Thinking is not Enough — The Importance of Taking Action!

I think a lot of us know when we "should" be doing something. That is, we're aware that we're facing a situation that requires some kind of action, but even so we feel hesitant to get started.

Perhaps — if you're anything like me — you don't like feeling rushed; you don't like rushing into something without first having planned it out and thought it through. But there are other reasons why we end up thinking about it rather than actually doing it.

This sort of strange personal inertia is not that uncommon. I've experienced it plenty in my life, and often it has been related to my thinking about a thing in such a way that the thoughts about the thing are actually far larger, daunting and frightening than the thing itself.

And that could be applied to anything from scheduling a dentist appointment, to undertaking a rather tedious and costly home repair.

What's YOUR Excuse?

Of course, the danger is that sometimes we end up spending so much time "thinking about it," and so much time planning it and making sure we have everything right, that the opportunity/response deadline actually passes and we end up doing nothing.

I suppose that can sometimes be defensible in the sense that if nothing bad happened as a result of our inaction maybe we saved themselves some time and headache. But most of the time, the price we pay for inaction is anything from regret on the light side to actually causing ourselves harm or injury on the heavier side of the equation.

Whereas "thinking about things" before you actually do them is definitely a good idea in most cases, essentially too much thinking can ultimately be considered a form of procrastination. I know that has definitely held true for me in the past!

Sadly — over the years — I have missed a number of important deadlines and doing so has either cost me in terms of regret, or in terms of late penalties/premiums or some other factor that clearly wouldn't have been present had I chosen to take action right away.

Case in point: Earlier today, I recognized that I was actually that risk of falling into one of my old habits because I'd been putting off fixing a leaky faucet outside our house. It had been "no big deal" because we'd just put a tub under the drip and used the water for our vegetable garden which we would have watered, anyway.

Part of the reason I'd been putting it off was that it likely would require at least a couple of trips to the hardware store, and it might even require a trip to a larger hardware store in a neighboring town to buy a couple of specialized pipe fittings (we have EXTREMELY high water pressure), both of which would be time consuming.

I also didn't feel 100% sure that I'd be able to adequately do the fix, and the thought of spending money and time on attempting a home fix, failing at it, and then having to call a plumber and spend even more money made me drag my heels.

Chances are there have been situations in your own life where something similar has arisen. The circumstances might have been considerably different, but it's something we all easily fall into.

As it turned out, the faucet fix was actually both relatively quick and relatively easy and relatively inexpensive and didn't require any extra trips or great cost. And so my worries were completely unfounded.

The Right Impetus...

Even so, I recognize that the only reason I finally got this fix taken care of today was basically that cold weather is right around the corner and having to deal with a water leak when it's freezing outside is not something I relish doing. What's more, if I had to call a plumber at such a time I would likely get charged extra for them to deal with frozen pipes!

And so, it was a good object lesson in doing things right away rather than putting them off because you fear that they're going to be somehow more complicated than you're willing to deal with!

Sometimes we "tell ourselves stories" about what we're facing, and they turn out not to be true, at all.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a great week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-10-16 00:15 PDT
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