Royane Real
Is Any Action Better Than Nothing?
By Royane Real
One of the most confusing things about life is knowing when you should take action, and when you should simply sit back and do nothing. We all experience situations where we are confused about what we should do, how we should proceed.
Should we carefully analyze all aspects of our situation and make a plan? Should we take some sort of tentative action and see what happens, then adjust our plans accordingly? Or should we simply wait and see what happens?
The problem with every one of these scenarios is that in some cases they are right, and in other cases they are wrong.
Unfortunately, while we are in the situation we can't always peer into the murky future and know which is the right path to take.
You may have heard of the old phrase, “Paralysis by Analysis”. This means that sometimes when we overanalyze, we don’t take any action. We over think a problem instead of taking action. When we don’t take action, we may actually be guaranteeing our failure!
There is a danger with too much analyzing and strategizing. When we analyze too much, we may get paralyzed to the point of doing nothing
All of us want to be successful, and we all want to have the good rewards that success brings us. However, what is not always so clear, is what we have to do to achieve the success we desire.
When we are trying to become successful, sometimes it seems that we lose our way. When we lose our way and seem stuck, we get confused. Then we get paralyzed from over-analysis. Should we continue on the same path we are on if we want to see success? Or should we be going in a different direction?
There are times when it's good to analyze a bit and strategize, but there are also times when the most useful thing to do is to take some sort of action, and see what happens.
A lot of times when you don’t know what to do, any action will be better than no action. That’s because you may have to put your plan into effect before you can start to see what the result will be. Once you start to take some action, you can then step back a bit and analyze whether the direction you are going is going to pay off for you in terms of success.
In many cases, it’s only after you have taken action that you have a chance to see whether or not you are on the right path.
Instead of using the phrase, “Ready? Aim! Fire!” as your guideline, in many cases you will get more success if you start using the phrase, “Ready? Fire! Aim!”
In many cases, analysis by itself is not the solution that leads to success. On the other hand, too much action without some evaluation and some course correction will not lead to success either.
You will probably need to take some action first, and analyze once you see what the results are if you want to see success!
( The above introductory comments were written by Royane Real.
Author of “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”
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