Action Words

You've likely heard it said, "actions speak louder than words!" 

I usually find that to be pretty true. But I also find that, many times, words can help us get to action...especially when it comes to actions that seem hard to take.

Back in the day when I put together schedules for super duper important awesome muckity-mucks at the White House, Senate, and State Department, I was responsible for piecing together a document that guided hundreds of people (and often many more dollars) every day. If and when I made a mistake, it could cause BIG problems. Even the tiniest typo around a time or date or address could turn out to be a BIG DEAL. So I had to be careful.

Every evening, after taking one final look at the next day's schedule, I usually faced a moment of truth: was I going to send that thing, or not? Even after hitting send on schedules thousands of times, I always faced the same moment with every new schedule, asking myself, "do you have the guts to send it?"

The phrase that I would almost always use to get over the bump was saying to myself, "ship it, Ship It, SHIP IT!" and then I would hit send.

This is kind of similar to the famous 5 second rule author Mel Robbins describes in her awesome book, "The Five Second Rule." She describes how, whenever you need to do something and you hesitate, just count down from five and do it, without any more thought.

So, my question to you it: what is the phrase you use to help overcome that last bit of inertia to get moving and take action? If you have one, are you using it? If you don't have one, what could your phrase be?

Hope this idea helps YOU ship it and win at work!