To act, or not to act: That is the question
Dear Friend,
Great to see you are back to my weekly learnings. This week I finished my consulting internship and received a final feedback for the entire employment. All in all, it was a very nice experience, many things to learn and great people I could get to know. And although it was pretty stressful, I would do such an internship just before my semester abroad again. Now, I have the time to visit and say goodbye to my family and all of my friends before I will depart to the USA for my exchange semester on Friday.
And how was your week? Did you have a great time? Are you currently doing learnings? Would be interested if you let me know!
Just do it
I have already written about situations in which we procrastinate in the face of a very annoying task. In this case, I recommend scheduling such duties as the first thing you do at a day. This week I had a similar learning which requires another approach, though.
Have you ever been in the situation in which you waited for something so that you can do something? Or you felt not ready? Or you thought that you did not have the time to do it? Any other excuse for not doing it? Then, my friend, you had the same feeling I had this week (and already had many times). There is this more or less famous video of Shia LaBeouf (put your volumes down when listening) which delivers the perfect answer to this issue: “Just do it! Do let your dreams be dreams. Yesterday, you said tomorrow! So, just do it!”
No matter the magnitude of what you have planned (whether it is asking a boy/girl for a date or quitting you job/drop out of college to pursue your dream career): If you keep telling yourself excuses, you will never be able to achieve it.
There are no perfect circumstances to do it, no perfect moment, no perfect day, no perfect year. Stop telling you that you are not ready, that you need more time or experience, the right environment or moment. This is complete bullshit. Most of times we keep thinking, talking, planning, … This is often good and might be vital for success, but the greatest point of leverage for getting results is just doing it. Without action you will not get any results. The reason why we often fail is not that we are not ready or do not have the right circumstances, but that we are not taking enough action.
If you are currently confronted with such a situation, I would suggest you two things: First, you should literally just do it and act as fast as possible. Secondly, if you really do not feel ready or think that the right moment has not come yet, you should set yourself a clear and specific point in time when you will do it.
“Just do it” sounds really simple, but it requires to overcome oneself. It helps if you tell yourself that you have to do it now and that with every second you keep waiting, the probability of achievement decreases dramatically. This is not only a “blind faith” you use to “fool” yourself, but it is empirically evident: Everything you set out to do, you should start within 72 hours. If you don’t do this, the likelihood that you will ever implement and achieve what you have set out for yourself drops to below one percent.
The more effort something demands of you, the faster you should act. You should not hesitate any second if you want to approach a man/woman or start with a new sport; you should approach him/her immediately after you saw him/her and jump right into the new shoes to go running in the morning.
In case you cannot act immediately, e. g. you want to change your career, you should set you a fixed date at which you will act no matter what happens. Imagine the following situation: Your legs are broken and you suddenly somehow make the decision that you want to start doing more sport. In this particular situation, you should decide what kind of sport you want to start with and set a fixed date and time for your first session. Whenever you ponder reasons not to do it, you should remind yourself that you must do it or you will never achieve it.
The goal of these methods is that you strengthen your discipline muscle and make “just doing it” a habit. At first, it will demand much effort of you, but – as with all things – it will become much easier once you have started.
This was the last week’s post. I hope you can learn something from this learning, too.
All the best to you and yours,
David
