Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
Today’s edition is sponsored by SurveyMonkey, the feedback management platform today’s business decisions are built on. Learn more below.
My friend Andrea is a personal coach. And she’s noticed a pattern among some clients.
“We keep having the same conversations,” she told me. “They want to talk about the same problems, and they keep saying my advice is helpful, but they don’t seem to implement any of it. I don’t know why they keep talking to me.”
I have an answer: It’s because talking to Andrea feels like progress — and therefore lets them off the hook for doing the harder work. Whenever they worry about their problems, they just think to themselves: “It’s OK, I’m doing something about this! I’m talking to Andrea!”
I have a name for this kind of thing: proxy action. It’s what happens when you do an easy task that feels like progress, then avoid the hard work of actually making progress.
Does that sound familiar? We’re all guilty of it, at times.
Today, I’ll help you escape this trap… so that when you have a real problem or a big project, you can truly tackle it.
But first, here’s how I discovered this problem in the first place.
The mystery of the January issue
My first big magazine job was at Men’s Health. And I was fascinated by this little fact:
The January issue was always our best-seller.
Why? We had a theory: Every January, guys resolve to get healthier… so they buy a copy of Men’s Health and join a gym. This makes them feel good, because they’d taken actual steps towards getting healthier.
But most of them wouldn’t stick with it. After all, buying a magazine is easy. Changing your behavior is much harder.
This is exactly what my friend Andrea is seeing.
“For those clients, talking to you feels like they’re doing something,” I told her. “But of course, the truly important part is implementing what you say. And that’s much harder.”
Here’s how to avoid this
I’m not saying that small actions are bad. They can be wonderful first steps. It genuinely is good to talk with someone about your problems. And it really is useful to buy a magazine and read about stuff you want to do.
But when we’re facing a big challenge, it’s dangerously easy to settle for small actions. They feel so good. And they can feel like progress.
I’m guilty of this almost daily. When I have a lot to do, I’ll often find myself repeatedly checking my inbox and clearing out emails. Why? Because this action is easy, and it makes me feel productive!
Too bad it’s not actually helping me accomplish my larger goals.
So how do we avoid slipping into the trap of proxy actions?
Here’s my advice: Whenever you’re working toward something hard, look at what you’re doing and ask yourself, “If I keep doing this — and only this — does it actually get me where I want to go?”
- Buying the magazine, by itself: Does that make me healthier?
- Talking to Andrea, by itself: Does that solve my problems?
- Clearing out email, by itself: Does that make me productive?
If the honest answer is no, then you’re not taking real action. And you should.
Now let’s talk about how.
Committing to the hard thing
Good news: Proxy action isn’t worthless! It can genuinely motivate you to do hard things — but you must use it correctly.
To explain how, here’s one final story.
In my home office, two bass guitars hang on the wall. They’re visible behind me when I record podcasts, so guests often ask if I’m an active musician.
I always explain: I’m a mediocre bass player, but I want to get better. So I hung them on my wall as a reminder to play them. Because if there weren’t in front of my face, I’d forget.
Recently, I said this to economist Caroline Webb (while we recorded this episode about how to give good feedback). And she said something I’d never heard before:
“That’s a great pre-commitment device,” she said.
A what?
“A pre-commitment device is a way to make it more likely that you’ll do something you may be putting off,” she told me. When you have a goal, and then tell other people that you plan to tackle it, you change the cost-benefit analysis in your brain. Now you don’t want to let those people down. And they’ll be watching.
It’s why, if someone wants to quit smoking, they’re supposed to tell friends that they’re doing it.
Similarly, by telling people that I’ll practice the bass, I am pre-committing to doing it. Now people expect me to. The stakes of not doing it feel higher, and I’m more likely to do it.
You can absolutely do this with a proxy action too.
Make the bigger commitment
Want to take the bigger action? First, take a small action. Then tell everyone about it.
For example, let’s go back to that January issue of Men’s Health. There’s a real difference between these two actions:
- Quietly buying a copy of the magazine.
- Telling friends, “I just bought this magazine, because this is the year I get healthy.”
The first one is easy to forget. The second one puts you on the hook.
So as we take those first steps towards action, let’s make sure we remember what’s actually required of us. And let’s make sure we’re really committing to the harder, bigger, more meaningful paths.
A first step is fine. But only if it’s followed by more.
That’s how to do one thing better.
Do you love or fear personal branding?
I’m running a survey and need your perspective. Here’s why.
I’m using SurveyMonkey to understand why so many professionals hesitate to build a personal brand. Then I’ll use SurveyMonkey’s AI capabilities to uncover patterns in your responses and share what we can learn.
What holds you back: Lack of time? Fear of cringe? Something deeper? And what helped you take that first step to overcome the fear?
It’s a critical question today — because in a crowded marketplace, voice and perspective can help you stand out.
If we can better understand what holds people back, we can help everyone get out there!
Take 3 minutes to share your perspective here.
I’ll share the results on LinkedIn soon. Stay tuned!
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