Knowledge isn't Power, Action Is

Stop overthinking and take action. Do you find that you're often dwelling on something too long before you get up and start moving on it? Or maybe you've been in a situation where you realize that because you didn't take action quickly enough, an opportunity, a huge development or potential reward or benefit in your life just escaped you. It passed you by. Today I'm going to talk to you about how you can be better at taking action. And because that really is where the power is. Knowledge used to be power, but taking action today, that's where the ultimate power is. Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I coach CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, and individuals in higher levels of performance, helping them achieve the peak that they're able to achieve, whether that's in their business or in their life. Drawing on my experience from McKinsey and company helping build Skype before we sold it to ebay, as well as several of my own entrepreneurial journeys. So let's dive in and how you can get better at not overthinking and taking more bold, consistent action. And before we dive in, because I'm going to take you through six things that you can do to optimize yourself for action. But before we dive in, I want to talk about how knowledge these days is cheap. So knowledge used to be power, right? But the fact is I can Google just about anything that I don't know, and within five seconds, I can have the knowledge. So it's not really knowledge. That's not where the game is played. It's about translating knowledge into action. That's where the game is played. And too few people actually do that. They give themselves credit for knowing, and they don't give themselves credit for doing. Or worse yet, they don't do. And you know what happens in the end? Their dreams pass them by, their lives pass them by. And then suddenly they're sitting there in a point of regret, not feeling that they've done all the things that they could have done, not feeling that they could achieve all the things that. That they were capable of achieving. And I don't want that to happen to you. I have a story to tell you of a client years ago that I had a CEO and he got into this habit of. Whenever we were talking about things that he could be doing or improving or ways in which he could elevate his performance to a higher level, he would say, yeah, Eric, I know that. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I know that. I've heard that before. Yep, I know that to be true. And I actually forbid him from saying that because every time that he was saying, I know that, it's as if he was giving himself credit for the knowledge when it didn't matter. It's about translating knowledge into action. It's about execution. That's where it counts. So let's dive in and I'm going to give you six ways in which you can better optimize yourself for taking action and stopping the overthinking and stopping the pondering and actually getting some strong, good, productive, consistent results in either your business or life. So number one, whatever it is that we're working on, we got to break it down. No matter what the project is, it can always be broken down into three five things. Whether that's a big task or a big project, always try to break it down. And this is absolutely critical because it relates to our tendency to procrastinate when something is too far off into the future. If we don't feel like we're going to get a taste of that success soon enough, we, we are far more likely to procrastinate on whatever that is. I'm sure you've experienced this, right? I'm sure you've had these big grand ideas. I'm going to do this in my health, I'm going to do this in my work. I'm going to do this with my family or my home. And it sounds great, but because you didn't actually prioritize, what's the very next thing I can do? How can I break this down? And how can I focus on just the next action and then focus on that as the goal? Because you never got around to doing that. You, you never actually achieved it. So always break down whatever it is that you want to achieve into at least three to five sub components. Number two, as part of breaking things down, you need to focus on what's most important. Where's the 80, 20 in that? There's 20% of the things that you could do for 80% of the result, you can't do everything. So focus on what is the highest leverage activities or the highest leverage actions or whereby if I just did more of those things, they're going to be predictive, highly predictive, and influence the success that I'm trying to achieve. You know, there's a myriad of things that you could be doing, for example, if you want to write a book, but probably the number one thing you need to be doing is just scheduling time in your calendar on a daily basis where you're actually going to have fingers to the keyboard and you're actually going to write. And so think about it in those terms when. What's the number? You know, the number one, two things that I should be doing? Where is the leverage in whatever it is that I'm looking to act upon? Number three. I always like this construct. I've talked about it before in many of my other messages. It's the pro versus amateur thinking, and I'm talking about it again. Why? Because it's so important for you to embrace this concept, especially if you want to be taking more action in life. So a professional versus an amateur, what's the difference? An amateur needs to feel like taking action, whereas a professional takes action whether they feel like it or not. This is so powerful. If you think about it for a moment. How many times have you not taken action because you didn't feel like it? Because you didn't. It just, you know, I'm not up to it. That's not how professionals act. Think about the Olympians out there. How many times does an olympian in the 4, 5, 6, 7. However many years of training that they did before the actual event, how many times do you think that they thought on a daily basis? I don't feel like following the diet plan. I don't feel like working out. I don't feel like giving it my all. I just want to, you know, sit back and just watch Netflix right now. Probably loads of times. And what do you think would have happened to their gold medal chances if they allow those feelings to dictate their actions? Well, they wouldn't have become a champion, would they? So you need to adopt a professional mindset. And it's action which generates feeling. It's not feeling which precedes action. That's the difference between a professional versus an amateur. Number four, you need to focus on continually starting. One of the things that gets in the way from us taking consistent action is often we think about something that we want to do, but then we think about, oh, I have to finish it, and it becomes a bit overwhelming and we never get around to it. If you just focus on starting, if you just focus on what's the next thing I can do? And then when can I start? The finishing will take care of itself. And after you've started and you've worked for a little bit, the very next question you should ask yourself after you finish that period of work is, when can I start again? And if you just keep asking yourself that question, when can I start again? When can I start again? When can I start again? And schedule it into your calendar. The starting will keep happening and the finishing takes care of itself. So focus on continually starting. Number five, Take a vacation in the present moment. This is from Neil Fiore, author of the Now Habit. I've talked about Neil before and some of the other messages, videos, podcasts, wherever you're listening to this. Neil is an amazing guy. Spent a lot of time working one on one with Neil after reading his book the Now Habit. I was just blown away by it. And so I reached out to him and booked some sessions with Neil. And. And Neil gave me this incredible concept of taking a vacation in the present moment. Because when we're not acting, when we stop or we hesitate or we don't go ahead with what we know we should be doing, it's usually because we're living either in the past or in the future. So we're either in the past, which has already happened and doesn't exist anymore, or we're in the future, which hasn't happened yet and doesn't exist at all. And Neil taught me to just center myself, take some deep breaths in the moment, center yourself in that present moment. Because if you take a vacation in the present, which you can do simply by breathing deeply with your eyes closed for two minutes, take your phone, set it to 120 seconds, and just breathe deeply to yourself and repeat a word to yourself, perhaps repeat the word relaxed over and over and over, but just center yourself in that present moment. And when you do that, you actually take a vacation in the present. And it's much more easier to take action. And it's much easier to take action when you've done that. Trust me. Give that a try. Number six. This one comes from Mel Robbins from her book with the same title, the Five Second Rule. I love this. It's super simple, it's practical, and it fights our tendency to overthink. Again, how many times when you're looking to take action, do you find that you're convincing yourself otherwise? You, you're coming up with random ideas or excuses or a ton of reasons why it's not exactly the right time to take action. And the five second rule is super simple. The moment you feel the urge to act, or the thought that you should be taking action on a goal, a project, or a task, or something that you know deep down is important to you that the best version of you would be doing, but maybe that you're not in the moment, you have five seconds to take action before your brain will get too involved and convince you otherwise. And so let's say for example, that you want to start working on that book or that project or that presentation or that new strategy or that new business partnership or going to work out or whatever it may be. So the thought comes into your mind, ah, I should be sitting down to work on that strategy. Boom. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off. Start working or should I work out this morning? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off. Put on the, you know, your gym shoes out the door, start working out. This is incredibly powerful. I encourage you to use it, the five second rule. And in combination, all of these techniques together will help you stop overthinking, will prime you for action so that you can close that gap between where you are and where you'd like to be. I hope you've enjoyed that. And if you head over to my website@ericpartaker.com you can also subscribe to my weekly newsletter.