subtleties of action: imagination, reflection, and waiting can all be some of its most powerful forms. At the same time, we can appear to be doing all sorts of things externally without actually taking a meaningful action. As Thoreau asked, “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”
Action is the surest path not only to reaching goals, but to finding the kind of meaning and purpose we desire. It is a kind of back door to the promises of so many philosophies and religions. When we are action-oriented, we forget to notice the missing pieces of our modern world: anomie fades away, change doesn’t seem so wildly fast, the news becomes white noise.
I wrote these meditations on action for myself a couple years ago because I needed them. When I wrote them I was feeling stuck. Between projects, between relationships, between exercise regimens — nothing seemed worthwhile. I was facing a crippling existential crisis. The only relief came when I lowered my expectations for my abstract mind and focused on what was actually going on. This didn’t always mean doing different things (although often it did), it meant being in a more active way.
I have visited this book regularly since then to get recentered and reinvigorated — it works every time. I hope it will have the same effect on you.
If you’re experiencing crippling paralysis or acutely anxious restlessness, try reading the book all the way through to jumpstart movement with a new mindset and in a new direction.
Or feel free to pick this up whenever you need a kick in the pants. The passages are short and designed to spur you to powerful action.
I recommend downloading the PDF and having it available on your phone so that you can open it up whenever you have a couple minutes to kill. It might just be more helpful than Twitter or Instagram. (Although I’m always down to tweet @kyleschen!)
A Note to the Reader: Defining Abstraction and Action
A quick note on words before we begin. I’ll use “abstraction” primarily to discuss “over abstraction.” Abstraction is useful but, as you will see, it’s less useful than it seems.
Abstraction is a type of thinking, the type that considers ideas more important than events.
“Action” is used here synonymously with “right action.”
Right actions are bold and deliberate. They carry the potential for flow and mindfulness. Right actions are virtuous. They bring us closer to understanding reality while bringing our imaginations to life.
Action is endlessly searching for the right lifehack to finally make you productive; right action is getting to work. Action is eating a Twinkie; right action is eating chicken breasts and broccoli. Action is punching someone because they root for a different sports team; right action is punching someone who’s beating up someone weaker.
Right actions aren’t usually grand. They can be small. Brushing your teeth is an action. Brushing your teeth mindfully is right action.
Part I: Philosophy as Action
“The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know.” –Marcus Aurelius
How To Live?
Action focuses this philosophical question into practice by transforming abstract reasoning into concrete reality.
Worthwhile philosophers are connected to reality.
Theories do no good unless they can reliably guide action – in our thinking and our physical actions.
Twenty minutes of meditation will show you what hours of reading the Bhagavad Gita never could. The concept of virtue is useless unless it drives your behavior.
You can never know if a theory is practical until you put it into action.
When you take a step forward you can truly grok a theory. You can feel what was being talked about.
And then, you know whether or not the idea works for you. In other words, you now understand the only thing that matters.
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school… it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” –Henry David Thoreau
Inaction Is Expensive
If we try and fail, we see the cost. The number of hours and dollars spent on the project. We feel the pain when it doesn’t work. The embarrassment is acute.
This makes inaction tempting.
We don’t consider refusing to choose as a choice. We think we’re safe if we don’t expose ourselves to failure. We don’t appreciate the consequences of inaction because they are slow, chronic, and less obvious. That’s what makes them dangerous.
You don’t get to escape pain.
The pain that comes with action is acute, scars you, and makes you grow.
The pain that comes from inaction is low-grade, softens you, and decays your soul.
You Are Not “Waiting To Live”…
You are waiting to act.
That stagnation, low-grade frustration, and perpetual exhaustion comes from your refusal to act.
The reason you don’t feel alive is because you’ve worn yourself out thinking about things instead of actually doing them. You haven’t moved because your habit is to flinch away from action.
You unconsciously refuse to see the falsity in your old beliefs, your old fears, and your old habits.
Action means pushing into a new way of living that you have not imagined before. It means pushing through what you’re scared of into what you couldn’t even think to be scared of.
It means pushing through all that, seeing that it wasn’t as bad as you thought, then doing it again.
Committing to action doesn’t end once you get somewhere. It means you never stop pushing.
What Is Up to Us Isn’t Up to Us
We can head in a certain direction. We can avoid the paths we know are bad. We can adopt a philosophy for living.
We cannot know what will happen. We cannot live in (or predict) the future. We cannot choose the choices we’re faced with
We can’t tame Fate. We can’t predict the future.
All we can know is how we will act when the rubber meets the road.
We can train ourselves be more prepared.
We can’t change what’s happened. Only what we do now.
Books About Heaven
Steven Pressfield relates a New Yorker cartoon in his (short) book Do the Work: “A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.”
He’s perplexed. He’s considering the book over the actual experience. It’s funny because it’s absurd… and because we know we’d have the same consideration.
Why would we deny ourselves direct experience?
Action is going to Heaven. Abstraction is reading about going to heaven.
(Reading a book can be Heaven when it’s a primary activity.)
Acting Is Dirty
Creation is inherently messy. The Big Bang was an explosion that created everything we know. You were born into this world bloody while your mother endured the worst pain of her life.
Modern movies, video games, and novels generally follow a clean narrative. We might not know exactly what will happen, but we know the general contours. The hero will be challenged, he will either be victorious or temporarily beaten. Either way he’ll be redeemed by the end of the story. Life doesn’t offer this guarantee.
Honest action won’t take you on a straight path. It may not make sense to you or those around you at first.
Instead, it will straighten your posture on any path you’re on. You won’t fear what others fear. You won’t regret what the others will.
You’ll have scars and remember the lessons they taught you. Others will look fragile because while they kept their training wheels on you let yourself fall down, endure the pain, and do it again.
“If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy…”
“… but where are they.” –Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
The Spartans knew they would meet the enemy and fight with courage. They didn’t ask for unnecessary information.
You don’t need to either.
Gather the minimum information you need to begin.
Then, before you think you’re ready, begin.
This will provide you more useful information than any amount of abstract research ever could.
Part II: Looking at Action
Motivation Follows Action
Our fatal mistake is waiting to be motivated before we take action.
Action motivates.
I don’t feel like working out until I get my blood flowing. I’m too tired to have sex until we’ve begun. I don’t want to go to the party until I’m there.
Motivation will follow if you have the balls to go without them.
Act to Become
How you perceive the world changes the way you act in it. This is the basis of a thousand psychology books. Neuroplasticity, the placebo effect, neuro-linguistic programming, and countless other findings show us that our internal world shapes our external world. This is true, and, like all good truths, so is its opposite:
Your internal world is changed by the external world.
Taking action out there shapes our “in here.”
You don’t need to convince yourself you are a healthy eater to eat well.
You don’t need to convince yourself you are a playboy in order to ask that girl out.
You don’t need to convince yourself you are a filmmaker in order to shoot a film.
Stop treating perceptions as primary. Let labels conform to your actions.
Instead of waiting to feel like working towards who you’d like to be, act in line with that desire, and the feelings with follow.
Act to become.
Experience Is the Best Teacher
When Mother told you the fire would be painful, did you believe her? Did you become adept at basic arithmetic when your teacher gave the lesson or after hours of practice? Did talking about the birds and the bees save you from fumbling around awkwardly?
It’s better if we can avoid mistakes than make them all on our own. It’s better if we can learn not to touch the fire by the examples of others.
Sometimes we can’t though. A lot of times. Sometimes, in fact, it’s better that we don’t.
The Most Valuable Resource
If you want to make something (a movie, book, business, painting, website), make it. Technology is cheap.
If you don’t, chances are you were more attracted to the title than the activity.
The scarcity in our world is in initiative, not the resources to produce.
A Good Future Does Not Depend on a Perfect Visualization
It depends on long strings of right actions.
Some scientists and philosophers say we don’t know anything for sure. Every scientific “law” is just waiting to be disproved.
If we can’t be sure of gravity (and Einstein wasn’t), then why do we feel the need to infuse our predictions of the future with such faith?
(The only thing I can predict with any certainty is how I will act, and that is only possible if I practice right action daily.)
You don’t know where you’ll be in a year for sure, but you can push in a certain direction.
You may not know what you want to do with your life. You may be somewhat certain you want to be healthy, though. Nobody has ever regretted eating well and exercising. Your future is almost guaranteed to be better if you do those things.
It doesn’t guarantee you health (you may break your back or get cancer) or happiness, but it will give you a much better chance at both.
“Anything can work.”
Alfonso Cuaron, director of Gravity, said that at a roundtable discussion with David O. Russell, Steve McQueen, and Ben Stiller. The directors were discussing methods and techniques; you could see Cuaron getting frustrated.
As they were attempting to grasp at what makes a great director great, Alfonso understood that there is no answer.
Sure, they all try really hard. Beyond that there is no formula.
Cuaron understood that every situation is different. It’s less about rules and more about posture. You can’t make 2001: A Space Odyssey twice, but you can make something as great.
Lean into the thing and see what works for this specific instance. What worked last time may not work this time.
As you test, follow what works. It may not agree with accepted wisdom. It might be the opposite of what you were told to expect. Follow what is working now.
Action Is Wild
Zoo animals get depressed.
A caged lion has longer life expectancy, more wealth, and a more predictable career than his wild counterpart.
Yet his mind is dull because there is no danger. He moves slowly because he is no longer hungry.
We aimed at comfort for ourselves and, when we got it, gave it to wild animals.
It’s not working out for either party. What looks comfortable, isn’t.
Comfort
The best life isn’t the most comfortable one. Yet that’s where our goals tend to lie.
Comfort causes depression and anxiety.
Action throws us into discomfort. It makes us exert effort and try out the unknown.
Consistent action pushes you into a life where you don’t have to borrow from the Kardashian’s drama, where the question of meaning in life is answered by effort, where time works for us instead of against us.
All you have to do is push past the momentary flinch — the acute discomfort you feel when you grow.
Action Is the Path
Action appears to reveal paths. On closer inspection, though, it is the path.
Action is faith in the present moment.
Action allows us to see beyond what we could see standing still.
Action pulls the internal and external worlds into harmony. Constant feedback is required to make sense of the deluge of information coming at us. This middle (internal-external) path does not reject reality, it accepts it and sees how malleable it is. The middle path does not fear the present — it understands impermanence. The middle path does not judge, it knows.
The Map Is Not the Territory
We need maps to understand where to go next. We need a wider perspective. The more information on a map, though, the less it shows.
A map of your neighborhood provides much different information than a globe.
A walk down your street provides a much different experience than looking at the street on a map.
Looking at the map can help you plot a course. It can help you know what streets to expect. That’s it, though.
It doesn’t tell you anything about the houses, trees, or wild cats you will pass. It doesn’t tell you about the kids who are going to sell you lemonade. It can’t know that your future lover lives in the house with the bird feeder.
You’ve got to go on the walk to find these things.
A map is helpful; awareness is imperative.
Action Is Change
My great-grandfather gave me this advice after I graduated high school: “Don’t change.” He wasn’t kidding.
Talk about setting a kid up for failure.
That remark changed me. It was the first time I considered staying still as a goal.
It’s scary.
Partly because you’re aiming away from anything new, partly because it’s impossible.
Failing in Action
When you fail while acting it isn’t a failure at all. It’s process. You can’t escape the benefits: experience, strength, knowledge, relationships, etc. This kind of failure creates new options, new potentials.
The failure of inaction is much more insidious. It isn’t immediately as painful and so it is much more seductive. The downside is much more serious: you get none of the benefits of action and you are faced with knowing that you are a coward — that you never even tried.
Bold action may always scare you, as it should, but never as much as the alternative: timidity. Inaction is the cancer that will eat away at your soul until it is gone. That’s scarier than anything.
Action Is Revolutionary
Nearly all the things that shake the world come out of nowhere. A boring (looking) scientist or businessman hard at work changes things far more than someone sitting around with a mission statement and a proclamation to change the world.
While 100 “entrepreneurs” online are busy updating their profiles and posting links to business-y articles on their Facebook page there is one entrepreneur (without a Facebook page) with his head down getting work done.
You can spend your time arguing about national politics or getting involved in your local government. One pleases the ego, the other makes a difference.
Action looks boring. It’s often not loud while it’s happening. But the result is frequently revolutionary.
Action Is Ungraspable
We won’t be able to understand all our actions all the way, right away. Sometimes we have to do things and we don’t know why until years later. We’re sitting having a beer with an old friend and in the middle of the conversation we get hit with it. So that’s why I had to do that.
Action takes faith. That it will make sense later. That the lessons you learned here matter. We are conscious of very little of what we understand.
Do you think, “I better not touch the stove” when you know it’s hot? No. You understand it so thoroughly that you don’t require an explanation. Lessons learned through action have this kind of depth.
No human can explain his or her life completely. Yet we go to great lengths to do just that.
The most liberating response to, “Why did you do that?”
Because I had to.
You’ve Already Decided
Studies have shown that we decide before we’re conscious of making the decision. We have decided to eat the last bite of cake before we even think about picking up the fork.
Our conscious awareness of the decision is followed by reasons. I chose this because…
And after that it’s a story we’re telling ourselves.
Action doesn’t try to justify itself. Taking action means you’re not explaining action. It means that you are adjusting course based on what is happening — not based on stories about what is happening.
Part III: Non-Action as Action
Action as Bearing Pain
In Steven Pressfield’s telling of the battle of Thermopylae — made famous by excitable high school teachers and Zach Snyder’s 300 — Leonidas, the Spartan king, did not select the 300 soldiers based on their courage. Instead, he selected them based on the courage of their women. The ones who would be staying home.
If the mothers and wives collapsed in grief when their sons and husbands didn’t come home then all of Sparta would fall. Their weakness would spread and sink the city-state.
Leonidas knew the importance of the inner battle as well as the external one.
3 Things That Aren’t Actions
Perhaps we can get a better understanding of what right actions are if we look at what they are not.
Ruminating. The thought spirals that are useless. They are pure perception without any progress.
Useless repetition. A bad habit, an ineffective action, constant empty promises. Some things benefit from repetition (exercise, healthy eating, playing piano) and some do not (every mistake we make). It takes action to change course once we’ve created a rut for ourselves — inaction allows us to keep rolling through it.
Retreat. When we flinch and don’t push back we’ve refused to take action. This is the automatic response to approaching a girl at a bar, selling your services for the first time, or offering up a controversial answer at a meeting. There is something deep in us that pulls back, that tells us to stay seated and shut up. Action overcomes it.
Action Is Waiting
The most difficult action to take is often non-action. Not stillness out of laziness, but out of self-discipline.
Waiting to look at your phone until your date is over. Waiting for the other guy to stumble in a negotiation. Waiting to work out until your injury is healed.
The sniper must be patient. Warren Buffett says he makes mistakes every time he is bored with too much money.
The Spartans would wait for their opponents to charge. They would stand still while the opposing army charged yelling and screaming. They would wait and then slowly, methodically, move into the charging force. The Spartan’s energy was focused and tore into their scattered opponents.
Patience is an action. Laziness is not.
Meditation as Action
Meditation connects the mind to reality.
It is pure action. There is no frustration of what should be done. There is only doing.
Meditation is a right action that acts as a catalyst for more right action.
How do you meditate?
One way: Sit down. Set a timer for twenty minutes. Close your eyes. Feel the sensation of air flowing in and out of your nostrils and on your upper lip. Each time your mind wanders bring it back to the sensation. Do not get upset when your mind wanders; the point is to become more aware of your thoughts, not get rid of them. And whatever you do, don’t get upset at being upset.
Consumption as Action
There is a certain amount of research you must do on something in order to effectively take action. How much? Always less than you think.
How do you know if you are reading as an action or as a way to avoid action? Are you ready to change your behavior if what you read provides a compelling enough argument to do so?
Are you engaged in the reading like you would be in a conversation with your most interesting friend?
If you can feel changes taking place within you, then you are reading as an action. If you feel like you’re having a conversation with the author, then you are reading as an action. When you are immersed, you are reading as action.
Ironically, many people are more active while reading a fictional story they enjoy than a “practical” book that is boring to them.
In Your Bones
I went on a free ten-day meditation retreat. There was no reading, writing, or talking aloud. Only eating sparsely, walking, and meditating.
Before going I had read plenty about meditation. I studied Eastern religions. I hung out with yogis. I even meditated twenty minutes a day.
But it wasn’t until I went to the retreat that I really understood what it was all about.
Before the retreat I understood these ideas intellectually. Afterwards, I knew them in my bones.
All the lessons that were clichés became authentic.
Through practice (praxis!), theory becomes reality. While the theory provided a framework for understanding, the experiences could have stood alone. The theory, not so much.
Relaxation as Action
Relaxation, when done properly, is right action.
It is the recharge you need after vigorous action.
When you become antsy you’ve been relaxing too long. If you were antsy going in, you shouldn’t be relaxing.
Your muscles need to repair after you work out. If you work them too hard too often they will stop getting stronger. They will get smaller and weaker. The recovery is as important as the workout.
Your mind does not stop learning when you rest. In fact, your subconscious will never get to work if you don’t shut your conscious mind up for a minute. Creative answers always come when we are at rest.
Relaxation doesn’t mean vacation. It may be casual reading or a slow, long walk.
Einstein was famous for solving problems while playing his violin.
Of course, most violinists don’t solve physics problems. The difference is that Einstein would work on a problem intensely before playing. Then he would give his mind over to playing (which was easy for him, he began playing as a boy) while his subconscious went to work sorting out what his conscious had been working on.
Relaxation can only be useful and pleasurable when it’s needed. Vigorous action followed by regular respite.
Imagination Is Action
Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist. He used imagination to come up with theories (and then would usually make a suggestion of an experiment for other scientists to do). Einstein’s imagination was not meant as an escape from reality (although it was an escape from personal drama), but meant to deepen his connection to reality. If his ideas were disproved, as many were, he moved on.
Nikola Tesla had a similar methodology:
“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”
Do not confuse this kind of mental work as daydreaming. The imagination is working with a goal of bringing its creations into the physical world. Einstein and Tesla were working to create structures in their minds so that they could export them from their minds.
Are you visualizing something that you will attempt to construct, or are you living in the abstract because you’re afraid?
Visualization Is Action
“I don’t think I could possibly do a jump, or especially a new trick, without having this imagery process. For me, this is so very key to the athlete I have become.” –Emily Cook, Olympic aerialist skier
This is action in the mind.
Visualization empowers Olympians like Emily to execute under the high-stress environment in which she competes.
You can never fully visualize the future. Of course the event never goes exactly as athletes plan. There are too many factors to take into account. Randomness doesn’t retreat — it continues to throw obstacles in their way.
But visualization creates a space for athletes to more effectively respond.
It can do the same for us.
Visualization creates neural connections that can change the way we see situations and, subsequently, how we answer back.
It is invisible action pushing visible action.
Tonight, try seeing yourself waking up doing your first productive task — be it working out, meditating, etc. — and see if it’s easier to get going than most mornings.
Observation Is Action
We can benefit from the actions of others as well as our own.
When you look around you can see all sorts of things. If you want to learn about getting girls, go to the bar and observe interactions. If you want to learn about giving a great speech, watch presidential speeches or watch a TED talk for its delivery instead of its content.
If you want to start a business it’s more useful to mimic an entrepreneur you admire than reading a book on the subject (both are useful). If you want to get fit, watch to see what the most ripped person in the gym is doing and try that.
It’s best to go to the source. Don’t ask the Olympian how they’re so good. They probably don’t know (but they definitely think they do). Instead, watch them. How do they hold themselves? What is their practice regimen? What is their diet? What are their beliefs?
Bittersweet Epiphanies
The sad part of an epiphany is realizing that you were not the first person to have it. Not even close. (This is referring to wide-reaching epiphanies rather than epiphanies about an individual situation.)
Philosophers have been saying that for thousands of years. There are fifty other startups doing nearly the same thing. There are already three hundred books written on the topic.
Your chance to be unique is in the actions you take after the epiphany. Nobody will be able to execute like you.
The power of an epiphany is determined by the power of the actions that follow.
Part IV: Doing Action
Some Actions Have More Leverage
Habits. Most of our life is shaped by our habits. Our eating habits, thinking habits, working habits, and every other default we have. When you focus on shaping your default actions you multiply the effect of the action. For instance, the first day you eat well it will be hard but will feel good. The twentieth day you eat well it will be easier. The fiftieth day you won’t even be thinking about it.
Environment. Some actions create a more healthy environment. Making a new group of friends may change things forever. Putting up a poster reminding you to take action today will change your life far into the future. Cleaning your desk will make you more sane for a week (or until it gets destroyed again). These are actions that you will benefit from daily.
Experiments. If you consciously measure the outcome of an action then it will matter more. You can learn better from actions that are meant to test a hypothesis. Remember, “What gets measured gets managed.”
The Harp
When you learn to play a song on a harp you know that you will pluck some strings and not others. There is a correct order to play the strings in order to get the sound you want.
You have to play some wrong strings before you play just right ones.
You don’t fear the wrong strings, you just know that they aren’t useful for achieving your goal.
Don’t fear the wrong actions, just work patiently towards finding the right ones.
Don’t fear the negative thought, just work patiently towards the more productive one.
The Half-Way Glass
There’s been a lot of concern with a certain glass over the years. It’s 50% filled with water.
Some people think it is half-full, others see half-empty.
There’s a room full of people arguing about the fullness or emptiness of the thing. A kid walks in, drinks what’s there, and then fills it up. The room goes quiet.
That’s the only person taking action.
Intelligent Ignorance
Every teenager believes he knows everything and every veteran scientist knows he knows next-to-nothing.
We stagnate when we think we need to know everything (the exception being that overconfident teen). When we feel we need complete information we won’t make a move.
When we take action we accept that it might not work.
We accept our ignorance without fearing it.
Asymmetric Outcomes
If I practiced piano I could go a long time with no progress (longer than normal, my musical talent is horrifyingly close to zero) and then one day something would click and there would seem to be an instant increase in skill.
There are few activities with a perfect relationship between progress and perspiration over the long term. Plateaus are a fact of life.
Anybody who has remained committed to an activity for a long period of time knows that you go through plateaus. It doesn’t look like you’re making any progress, and by any measurement you aren’t, but then one day something clicks and you break through to a whole new level of performance.
These plateaus are the most difficult to continue through. It doesn’t seem as if our effort is getting us anywhere.
We get worried that the plateau doesn’t end — that it’s actually just a long, low peak.
It’s important that we focus on the action, the process.
Maybe there is something holding you back. Maybe you need another point of view. Maybe, in fact, quitting is the best action to take.
Ask others in the field, “Did you also experience a plateau like this?”
Heroic Action
Ancient heroes were judged by their actions instead of the results.
Imagine your favorite fictional character acting just as they do, but failing. Would that take anything away from the person? Of course not.
Much of life is random — including extreme success.
Sometimes the dragon burns down our house while we’re sleeping. Sometimes we get caught in a crossfire. In fact, there are few obstacles we can know for sure.
Do not let this randomness (unfairness) of results wear you down or induce you to cut ethical corners.
Focus on acting in the way you know you should, regardless of the circumstances.
Focus on the actions you take, not on their outcome or payoff.
The payoff may give you information on what to do next, but not on who you should be next.
“Successful People ”
There are thousands of bloggers filling in that blank space every day.
Millions click the headline hoping for the answer. The one that was missing the last hundred times they clicked a nearly identical headline.
Successful people are humans. Meaning they do all the wrong things: they ignore the emotional needs of their spouses, they abandon their children, they go insane, they procrastinate, they eat poorly and drink too much, they have negative thoughts, they waste money, they’re shortsighted, they’re everything you are and worse.
Read a couple biographies. Walt Disney chain-smoked, is rumored to have sympathized with Nazis, and was a terrible boss. Steve Jobs would tell an employee his idea was terrible and then present it as his own the next day. Warren Buffett drinks five Cherry Cokes a day, lived with another woman while married, and refused to acknowledge his son’s adopted kids as family members. Quentin Tarantino nearly drove his friend to suicide because he was such a competitive movie buff.
Everybody screws up. Everybody, for that matter, is screwed up.
Nobody is winning because they’re perfect. They’re winning because they have consistently taken action, they have remained focused, and, more often than you’d think, they got lucky.
Stop worrying about having all your ducks in a row, “getting your life together,” or whatever else it is.
Today move in the direction you want to move in. Take action.
The world around you is a mess, have fun with it.
Reactivity
Right action is not reactive, it is proactive. It is independent of others’ immediate demands on your time.
Checking email, Facebook, and Twitter upon waking up sets you up for a day of reactivity. Starting the day with your own creative labor sets you up for a day of action.
What’s the most important thing you could work on today? Why aren’t you putting that before everything else?
It’s hard. But only until you begin.
Ritual
When something has survived for thousands of years, there is a reason. There is a deeper rationality to what seems irrational.
Rituals — religious, philosophical, creative, and otherwise — can often provide peace, strength, and inspiration much more potently than talking, reading, or statically thinking.
Why?
Rituals are based in action.
They create a movement or symbolism that we can attach our ideas to.
Rituals are essentially habitual movements that bring us to a certain headspace. Consistent actions affecting the mind.
Many great creative minds have relied on rituals. Stephen King discusses his:
“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from eight to eight thirty, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places.”
Rituals are poetic habits. They serve a purpose that may not make sense to the reasoning mind — but is undeniable to the heart.
Stepping Forward
You must be willing to change everything on the evidence of new information (or even a gut instinct). As Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”
The legendary investor George Soros is known for holding a strong opinion on a certain market and then taking a position in the opposite direction the next day. He’s not afraid to change his mind when new information is available.
Each action you take provides a new view. You may discover something about the world (or yourself) that completely changes the course of action you must take. You change and the world changes. Don’t fear contradicting yourself.
How do we avoid the fear of being misunderstood — that feeling that we are a traitor to some idea or plan? We act into it.
As soon as you dive into the new path of action you answer all of the worries you had. Is this really the correct path? Well, it’s your new best guess — try and find out.
Do not get stuck at crossroads. Remember that you have all the information that you will have from where you stand, then pick.
There may be no right answer but by now you know the one definitely wrong answer: standing still.
Satisfice
Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon postulated that people can be divided into two groups: Maximizers and Satisficers.
Whether they’re choosing a restaurant, college, or spouse, maximizers are obsessed with always making the very best choice and trying to attain the very fullest happiness.
Satisficers are happy with any sufficient option.
You’d think Maximizers would be happier, since they spend so much time and energy on making the best possible choice.
But they’re not.
Even after they make their choice, they agonize that maybe it wasn’t the right one after all.
Satisficers, meanwhile, have moved on with their life and are enjoying what they chose.
Deciding is progress.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Warren Buffett Didn’t Have A Plan
Warren Buffett was obsessed with making money his whole life. It became his favorite game. Many focus on making money to buy things; these people often lead extremely unhappy lives. They can never have enough.
Warren Buffett is insatiable as well, but his focus is on the game. Therefore he could never play enough. It wasn’t about acquisition; it was about playing the game.
Popular self-help would have us believe that without a master plan our lives will surely be worth nothing.
Yet Buffett admits at the end of The Snowball, his fantastic biography, that he had no plan early on.
His laser focus and love for money-making ensured a future where Buffett would amass a fortune. The path he would take to do that, however, was just as uncertain as yours.
Probabilities
Our ability to determine probabilities are weaker than we could imagine.
When you look at the possibility of your success in an endeavor it’s dangerous to look at the success rate of everyone who ever attempted it before.
The failure rate in any given field is in general. You may have a knack that sets you apart, you may have resources that others haven’t been able to draw on, you may be putting in more effort than 90% of the others.
A statistic can give you a measurement of the failure and success rate of a certain thing, but it hides an amazing amount of details about what went into each attempt.
Explanations
“We cannot spend the day in explanation.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
We try to explain everything. Why we are where we are. Why our parents raised us that way. What everything means. Why that happened to us and why nothing is fair.
We allow our minds to run in circles of bitching and moaning and then wonder why we feel too tired to make anything happen. We leave ourselves zero energy left to deal with the actual problems (which probably are way different than the ones we imagined).
Instead of asking “Why?” leave it at “Why not?”
Luxurious Inaction
Some are born without the luxury to be lazy. They had to take action or die.
The enviable position isn’t always as enviable as we think. Nature does a great job at balancing out everything.
Those who “never had to work a day in their life” end up being soft in body, mind, and spirit.
Most of the millionaires I know personally came from nothing.
They were forced to focus on money from an early age. They never questioned their dedication to making money because it was so precious growing up.
Inaction is a luxury, one that many take for granted (and take pills to deal with). Action comes from hardship and necessity, physical or psychological.
If you were born into luxury, or earned it later, the trick is to treat it with disdain and effort with reverence.
To stay hungry when you could be constantly full — to stay active when you could be sedate.
Keep Moving
Amelia Earhart had the phrase “Always think with your stick forward” painted on the side of her plane. If she slowed down too much she would crash.
Einstein wrote in a letter to his son who was in a downward mental spiral that “life is like riding a bicycle,” because you can’t stop.
There are some species of shark that have to continually swim forward to breathe.
Humans are the same way — we have to keep moving or we die.
Persistence and Inevitability
Persistent action is proof to the world and ourselves that we will not be stopped — by failure, setbacks, external circumstances, doubts, anything. It may be ugly. It may not be quick. It is inevitable.
Time works for anyone who is willing to persist.
That Rocky quote is true, “[I]t ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
One of Warren Buffett’s few rules is having a large margin of error. He knows that retaining capital is more important than massive gains because without the capital there’s nothing to invest.
You build power and momentum as you act, you lose it as you stagnate. This accumulates through your consistency. If you get up every time you’re knocked down you’re guaranteed to at least die on your feet.
“Just take it bird by bird.”
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write [which] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
When you think of all that needs to be done to get from where you are to where you want to be — to reach a big goal or complete an audacious project — it can be overwhelming. So much so that you feel paralyzed and unable to start at all.
Just take things “bird by bird.” Action by action.
Don’t look ahead. Concentrate solely on the very first step.
Once it’s done, take the next step. And the next. And the next.
Until you arrive.
It May Not Happen
Einstein became famous for his Theory of Relativity in his thirties. After that he would spend most of his energies on trying (and failing) to debunk quantum physics and trying (and failing) to solve his Unified Field Theory.
He set himself a second set of pyramids to construct and, in the end, couldn’t.
Maybe that’s because it was impossible.
There is a possibility that the thing we’re aiming at may not be attainable — it may not even be a possibility.
Would that rob all of our actions of their meaning? Absolutely not.
Many of the greatest discoveries occurred on accident. Penicillin and silly putty, to name just two.
Want to always be able to read a meditation or two offline and on the go?
Grab your FREE ebook copy of Meditations on the Wisdom of Action
.
Part V: Benefits of Action
Action Shuts Up False Morals
We often think we don’t take action because we fear failure.
I don’t think we do. We’ve been failing since we were born. We failed to walk. We failed to make the team. We failed to properly write an “A.” We were born into a life of constant failing. Every day is a failure to be who you will be tomorrow.
Sure, at some point we start feeling ashamed of failure. I’m not convinced that’s what we’re actually afraid of, though. So what are we actually afraid of?
Being rejected. By the tribe. By the boss. By the girl. By the audience. By the mob. These things set our amygdalas on fire.
Humans need humans.
We fear that if we do what we want we will step on other people’s toes. We might take a wrong turn and be rejected. If you are fully yourself, the tribe may label you an outcast and you’ll never be included again.
If we fail, we’re guaranteed to get love. Failures who followed the rules are forgiven. The ones who go out and disrupt the natural order, no way.
Action shuts up the mind that is concerned with rules. Action is concerned with creation. It’s concerned with what is, not what should be.
Action Kills Addiction
We’re addicted to everything. There are literally chemicals that compel us to stay on reddit looking at cat pictures. Every novelty squirts little chemicals into our system. We have to fight it (if we can’t avoid it).
We’re addicted to compliments and looking at other people living their life on Facebook. We’re addicted to TV shows and sugar. We’re addicted to running away from the thing we know we should be doing.
It takes one moment of strength to ignore the addiction and take action.
You stop craving ice cream five minutes into a run.
The itch to check Instagram ebbs the minute you turn off your phone.
As soon as you start, the addiction is destroyed.
Action Breathes Life Into Cliches
We know clichés are there for a reason. Maybe they aren’t all correct, but they’ve served some purpose for a long time.
We can’t truly appreciate them, though, until we have direct experience. Until we come face to face with something that makes us say, “That’s what grandpa was talking about all those years.”
Action Puts Time On Your Side
“[H]e not busy being born is busy dying.” –Bob Dylan
Time works against anything that is stagnant. Machines that aren’t used rust. Water that stays still turns to poison. Sharks that don’t swim suffocate.
When you take action you are putting time on your side. You are ensuring that you learn with time. That time gives you more opportunities instead of diminishing them. Action uses time to create new potentialities and even new lives.
Snowball
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” –Lena Horne
Warren Buffett became one of the richest men in the world by following each of his actions to the next. He didn’t do it all at once.
He started where he was and then moved slowly and methodically. His biggest advantage: not making greedy (stupid) mistakes.
No large project is completed in one movement. There are multiple moving pieces that must follow a particular order.
It’s unrealistic to think that you will adopt all the good habits you think you should today. You may have one great day and then are sure to fall off the horse. In order to build strong habits you must start with a single habit. Practice it diligently until you do it without thinking. Only then do you move on to the next habit.
Small consistent action beats single Herculean leaps (almost) every time.
Action Is Genius
Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” He first envisioned himself riding along with a light beam when he was a young boy. That vision stuck with him into his thirties. He couldn’t stop thinking about it until he could explain it.
Thomas Edison has given us many clichés about the importance of hard work — the truth of which, like all cliches, you don’t really understand until you’ve lived them through action. A favorite:
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
Friedrich Nietzsche had a poetic way of saying the same thing:
“Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted! They acquired greatness, became ‘geniuses’ (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.”
Scott Fitzgerald points to the “dazzling whole” referred to by Nietzsche here:
“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.”
Action is required to slowly build the bridge from imagination to reality. Your craft is your chosen tool to express what is in your mind. It will be frustratingly bad at first. It is only with diligent practice that we can sharpen the tool and see more defined expressions of our mind in the external world.
Action Is Inspiration
Many of the greatest writers explain their creative process as sitting down and writing. It’s the effort that opens you up for inspiration.
Nobody achieves greatness except through intense practice over a long period of time.
We try to get around this. We see people whose first novel was a bestseller or who created a successful first business venture. We should be them. What our stories rarely include is the time that these prodigies put in ahead of time. Left out is the sacrifice and pain they’ve suffered personally because of their intense dedication.
Inspiration comes to those who work.
“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.” –Stephen King, On Writing
Action Is Inspiration: Part II
You don’t need another motivational quote laid over a picture of a mountain. Think about what happens every time you go on a motivational image or video binge. You jump from image to image, releasing a little more dopamine with each click (like an addict).
Then you get to a point maybe an hour later and realize that all the motivation did was kill time. Now you’re exhausted and have no energy to do anything else.
A much better way to inspire yourself is to take action.
Work on your project. Take the first step towards starting a new habit. Write the first paragraph of a blog post.
Do something!
The only information that stays inspiring in the long-run is the information that we apply.
Knowledge is not power, it’s frustration. Applied knowledge is power.
When your default is action, inspiration builds on itself.
Action Is Passion
“The more we focused on loving what we do, the less we ended up loving it.” –Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Most people should not quit their jobs and go “do what they love” for the simple reason that most people can’t make money doing what they love.
And they’ll stop loving what they love when they try to make money from it.
Maybe they’d start loving what they do do if they stopped feeling like they should be doing something else.
Instead of finding your passion, and then getting to work, get to work, and you might find your passion.
Action Finds False Dreams
One way we protect ourselves from failure is by guaranteeing it.
We embrace a dream that is so audacious we w