How To Make Things Happen — Now

A Productivity Challenge For Everyone

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

If I could tell you one thing to stop procrastinating and start making things happen right now, it’s this:

Action generates inspiration. Not the other way round.

It was Frank Tibolt, who said:

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”

Ironically, it took me about a decade before I acted upon this simple idea, and when I did my life changed completely. Here’s a quick list of some, but definitely not all, of the things that happened almost immediately from a dead-end starting point:

1. I traveled the world.
2. I wrote a book, got an agent, got it published.
3. Learned to jump out of planes, drive cars sideways and qualified to US air marshal standards in firearms.
4. Applied for an expedition to the north pole and then went there.
5. Met the woman who became the mother of my kids.
6. Studied the science of deception.

And while those are big things, at least for me, it also works really well for the little things too, just this morning I’ve used this simple “Take an…