This is what I keep telling myself about my blog. I am really bad about planning, planning, and more planning of something, and not enough action. I’m a planner at heart and something I love a lot. However, I don’t get done what I need to get done without action and only planning. Besides for planning, action is the most important step. Without action, a good plan is a waste; only a plan and nothing else.
As I write this, know that I am preaching to myself and not you. I struggle with this. I struggle with taking action after I have planned very thoroughly. The question is, why do I do this?
Sometimes I would rather plan than take action. But what does that get me? Nowhere. Action is that crucial step you must take, especially if you have taken the time to create a plan broken down into smaller steps. On the flip side of that, if I don’t plan thoroughly, I don’t know what action to take or where to start. I like to plan so that my days will be just perfect, but we all know that is not really possible or realistic. Without getting into perfectionism, this is a quality of perfectionism that I know that I have. I wrote about perfectionism in a prior blog post if you want to check it out.
I listened to a podcast episode today, trying to help me figure this out. What I learned from this episode is that I am not taking action because of how I feel, which is caused from what my thoughts are causing me to not want to execute. Brooke said in the podcast episode that you can only begin to change by first acknowledging what your thoughts are around the issue. So I began to sit with my thoughts, trying to figure out why I don’t execute the carefully crafted plan I created. What I realized, is that I have numerous thoughts about fear when it comes to executing. Planning is safe, and something I can do everyday. Planning keeps me from failing at something or being a failure. Executing may end up being a waste of time. I may not gain any followers, people may not like my content. People I know may make fun of me or laugh at me. But a good plan is a waste if never executed. Also, I may never know if I can be successful doing this if I don’t try.
I will say though, when I have mapped out, planned out, what I need to do into smaller tasks, the action piece becomes a lot easier. For example, if I write on my list to do blog post, I am more likely to do it if I have written, outline post, start writing blog post, add SEO to blog post, proof blog post, etc. You get the idea.
Small specific tasks make do blog post much more doable because each task is broken down. If you can do each task, bit by bit, it is much easier. It’s these small forward movements that move the needle. Forward movement is not seen or felt unless there is action.
