Hello Listeners, March 06, 2025.
Welcome to Social Skills Coaching, where you become more likable, charismatic, and productive.
Today's episode is from the book titled Take Rapid Action by Patrick King.
This practical guide available on Amazon, with an audiobook on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible, will help you turn your thoughts into reality instead of endless avoidance and laziness.
The author's website is bitlyPKConsulting.
Take Rapid Action deconstructs the psychology of laziness and why tomorrow always sounds like a better idea.
This book is a shot of motivation, a spark of fire, an understanding of your brain, and a list of techniques to get into motion.
Learn how comfortable inaction is sabotaging you, actionable and applicable rules to get started before you feel 100% ready, how to create motion and take the first step from complete stillness, and how to defeat procrastination by bundling.
Discover what you think is action but is actually a waste of time in today's episode "Err on the Side of Action" - Get a Little Uncomfortable, Tiny Steps.
Stop saying "I'll do it later" and overhaul your mindset for productivity and efficiency with Take Rapid Action.
The link to the book is https://bit.ly/takerapidactionking.
One of the (many) problems with a lifetime of not taking action is that your first instinct will be to freeze.
You may feel that it’s safer to maintain the status quo instead of making a move, or you may just feel uncomfortable acting without analyzing things to death.
Whatever the case, you have found yourself unconsciously erring on the side of inaction.
You may have heard of what’s known as the fight or flight response.
This is when we interpret a stimulus in the world to be dangerous, which ratchets up our adrenaline and alertness and readies our bodies to either flee at full speed or engage in a fight to the death.
What’s less frequently mentioned is that this response actually has a third component—freezing.
For most, this is when the adrenaline rush is so extreme that we are essentially left frozen in shock.
For those who have made a habit of avoiding action, this is our default response no matter what happens.
It’s easier said than done to break these patterns, but this chapter contains a few ways to err on the side of action and get moving more frequently and consistently.
Get a Little Uncomfortable The action you want rarely happens when you’re in your comfort zone.
In fact, that’s probably true with anything you want.
It’s not going to come easy, and you will have to endure something uncomfortable, new, and difficult to achieve it.
If you are too comfortable with your current job, you won’t feel the need to push your boundaries to seek a promotion or pay raise.
You won’t learn new skills or strive for something better.
You figure that good enough is good enough, and so inaction will be your way of living.
We call this sort of sloth comfortable inaction.
Things may not be ideal, but you’re comfortable enough (or not uncomfortable enough), and thus no action will be taken.
You can think of it as your tolerance for discomfort being higher than average.
It’s knowing that you’re slowly gaining weight, but not changing your eating habits because you can still squeeze into your favorite pair of jeans.
Or, for instance, it’s understanding that your business’s monthly revenues have been decreasing by 5 percent for five months, but not changing your business model because you’re still paying your bills without a problem.
Comfortable inaction can also rear its head in small everyday occurrences like lying in bed, being slightly cold, but not wanting to get out of bed to close your windows.
You’d be warmer and more comfortable if you took action, but without it, you feel adequate and like you would be able to fall asleep regardless.
Whatever your short-term needs and desires, they are being adequately met, so there is no reason to change your life around.
Initially, comfortable inaction may seem completely harmless.
After all, you’ve already found ways to live with the problem or to mentally deal, right?
You rationalize to yourself that if something urgent happened, you would be able to spring into action.
(But who’s to say that you wouldn’t simply increase your threshold for discomfort and wave off most problems as issues you can just cope with?)
What makes comfortable inaction so damaging?
Because everything compounds and grows over time, and if you’re not careful, you will unknowingly end up in a situation that is untenable and far past any boundaries you may have set for yourself.
This is best exemplified with a frog trapped in a pot of water that is slowly coming to a boil.
If the frog was suddenly thrown in a pot of boiling water, he would jump out, but if he is in the water as it gradually grows hotter, then he doesn’t perceive the growing danger and boils to death out of a lack of self-awareness.
There may be urgent emergencies down the line, but for the time being, you’re more comfortable doing nothing.
Understand that even if you may be comfortable right now, it doesn’t mean you will be so forever.
Constantly settling is not how you get what you want in life.
Stop setting aside things for later when you can handle them right now.
Generally speaking, successful people have a bias for action.
Their default mode is to spot issues and then execute as fast as possible, because they know that’s the only way to get what they want in this world.
They don’t get sidetracked by distraction, fears, or even comfort.
Perhaps they have even conditioned themselves to be uncomfortable with inaction, an enviable mental space to occupy.
The human mind is great at coming up with excuses for not taking a risk.
After all, why would you want to change anything if you’re already in an acceptable situation?
This is the million-dollar question: how can you use this knowledge of comfortable inaction to avoid falling into its trap?
Picture that you are living in a house in Hawaii close to a volcano.
In one scenario, you turn on the news radio to hear that researchers have estimated that the volcano near you will be active within the next one hundred years.
You figure you won’t be around to care, so inaction it is for you.
In another scenario, you turn on the news radio and discover that researchers have estimated the volcano to be active within the following two months.
You start packing up your belongings in cardboard boxes immediately.
What was the difference?
Inaction was no longer comfortable; in fact, it was painful.
Thus, to break out of comfortable inaction, you must make inaction as uncomfortable as possible.
Imagine all the long-term and short-term consequences of inaction with as much detail as you can.
Project into the future and visualize all the eventualities.
In fact, let your imagination run wild as you picture the potential failure, rejection, and how far behind you will be.
This helps in two main ways: First, it snaps you to awareness of what’s at stake in your life beyond your current sense of laziness.
Second, amplifying pains and discomforts creates a sense of urgency that will push you to act to stop that pain.
Suppose you’ve been dreaming about leaving your desk job and building something of your own, but you never actually do it because you are comfortable with receiving a fixed amount on a fixed date to pay your bills.
That seems like a pretty reasonable excuse to stay in your zone of inaction, right?
But think about all the opportunities you are missing, as well as the ways you are stifling your growth by staying.
Amplify the positives from action and negatives from inaction.
Positives from action: You could be earning more money, or you could be working for only four hours a week instead of forty.
You could be going on a nice vacation every month or, even better, working from exotic locales.
You could be proud of building something from the ground up.
You could retire early.
You could laugh at all your naysayers.
You could be your own boss instead of a perpetual cog in the machine.
You have always dreamed of working for yourself.
Your worst-case scenario is to end up exactly where you are right now.
Negatives from inaction: You are miserable at your job.
You hate your supervisors.
You have a long commute.
You will never advance further than you already have.
You don’t feel passionately about your work.
Competition increases every day.
Both your opportunity and ambition will decrease with age.
You are never going to build a business if not now.
Is it really that scary to take a risk on something you’ve never tried before?
When you think about it hard enough, you might realize that inaction is actually a lot scarier.
Inaction amounts to a lot of wasted time, but taking action makes wasted time impossible.
Tiny Steps Very few people want to go to work when it’s raining cats and dogs outside.
It’s an enormous burden to overcome mentally.
You’ll get soaked, your shoes and socks will be puddles, and you’ll freeze from head to toe.
Oh, and your only umbrella is broken.
It’s such a burden that you don’t even want to go through the motions of getting dressed and putting on your boots.
You feel defeated before you even begin.
Sometimes a horrendously rainy day can feel just like trying to take action and get started.
When we’re faced with huge tasks that feel insurmountable, it’s like looking through a window out at the rain.
It’s such an obstacle that everything feels impossible and pointless.
We drag our feet, discourage ourselves, and bitterly complain the whole time.
Most of us will probably just stay inside the entire day with a cup of hot chocolate and never get our day started.
Similarly, a single huge task, such as “finish the two-hundred-page report,” can certainly sound imposing, if not impossible.
It’s just so discouraging to start something like that because you feel that it will never end and you will never make any progress.
To some extent, that’s true, because even writing ten pages is only completing 5 percent of the task.
Imagine how hopeless you would feel.
However, what if you were to break that monumental project up into tiny, easy, individual tasks you could get to work on immediately, as well as see instant progress?
For example: preparing the template, finding the first three sources, creating a bibliography, outlining five hundred words of the first section, and so on.
Actually, it can go much smaller yet: choosing the fonts, writing the chapter titles, organizing the desk, formatting the document, turning the computer on, sitting down for five minutes, or writing just one sentence.
The smaller, the better.
Otherwise, you’re starting each day staring at the equivalent of a torrential downpour.
When you break up your tasks into as tiny pieces as possible, you are creating ways to keep your brain happy and motivated for action.
Anything difficult is only a series of easy things.
One of the biggest hurdles to taking action is looking at tasks as huge, inseparable boulders.
It’s intimidating and discouraging, and when those emotions arise, it’s easy to avoid action because tackling a boulder is a tough sell.
Unfortunately, this is a habit that plagues most people.
They see only massive boulders and allow themselves to get emotionally thrown off track.
Break up your big tasks into smaller activities and keep repeating until the tasks you have before you are so easy, you can do them within a few minutes.
Create small, manageable chunks that will be psychologically uplifting and acceptable, and you’ll increase your action instantly.
Make your to-do list as long and articulated as possible, with as many small tasks as you can list.
Instead of boulders, think in terms of pebbles—a pebble is something you can handle instantly, without any effort and even with little thought.
In fact, make each task so small it’s almost like you’re not doing anything at all.
Can you start a fire only with big logs?
You might be able to, but it would be difficult.
It’s much easier to start with kindling, paper scraps, and small pieces of wood that burn easily.
Small steps can take you to the top of the hill and let you roll down the other side to seize momentum.
They help you break the inertia that leads to passivity.
Let’s take an example that we’re all familiar with: working out.
You want to lose one hundred pounds, a hefty goal.
If you go into the gym every day thinking that you want to lose one hundred pounds, you’re going to fail.
It’s a huge, enormous boulder of a goal.
It might sound grand to proclaim, but in reality, it is going to be very hard to stick to because of how unbelievable it sounds.
You won’t see much progress on a daily or even weekly basis, and you will understandably become discouraged.
It’s too much to face at once, like the rainy day from the beginning of the chapter.
So what if you approach your weight loss target by breaking it into small, manageable increments (goals) and tasks?
This might look something like setting a reasonable weekly weight loss goal, creating daily objectives of eating specific foods (and not eating others), and drinking water every hour.
Eat one hundred fewer calories per meal.
Go on walks after each meal.
Drink only half your soda.
Eat five fewer fries each meal.
Cook once a week.
Buy the low-calorie version of snacks.
Substitute water for fruit juice.
Now those sound much more palatable and achievable—easy, even.
If you hit your weekly weight loss goal and successfully drink water every hour, it is far easier to stay motivated and focused.
Meeting your smaller weekly target will give you a sense of accomplishment, whereas making an insignificant dent in your total goal (one hundred pounds) will only leave you feeling discouraged and as if the task ahead is too great to achieve.
These are small tasks that, if done consistently and correctly, will lead to your overall goal of losing one hundred pounds.
These tiny steps and frequent victories will encourage and motivate you to take action.
Depending on our mood, even saying “I’m going to write two hundred words” can feel like a twenty-mile march to the sea.
In this case, it’s not even a tiny step—it’s a portion of a step—that we struggle with.
One way to get the ball rolling no matter how you feel is to change your phrasing.
“I’m going to finish that” turns into “I’m going to get started on that.” The point of this, just like with tiny steps, is to make your threshold for starting as low as possible.
In fact, you want to make it so low that it’s nearly indistinguishable from the laziness of not acting at all.
Hello Listeners, March 06, 2025
Today on Social Skills Coaching, where you become more likable, charismatic, and productive, we're diving into a game-changing book that will transform your life.
Take Rapid Action: Get Productive, Motivated, Energized, Stop Overthinking, Procrastinating by Patrick King is available on Amazon, with the audiobook also accessible on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.
Visit bitlyPKConsulting to explore more of Patrick's transformative work.
The episode title, And, is from the book titled Take Rapid Action.
In this must-read, you'll discover practical psychological methods to turn your thoughts into reality instead of endless avoidance and laziness.
Transform from struggling with getting off your butt to a machine of productivity and self-discipline.
Create an action bias in your life, starting now.
Patrick King, an internationally bestselling author and social skills coach, deconstructs the psychology of laziness and why tomorrow always sounds like a better idea.
This book is many things at once - a shot of motivation, a spark of fire, an understanding of your brain, and a list of techniques to get into motion.
It's one of the most valuable skills you'll ever gain because only action matters in life, not good intentions.
You'll gain the ability to get things done and hit your goals no matter the circumstances.
Learn how comfortable inaction is sabotaging you, actionable and applicable rules to get started before you feel 100% ready, how to create motion and take the first step from complete stillness, and how to defeat procrastination by bundling.
Patrick also teaches you how to strategically plan your days to prevent laziness and distraction.
Discover what you think is action but is actually a waste of time.
Stop saying "I'll do it later" and overhaul your mindset for productivity and efficiency.
This transformative read will change your life - get your copy today on Amazon, with the audiobook also available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.
Visit bitlyPKConsulting to learn more about Patrick King's work.
Join us next time on Social Skills Coaching as we continue our journey to become more likable, charismatic, and productive.
Until then, take rapid action in your life starting now!