I think I’ve been good at having ideas and saving them off somewhere. I’m now trying to get in a flow where I turn those ideas into something.
I’ve been following James Clear’s blog posts where he shares several good tips around building habits, taking action, etc. Here are two posts that I have been keeping in mind and trying to put it to good use:
The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action
Example: If I outline 20 ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually write and publish an article, that’s action.
I read that post and his examples resonate with me. I went back to where I keep ideas, and sure enough I’ve been having a lot of “motion”, but not “taking action”. I decide to change that, so I picked a few ideas that seem to make me go like “yeah, I want to do that”, and started to take action on them, tracking the steps and trying to make progress.
This is another post of his I keep going back to:
The Physics of Productivity: Newton’s Laws of Getting Stuff Done
- Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Find a way to get started in less than 2 minutes.
- It’s not just about working hard, it’s also about working on the right things. You have a limited amount of force and where you apply it matters.
- Your productivity is a balance of opposing forces. If you want to be more productive, you can either power through the barriers or remove the opposing forces. The second option seems to be less stressful.
I’m keeping those ideas in mind and trying to apply them on a daily basis. I also enjoy these two short free PDF books available at his site: