Note: I had this in the Learning but not Doing thread, just wanted to put it here also
The people who figure out how to take action become the leaders.
Most people are not the leaders. Most people are followers. Most people learn too much.
Leaders are creative. They know how to seek answers for themselves. They come up with the solution themselves.
Seriously. If everyone here took a week and thought about nothing but how to be productive, just finding the answers within, then they could probably come up with enough insight to derive a huge chunk of the knowlege that was written by Steve. They have the intuition there to make decisions, though it might take like a year or two to try to type it out what they've discovered in a week.
Its like there there is one high level formula (= higher order IR), and then the Personal Development writers who know the simple formula themselves throw tons of different situations to the formula, and then they take those answers and sell them in huge books. When the formula itself is very simple, and is very general, and can handle any experience that can ever happen to a human.
Then its up to the reader to take in all the answers of the book (low order IRs), find the pattern (by reading them over), and then hopefully be able to derive that formula (the same high level IR). But then people get stuck when they've found the simple formula... and its just too simple. They don't lead themselves to apply new numbers/situations to that formula (they are not brave enough to apply that life formula to new life situations) or they are just stuck with getting good at coming up with different formula's. Or that they are not patient enough to plug in numbers and do a few simple calculations to come up with their own answers. Or they are distracted and forget that they know the formula. Or they don't know what numbers to plug into their formula because they don't have any real goals (i.e highest level goal/purpose that is discreet (defined well).
Or that they are looking for someone else to tell them what to apply the formula to. You've gotta learn how to be your own leader, or you are always going to be stumbling through life not knowing really what to do and feeling quite pointless.
Here's a formula, instead of a table of answers, to get you off of inaction:
Do a 30 day trial of spending an hour a day of thinking about your own formula that runs your life (i.e high level mental IRs), from internal knowlege (the low order IRs already in your brain), not external knowlege (the low order IRs written by text by someone else). This is where a journal comes in handy. External knowlege is the table of answers. You are deriving the equitation (the high order IR) that comes up with those answers. You are coming up with your own formula. Like Steve has his own formula and that's why he's able to create this huge blog, he just keeps throwing on new situations onto the formula. on You are learning internally how to be your own leader (i.e. learning how to plan). Then spend a second hour thinking about your life goals/purpose. Your life goals will be the numbers that you will plug into your formula that you've derived.
Here's a formula that DNA provides for your life purpose:
To be happy, you have to constantly have good relationships, health, and wealth, and curiosity (built in because nature wants us to know about our environment so that we can manipulate it and survive in it better)
But all of this advice was derive from my own formula...
though this is when action is required action that you come up with your own formula.
Steve described his formula that he uses for running/managing his life here:
Meaning of Life From Purpose to Action
more specifically
more on planning
And what his input is for his "life equation" here:
About Steve Pavlina
What has resulted from him applying his equation to his purpose that he described there? This whole website of his that makes him $100,000
His whole idea about light/dark workers is so that you don't feel guilty for having your own world changing, ambitious goals.
And that when you have high enough goals, then learning will no longer be just something to do, it will be action, because you know how it will get you to those high level goals.
And if you actually read these articles, then it actually counts as action because you are taking action to derive your own equation that runs your life, and then if you read his articles about finding life purpose then that is also action because you are taking action to find your life purpose/goals.
Then to take action for the rest of your life onward, you'll take the formula that you've derived from reading all that information and apply it to your own life purpose that you've created.
And never again will you not be doing action as long as whatever you are doing is fulfilling your life purpose. Learning is action as long as you
know how it is specifically fulfilling your life goals and purpose (executing IRs that are linked to your hierarchy and not fragmented). Learning is inaction if you don't know (reading lower order IRs by reading external knowlege is inaction if they wont be able to link to your main hierarchy) .
So if you have not defined your life purpose yet (made a high level well defined IR that you can link everything else to (created by being creative (see my creativity post)), then everything that you do is inaction. (i.e. tv, school, your job, your family.... unless you know how those specifically help you to fulfill your life goals... like if TV helps you to recharge (because you just finished having a creative burst that ran down your brain circuits) so you can be your best later , then its cool... but if you are just addicted to it (i.e have high level mental IRs that run subconsciously but are not linked to your main hierarchy) and it keeps you away from figuring out how to be a billionaire (which i assume is connected to your main hierarchy) then it is inaction...)
For me, writing to these forums is action because it helps the convergence of conciousness and it is helping me to figure out how to program AI.