54. The Secret Strategy Behind Every Single Accomplishment Ever
Episode 54
We watch people around us move forward, get the promotion, pass the test, reach the goal...and we wonder what they have that we don’t have. The truth? It’s not what they have, it’s what they do.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, we shed light on the number one secret ingredient behind every accomplishment ever, whether big or small, public or private, yours or someone else’s. Tune in to find out the closest thing we have to magic.
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Episode 08 → Motivation vs. Discipline: Which One Matters More?
✅Enroll in SchoolHabits University (Curious? Check it out!)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
54 The Secret Ingredient Behind Every Accomplishment Ever===
[00:00:00] Picture, this there's a folder on your desktop right now with a half started project. An email in your drafts that you haven't sent. A decision that you have been putting off for weeks. We all have them. Those tasks that seem to grow bigger the longer we wait. And today we're going to talk about the one simple thing that separates success from standstill.
But before we dive in, I want to take a moment to share something special. As we approach the one year anniversary of Learn and Work Smarter, I'm filled with gratitude for every one of you who has been part of this journey with me.
I am excited to begin season two in the new year. Starting in January, 2025, which is just around the corner, I'm going to be introducing an additional format on the show. I'm going to be bringing in industry experts on to have conversations around all of the topics that we talk about.
I am so excited to bring these interview style episodes probably [00:01:00] around once a month. That's my intention. And if you have feedback about what kind of experts that you want me to have on the show, leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube. Or fill out the form at learnandworksmarter.com. You can also send me an email. I'm sure that you guys all have some wonderful ideas in addition to the first few guests that I already have lined up. All right.
So do you want to know something interesting? After just about two decades of studying high achievers from students who consistently ace their exams to professionals who keep climbing up the ladder to entrepreneurs who are building thriving businesses out of nothing, I've noticed something surprising.
I have personally analyzed countless success stories, looking for a complex strategies, groundbreaking techniques, revolutionary systems- you know I'm about none of that, right? But here's what keeps standing out. The biggest single difference [00:02:00] between those who are achieving their goals and those who don't is not talent. It is not intelligence. It isn't even having the perfect plan. It is something so simple that you probably have access to it right now in the palm of your hand at this very moment.
If you want to pass a test, you need this magic ingredient. If you want to graduate high school or college, you need this magic ingredient. If we want to land our dream job or move up in our careers, we need this magic ingredient.
If we want to complete any assignment or task or project ever, we need this magic ingredient.
[00:03:00] All right, so let's get straight into it. The magic ingredient that I am talking about today is action.
As far as I'm concerned, action is the closest thing we have to magic in this world. Because the truth is that we can have the best ideas, the most detailed plans, and even the strongest desire to do something, but until we take action, nothing happens.
Quite literally, there is nothing without action. So often we fool ourselves into believing that we need to feel more prepared or more motivated before we can get started, but as I shared back in episode eight, motivation is overrated and not even necessary.
The only thing that truly matters is taking that first [00:04:00] step motivated or not. Because without taking some kind of action, we remain exactly where we are.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Planning has its place. In fact, some degree of preparation is crucial for success. If you're giving a presentation to the board of directors, you absolutely want to review your data. If you're taking the MCAT, you definitely need to understand the test format and the content areas. But here's where many of us get stuck. We confuse preparation with progress.
We tell ourselves, let me just, you know, read one more article. Let me just revise this outline one more time. When really what we need to start doing is just taking action.
Think of it like this. Planning is like a drawing, drawing a map for a journey, right. We need the map. It gives us direction and it helps us maybe anticipate [00:05:00] obstacles. But no amount of map studying will actually move us toward our destination.
At some point we have to start walking.
So, how do we find that sweet spot between preparation and action? Here's a strategy that I've seen work time and time again: give yourself a clear, definite planning window.
Maybe it's 30 minutes to align an essay or two hours to gather data for a report, set a timer.
When that window closes, it is go time ready or not.
The beauty of this approach is that you can always adjust course once you're in motion. If you're not liking the way that something is turning out, it is always available to us to take another action in another direction.
The presentation that you're working on starting to create, it might reveal gaps in the research that we couldn't have anticipated during the planning phase. The [00:06:00] paper we're writing, the act of putting words on the page often shows us what additional information we might really need.
Remember: perfect preparation. It's an absolute myth.
The most successful people are not the ones who plan flawlessly. They're the ones who plan- get this- adequately. And then they get moving. Adequately. Sufficiently. Enough. Not perfectly. All right.
Take a college research paper, for instance. You could spend days reading articles, organizing notes, maybe reworking your ideas, but until you sit your bum in a chair and put your fingers on the keyboard and start writing you're not moving. The paper does not get done unless you do it. All right.
Let's say that you're a professional and it's your turn to deliver, I don't know, the team's [00:07:00] quarterly presentation to the company. You need to collect data and collect people's input and make slides and graphics and do all of the things. So you go back and forth between planning and procrastination, fear and anxiety, and time is passing and you're wondering, oh my gosh, how the heck am I ever going to get this done? You know the answer to that. The only way it gets done is if you do it.
The magic happens when we do something.
If you're listening right now, or maybe watching on YouTube and you are a student inside SchoolHabits University, you know that one of the most common things that I repeat in probably, you know, all 38 lessons in there is that the magic is in the action. I could not be more convinced that this is truly the key to it all.
I know, I just rattled off a few examples, but I do want to give a few more examples here so that you can really truly understand the [00:08:00] significance of what I'm trying to say, because I know that this argument may sound so simple and basic that maybe you're starting to think that this episode is silly. But if you really truly think about it, honestly, really think about this. Taking action, uh, writing the email, asking the question, designing the product, having that conversation signing up for the class, whatever it is, that is the only way that we can ever, ever move in a direction that we want to go.
Waiting is not a strategy.
Hoping is not a strategy. Action is the strategy.
All right. So let's go through a student example first and then one for working professionals. Okay. Imagine that you're a student and you're preparing for your final exam. You are stressed out. You are overwhelmed. And you don't know where to start, so you keep putting it off, even though your exam is in a week. Here's the thing.
Sitting there waiting to [00:09:00] feel ready will never, ever help you learn the material.
Your test is coming. You're going to need to know things on your test.
And the only way that you can know things for your test is if you do something to learn the information. If you take action.
Even something as small as opening your notebook to get your bearings or finding an old quiz to test yourself on, you know, practice questions will move you forward- that tiny step creates momentum.
And before we know it, We're studying.
And notice that nowhere in this hypothetical scenario did motivation show up to the party.
You are absolutely totally capable of putting your body into a chair and opening your notebook without the slightest bit of motivation.
Would motivation make it easier. Absolutely. But action exists independently from motivation.
All right. So for professionals, think of someone who's been stuck in a job that they don't like. Maybe [00:10:00] that person- maybe it's you- has been waiting for the ideal time air, quoting that to look for something better.
You're dreaming. You're wishing. You're hoping you're watching your colleagues move on to better things. You plan and plot and picture yourself in a better job. But you don't do anything about it? But what do you think is going to happen? If we do nothing, we get nothing. If we don't take action, we stay stuck.
And you know what, honestly, if you like where you are and you're happy and content, that is awesome.
Stay there. Then that is actually the action you're choosing to take choosing inaction is still a choice. But if you want out, if we want something different, we have to do something different.
Could fear be holding us back. Could we have deep-seated issues related to not feeling worthy hello and other emotions threatening our choices? [00:11:00] Maybe. But those feelings are going to be there regardless of whether or not we take action. So we could feel scared and apply for the job. Okay.
Or we could feel scared and not apply to the job. All right.
An interesting pattern that I have noticed is one of two things is usually happening when people aren't taking action.
I'm talking about the scenario where someone is like so stressed out that they have to do something, an assignment, a project, whatever. And the simplest solution is to do it, but they're still not doing it.
Okay. So first the reality is it's so many people overlook the power of action.
We underestimate it because it seems too simple. And that's actually my fear for some of you listening to this episode that right now that you might be thinking, oh my gosh, she's really just. Talking about, like, if you have something to do, do it. But we would have so much less drama in our academic and our professional and [00:12:00] even on our personal lives too, if it were that simple. Right. My argument is that I know it's hard to take action. Okay.
But if we want something for ourselves, That is the skeleton key. All right.
We assume that the grand things in life graduating getting a high paying job, maybe creating something beautiful and artistic require something bigger than action. But the truth is that every major achievement you've ever seen or experienced began with action.
That is the magic. That is the most powerful thing that there is.
Or, and this is another culprit of inaction, we tend to get emotional about the idea of action.
We think of something that we need to do, and we feel a thousand different ways about it. We feel scared. We feel nervous about what it might mean.
We don't want to mess up. We fear what people might think of us. All of the personal thought patterns that we have developed [00:13:00] for ourselves over our lifetime are showing up saying, Hey, I am a feeling. Listen to me.
I said this just a few minutes ago, but those feelings are going to be there regardless of whether or not we take action. So like in the scenario of facing something that has to get done, it's our responsibility, it's our job description, an assignment that we need to do to pass a class, it's something that we have to do, but we're feeling all kinds of ways about it, you're going to have to do it anyway. Like, there is no way around it, right.
Without some significant consequence, you're going to have to do it anyway. Waiting until all of those feelings subside, which they likely will not is not a strategy.
The reality, the facing the music moment is it, if something has to get done, the only way it's going to get done is if we do it. So we might as well do it. And save ourselves [00:14:00] the pain. The pain comes from not doing it. So rarely does it come from the thing itself? Right.
It may come out messy. It might come out imperfect. In fact, it probably will. And that is perfectly okay because we are just humans. Most of what we do comes out messy and imperfect. I cannot tell you how many times in my life, especially in the context of building schoolhabits from the ground up, I have had a thousand different really, really good reasons why my feelings mattered. But I took action anyway, and it was messy and it was imperfect. And nobody cared that it wasn't perfect. All right.
Do the thing. Do the things scared and imperfect. That is so much better than not doing the thing and still feeling scared at just the idea of it.
You know, here's something else to think about too. The difference between the people that we look up to our idols, our role models, [00:15:00] okay, the people we aspire to become, and then everyone else often comes down to one thing. The people that we aspire to who have what we hope one day to have for ourselves they took action. They started.
How did Mark get that job?
He applied for it and we did it.
How did Lauren get a better grade on the test? She started studying earlier than we did.
How did Olivia get approval for that project? She asked for it and we didn't.
How did Chris finish his lab report three days early? He sat down and he wrote it and we didn't.
How did Sam start her business?
She made a phone call and she asked somebody to be her first client. And all we did was imagine what that would be like.
How did Nick get the lead on the project? He set a meeting with the boss to talk about it. We didn't.
It's like our brains build up these tasks to be monsters. But taking action shrinks them back to [00:16:00] size.
And that's one of those magical things about action: it destroys the illusion of difficulty.
Now let's flip the script for a moment.
What happens when we don't take action? Think back to a time when you delayed something important, maybe it was starting a project, studying for a test writing, a tough email, making a hard decision at work. What'd that feel like? It felt stuck. Like you were spinning your wheels, you weren't getting anywhere.
You felt frustrated, maybe a little shameful, maybe guilty. And the longer you waited the bigger and scarier the task seamed.
Inaction doesn't just keep us stuck; it makes the problem worse and those negative feelings worse.
Projects become hasty and urgent and rushed. Decisions get made under pressure opportunity slip by a notice. Noticed. And the worst part. We're left with that lingering “what if I had just done it sooner” feeling. We always regret [00:17:00] not having done it sooner, right?
And that is why action is so powerful. It cuts through the noise. It snaps us out of the cycle of avoidance and puts us back in control.
Even the smallest step writing the first sentence, asking the first question, making the first move, shatters the illusion of overwhelm and gets us back into forward motion.
Because here's the truth.
Action is what shrinks the monster under the bed. It takes what feels unmanageable and makes it doable. And once we start, we realize yeah, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Right.
If you're someone who has no idea where to start, here's a tip. Just stare at the task, put yourself in the context, in the environment in which the task needs to happen.
So maybe sit at your desk, open the document, look at the problem. Sit down and tell yourself, I'm just going to spend five minutes on this. All right. That might sound too simple. But it works. The act of [00:18:00] starting, even if it feels insignificant that reveals the next step.
And then once we are in motion, it's easier to stay in motion. That's just physics.
Because action truly is the closest thing that we have to magic.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone you know who might need that little push to get started. Also come and find me over on Instagram.
I'm @SchoolHabits.
Don't forget to leave a comment or send in your suggestions for the experts that you would like to hear from in season two. As always, never stop learning.
