Building Your String

I’ve been toying with an idea lately—I’ll warn you upfront, though, it’s not rocket science.

If you’re looking for rocket science, goals aren’t your place. And, heck, maybe that’s part of the problem—you’re complicating things.

Here’s what I’ve been toying with lately: Action Session

What’s an action session?

Well, the image below perfectly captures an action session.

Say What?

You’re right, it doesn’t. But, it will serve as our visual representation moving forward.

So, what’s an action session?

An action session is dedicated time and effort to an activity that helps you make progress toward your goal.

See, like I said, it’s not rocket science.

But, here’s the thing I’ve noticed in working with clients and their goals: there’s a belief that goals are the results of these massive actions—actions that aren’t sustainable over the long-haul.

As I’ve said before, a little bit on a consistent basis over a long period of time leads to big changes.

Being a good academic, the operational definition that we’ll work with for an action session, as it relates to your goal, is 60-90 minutes of dedicated effort to an activity that helps you make progress toward your goal.

Let’s take walking…

For someone who can hold a clip of 15 minutes per mile, that 4-6 miles of walking.

The magic is not in the action session, though.

The magic lives in the string.

A String of 2 Action Sessions

Looks pretty cool, huh?

This is what 2 action sessions strung together over a 2-day period looks like.

Rocket science, huh?!?

Not really.

But, when we step back and think about it from our example, this is 2-3 hours of walking—or, 8-12 miles.

That’s not too bad and, in 48 hours, that’s only 4-6% of time commitment.

A Week-Long String

The cool thing about action sessions is that we can keep building our string.

The above is what a week-long string looks like.

Using our example, this is 7-10.5 hours of walking—or 28-42 miles.

Wow!

That’s something to be proud of. That’s a significant amount of ground covered.

And, all it took was a 4-6% commitment of time and energy on a daily basis.

I’ll repeat…

A little bit on a consistent basis over a long period of time leads to big changes.

Here’s what happens all too often, though…

We Break Our Strings

Something else comes up.

We prioritize other things.

We find justifications.

We come up with excuses.

And, within these gaps we miss out on a key action sessionthat, in and of itself does little, but in the big scheme of things adds up.

We don’t make progress.

We lose momentum.

And, it becomes easier to miss the next time.

All it would have taken was 60-90 minutes of time.

4-6% of a day.

With our example, at the end of the week, we change from 28-42 miles to 16-24 miles.

Still great, but certainly a difference.

Imagine what a year could add up to!

What Kind of String Can You Build?

What would happen if you built a perfect year-long string of action sessions?

Where would you be with your goal if you dedicated 60-90 minutes a day—a single action session—to working on it?

What could be different a year from now if you dedicated 4% of your time to your goal?

It doesn’t take much.

But, it does take some.

That some is an action session—done on repeat.

Build your string.