Two of the biggest issues in life are figuring out what you want to do and then building the motivation and discipline to do it. The first is well-known in psychology as “paralysis by analysis” (or, more colloquially, analysis paralysis). Life goals are the ultimate option-heavy decision because there are an infinite number of ways to live your life. If the famous psychology study where people who had more options were more likely to not choose at all is any indication, being presented with infinite options will lead people to procrastinate as much as humanly possible by doing what others are doing or, worse, not doing anything with their lives.
This first item is exacerbated by the other famous psychology experiment where people were happier with their choices if they weren’t allowed to change their minds afterward. The concept, dubbed “manufactured happiness” by Daniel Gilbert, is the idea that when you are stuck with a decision, your mind reasons why it’s a good thing that things turned out the way that they did so that you feel better about it. When people had the option to change their minds afterward, however, they were less happy. Since you have many choices in life and can go in any direction at any time (even though the consequences might be high), the “manufactured happiness” effect kicks in less frequently.
The second item, the motivation and discipline, is often a compounding factor of the first item—after all, how can you be motivated to move toward a goal that you’re unsure about? But even if it’s a goal that you are sure about, you might not have the drive or discipline because you are uncertain about how to proceed or have other commitments and can’t fit it in. Additionally, it can be a goal that requires certain prerequisites and so you have to wait a while for those to be completed first or one that, like the goal itself, has a near-infinite number of ways to get started (creating more analysis paralysis!). Finally, even if you get started, you might find out that you are either “in over your head” (i.e., there’s so much more involved than you originally thought) or that there are obstacles that immediately take the wind out of your sails and stop your progress and motivation cold.
Now, there are a lot of approaches you can take to address these, but we’re going to focus on just one technique in this post: pick and go!!! In this technique, you cut out all excuses and just decide and/or act. No BS. No excuses. Don’t think; just do.
What is the point of this approach, and what are the benefits and risks? The primary point is that you are probably afraid of being wrong. But the irony is that you’re afraid of doing something and it turning out badly, but if you would just do it, you would find out and can then move on with your life if it doesn’t work out. Note that this applies to a job (you can get another one), a date (you can always part ways after it), a hobby (you can stop at any time), a town (you can always move), or any new thing or experience (you can return a product or try a different experience next time). As long as it’s not something with dire consequences like having a child (18-or-more-year commitment), buying a house (mortgage and closing costs), or getting married (lifetime commitment), it’s a good approach because you can just experiment and see whether the results are desirable or not.
The benefits of the approach are that you get more information about the goal by getting started, and you eliminate all of the excuses that are stopping because you just do it, anyway. The major risk is committing too much cost early when you are not going to continue. So a good example is if you (think you) want to learn how to play the guitar, you buy/take some lessons and either use a training one the instructor has or buy an inexpensive/used one to get started. The risk is that you buy a $1,200 guitar and then never play it more than once. So the goal is to get started and get the basics out of the way without overcommitting while you’re still unsure of the long-term viability.
There are flavors of this approach that push you a little harder that you can use if you feel it works in that situation, but they are higher risk. The one hinted at above is the “burn the boats” approach (made famous by the quotation about destroying the means of retreat) where you do commit fully and give yourself no alternative, but I don’t recommend that unless you are certain (in the eponymous example, it was a life-or-death situation for a whole group of people). Another flavor is the “flip a coin” approach where you only have a couple of options and you use the coin to either/both tell you what you really want (because the result might disappoint or relieve you) and pick which one to try when you can’t make the final decision yourself. But life options are usually more than two, so you could use a die or other technique to achieve the same result with more options.
So the “pick and go” approach is really helpful to get you unstuck and trying new things. The major concern on the “go” side is that you might make mistakes, and that is one where you want to be open to mistakes. Doing things perfectly on the first try is either a 1/1,000,000 chance or only done after years of practice at the overall discipline (known as the “10-year overnight success” when someone breaks out in comedy or the “only-took-one-take” result that makes people forget about the fact that the person is a professional with years of experience and rehearsed it over and over before the one take). So you can either embrace mistakes and failure as learning or never get started because you think it’s a “you either have it or you don’t” thing when it’s not. Try one approach, and if it doesn’t work then try another. Again, if you break down the goal into small steps, you can make progress and improve without investing as much up front. Even if you want to do huge things like starting a business, there is nothing stopping you from taking a class or doing a business simulation to uncover all of the problems when the business is fake so that you don’t fail when it comes time to try it for real. There’s the old saying, “If you’re not willing to do what it takes, then you don’t really want it,” that applies here: if you aren’t willing to do anything, then it’s not really your goal. In that case, pick something else and go!
So if your issue is simple procrastination, then all you can do is jump in and do it. There are many tricks you can use to get you to act, from setting deadlines to establishing milestones to rewarding effort, but whatever you do, at the end of the day it’s just about picking a direction and going.
On a final note, this is a good technique if you’re completely lost in life. You see this often when people enlist in the military, join a church, or read a book and follow its philosophy. The idea is that you have no direction and so you just pick a group of people who seem to have the goal, drive, or discipline you need and follow their approach. The military provides the structure, discipline, and purpose that many people are lacking, which is why it shapes so many lives. Religions are similar in that they provide a framework for life, a social group, and the habits and purpose that they are looking for. Sometimes it’s not the goal but the benefits of having a goal—a purpose—that brings everything together for someone.
There’s an argument about the famous “Triangle Offense” in basketball where the Michael Jordan-led Bulls were already an excellent team and that it wasn’t the Triangle Offense itself (if it was, everyone would’ve adopted it) but rather the unified commitment of the team to an approach to winning basketball games that would get everyone on the same page. Similarly, in life you can adopt any goal and practice building the drive and discipline you need to succeed at not just that goal but then any goal in life you have after that. That’s what’s so powerful about the “pick and go” approach—it is not about the goal itself but rather that you are practicing and developing the habits of successful people that will lead to your ultimate success…regardless of whether the goal you pick was right for you. That’s the difference between success and failure: moving forward and continuing to move forward no matter what fear, uncertainty, doubt, or setbacks you face.
However you approach your goals in life, I wish you luck. Living life is success; whether you achieve one specific goal or not is not. Don’t wait for perfection, as it’ll never come. Make the process for figuring out what you want and going after it as effective as possible at helping you learn, grow, and improve.