“Well done is better than well said.” — Benjamin Franklin
We can use three types of actions to help us get back on track, achieve our goals, and deal with the unplanned chaos in our day.
During our day, not everything is a goal, and not everything is a planned action.
And we get distracted by unplanned events or things we can’t plan for.
But there are three types of actions that can help us move towards our goals: 1) Daily Habits, 2) Planned Actions, and 3) Inspired Actions.
In the book Act Now! A Daily Action Log for Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days, Peter D. Winiarski walks through three types of actions we can use to achieve our goals and move us towards our desired future state.
1. Daily Habits
There are some actions that we take daily that support us and move us toward our goals. They might be actions we perform at a certain time in the day, such as a workout routine, or they are habits that we perform at a certain event, or trigger.
Once the actions are habits, we don’t have to think much about them. We just do them. The beauty of Daily Habits is that they help provide some structure and routine in our day. They are also a way to invest in our future and compound our efforts over time. Working out a little bit a day, adds up over time.
Our Daily Habits can also add fuel to the fire and keep us ready for anything, especially setbacks.
Via Act Now! A Daily Action Log for Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days:
“Daily habits–proven success habits we follow on a daily basis. These are things like visualizing goals, saying affirmations, meditating, reading, exercising, and other disciplines proven to accelerate our goal achievement. We trust that these daily disciplines will help us achieve our goals by enabling us to mange stress and stay focused, by allowing us to keep our energy and motivation levels up, and by triggering the biology and physics of goal achievement. This helps us recognize ideas and resources that are there to accelerate our results and goal achievement and to take action on our ideas.”
2. Planned Actions
Planned actions are the specific tasks that we identify that we need to do to accomplish something or move towards our goals.
Via Act Now! A Daily Action Log for Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days:
“Planned actions–the actions we take as a result of writing an action plan for a specific result or goal. Following the steps that we say we will take moves us toward the results we want. For example, if you want to complete a marathon six months from now, you might create a schedule of distances you plan to run each week and each day. That run would be a planned action. Or, if you want to start a new business venture, we clearly define the steps we plan to take over the next ninety days (or longer) in a business plan.”
3. Inspired Actions
Serendipity happens and it’s a good thing, if we take advantage of it.
Inspired actions are the actions we take based no our flashes of insight or brilliant ideas that pop into our head.
Via Act Now! A Daily Action Log for Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days:
“Inspired actions–these are actions we take in response to an intuitive hit, inspiration, or idea. We may find solutions to a problem we currently face or receive a delightful string of creative ideas. These solutions and ideas will pop into our awareness, seemingly out of nowhere (because we are disciplined in following the daily habits)–it is now up to us to take the actions inspired by our ideas. Note that initially you will not likely find these actions on your action plan. Rather, these will be special instructions that you receive in the moment–instructions from some higher place of knowing. This is powerful stuff, so don’t ignore the signals you get; act on them as quickly as you are able!”
When you get intentional, you can put all three of these types of actions to work for you. You can create Daily Habits that support you. You can use Planned Actions to make progress on the things you want to achieve. And, you can use Inspired Actions to take advantage of your creative brilliance and flashes of insight.
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Image by AGeekMom.
