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Your Life Systems is a podcast about building practical systems for everyday life.
Join Wes as he shares simple ideas, practical frameworks, and real-world experience to help you make consistent progress in the areas of life that matter most.
Most people don't need more information. They need better implementation.
Instead of relying on motivation, you'll learn how to build systems that make success easier, more consistent, and more sustainable.
Stop Waiting for Clarity. Move First.
Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Stop Waiting for Clarity. Move First.
And this whole episode really boils down to one thing.
Action.
If you don't take action, you're never going to reach the goals or the success that you want to in your life. Everything boils down to taking action.
Now, there's a lot of things that go around action that are important. But no matter what you do, if you want to achieve anything in your life, you've got to get into action. You've got to take action.
So another thing that I jotted down while I was studying this is why clarity usually comes through action.
So here's an example. When I start a business idea, or start a side business, or start a new main business, or want to learn about something, I start gathering information.
I'm an information gatherer. I like information. I can analyze information.
That's one of my skills. So I gather a lot of information, and I learn, and I analyze, and I start making plans.
If you've watched any of my episodes about my time management system or the goal systems that I use, I put everything into goals, and then I break them down very small, into very small steps.
And then I take action. I take action on the next small step.
Every time I get stuck, the thing that breaks me out of it is I take action on the next small step.
But the point is, it's good to gather the information, and it's good to analyze the information, but you've got to stop and take action to gather more information eventually.
That's what I mean when I say why clarity usually comes through action.
You can do all the planning you want. You can put together the best plans, the best goals, the best systems for your life, for your businesses that you want, and if you never put them into action, then you're never going to learn how well they're going to work.
And that's a sticking point. A sticking point can be, I want to be certain. I want clarity before I get started.
Well, you should gather as much certainty, as much clarity as you can before you start, but you're never going to get true feedback until you take action.
So here is your question for today.
Think about this question as we go through the rest of this episode: What could I learn by taking one step that I cannot learn by thinking about it longer?
Again, I'm a thinker. I like to study.
I like to learn. I like to think through things, especially businesses, business questions, success systems, life systems. I like to think through all those things, but you can't get stuck just thinking.
So what could I learn by taking just one step? And it can even be a small step. It doesn't have to be huge.
By taking one step, what can I learn that there's no way I can learn by thinking about it longer? And then you take that step.
And that's why I always talk about, so often, taking your big goals and breaking them down into steps, and breaking them down into smaller and smaller steps.
You make the steps as small as possible so that there's always the next step you can take, and it doesn't feel so daunting. It doesn't feel like a huge deal.
I've used the example of when I want to launch a new website. You know, there's steps to that. There's steps of planning it out, etc.
But one of the first action steps is, go buy the domain. That's a very small step, but it's an easy step, and it gets me closer to the goal of whatever I want the website to be or do.
Then the next small step, set up hosting for the domain.
Those are simple, small steps. They don't take long, but they both get me closer to my goal.
So what's the next small step that you can take that's going to bring you more clarity, or give you answers, or give you feedback?
I also talk a lot about a big thing about achieving goals: you take action, then you evaluate your results, and then you adapt.
And that's all part of action. You can have the goal, you can have the steps, but a lot of times you've got to take the action, take the next step, to get the feedback about how it's working, and then you can adapt or adjust.
That's how you reach big goals.
You take action, then you evaluate what that action did, what the outcome was, and then you adjust.
So some decisions can be clarified through thought, for sure. You know, let's go back to the website example.
I don't just go buy any domain. I figure out what I want the website to be about, then I go and I research the available domain names, and I find a domain name that, to me, works best with what I want the website to be.
Some of them I'm interested in keyword domains, some of them branding.
I mean, I've got a lot of experience in this, so I usually know what I'm looking for.
But that's a thought step. The thought step is, here's the business, here's the website I want to create for this business, whatever it is, and here's what this website's going to be about.
Those are all thought steps.
Then I start researching the available domains, thought step, and then when I find the domain that I want for this business or this website, then I buy it.
Buying the domain is the action step.
Then set up the hosting. Then load whatever CMS, content management system, I'm going to use. Then I start working on the content, whatever content that's going to be, written, video, audio, whatever it is.
Those are all steps. See, there's parts planning, and then there's time to take action.
Now, let's take that a little further.
Let's say I've got the domain, I've got the hosting, I've got the CMS, I've started putting content up.
Then I can start getting feedback on how that's working.
Is this page doing what I want it to do? Is this page getting any traffic? Why is it getting traffic? Why isn't it getting traction?
That's the feedback that I'm learning from that.
Again, in this example, if you don't have experience with this, it's hard to understand the feedback you're getting.
I've done this long enough, and hundreds and hundreds of websites for different things over the years, that now I understand the feedback much better through experience.
Then, if this is happening or not happening, I have a good idea of what to do.
You build these kinds of skills through experience, through taking action.
If I'd never launched the first website, if I'd never taken the action, if I'd never taken the action of creating the next page of content or whatever, if I'd never worked on search engine optimization or things like that, those are all action steps.
Then I wouldn't know what I know now.
So the action is the important thing. You've definitely got to think things through.
That's the other thing, though. You do it one time, you get the feedback, you learn from that, and that helps you think it through the next time you do it.
But it all gets unlocked. It's like the key that unlocks it is taking action.
And that goes back to what I'm saying with the title of this episode: stop waiting for perfect clarity. Move first, or take action first.
Actions turn assumptions into something you can test.
That's what I'm talking about, the feedback.
You take action, which is actually testing something, even though often we don't look at it as a test.
But sometimes it helps me, especially if I'm struggling with achieving a goal or working on a system, and I'm struggling getting it to work.
Then instead of thinking, oh, this is the next step, sometimes I'll switch my thinking to, this is the next test.
I don't know how this is going to work, but I'm going to test this, and then if it works this way, I do this, and if it doesn't work, I do this, or whatever.
But sometimes just switching my mental thought about the next step from a step to a test helps unlock what I need to do so I can continue taking action.
A small first step can reveal obstacles, opportunities, and preferences you could not see before you took the step.
Action is all about moving you closer to your goals and getting feedback on your goals, or your steps, or your system, that you can use to improve the current goal, or system, or steps, or whatever you're doing, and learning so you can do better in the future.
But action unleashes, unlocks all of that.
Choose reversible, low-risk actions when uncertainty is high.
For example, when I said about a test, sometimes I think, well, I'm going to test this instead of it being the next step.
So when you want to test something and you're really not certain how it's going to work, you find the smallest possible test that doesn't kill you, that doesn't kill the business, that doesn't destroy everything.
Find the next small test you can run, and test the smallest thing.
Get the feedback from that, whether it's good or bad feedback, and then test the next smallest thing.
Success isn't a straight line.
Success is jagged, up and down, up and down.
And you learn, you should learn, just as much from when things go down as when they're going up.
Some of us learn far more when things are going wrong than when everything's going right.
Because sometimes we get, I don't know if lazy is the right word, but complacent when everything seems to be doing good.
But when a dip comes, then we put it into overdrive, and our brain's more alive, and we're problem solving.
Some people enjoy problem solving more than a straight line of success.
Now, I want success, but I do enjoy problem solving.
If I had to pick between the two, yeah, I want success first.
But sometimes the problem solving is the challenge that keeps my brain engaged with what I'm trying to do with its success, and sometimes a problem or two along the way unlocks something that creates even more success than I was shooting for the first time.
Clarity is often something you build, not something you wait to receive.
And how do we build clarity? We take action. We move first.
We think through as much as we need to, to be safe and to make good decisions, but that's never going to reach the goal until we start taking action.
So again, clarity or certainty is often something that we build, not something we wait to receive.
In other words, if you want to receive clarity, if you want to receive the answers, you've got to take action.
You've got to ask.
I talk about ask, seek, knock, which is from the Bible. All those mean action.
Ask is an action. You've got to ask the right questions, whether it's from you or from someone else.
You've got to knock.
You've got to knock on the door, whatever that door is, whether it's a real door or a mental door.
You've got to seek answers. You've got to seek the success.
If you want to be successful, it's ask, seek, knock. It's action.
Take action today.
So, what's the next small thing you can do? Figure it out and take some action, starting right now.
Then look at the feedback, and then improve. Adjust, adapt, overcome.
This is Wes, Your Life Systems. Please subscribe. Hope this helps.