Do It Now
When to start a new, unanticipated, task within the domain of your critically thought out plan
Now.
You set out to acheive a goal to increase your quality of living. It involves some pretty big changes but they get you to where you want to be. There’s just something missing. Eventually, after thinking critically on the topic, you come to realize what it is you need to do – an unanticipated task. Do it now.
Use the momentum of figuring out what it is you need to do to make progress doing it. Figuring out what to do comes from a chain of critical thoughts and conclusions. As more thoughts come together, their momentum increases until they form a solution, with associated task(s), heading in the direction of your goal. Leverage that momentum to make progress on your task.
Momentum provides us an opportunity to efficiently use energy already in the system. Take the opportunity to make progress on the task. Even if you start and don’t finish, you’ve still made it further, with less energy, than if you tried restarting the task at a later time. By taking action immediately, you have found if your solution is viable and have given your subconscious actual experience to chew on rather than hypotheticals if you had not taken action at all.
Momentum, generated through that long chain of thoughts, gives us our action support through context. Since that solution was recently created in our minds, we can more easily make the best decision when taking action because we remember why we are doing what we are doing. We remember the requirements. We remember the boundaries we are operating within and what we are trying to achieve with this task and how this task will get us closer to our goal. We remember this because we just came up with the solution that fostered this action. That context is with us because we are still within the momentum of the solution.
On the contrary, when we wait to start, we risk forgetting the thoughts that created the context motivating the task. Depending on how long it’s been since the initial thought, it can take considerable effort to remember the necessary context. The context we do remember may not even be accurate. Without action, our subconscious has only hypotheticals to chew on instead of imperical data which can result in us heading in an entirely incorrect direction exposing us to mistakes down the line.
By identifying a solution, you have already developed a critically thought out plan. You intimately know the domain of the work your effort is in. You know this task will bring you closer to your goal. Use the momentum of the initial realization to make progress immediately through action. Get started. Even if you don’t finish, you’ve given your mind something to chew on until you can work toward your goal again.
Leverage momentum when given the chance. It’s worth double the effort later.
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Interestingly enough, this is the original article that I wanted to write based on how my friend B operates on a daily basis – immediately engaging in problem solving as soon as the opportunity is presented. But I had trouble generalizing this practice while excluding the scenarios where immediately taking action would result in waste. Hence, the two preceding articles and included the disclaimer about critically thinking before taking action and taking action within the domain of a goal. The previous two articles answer 1) why to do work fast (to achieve goals) and 2) when to do work fast (when it fits within the domain of your plan). Without those two prerequisites, Do It Now looks like helter-skelter Employee Mindset-type effort that doesn’t really achieve anything even if the work ever does get finished.
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