How is Action-izing Different from Action, and How Can It Make You More Successful?

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

Taking action — basically this is the only way anything gets done. You can think and think and analyze and analyze all you want, but ultimately it is action that moves the ship forward. It’s common sense, but inside of the topic of Action is a science and methodology for success based on my experience. Most of us equate taking action with “time”. Action takes time and time is a limited and precious commodity for all of us.

So there in lies the area within the “Action” concept where there are opportunities to innovate and find methodologies that may be extremely useful and effective that can improve the amount and quality of action.

One of the biggest challenges that I find most people have, and that I certainly face, is there are so many ideas and requests are being created or coming in all day long every day, that it can become overwhelming. Its like a fire hose of stuff coming at you constantly, it can make it very difficult to actually work on important tasks and projects. Couple that with the inherent distraction of all the communication tools that you are connected with, taking consistent focused action can be down right challenging.

Because of this, I have played around with innovating the managing process of all of these inputs of requests and ideas and project requests, etc… Through this process I have discovered a concept that has really helped me be successful by increasing the amount of action and the quality of action that I take.

Action-izing

The distinction or innovation I discovered and have put into use is the concept of Action-izing vs. simply taking Action. Essentially, it is Pre-Action Action. It is not really new per se, but the mindset distinguishing the role of action-izing from the role of taking action is new for me. And it has made a difference for me in terms of performance and action.

In the distant past, I would field ideas coming in, see requests, and if I felt they were important, I would put those into a Task List. Generally speaking, I tried to maintain a fairly manageable task list and I would try to address or complete tasks on that list in a given priority relatively soon after the idea or request came to me.

Over time in recent years, it seems that there are more and more triggers that require action from me coming from more and more places than in the past. This has created a volume and complexity issue that did not use to exist. I needed to innovate my approach to handling this to continue to be effective and successful. The tool that innovated my approach is action-izing.

The distinction or innovation of Action-izing for me vs. what I would do in the past is combining 3 key things:

1. Moving an idea or requested task from wherever it came from into my Calendar (vs. Task list — the key here is there is only one repository for all stuff to do, whether it is meetings, projects, tasks, or ideas to consider) immediately upon becoming aware of it without much thought about it,

2. Doing at least one small, and very efficient micro-action on the idea/task the moment I put it into my Calendar (“Central” repository location) to advance it forward even ever so slightly regardless of the situation or how I feel about it, and

3. Use a physical journal or notepad to isolate the only items I am focused on today

What these 3 steps do for me is:

First, it creates one single location for every possible task, idea, project, or meeting that I need or want to take action on at some point. In the past, I would use a Calendar, Task List, and my Inbox as a means of tracking and managing all the things that required action. By converging everything into 1 single location, it dramatically simplifies things and allows clearer more decisive action to be taken.

Second, taking some small action to advance the idea, project, task, or meeting forward upon dropping it into the central repository initiates one of the most important principles I have discovered over the years…which is: “the most critical single thing for success on any task or project is to just quickly START to move it forward, even just a little.”

Third, using a physical journal to extract just the small number of focus items for “today” allows me to focus only on what I need to complete “today”.

Action-izing Advanced Tip: If possible, adopt and use a set Syntax approach to “Tag” all the items you drop into your Central repository (aka Calendar for me). Using standard tagging key words can help you manage more items more efficiently, because you can sort and group all your stuff quickly. Putting “Idea:” as the first word in an ’Idea’ record you create allows you to search on, sort, or filter by “Ideas”. Does not matter what you choose for your tagging words, but attempt to consistently apply your tagging method to everything logged. Pays back huge.

In Summary, Action-izing creates a more effective environment for massive and quality action to take place. Action-izing is Pre-Action Action. It’s is a method that puts you in better position to take more action and higher quality action because you are more focused and you use key productivity principles to turbo charge the centralize- your-stuff principle.

Have fun with the concept of Action-izing and see how it can make you more action-oriented and more productive and successful.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford