Knowing the Difference Between “Activity” and “Action” Will Help You Achieve Your Goals Faster
By Bob Lucchesi

Yesterday, I spoke of The Seinfeld Method and not breaking the chain. And, how using this technique can help you realize your goals.

Today you’re going to learn how to determine what task is important enough to do every day to warrant that all-important X on your calendar and move you toward achieving your goal.

But first, you have to understand the difference between activity and action …

They may sound alike, but they’re distinctly different.

An activity is when you’re busy doing something, but that task will never produce an outcome by itself.

Action, on the other hand, is an act that will get you a result.

Do you remember what Jerry did to mark an X on his calendar?

That’s right, he wrote a joke. That’s an action. It moved him toward his goal of being a better comedian.

Let’s look at some more examples …

Activities could include …

• Group site discussions
• Reading blogs
• Reading emails
• Doing research
• Brainstorming ideas

While these activities are important because they help you prepare, strategize and learn … the activity – by itself – will never produce an outcome.

Yet, actions like …

• Writing
• Reading and doing the exercises in The Accelerated Program
• Contacting clients
• Building a website

 … will produce specific, tangible results.

If you write every day, soon you’ll have a book, a script, a piece of copy, or a product of your own …

If you contact clients, you’ll gain more clients …

If you build pieces of a website, soon you’ll have a complete website …

You get the picture.

These are the types of tasks you want to do every day, and only these are worthy of that big X on your calendar. Because only these actions will help you achieve your goal.

While activities are helpful and can make you feel like you’re busy getting things done and working toward accomplishing your goal … they can actually be sneaky forms of procrastination.

Sometimes you need to do the activity … like brainstorm, research and read blogs … because it helps you gain information.

But the fastest way to achieve your goals – bar none – is to take action.

It’s the difference between thinking you’re getting something done and actually getting something done!

Go ahead and brainstorm a list of actions you can take to keep your chain of Xs going on your calendar.

Then, let me know what you came up with in the comments, and how it’s going to help you achieve your goal.

Tomorrow, I’ll continue by sharing a big secret about what paralyzes us writers from taking action.

It held up my screenwriting career for a while …

But I’m happy to report Jerry Seinfeld’s method has a solution to solve that problem as well.

Remember an Activity will never produce a final result. Action will.

So, take Action!