In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick explores how fear—described as a learned, illusory response—paralyzes action and how to overcome it. He opens with a mentor’s frog riddle to illustrate the gap between deciding and actually doing, then explains that fear can be unlearned by recognizing its illusion and taking incremental steps (“one foot in front of the other”). The core concept is the Law of Diminishing Intent, a principle from Jim Rohn stating that the longer one delays after deciding, the less likely they are to act. Brian links this to common procrastination excuses, cites Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way to show that inaction yields nothing, and urges listeners to identify pending decisions and act immediately. The episode ends with a motivational call to use today’s opportunity to move forward.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Now, before I get into today's topic, I also want to remind you that every single day actually brings you— brings a new opportunity to introduce somebody to the No Days Off Podcast, to the No Days Off Nation. And all kidding aside, I would greatly appreciate you sharing a favorite episode, sharing a message, just sharing the podcast to anybody that you think in your world may benefit from some of the things that we discuss. Be it an episode, a topic, whatever it may be. I really, really, really want to continue to spread this movement, getting people focused on getting a little bit better each and every day. So please, please, please share this podcast with those that you think can benefit. On that note though, what I want to get into today, I want to talk about the law of diminishing intent. Now, what is the law of diminishing intent? I'm going to start by sharing a riddle that my mentor, Mac Newton, if you've been listening to No Days Off for some time, you know that Mac is a meaningful mentor of mine. Mac said to me not too long ago, he said, Brian, 5 frogs are sitting on a log. 4 of these frogs decide to jump off the log. How many frogs are left? I said, Mac, that's pretty easy math. 5 minus 4 is 1. He said, you're wrong. He said, there's 5 frogs remaining. I said, I don't, I don't understand. He goes, Ryan, I said that there are 5 frogs, 4 decided to jump off. I didn't say they jumped. I said they decided to jump. And deciding to do something and actually doing something are 2 very different things. Now, sure, this was, this was a little tricky, right? Like it was a play on words, but Mack was so damn right. Deciding to take action and actually taking that action are not one in the same. Deciding to take action takes courage. Like, taking action takes courage. Jumping off that log takes courage. Fear though gets in the way. Fear gets in the way and it paralyzes us sometimes. We've heard of these acronyms for FEAR, right? Mac would say fantasized experiences appearing real. Fear is the enemy of action. Fear paralyzes us. Fear creates settling. Fear creates complacency. Fear creates excuse. But fear is only in your head. It's actually a learned response. I recognized this one day when a friend of mine, you know, her, her daughter, I was observing, was pretty afraid of this roller coaster. The kid was young, you know, I think she was 6 or 7. She didn't want to go on the roller coaster with the rest of the girls. And I'm thinking in my head, man, that doesn't make much sense. She's too young to already not like roller coasters. What's— roller coasters, what's going on there? And then it occurred to me, my friend, she hated roller coasters as well. She had influenced as the parent, her daughter to be fearful of heights, of roller coasters, of things that she deemed extreme. Now I'm not trying to judge my friend because we're all guilty of this, right? While I didn't influence my kids to have fear around roller coasters, there's probably some things that maybe I unintentionally made them think a little bit different around and they had yet to have an experience. The point I'm trying to make is fear is a learned response. That's important. Why? Because it, it means it could then be unlearned. Fear can be unlearned. And when it comes to taking action, we've got to get past fear. How do we get past fear? I'll tell you what Mack told me. He said there's two things you need to be doing. Number one, you got to recognize that fear is an illusion. Like, be aware, recognize you are being duped. Fear is an illusion. And then the other way to get past fear, put one foot in front of the other and just keep moving. Just keep moving one foot in front of the other to get past fear. It's an illusion. It's in your head. Be aware. And once you've gotten there, one foot in front of the other. So now let's bring this back to what I said was going to be the topic today, which is the Law of Diminishing Intent. This is a principle that Jim Rohn actually taught. And what he was saying is the longer you wait to take action, the less likely you are to take action at all. The longer you wait to take action, the less likely you are to take action at all. Meaning that when you get clarity about something, because you've had an aha, or because you've determined a course of action, or you know, you know, it's time to move forward. That's when you have the most action. I'm sorry, the most energy to take action. Therefore, whatever it is, you need to take action as quickly as possible. So the second you decide, the second those frogs decide to jump off that log, jump. You gotta get into action because the law of diminishing intent says the longer those frogs sit on the log, the less likely fear is to overtake them or something else is to stand in the way and they don't take action. The law of diminishing intent. So the best thing that you can do is to act now. And if for some reason you cannot act now, make a note to yourself about what you need to do and then follow your own advice as soon as humanly possible. But many folks, many people, for whatever reason, will wait. But why? What, what purpose does it serve to wait? And again, it goes back to what I was just talking about. They oftentimes delay, delay because of some sort of doubt, which is kind of a code word for some degree of fear. Ryan Holiday talked about this in his book, The Obstacle Is the Way. He had said something along the lines of, uh, life and how frustrating it can be. And Oftentimes we know what problems, you know, what our problems are. We may even know what to do about them, but we have this fear that taking action is too risky and that we don't have the experience, or that's not how we pictured it, or because it's too expensive, or because it's too soon, because we think something better might come along, because it might not work right now. And Ryan says, you know what happens as a result? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We do nothing. So choosing not to move forward has the same result as being stuck, unable to move forward at all. But it's courage, it's overcoming fear, it's just taking action that is necessary. So once you're clear on what needs to be done, there's really no advantage in procrastination. So you got to take action. And you gotta move on. The law of diminishing intent simply says the more time that goes on, the less likely you are to take action at all. Be a frog that jumps off the log, right? So the focusing question for you: what decision have you made but you've yet to take action on? And how can you take action to today? How can you get things into motion today? In addition, what decisions will you make today that under different circumstances you may procrastinate or hold off on, but instead starting today you're going to put one foot in front of the other and you're going to move forward? Where does that, where does that live in your world today? That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
