How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips
“It
had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and
happened to things.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
To get things done you need to take action. Things seldom happen on their own.
But
taking action can be difficult and hard. And so it’s easy to wind up in
Lazyville or Procrastinationland a lot. How can you break out of such
behaviour and develop a behaviour of taking more action?
Here are 10 tips that you’ll hopefully find useful.
1. Reconnect with the present moment.
This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done.
This
is probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action
since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance
to the work you’ll do. And it puts you in state where the right actions
often just seem to flow out of you in a focused but relaxed way and
without much effort.
One
of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep
your focus on you breathing for a minute or two. Check out 7 more tips
in 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment.
2. Be accountable to others.
If
you tell a bunch of people that you are going to do something then it
will be hard to not do it. You don’t want to disappoint them. Or have to
face up to them the next time you meet.
If
you have a hard time getting going with something get some support. If
you for instance workout, do it with a friend to motivate each other to
take action – and actually go to the gym – when motivation runs low.
Motivating each other and bringing enthusiasm when one of you is feeling
low can really help to develop consistency and useful habits.
Think about how you can involve others to help all of you to take more action.
This
tip works well. But it can put you in situation where you take action
to avoid pain, to avoid judgement. And it can help you create pressure
within yourself. Such a state may not always be the best one to be in to
take action and perform well. One way to lessen such problems is to use
this tip and then when you are about to take action you reconnect with
the present moment to quiet negativity within yourself.
3. Be accountable to yourself.
In
the long run a more consistent and perhaps healthier way to develop a
habit of taking more action is to answer to yourself instead of others.
To set your own standards and principles for how you will behave.
The
problem with this one is that you are likely to cheat on yourself and
rationalize how you don’t need to take action or follow your principles.
When the social pressure of having to answer to others isn’t there it’s
easy to slip and fall into laziness or procrastination.
But
over time you can become more and more consistent with acting according
to your own standards. I believe that one of the keys to develop this
kind of thinking is to get off a dependence on external validation and
be more internally validated. You can read more about that at # 8 in 9 Great Ways to Make Yourself Absolutely Miserable.
If
you can develop accountability to your own standards then it can be
more consistent than the one you get from relying on being accountable
to others. It comes from within so it doesn’t have to rely on other,
outer circumstances that may fluctuate.
It is also very useful to help you feel good about yourself
and to help you grow. If you rely on being accountable to others and
their validation then you may grow but also feel confined by what others
expect from you. If you are accountable to yourself then you set your
limits wherever you want them.
4. Lighten up.
Tips 5-9
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