By: Jason Demakis
In this article, I discuss how we often blind ourselves from taking action due to the ambiguity brought on by lots of equally-good ideas, and how to move past said ambiguity and get into a place of taking action. I also talk about my own personal experiments with moving from ambiguity to actionability, the lessons and insights I’ve acquired from it, and how it’s transforming my life on a daily basis.
Too Much Planning Leads to Too Little Doing
Brainstorming and planning are magnificent tools. They help us organize ideas, identify problems, and establish a constructive workflow. But how many times have you sat down with a pen and paper (or word processor), made what you’d consider “your best list of ideas ever”, gotten excited, prepared to take action, and then…
You end up procrastinating or getting distracted by something else, and none of those awesome ideas get put into action.
What happened?
All too often, we get a flood of great ideas that never see the light of day. There’s one very huge reason for this:
Lack of Actionability
If you can’t take action on an idea almost immediately, then you haven’t refined the idea enough to make it of any real value to both yourself and the world around you.
To put it another way: until you’re clear enough about what you’re actually planning – and the action steps become obvious and immediately implementable – then you don’t have action steps.
You have glorified ideas.
What’s the Difference Between Ideas and Action Steps?
Ideas are just that; thoughts that you capture on paper, on your cell phone, on a voice recorder, etc. They’re abstract intentions that may very well be goodintentions in the long run, but they haven’t hit the pavement yet via testing.
Action is the domain where you take those same good intentions and put them to the test. You take them out of the laboratory that is your mind (or notepad, cell phone, voice recorder, etc), and into the real world for testing. Whereas your intentions were mostly notes and abstract potentialities scribbled somewhere – action is where the rubber actually meets the road.
Action is the arena where you breathe life into your abstract scribbled notes, ideas, and intentions.
Even the most sub-optimal action is almost always infinitely more valuable than the single-best, most amazing life-changing “idea” or “intention” that merely remains a sticky note on your desktop.
…And the only thing better than action is quick action.
Quick Action
Quick action is where all progress is born, because you step out of the planning phase, trust yourself, and take action immediately. Then, you gauge the results you’re getting, adjust your aim, and then take action again. Quick action is the mother of progress.
It’s like a series of quick successions or “bursts” of intelligent (but not over-analyzed) action in the direction of your goal of choice.
This is more commonly known as the “ready, FIRE!, aim” approach, and it’s incredibly effective once you get used to using it.
Too often, we get caught up in the process of “readying” ourselves, then “aiming…aiming…aiming…” and never firing.
Repeated and prolonged “aiming” is what was being referred to at the start of this article as brainstorming endlessly with awesome ideas that never become actionable.
What use are all of those amazing ideas and intentions if they never get put into actual actionable steps that generate results?
When you truly understand this, you realize that all ideas which aren’t actionable are equal to having no ideas at all. It’s the same thing. You might as well be spending your time web surfing and actually getting the result of being distracted, instead of fooling yourself into thinking you’re being productive, and never truly seeing what sorts of results your wonderful ideas can bring to you.
Don’t fret if you feel you’re stuck in the infinite brainstorming/idea loop, however; this is a big stumbling block that many, many people will become snared in over the course of their lifetime.
The important thing is to become conscious of the true block.
It’s not that you’re not motivated enough, smart enough, or creative enough to get something going for yourself. It’s that you fear the consequences of what could happen if you tested these ideas. More accurately – you fear both the good and the bad results equally.
You fear the uncertainty brought on by the ambiguity of the situation.
Your ideas have nothing to do with this at all; they’re merely the shadows being cast by your true source feelings deep down inside. Ambiguity can be a terrifying block if you don’t learn how to move through it. Fortunately, there is a way to move through it.
Ambiguity is defeated the moment you decide to get started and test those ideas and intentions as external actions, rather than keeping them internal where they remain nothing but self-inflicted reactions.
Bypass Fear and Ambiguity, and Create Actionability
This may seem like a catch-22, because the source of your fear for taking action is the ambiguity of the situation, so how can you simply “just take action”?
The answer is to start with a level of action that’s small enough to feel comfortable for you to undertake, yet at the same time will bring about enough progress that it’s worthwhile all together.
Consider the following example:
Let’s say you want to start a business; it can be any business. Now, before you invest your precious time, money, and energy into creating a product or a service, you’re going to want to test the market to ensure there’s adequate demand first. This seems like an overwhelming task to you, and you allow ambiguity to prevent you from taking any action at all. Thus, you get no results, and can make no progress.
Now consider if you broke this apparent problem down into more workable, do-able parts. Instead of allowing yourself to become overwhelmed, you use your emotional intelligence and realize these feelings of fear are a compass, and you’re in a growth opportunity situation. You take a few deep breaths, calm yourself, then start thinking logically about what you can do.
You come to the ingenious and actionable intention to create a brief survey that you can put up online on your website, facebook, twitter, linkedin, craigslist, and any other number of resources. You ask your potential prospects what sorts of problems they’re having, what sorts of solutions they’re looking for, and what they think is missing in the market place that they’d like to see more of.
This is an incredibly intelligent first-acionable step, because you only have to create the survey once – and then you can post it any number of places any number of times. You don’t even have to deal with people face-to-face or phone-to-phone like with interviewing or cold-calling. Simply wait for the replies to roll in via your email or any of those accounts.
If a week goes by and you’re getting minimal answers, then you’re already getting valuable feedback in the form of the realization that you need to alter or refine your marketing message/questions more. You’re already getting results, even if they aren’t the results you initially intended to receive. The market is showing you “Sorry, this kind of gets our attention, but your questions aren’t quite calibrated to what we’re dealing with. Give it another try!”.
And then you can repeat this process, refine it, or expand upon it in any number of ways until you start calibrating with the market. You’re going to gain so much valuable insight and experience this way, but most importantly – you’re going to build confidence. This confidence is going to enable you to do much more focused, meaningful, passion-driven high-value work over the long run. Your contribution to humanity is going to amplify tens of times over the more you refine your ideas until they become actionable.
Nothing in My Life Changed Until I Got Started with Testing My Ideas
I know the above example works, because I’ve been trying it with my own entrepreneurial endeavors. It took me a long time to get over that hurdle of testing all of these awesome ideas in my head, because I was scared of what I might learn about myself in the process. As it turns out, all of those lessons have been extremely empowering ones. I had no idea about marketing, or how to test the market; so, I did the next best thing, and simply asked people via a survey.
My latest ebook “The Practice of Presence” (coming 9/1/14) is the result of combining value that people have blatantly told me they’re looking for – and I could never have gotten that book started if I didn’t see what the market actually wanted. I would have just swam in circles with ideas and convinced myself that the ambiguity was reason enough not to write it. I also intend on getting out there and testing my idea to lead private/group classes on emotional intelligence, and relieving internal stress, friction, and incongruency for people who don’t feel like they’re getting the types of results they want out of life. Enabling others to reconnect to their true core self and begin correcting their habits via inspired action inspires me into action! : )
You don’t even have to do a survey; you can simply ask people questions. This doesn’t have to apply to creating a business, either. It applies to anything and any goal you can imagine. Overwhelmed with trying to lose weight or get into shape? Ask someone with experience, locate more information, and get inspired to take action from there. You’re already taking action by doing those first two things; most don’t understand that, and discredit themselves because they feel that anything less than life-changing results “don’t count”. Don’t do this to yourself!
Action is the mother of all progress and growth.
Action is required to get results so you can “aim” again, “aim” higher, and “aim” more accurately with each new “FIRE!”
…And it all begins with breaking down the ambiguity barrier, and taking small, actionable steps driven by your inspired abstract ideas and intentions.
For more empowering insight on bringing your ideas down into the real world of action:
Check out my YouTube webinar series “Concepts of Consciousness” (Recorded live every Wed)
Check out my website JasonDemakis.com (join my mailing list and get my free ebook!)
About the Author:
Jason Demakis a frequent Expanded Consciousness contributing writer. Read more of Jason’s articles HERE. Jason is best known for his writings of consciousness and meditation, and has profound knowledge in each.