When setting goals, I have this tendency to want to move mountains. I love thinking big picture, grand vision, big outcomes, etc. It is much more rare for me to have a goal around shoveling. In other words, the little things that will, if done daily, actually move that mountain.
When the New Year rolls around, I sometimes look back on the year, and in some categories of my life, have nothing to show for my efforts over the past year. Here’s how it usually plays out:
- Set a big goal
- Research the heck out of that goal.
- Learn who the experts are.
- Read their material.
- Read the primary sources that the experts cite.
- Pay for an online course on the subject.
I tell myself that once I become an expert, I’ll be ready to get started.
Meanwhile, I will notice that a colleague is also starting to produce in this space. Maybe it is writing about a certain topic, maybe it is a new line of business she is adding to her company. What she’s doing won’t look good compared to the experts. In fact, she is producing the kind of work that would embarrass me. Until I’m ready to produce work of the quality of the experts, I hold back.
At some point, my colleague is cited in a major periodical or by one of the experts I’m reading, or maybe she lands a big new customer for her new product line. Through practice, she has honed her craft while I acquired knowledge.
At the end of a year or two, I give up. The mountain is too big. I’ll have a lot of knowledge but no skills and nothing to show for it. My colleague, who has been shoveling continuously for two years, has made a dent in that mountain. After/Despite/Because of her awkward start, she built a skill and is making an impact in the marketplace. On the other hand, I have a bunch of knowledge but no mastery.
Taking action is hard but leads to growth
This isn’t just anecdotal. It’s backed by science… done by a bunch of physics professors at Harvard University… when figuring out how to get better at teaching. Not only did they find that students learned more by active learning. They found that students didn’t believe it. In fact, the professors hypothesize that “when students experience the increased cognitive effort associated with active learning, they initially take that effort to signify poorer learning. That disconnect may have a detrimental effect on students’ motivation, engagement, and ability to self-regulate their own learning.”
Replace “students” with “people,” and “active learning” with, “doing something new that’s hard” and I think the same thing holds true for many of us. It is so easy to spend time in great books, courses, or peer groups talking about someone else’s genius. It is harder to just pick up the shovel and do it, however awkward or uncomfortable.
Moving mountains means picking up a shovel
I have an overly(?) elaborate system to manage my goals, tasks, and time. I’ve started to track one more thing for each activity in my day: was this time block dedicated to action or motion?
To summarize James Clear’s definition of Motion vs. Action: Motion is planning, strategizing and learning. Activity that sets you up to take action but doesn’t lead directly toward any results. All of my activities that I described above was motion – as is attending a lecture at Harvard. Action drives results. It is picking up that shovel, writing this blog post, meeting with a customer, etc.
Action is the active learning done at Harvard that students didn’t like, felt uncomfortable doing, but learned/grew more. It is putting yourself out there before your perfect, having a growth-oriented mindset. Action is accepting that you’re learning and growing by doing. It is picking up the shovel, getting callouses and making a dent in that mountain.
Photos from Ales Krivec and Laura Kapfer