How to develop a bias to action

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s newsletter!

If you’ve been a part of #TheLifeofJLOWE fam for a few weeks now, you’d know that I’ve been in the midst of taking my licensing exams to become a registered investment adviser representative.

I’m happy to report that after the news that I shared in my piece on “How do you define failure”, I passed my Series 66 exam and can now be considered a registered investment adviser representative!

What does that mean? It means I can legally give financial advice and recommendations on securities, but as you’ve probably realized, that’s not the bread and butter of #TheLifeofJLOWE, so today we’re actually picking up where we left off last week when I introduced “The 51% Rule”.

How to develop a bias to action

As I said last week, the 51% rule is based on this concept of “bias to action”, so I thought I’d take the time out to share how and why I have a bias to action, why it’s beneficial and how you can develop this habit for yourself too. 👉🏼

How & why I have a bias to action

Going through college, I set up my classes so they’d be at a fairly normal time - start at 9-10am and end between 2-4pm. I did this because I dreaded the idea of taking night classes, and I knew I’d fall asleep in them, not necessarily because I was a morning person.

After my classes, throughout the first few months of college, I’d come back to my dorm at 3/4pm and take a fat nap until dinner time around 5pm, then did homework and studied after that. It was great and all, until I decided I wanted to start going to the gym.

When I started going to the gym, I figured I’d just go at 5pm after I wake up from my nap so that the only thing that would really change would be the time I eat dinner - and it made sense to eat dinner after going to the gym anyways (you know, bigger appetite and all).

But my days started feeling longer, and I started going to bed later, and I’d have to force myself to stay awake to study and do my assignments late into the night after being tired from the day AND a workout. At least I had the nap in the day right?

Wrong.

The nap just made me feel even more tired for the rest of the day, so what’d I do?

I swapped my nap time for gym time.

How that swap affected my productivity in an outsized way

Recognizing that I actually had more hours in the day and all I had to do was use them more productively was my triggering moment for developing a bias to action. My thought process was: why take a nap when I could go to the gym?

The time was going to pass anyways.

I’d sleep better at night, get more work done and feel much better about how I used my hours each day as a result.

From then on, my perspective on how I used my time changed, to just doing things in the time that I already have rather than having to add things to the schedule and lengthen my day.

These days, it’s helped me to use my train ride to work to read books, use my car ride to listen to podcasts, use my runs to catch up on new music that I want to listen to or even use my bathroom breaks to write this newsletter (TMI 😂). There’s so much time that we can slot things into our day, and recognising that allowed me to maximise how I use my time in a productive way.

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How you can develop a bias to action

If you feel like you don’t have time to do something that you want to do, just sit and take a moment to review your schedule. What does your day to day look like, and how many minutes are you wasting scrolling social media or napping unnecessarily?

And by the way, I’m not saying those things aren’t necessary sometimes - even I love to just lay down and rot in bed sometimes on my phone.

But if you think you don’t have enough time to go for your first run, start that podcast that you’ve always wanted to start or read a new book, you’re fooling yourself.

All you need to do is swap something that you’re doing now with the thing that you want to do. Think about when you’d have free time that you might not consider to be “free time” right now, like a commute or a break in the day, and try using that time differently to pursue whatever it is that you want to.

The results will compound over time.

Conclusion

If there’s an idea in your head that you want to pursue, don’t let your mind trick you into waiting for “the perfect time” to do it. Newsflash - there will never be a perfect time to do anything.

In fact, although there will never be a perfect time, there is a best time to do it - and that time is the present. Right now.

Don’t get caught up thinking about all the things that you need to prepare before you can start something new. Don’t get caught up buying all the equipment before actually getting started.

The preparation phase is Anxiety having a mental breakdown (for those of you that watched inside out 2) and coming up all the reasons why not rather than the reasons why.

If there’s something on your heart that you want to do, do it.

You have all you need at your fingertips, and if you don’t, you can begin to figure out how to do it with what you have.

Overthinking and over-preparing will never be the same as the experience that you’ll get from actually doing it.

The only way to find out is to try.

So what are you waiting for?

Go be great and go do that thing!

Until next Sunday,
Justin

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