Many people confuse hard work with smart work. In the same way, being busy (in motion) gets confused with being a person of action. And it isn’t just a matter of vocabulary: even the smartest people can come to believe they’re doing something productive when, in reality, what they’re doing won’t produce any result on its own. That’s being in motion. Other kinds of behaviour do give us a result (positive or negative). And that’s taking action.
Let’s look at a few examples.
If I sit at my desk and come up with 10 ideas for an article, I’m working, but I’m not producing anything. As soon as I start writing the article, I’m taking action.
If I buy 10 books about the stock market and attend several investing courses, I’ll be learning concepts, but until a single euro from my pocket goes into the market, I won’t be investing.
If I decide to start a business, look for information, look at premises, check out suppliers, compare prices, analyse my competitors and so on, I’m doing what’s recommended before launching my own company. But it’s motion, not action.
Where’s the problem with these concepts?
The real problem is that most people settle into this deceptive zone of being in motion. Unconsciously they feel they’re doing something useful, so they spend far too long in a zone that doesn’t seem to be the comfort zone.
But in reality it’s still the comfort zone until they decide to take action. Some fool themselves by stretching out this phase, because they’re actually afraid of taking action. You’ll never find success or failure in the “motion zone”, but as soon as you take action you open a door to an imminent result, and you’ll end up finding success or failure in your project.
It’s as if staying in that zone made us feel we’re making progress, with the advantage that we’re not running the risk of failing.
And we tend to procrastinate: “I’ve almost got it ready… I’m just finalising the details so we can get going next month, as soon as I have a bit more time.” The problem is that some people have been saying those words for years.
If you drag out the motion zone, as a rule you’ll never start anything. Your project will die in your head, and in a way you’ll feel happy, because you’ve avoided the possibility of failing at it.
And that’s the only reason we can’t bring ourselves to take action: our twisted minds are trying to postpone failure.
How can you stop wasting time in motion and start taking action?
Set deadlines
This may sound silly, but some time ago I got into the habit of setting deadlines for all my projects and forcing myself to meet them.
Think of yourself as a student who has to pass an exam. If we’d been given the choice, we’d have pushed back the exam date as far as possible. But because the date is fixed, the exam arrives no matter what, and on that day you’ll either pass or fail. There’s nothing you can do to avoid it, except be prepared for that day.
Take steps
Once we know that motion isn’t action, we need to take steps towards action. Some readers have told me about business ideas they had in mind and said they were going to look for funding for them.
I’m pleased to say that some of them are already up and running (and not because they found funding), while others are still “in motion”.
For example, if you have a tech business idea and you can’t get funding, you need to take action without funding and build it anyway, even if it means working much harder. That’s what we called the Seinfeld strategy: every day we lay one brick, until brick by brick the wall gets built. In other words, you have to start building. Doing it this way may even make it easier to find funding.
(Read: How to start your business idea when you have no money at first, and make it work)
And as a rule, it’s a matter of paying more attention to common sense once we know what motion is and what action is.
I have no customers in my business: the answer is obvious. Don’t sign up for business marketing classes. Just get off your backside and go out and find customers.
In short: when you’re preparing for something, ask yourself whether you’re spending the time on preparation that is recommended and necessary, or whether you’re falling into the subconscious trap of putting off action out of fear of failure.
There’s a big difference between feeling useful and doing useful, efficient things. Basically, being in motion means using energy without getting results. Action means turning that energy into a result.
Further reading
Featured image: Kheel Center, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
