Lack of action stems from unclear goals: true self-discipline means placing your goals within time.

Preface :

We often simply attribute a person's lack of action to "laziness", "lack of self-discipline" or "poor execution ability",  but there seem to be other reasons as well. 

I once saw a viewpoint about Elon Musk: Many so-called "lack of action ability" are not necessarily due to laziness, but because the goals and paths are not precise enough.

Because very often, we are not without desires or without motivation, but we haven't truly thought it through:

What exactly do we want to do? Where to start? When to do it? How much to do every day?

The more vague the goal is, the more difficult the action becomes.

And when a goal is broken down into specific tasks and actually placed within the limited time of each day, many so-called "procrastination" will actually disappear by itself.

 

With clear goals, there can be a starting point for actions.

I increasingly realize that the significant differences between people are not merely in their abilities, but in their execution capabilities and the ability to continuously take actions.

People with strong execution capabilities often possess a continuous forward momentum.

They may not be filled with passion every day, nor are they necessarily smarter than others, but they know where they want to go and are willing to repeatedly do it for a long time.

While those with weaker execution capabilities are not necessarily without desires.

Wanting to learn English, reading books, exercising, losing weight, making money, learning a new skill, starting a side business... 

For example, a friend of mine said at the beginning of the year to me:
"I will study English well this year."

But after a few months, she herself said with a smile:
"I haven't started learning yet."

She has motivation,
She knows that English is important.
She might have bought courses, downloaded apps, and collected many learning materials.

But "I will study English" is still just a wish.
Because the next step is unclear.

Is it to memorize 30 words every day?
Or to listen to 20 minutes of English every day?
From which textbook to start?
In the morning or at night?
How long to study each day?
If not completed today, what to do tomorrow?

When these questions have no answers, "studying English" will remain in the mind and it will be difficult to truly enter life.

So I increasingly believe:
What truly drives actions is not just the goal, but a sufficiently specific action path.

 

True self-discipline is not forcing oneself to persist.

True self-discipline is not forcing oneself to persist; rather, it is finding the reasons that enable one to keep moving forward.

The motivation that drives us forward may come from making money, from others' recognition, from a sense of achievement, or from inherent interests and curiosity.

（...about finding the reason that keeps you moving forward）

All of these can serve as the driving force for our actions.

However, what solutions like motivation provide is:

"Why do it?"

What truly determines whether something can be sustained is:

"Has it been transformed into an action that can be repeated?"

Therefore, for something to be sustained over the long term, at least three things are needed:

• Wanting to do it - addressing the motivation issue.
• Knowing how to do it - addressing the method issue.
• Having the time to do it - addressing the execution issue.
  

And what I have most easily overlooked is precisely the third issue.

 

Often, it's not that there are too many goals, but that your time simply doesn't have enough room for them.

I've noticed a problem with myself, which is that there are too many things I want to do in my mind.

But there are only 24 hours in a day.
Only 7 days in a week.
And only a few days during the vacation.

You can have many goals, but you can't have unlimited time at the same time.

After realizing this, I began to try to arrange my affairs in a more realistic way:

Don't just list the goals, but put them into time.
Because only in this way will you truly know:
Do I really have time to do this thing?

I myself was also "startled" by this schedule.

When I divided the things I do every day by time, I suddenly realized that there wasn't nearly as much time as I thought. The few tasks right in front of me had already filled up all my time.

Exercise, stock research, writing articles...My mind was filled with a long list of things.

For example, based on my current lifestyle:

After getting up in the morning and before the stock market opens at 9:30, I go for a run, listen to an English podcast or something like that.

9:30 - 11:30, the stock market opens

The entire morning passed by rather quickly.

At 3:30 PM, the stock market closes.

From 3:30 PM to 6:00 PM, I might start thinking about the article, organizing the blog content, doing some yoga.

Then comes the time after dinner, start from 7:30 or 8:00 PM , which is a bit longer. 

At this time, you can read, review, write articles, do some content creator work， maybe check the US stock market， and the time passes quickly.

In this way，the day basically comes to an end.

And this is only the theoretical time.

In real life，there are many "invisible time losses"： （just like the inventory calculation loss in accounting concepts， and bad debt losses in accounts receivable...）

Flicking through the phone for a while，answering a few calls，replying to messages， being temporarily interrupted by others， handling some unexpected small matters...

The theoretical 24 hours a day，the time that can be used according to one's own will，is far less than 24 hours.

On Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, for me, the time when the stock market is not active is equivalent to having a complete non-working day.

I can then go out to meet friends, attend some small salons, or perhaps do nothing and just sit down to read financial reports and look at valuable articles.

In addition, every month I have fixed tax filings and financial accounting tasks.

Although these things don't happen every day, they still require me to set aside time in my schedule.

After I subtract these tasks from my time, I truly understand:

The actual amount of things I can do seriously in a day is not as much as I thought.

This also made me suddenly realize why sometimes I want to finish reading a book seriously but always can't; why some study plans start but it's difficult to maintain continuity.

Some things, even if you repeat them in your mind countless times, you still don't take any action because your time capacity is simply limited, and you overestimate the amount of time you can actually control.

 

Time management, in fact, is also a kind of choice management.

Previously, we always believed that people with strong execution ability were those who could do more things.

Now, I actually think:
The true execution ability is knowing what should be done and what should not be done at the moment.

Because a person's time is limited.

If you give your time to A, it means you temporarily don't have the same amount of time to give to B.

So the essence of time management is not to fill the day to the brim.
But to constantly make choices.

• You can learn English, or photography;
• You can run, or learn oil painting;
• You can write articles, or watch short videos;
• You can study stocks, or develop a new interest.
  

The question is not "Are these things good or not".
The question is:
Do you have time to do all these things simultaneously right now?

The problem for many people lies precisely here.
They don't lack goals, but they have too many goals.

Each goal looks good when considered alone, but when put together, it has already exceeded their time capacity.

 

Time management also requires leaving room for "losses".

Inventory will have losses, accounts receivable need to consider credit risks, and budgets need to leave space for unexpected situations.

Time management is the same.

We cannot assume that one day's time can be 100% effectively utilized. A part of it will definitely be consumed by various uncontrollable factors.

Temporary calls, unexpected events, changes in mood, physical fatigue, household chores, socializing, transportation, and those seemingly only a few minutes but actually accumulating over time on the phone... These are all real "time losses".

But at the end of the day, the time that can be used for reading, learning, exercising, and creation has been fragmented.

So, if you fill every single day with a full schedule, the plan is likely to fail easily.

The truly sustainable time management requires giving yourself a buffer.

Just as a financial budget doesn't assume all resources to have zero loss, we can't treat ourselves as a machine that can run precisely 24 hours a day.

No one's day can run as precisely as an Excel table.

 

Set aside "positions" for your own time

When investing, we don't put all our funds into dozens of stocks just because we are optimistic about many companies.

Because funds are limited.

The same goes for time.

Your time is the most important "position" in life.

If your schedule includes English, running, yoga, reading, photography, oil painting, stocks, entrepreneurship, content creator... 

Each thing takes up only a little time，then in the end，it's very likely that you won't do any of them deeply enough.

So now I prefer to view each day and each week's time as a "time position".

• Important things should be reserved with a position，and be done every day.
• Less important things should have their positions reduced，such as once a week.
• Things that are completely unimportant should be cleared out.
  

When your goals change，you can adjust the positions like adjusting a stock portfolio.
Add a little，reduce a little，change a little.

But there is one principle that will never change：
The total position is always limited.

You can't create more time； you can only redistribute it.