Every action you take either takes you closer to your goal, or closer to someone else’s goal.
So long as your and another’s goals are aligned, it’s a great way to accelerate you progress. This is the principle, at the core, of any support group (or a cult). One great element of such a group is that intended outcome is pre-established. Your goal is set, formalized, written down and scrutinized – regardless of the goal itself. After that it is easier to see what causes are a result of what action, but there is no way to dismiss it – every result has an action associated with it. Effect is what happens when you act out a cause.
Most actions allow for a lot of varied causes. They affect even more results indirectly which flow in to more actions, causes, etc. All combining in to what seems an incomprehensible web of causes, effects, decisions, results and all of those compound at each iteration. Are you in a bad mood today because you don’t like your lunch, you didn’t get a present that you wanted 3 weeks ago, your friend didn’t invite you to the movies next weekend, the girl at a club wouldn’t give you her number, you stayed up late and didn’t get enough sleep last night? One result, many decisions, even more actions.
Every molecule of water, over time, erodes the canyon. Was it this molecule or that is largely irrelevant. The more important aspect to consider is the reason behind the action. This will dictate the result you want and motivate you to take a positive action.
This seems trivial – and it is: an action is the outcome of a decision to achieve some kind of result. In other words, your actions are not decision driven(!). The intended result drives the decision. That decision is then responsible for taking this action or another or no action at all.
This is the reason why if your intended result is to save $100, not buying gum because you don’t chew gum wouldn’t, in the long run, get you any closer to your goal. Not buying gum because you intend to put that $0.25 towards $100 will, because it will combine with many other decisions.
This is why working “backwards” works, and working “forward” doesn’t. This is also why “fake it till you make it” rarely works in practice. By the time you can successfully “fake” it, you’ve done so many things that you’ve essentially made it anyway. In this light, the cause is more important than the decision and action. And naturally it follows that every action must be decided upon in the frame of getting you closer to the result or further away from it.
It’s easiest to notice this when decisions are attached to things the action has no direct effect on. The litmus test is intermediary rationalizations:
I want to get a girlfriend -> skinny people are more liked by girls -> I need to be skinny to get a girlfriend -> I can’t get a girlfriend until I’m skinny -> I’m going on a diet.
Breadcrumbs in the middle of that chain result in purchasing expensive cars, bleaching hair, wearing tight uncomfortable jeans, buying drinks, dinners, houses, going out 6 nights a week, classifying people in to arbitrary categories… the list is infinitely long.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just say “Hi!” to every girl you find attractive?
The take away here is that if an action doesn’t result in a predictable, repeatable outcome, getting you closer to the end result in one iteration, the decision should be “no action.”
An actionable cause is the result which can be achieved by systematically deciding to take the same one (and only one) action.
Loosing weight is NOT an actionable cause. Consuming one candy bar a week is.
Being well dressed is NOT an actionable cause. Putting on a shirt that is clean is.
Being more social is NOT an actionable cause. Inviting a classmate to grab a beer is.
Meeting more women is NOT an actionable cause. Saying “Can you recommend a good book in this section?” to 2 women inside a B&N on Tuesday at 6:30pm is.
Creating actionable causes and learning to recognize non actionable ones might be the single most important step to go from running around doing things to getting closer to achieving your goals. When the effect is self evident, it’s a clear sign that you’re on the right track.
If you can’t come up with an actionable cause for the desired effect, the result you get by taking an alternate action will rarely be the one you want.
