How to Become an Action Taker: 6 (no fluff) Tips That Get Results

"Being able to take action will give you a sense of feeling in control of your life again, to help you make consistent progress on the things that really matter"

When I was 6 years old my Mum took me to a child education psychologist. My teacher said I was getting distracted easily, wasn’t applying myself and didn’t want to do any of the work in class.

The diagnosis: “There’s nothing wrong, he just doesn’t want to do it”.

Oh great, stubborn and lazy.

As you can see, from an early age it became apparent that my brain wasn’t wired to take action. Daydreaming and playing outside, now that was my thing! Not too harmful if you’re a kid, but it can make life tricky when you become an adult.

Wait, I still do that… (daydreaming and playing outside). Okay focus now…

Do you ever find yourself struggling to take action on things? Like that work report, starting to exercise, painting that room, decluttering, signing up for that class or course?

There is nothing wrong with you! Human beings are just wired this way. When life gets busy we become overwhelmed and the first things to go out the window are our motivation and self-discipline.

But wait…

What if you could become a consistent action taker without becoming overwhelmed? How would your life look in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years time?

What goals would you work on, what things would you improve, what hobbies would you engage in? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Something that’s made me feel 100 times better about myself and diminishes that feeling of guilt and regret that you get when you don’t do things, is learning how to consistently take action.

I’d like to share some tips with you that have really helped me. I’ve also provided some practical steps for each tip that you can take action on today. See what I did there 😉

Remember as you’re reading… Simplicity works! We fail when we over-complicate things.

1. Get some clarity

I’m a big believer in listening to your intuition. If there’s an idea or a thought that keeps coming up for you over and over again, you need to listen.

How many times have you thought “Ah I’d love to do that, try that, start that”, only to forget about it or push it down as soon as you get busy again or become distracted by other things.

I have… The amount of times I’ve dreamt of starting my own blog and then not actually taking action on it, seems ridiculous to me.

I was watching something on TV the other day, a show about combining baking and engineering (I know, don’t ask…) and at the end the contestant said something that punched me right in the heart:

“I wish I hadn’t spent most of my adult life doubting whether I could do it. I wish I was as fearless as I am now”

Read that again and take it in for a minute. Hurts a bit doesn’t it?

That was the moment I decided I was going to move forward and start writing no matter what.

Action steps for you...

• Find 10 minutes so that you can just pause, sit quietly and think. NO distractions. Close your eyes if you want. Think about each of these questions.

• Which area of your life would you like to move forward in and why? Pick just one area for now.

• What does your life look like in a year’s time if you do? What does your life look like if you don’t?

• Now go into the future quickly. In 10 years time, if you had to look back, how would you feel about not doing it? Is there regret?

2. Beat overwhelm by creating a small habit and focusing only on the process

Overwhelm can do two things:

• Make us procrastinate and not even start.

• Make us stop, because we can’t handle the load along with all the other things we’re having to juggle.

The reason you get overwhelmed is because you give yourself too much to do, put too much pressure on yourself and over-complicate it.

Did I do this when thinking about starting this blog? Yep…

“What if I run out of ideas, what about all the writing, what about all the editing, what about finding the right images, what if it doesn’t work?” etc etc. My solution was to just focus on the process and get a good writing habit going.

So I decided I was going to write in blocks of 25 minutes and I was going to aim to do 150 blocks of writing in 3 months.

I printed out a page with a grid of 150 blocks and just started ticking one block off at a time. Before I knew it, I was ticking off my 12th block and had written, edited and published my first blog post.

Here's my actual sheet

That’s it, a simple habit where I’m just focused on one 25 minute block at a time with a 5 minute break. Notice how I didn’t try to make myself sit down and write for hours. I’d procrastinate the hell out of that.

Some days I’d only manage 1 block and other days I’d tick off 5 blocks, it doesn’t matter I still had forward momentum.

I helped somebody else with this method recently. She wanted to get fit and lose weight, but was struggling to keep her motivation for exercise going, because she was so busy and stressed!

We created a simple, easy to maintain process for her.

In order to tick off one block she only had to exercise (walk, run, gym etc.) for 10 minutes. If she kept going for 20 minutes then she would tick off two blocks, 30 minutes three blocks and so on.

You can always find 10 minutes, but the trick is to keep it simple and short. That makes it easier to start and to get going, because it doesn’t seem like a mammoth task to your brain.

Action steps for you...

• Create a small habit process for yourself.

• Step 1 - Decide how long you’re going to do it for (1 month, 3 months etc).

• Step 2 - Decide what each block will represent (10 minutes of exercise, 25 minutes of writing, 15 minutes of painting, 12 minutes of tidying/cleaning etc).

• Step 3 - Roughly work out how many blocks you want to tick off during that period (60 exercise blocks in 90 days).

• Step 4 - Print your sheet and stick it up or track it on your phone.

3. Remind yourself and stay accountable

In his brilliant book Atomic Habits, James Clear says that one of the most powerful ways to keep a habit going is to make sure it’s visible.

Basically you’ll be more inclined to floss your teeth if you leave the dental floss on the counter where you can see it, rather than in the cupboard. You’ll also be more inclined to eat 5 cookies if they’re left out on the counter, so be warned it works both ways!

I can confirm that it works really well.

I’ve stuck my sheet on the fridge where it’s always visible. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and my wife is checking how many blocks I’ve ticked off. Massive accountability right there!

Trust me there’s nothing like the people you love, watching what you’re doing in order to keep you on the right track. Use this to your benefit.

Our brains also love ticking boxes, it gives us a hit of the reward chemical dopamine, which strengthens and reinforces the new behaviour.

Action steps for you...

• Make sure you’re reminding yourself daily, otherwise you’ll forget when life gets busy.

• Stick a sheet with tick boxes up somewhere where it’s always visible, or create a reminder on your phone.

4. Progress not perfection

Perfectionism is also another major obstacle when it comes to taking action. Perfectionists procrastinate. I speak from experience. My take on perfectionism is that it’s an overcompensation or a coping mechanism for feeling like we’re not enough.

Psychiatrist Alfred Adler explains it like this:

People who are struggling with perfectionism are “perpetually comparing themselves with the unattainable ideal of perfection, and they are always possessed and spurred on by a sense of inferiority.”

Jeez, this is something I've struggled with a lot. I’m not even joking when I say that I would create an entire program or a detailed, comprehensive piece of content and then bin the whole thing, because it “wasn’t perfect”. I know now that it was the self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy that made me fear my work being judged by others, aka ‘perfectionism’.

“The world doesn’t need your perfection, it needs your imperfection” - Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani

Action steps for you...

• Whenever you feel yourself procrastinating, hesitating, doubting yourself or not taking action, because you want things to be “perfect”. Just repeat this in your head: “Progress not perfection” and then go ahead and do it anyway. “Good enough” is exactly that, it’s good enough.

• If you’re still uncomfortable, why don’t you treat it as a little experiment? Allow yourself to not be perfect for a day and see what happens.

5. Timer method

This one has honestly changed the game for me.

In order to get myself to start taking action on a task, I use the timer on my phone. If I’m really putting something off I’ll just set the timer for 10 minutes and then work on the task until the alarm goes off.

Then, I'll often find myself in the flow of doing the activity so I’ll just keep going. But even if I stop after 10 minutes, I’ve still chipped away at the task a bit and I’ve made some progress.

This method really seems to laser focus your mind when you use it, and it feels really good to know you've chipped away at a task made a little bit of progress on it.

Action step for you...

• Find a task you don’t like doing or that you often put off doing, set a timer for 10 minutes and go. If 10 is too long, start with 5 minutes. You can always find 5 minutes.

6. Don't disrespect yourself: You'll care less about what others think of you when you earn your own respect

Caring what others think is a huge reason why many of us don’t take action.

Often, one of the main reasons why we care so much about what other people think, is because we haven’t earned our own respect.

Keeping the promises you make to yourself will start to build your self-trust. You start to earn your own respect and that leads to self-confidence. That’s when other people's opinions or judgement become less important.

Action step for you...

• Keep the promises you make to yourself. Take action. Use these tips to help you do that.

Final thoughts

Use these tips and you’ll not only keep regrets at bay, but you’ll also start to make consistent progress on the things that really matter and that make you feel alive.

It’ll give you a sense of feeling in control of your life rather than worrying about the years passing by too quickly. You’ll never have to worry in 5, 10 or 15 years time, whether it’s too late to start.

But that’s only if you develop a good routine for taking action now. And I have every faith in your ability to become an action taker.

Which of these tips are you going to try first? I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment below and let me know if you found this post helpful 🙂

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