Are You an Active or an Action type of Person?
Posted on September 09, 2021 by James Wylie, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
Do you have a project to do whether at work or at home? The toughest part of any endeavor is getting started.
You sit at your workstation and realize that you have a presentation to put together for an upcoming meeting. It requires a lot of data collection, data collation, chart construction and power point layout. You know that you have to start on it but the mountain of data to plow through makes this task monumentally difficult. You hate crunching numbers and uncomfortable with getting up in front of a group to make a presentation. You get a phone call on an emergency situation and feel relief that this will prevent you from starting this task.
Another scenario……….
Your wife has been after you for weeks to paint the bedroom, You have been putting off the project because the thought of buying the paint, lining up the the furniture, and covering it with protection just did not seem appealing. It is summer and rather than being stuck inside, you rather play golf.
In Porche and Niederer’s book You Can Coach Anything, they delineate two types of people, active or action. The concept is key in understanding the type of person that you are, especially if you have a goal to achieve, a task to perform or a project to complete. Active people, simply put, are those that stay busy in accomplishing their daily tasks. The activity though necessary does not necessarily move you forward in helping you complete a major task or project. Action people, by contrast, work methodically to get their major tasks completed even as they have to complete their daily ‘activity oriented’ tasks. Though these activities are distracting, the action oriented person stays the course and finds ways to complete the project.
Consider the person that has to put together the presentation who faces numerous interruptions. The longer that you put off the task, the harder it will be to efficiently collect and properly present the data. An action oriented person will compartmentalize the task and break it down into small packet of activities. Set a timeframe for collecting and collating the data which could be by a certain date. Set another time frame for taking the data and format it so that it can be put presentation form. Finally set the last timeframe for putting the data into presentation form and just as importantly, allow for time to practice your presentation. Think of the Iron Chef competition on the Food Network where they have to take a secret ingredient, compartmentalize the activities to prepare the food and plate five dishes in presentable form and do this in an hour. If they were not action oriented, they would be lucky to plate one dish.
Golf or paint the bedroom? This is definitely a no-brainer. However consider this. Could you really feel like you can enjoy your golf game with this hanging over your head? Suggestion would be to pick a time frame to commit to the project. Consider looking at the weather forecast and pick a day that will rain. Now, if you have to paint, why not do it on a rainy day. Planning would involve gradually gathering the materials, spend an evening, moving and covering the furniture and then launch on that rainy day.
Hardest thing to do on any endeavor is to simply to get started (I refer to this as “Inertia” in my book Life Imitates Science). When you have a project, whether home or work related, it is always best to mentally get yourself ready. Pro athletes do not just show up and play, they mentally get themselves ready long before they arrive at the field of combat. Once you have the right frame of mind, the rest should flow.
