Tag: taking action

Why no one else can see the most important work you do.

Your self-improvement work is not obvious work. It is not showy. No one can watch you do it. It would be pretty boring to watch in a zoo. Or in a red-light district. Because it happens on the inside. In fact, the most important work you do is changing your mindset, your beliefs and your habits. And not just changing. Upgrading.

Upgrading Yourself

Upgrading your thoughts is big. Upgrading your responses is huge. Upgrading your whole operating system changes everything.

This is why education is so important. It exposes you to new ideas that you can incorporate into your own thinking. But it is not enough to educate. The application is where the value appears. So you must first understand that there is a better way, then act in that better way. This is the basic plot of the movie Billy Madison. (This classic film also includes important reminders of the power of nepotism and some top-shelf potty humor.)

The More You Learn…

Develop the habit of learning new ideas. This is done through curiosity and a desire for self-improvement. It will lead you to seek and find new and better sources of information. You’ll find it in classes, books, articles, podcasts, blogs, videos, experts, and fortune cookies. (And even in books about fortune cookies.)

Apply Your Knowledge

Once you have better information, it becomes knowledge. Applying your knowledge in your various roles makes you a more valuable contributor.

Think about everything that you know you should do today. Eat right. Sleep well. Exercise. Read. Work in focused and productive ways. Invest in your relationships. Invest your money. Give back. See a doctor. Floss. Close your barn door. You and everyone else on the planet know that you should be doing those things.

But are you doing them?

There are two types of people:

  1. People who know the basic actions they should take. (This includes nearly everyone.)
  2. People who take the basic actions they know they should take. (This includes far less than everyone.)

This means that basic action is the great separator of people. But go beyond the basics. The things everyone knows they should do. Self-education helps you level up. It helps you discover the other things should you be doing if you want to be even more valuable in your career, as a spouse, parent, or friend. What is the next level of health and fitness? What is the next level of investing? Or productivity? Or spiritual enlightenment? That knowledge comes from more curiosity and more self-directed learning.

Just like a pyramid, that may or may not have been built by aliens, there are fewer and fewer people at each level as you ascend. Which means that the success pyramid is really a matter of attaining knowledge and then applying that knowledge. To take a full step higher you have to do both: attain and apply. Because it is the person who applies their new knowledge and self-improvement that is ultimately successful.

Key Takeaway

Always be learning. Educate yourself on new and better approaches to all areas of life and work. This is the invisible work of self-improvement. Then put that knowledge into action. And when you do it will change your life in ways that everyone will see.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

How to get more out of your reading every day.

I love to read.  Like most people, I was born highly uneducated. Reading has become an instrumental part of my master plan to overcome my early shortcomings. I love to learn and to become inspired. And if you are reading this I expect you do too.

I like reading classic literature because it makes me feel worldly. I liked reading the first three Harry Potter books because they made me feel magical. But then I realized my time is too scarce to read four more books about a fanciful wizard boy.

Today I read a lot of books on self-improvement, business, and biographies. I also read healthy portions of magazines like Fast Company and Inc. because I find them both creatively stimulating and educational. Plus I like the pictures.

Several years ago I read an interesting quote from Charlie “Tremendous” Jones that said, “You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet.” And this reading about reading encouraged Adam “Ordinary” Albrecht to read even more.

But there is also a potential danger in reading. And not just the threat of papercuts and eye strain. I have found that too much reading can lead to too little doing. If I fill all of my time with learning and inspiration I leave no time for action. Like the career student who seems to know everything but does nothing.

If you find that you are reading and learning, but not actually putting your learnings into action, follow this simple rule of thumb that influences my reading today:

Read just enough to learn something new and become inspired. Then act on it.

This simple rule has helped me accomplish more. I’ve wasted less time. And I’m more excited about my work.

I think of reading now like a pregame speech. One that I listen to just long enough to become properly motivated. And as soon as I am lathered up I jump to work, acting on the inspiration.

That’s when I start writing, planning, structuring, detailing, calling, creating, wizarding or potioning. When I have one hour available, instead of one hour of reading, I can do 10 or 15 minutes of reading. Then I can spend the rest of the hour implementing. Which means that the return on that one hour is significantly higher than it would be from reading alone.

I use my reading to prompt action. This approach has been vital to my experience as an entrepreneur and Founder of The Weaponry. It has empowered me to author What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? and my current writing projects. And it is the driving force that has inspired more than 960 blog posts. Because reading is not the goal. It is just the beginning.

Key Takeaway

Reading is a great way to learn and grow. But putting your new knowledge into action is far more valuable. For the next week, I encourage you to read enough each day to want to do something new and exciting. Then do it. Then repeat the process. And let me know how it works for you.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

How to make your wishes come true by adding this special ingredient.

I have always wanted great things in my life. Personal and professional success. A happy marriage to a hottie. A loving family. Adventurous travel. Good health. And an endless supply of cheese curds.

I pray about these things. Okay, not the cheese curds. Because I assume God already knows. But it helps to feel that I have expressed the things I want in life to a higher power who has the ability to influence how the ball bounces and how the cookie crumbles.

However, there is an African proverb that says:

When you pray move your feet.

It’s a great reminder that it’s not enough to ask for what you want.

You have to take action. You have to force your dreams to life.

Work. Do. Act. Build. Make. Go.

That’s the best way to ensure you get the things you pray about.

Key Takeaway

The Lord helps those who help themselves. Don’t just dream, wish and pray. Take action. Because the more action you take the more likely your prayers are to be answered.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Enjoy the great results of taking just a little action every day.

Success is a stacking exercise. It is about taking a little action every day. (The way Elvis Costello wrote the book.) Just take a little action, day after day. And watch the results stack up.

Here are the types of actions you should take every day.

Reading. Read a page a day, 5 pages a day, or 10 pages a day. At 5 pages each day you will read over 1500 pages in a year. At 10 pages you will read 3650. That’s a lot of knowledge gain in the membrane.

Exercise: Exercise strengthens your body and helps you burn calories. By taking a little action every day, you stack strength gains and weight loss, or weight control. And look better naked.

Meet Someone New. If you stack a new person into your life every day you will meet 365 new people this year. That would transform your life, both personally and professionally. It would also increase the cost of your Christmas cards. And you would need a bigger budget for ham sandwiches at your funeral. But the rest is upside.

Reach out to someone in your friend circle or network every day. Make contact, rekindle a friendship, or start a conversation every day. That’s relationship maintenance. And it’s just as important as making new friends, in the same way that it used to be important to not just take pictures, but get the film developed back before digital photography came along and ruined my analogy.

Write. A journal, book, plan, blog, play, movie, whatever. Writing a little each day will help you create. And it will help you improve your own thinking. Writing my ideas down helps me more than it helps those who read what I write. Sorry.

A step on a master plan. You have a big plan, goal, or idea. I know you do. Commit to taking one action towards it every day and that master plan will come to life. That’s exactly how I built my business, The Weaponry, from dust. It’s how I wrote my book What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? And it’s how Eric B. and Rakim went from thinking of a master plan to getting paid in full.

Play an instrument: Playing an instrument every day for just 5 or 10 minutes will stack into a valuable and enjoyable skill. Anyone can do it. You can teach yourself with learn-to-play books and online videos. Start now and you’ll be able to play Christmas songs by Christmas time. Especially if you play a kazoo.

Learn a new word in a different language. When you travel internationally you realize how many words there are to know beyond your native tongue. If you add 365 new words in Spanish, Chinese, French, Norwegian, or the language of your choice each year you would add significantly to your understanding of the world and your ability to communicate with people. Plus it’s the best way to avoid ordering Veau or Escargot if you are not into such things.

Key Takeaway

The rewards of simple actions, done every day, stack into huge and powerful piles of value. Just like money saved and invested. And little by little, they transform your life. So start today. It doesn’t take much. It just takes a little every day.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The greatest teacher of all time doesn’t work at a school.

One of the great mistakes you can make in life is studying things to death. By this, I mean that you read and research the things you want to do. And then you die. Your life is full of studying, thinking and preparing. But never actually doing. This is a big mistake. Huge. Like Julia Roberts said.

Most people think they need to prepare to get started. But they are never prepared enough to go. If you subscribe to this philosophy you will never meet the greatest teacher of all. Because she isn’t in your books. And she isn’t part of the PTA in Harper Valley.

The best teacher in the history of the planet is action. Action provides immediate lessons, feedback and progress. You learn by doing. You do not really learn by not really doing. I think Dr. Doolittle said that.

You learn to play a game by actually playing the game. This was true on the playground. It’s true in board games, video games and head games. (Just ask Lou Gramm.) It is also true in the game of life and in the great game of business.

As an entrepreneur, I learned how to start and run a business by simply jumping in and doing it. I learned more in the first week I launched The Weaponry than I learned from all of the books, magazines and articles I ever read.

I’ve learned how to coach sports by jumping in and doing it, while I was still totally ignorant. (Now I am just 3/4 ignorant.) Each step you take teaches you what you should do next. It’s how Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook. And why the Winklevosses did not.

Key Takeaway

If you really want to learn how to do something don’t study it. Do it. You will learn more and faster by taking action than you could through any other approach. The more action you take the more you will learn. You are already prepared enough. It’s go-time.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

This year resolve to take important new actions.

This is an exciting week for people who own calendars. Because we have flipped to a whole new set of 365 days. The new year brings on new hopes and dreams. It is full of opportunities. Most of us come into the new year, like Wayne Gretzky, with a bunch of new goals.

But the most important thing to do in the new year to convert those goals into reality is to take action.

A goal to lose weight is only a dream until you take action with your diet and exercise. A goal to start a business is worthless until you start talking to potential customers. A goal to travel is only a dream until you buy your ticket to ride. And a goal to write a book, screenplay, or fortune cookie is meaningless until you start typing on your keyboard. (Oh lord, why don’t we?)

The familiar phrase New Year, New You is missing a key ingredient. The complete saying should be:

New Year. New Action. New You.

The action is the active ingredient. It is the change agent. It is the inflection point. Don’t forget the new action. Action is the yeast that will make this year rise above all the rest. So here’s hoping you get a lot of action in 2023.

Key Takeaway

Goals don’t change you. Actions do. As you make plans for the new year go beyond the goals to the actions they require. Write down your new actions. Put them on your calendar. As you take action you will make progress toward your goal. A journey of 1000 miles doesn’t begin with writing down your goal. It begins with that first step.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The best way to get better is by dropping your bad habits.

You are a product of your habits. That is both good and bad news. Because some of your habits are constructive and make you better on a daily basis. Others are destructive and continuously hurt you. You’ll find many of those kinds of habits in country songs. And in prison.

Identifying Your Bad Habits

Do you know your most harmful habits? The ones that most negatively impact your life? That’s not a rhetorical question. I want you to take a moment to write down 3 to 5 of your bad habits. Then rank them starting with the most problematic. These are the habits that are most detrimental to your happiness, health, reputation, productivity, or success. I’ll wait while you create your list. (If you don’t create yours now we’ll automatically add procrastination to your list.)

My Habits:

I have a lot of good habits. I get a lot accomplished most days. I work hard. I write almost every day. I brush. I floss. I exercise regularly. I spend quality time with my family. And I put down the toilet seat.

But I wouldn’t have asked you to do anything I haven’t done myself. Here are the top 3 bad habits that I would do better without:

  1. Procrastination. I procrastinate on things longer than I wish I did. I have a backlog of incomplete tasks. And I have lost out on opportunities because I have waited too long to pull the trigger. Now, if I acknowledge that I don’t like my procrastination, but put off doing anything about it, that would be ironic, don’t you think?

2. Overeating:  I love to eat. And I am good at it. But I regularly eat more than I should. And I don’t like the impact it has on my physique. I developed the habit of eating a great deal when I was training heavily for competitive athletics. Back then I needed all the calories I could inhale. That was back before my metabolic slowdown, which happened somewhere in my 30s. Today my body doesn’t need the surplus calories from a Meat Lovers Pizza binger. And if I could change this occasional habit I bet I would feel more comfortable at a nude beach.

3. Screen time. I check my phone and computer far more often than I wish I did. This is complicated. Because like you, and Elon Musk, I have a complicated relationship with social platforms. As a blogger and author, I post and share a lot of ideas. Ideas that are intended to have a positive impact on those who read them. And the algorithms reward content that is interacted with. So interacting online is also important. But I would be happier to cut my online time in half. And I don’t care which half.

The Next Step

Now, I want you to pick one bad habit to attack. Because if you can eliminate one bad habit you will improve your life in a profound way. And if you can, you should.

The first step is to change your self-identity. Tell yourself, and firmly believe, that you are a person who doesn’t struggle with (your bad habit here). In fact, you are great at doing the opposite of (your bad habit here.)

To combat my procrastination, I have already adopted my identity as an action-taker and have rewired my decision-making system over the past several weeks. I recognize when decisions and actions are in danger of being put off. And I dedicate time to doing things now. It is making a huge difference, and I feel more me than ever.

Key Takeaway 

A key component of self-improvement is eliminating bad habits. Call them out. Write them down. And start picking them off one by one. Claim your new identity. Then create good habits to replace the bad. Because without your bad habits holding you back you will be much more you.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my new book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

You made a great plan. Then life got in the way. What do you do now?

Humans are extremely intelligent animals. We have been able to transform the planet to better suit our needs. We envision a world that doesn’t exist and then we create plans to make it a reality. We are like the Walt Disney of the animal kingdom. (Meaning the real animal kingdom, not the Animal Kingdom that Disney created to illustrate this point.)

Humans are really good at knowing what actions we should take to get the result we want. In a perfect world, we would always get the results we wanted. Because we would always take the right steps. Like John Travolta.

But between deciding on the right actions to take and actually taking them a funny thing often happens. Not funny haha. Funny strange.

Every day, all over this big blue marble, the regular events of life get in the way of our plans.

Things change. New demands pop up. Curveballs get thrown. Wrenches get thrown. And eventually, the towel gets thrown in the ring.

But there is one simple solution that will prevent your plan from failing.

Remember that play that you were going to run to make your plans a reality? Before the noise and static?

Run the play anyway.

Do what you set out to do.

Modify your execution if you have to.

Take shorter actions.

Or change the time frame.

Adjust your process to work with the new conditions.

But don’t make excuses.

Change what needs to be changed.

But not the play.

You know that play will work.

Key Takeaway

Run the play anyway. You know it is right. You just need to run it.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my new book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

How to move your most important initiatives down the track.

We all have big goals we want to achieve. However, the goal setting isn’t the hard part. It is not enough to know what you want to do. It’s what you do do that matters. In order to achieve your goals, you have to take action. A lot of action.

The good news is that to accomplish your most important goals you don’t need to make things happen in giant steps. You simply have to make steady progress. I find it useful to think of my most important initiatives as trains. The objective is simply to move the trains down the track.

The Process

1. Identify your trains.

Start by focusing on your 1 to 5 most important initiatives. Remember, 5 is the max. More than 5 dilutes your attention and your energy. This is why we don’t have the Jackson 6, or go around high six-ing each other.

2. Start each day with your list of trains.

They could be businesses you want to build, fitness goals, work projects, passion projects, volunteer efforts, or travel plans. In fact, your trains can be anything you want to do, make or accomplish. Heck, your train could be to catch drops of Jupiter or to meet Virginia.

3. Write down an action you can take that day to move each train down the track.

Determine the next step in the process that will help you make progress. Always be thinking about the next task to take on, like A-ha said.

4. Take that action.

Some actions will move you inches. Some will move you feet. Some will move you yards. And others will move you miles down the track. However, all actions, large or small, will get you closer to your goal.

Keep Moving

The key is to get your trains movings. Your biggest goals, hopes, and dreams are like locomotives. They are heavy, powerful, and hard to get going. Simply getting the wheels to start turning can feel like a monumental task. Especially if your goal is to build a monument.

But once your trains start moving it is easier to pick up speed, like Sandra Bullock. You will soon find yourself taking more and bigger actions faster. Before you know it you will have momentum on your side. Your actions become habits. And you will start ticking off tasks like the clicking and clacking of a train speeding down the track. (By ticking off I mean completing. Not making-mad, like my parents used to say to me.)

At the end of each day, check to see if you moved your trains down the track. The answer should be clear. You either took action or you didn’t. If you did take action, note whether you moved inches, feet, yards, or miles. Of course, these are meant to be symbolic relative measurements. They translate to small, medium, large and Neil Armstrong-sized steps forward.

If you take no action your train will remain in the station. But through consistent action, your trains will reach their destination. It’s as simple and certain as that.

Key Takeaway

Move your most important initiatives farther down the track every day. Small, consistent actions start the wheels turning. Then come bigger actions with bigger results. Which ultimately help you build momentum. A train with momentum is very hard to stop. A person with momentum is nearly impossible to stop. Make yourself that person.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

The 2 things you need to get better at anything.

You are the greatest project you will ever have. As a human being, you are the most complicated machine on Earth. Which means there is no limit to the amount of self-improvement you are capable of.

Your improvements can be highly specific. They can be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, philosophical, or professional. But even these broad categories that all end in -al barely scratch the surface.

You can get better at signing your name, walking, selling, replacing an organ, or serving a tennis ball. You can get better at eating hot dogs. Just ask Joey Chestnut. You can get better at streaking. Just ask the dude who invited himself onto the field at Super Bowl LV. Heck, you can get better at eating hot dogs while streaking. And if you do you can probably get a sponsorship deal.

The 2 Ingredients

Regardless of what you want to do better, there are 2 key drivers of self-improvement: the things you learn and the things you do. Because you improve through a combination of knowing better and doing better.

1. The things you learn.

This is all about gaining new information. This can come in many ways.

  • Reading books, magazines, articles, and reports.
  • Watching instructional videos
  • Taking classes and courses.
  • Learning from others through discussions, conversations, observation, and spying.
  • Working with a coach or mentor
  • Experimenting
  • Experience

2. The things you do.

All the knowledge in the world does no good without action. Your actions drive results. Those actions include:

  • Effort
  • Focus
  • Commitment
  • Practice
  • Habits
  • Stamina
  • Optimization

Key Takeaway

Learn all you can. Then put that new knowledge to work through your deliberate actions. By doing so you will end each day better than you began. You are the greatest project you will ever have. And you are nowhere near finished.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this idea, please share it with them.