5 Tips on How to Emphasize Action Over Inertia

At Behance, we’ve observed that the most productive creative professionals typically organize themselves and make decisions with a strong bias towards action. Not surprisingly, actually doing things seems to be more effective than thinking or talking about doing things. In the spirit of doing, here’s five quick tips on how to emphasize action in your work environment:

1. Act without conviction.
It’s a natural tendency to try to plan out everything perfectly before you take action. Yet, nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. We’ve found that the most successful professionals tend to take action even if everything about a project isn’t clearly defined.  The next time you’re stuck in a planning rut, unable to envision the “perfect solution,” try to go ahead take action in any way you can. The information that you gather by acting, as well as the momentum you gain, will help you refine your objectives and keep moving forward.

2. Prototype your ideas.
We rarely (if ever) strike upon the best solution right out of the gates. Rather, we get there through iterative development, or trial and error. Although the word “prototype” is largely used in the context of professions like industrial design – the design consultants at IDEO are bullish on transforming ideas into working models as soon as possible – it’s a practice with application for all of us. Writing and rewriting a proposal is prototyping, running and refining a social media marketing campaign is prototyping, and so on. In essence, prototyping just means trying something out, and then making a better version based on what you learned. The sooner we experiment, the more information we have to take further action.

3. Get out of your own way.
The problem with creating hard-and-fast plans is that we often get unduly attached to them, so much so that even when an unexpected opportunity emerges, we are loathe to deviate from the agreed-upon plan. But some of the greatest advances and innovations have emerged from “accidental” or unforeseen insights that had nothing to do with a business plan. If a promising opportunity emerges or momentum wells up unexpectedly, be willing to explore it – even if you don’t quite understand yet how it fits into the big picture.

4. Replace update meetings with “huddles.”
For some reason, when we all gather in the conference room, meetings tend to take a bit longer than they need to. Yet, when everyone remains standing for a meeting, the gathering automatically gains a certain urgency that encourages speedy updates and efficient decision-making. For meetings that do not demand extended brainstorming and/or debate, a quick huddle will usually suffice and has the added bonus of encouraging less idle talk and a swifter return to doing.

5. Create testaments to progress.
When we accomplish the items on our to-do lists, we rarely take the time to appreciate the progress we’ve made – instead, always looking forward to what’s next. While it’s not constructive to rest on your laurels, it can be helpful to integrate testaments to past progress into your work environment – whether it’s a wall of “to-dones,” or an oversized project board that tracks phases of completion as you develop a new product or feature. We are emboldened to take action when we remind ourselves that every little step makes a difference.

***This post by J.K. Glei is based on research by the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think thank, the Action Method project management application, and the Creative Jobs List.