In Part 1 of this article, Paige’s case showed an example of actions that contribute towards a goal, but in reality they are not genuinely helpful in obtaining concrete results.

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In her situation, it’s essential that Paige communicates with her parents, whether by phone, email, WhatsApp or any other means. As long as she limits herself to rereading her notes or thinking about what to say, she won’t get any tangible results.

Essential Actions, Helpful Actions And Unhelpful Actions

In general, actions can be split into three different categories. For convenience, let’s call them X, Y and Z actions.

X actions: These are all the actions that are essential and critical for reaching your objective. If you don’t perform these actions, you won’t be able to get your desired result. These actions are crucial for the fulfilment of your goal.

Y actions: These are all the actions that support the X actions. They are helpful, but in themselves are NOT essential to fulfilling the objective. They can help you to prepare for the X actions, but alone they are not enough.

Z actions: These are all the actions that are not at all connected with the result. Generally, they are distractions that cause you to waste time and are not relevant to your primary goal.

Paige’s actions so far fall mainly into the Y category. Reading notes and preparing herself mentally for the phone call are certainly useful activities, but alone they aren’t enough to obtain her desired result.

In her case, examples of X actions would be calling her parents, sending them a message, communicating her feelings, maintaining regular contact, etc. If Paige had decided to look at photos of her childhood and drift off into fond memories of old times, this would be a Z action – completely irrelevant to achieving her goals.

Still Not Reaching Your Goals?

If Paige were to continue to perform Y or Z actions, she would never achieve her goals. She might believe that she is doing something, but she would continue to feel troubled and unfulfilled.

Here are some examples of X, Y and Z actions in other situations:

Objective: Create a website

X action: Publish content on the site.

Y action: Acquire a web domain, configure the graphics, create texts to publish, etc.

Z action: Read emails, browse Facebook, chat with a friend, etc.

Objective: Lose 3kg

X action: Do physical exercise and reduce calorie intake.

Y action: Join a gym, choose a suitable diet, buy low-calorie foods, etc.

Z action: Flick through sportswear catalogues, daydream, complain, etc.

As you can see, the Y actions are helpful for achieving the X actions, but in themselves they’ll never be enough to fulfil the identified goal. The next time you end up failing to reach an objective, ask yourself:

• How many X actions am I actually performing?

• How many of them are Y actions?

• How many are, in fact, Z actions?

If you waste time and energy doing things that don’t bring you closer to your objective (Z actions), your motivation will wane and you’ll easily be persuaded to give up. If, on the other hand, you concentrate on Y actions and, in particular, on X actions, the likelihood of reaching your desired result will be much higher, as will your levels of motivation and satisfaction. It all comes down to this simple and effective principle: Whatever your objective may be, the more X actions you are able to perform, the quicker you’ll succeed in reaching it.

So every time you get ready to do something, remember to ask yourself: Is this an X action? If the answer is no, ask yourself what would be a more useful action: an action that would really enable you to move closer to your desired goal. Remember that Y actions are very useful and you’re right to be taking them, but alone they’re not enough.

I’ll leave you with a question: What is your objective and what is the X action you are doing to fulfil it?

 Begin the journey to become the hero of your life! Visit Anh’s page to find out more

_{This post was first published on ThreeSixtySkills blog and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author.
Edited by Nedda Chaplin
Image credit: Two young female friends gossiping in a bar from Shutterstock}

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