We are busy for the most part of our lives, yet, how often are we really taking action? What does it even mean to really take action? I have been wondering about this for a long time. But it’s only since I actually started living my life on my own terms, that I slowly start to understand why taking action is important and what it really means.

I’m sure we all are familiar with this feeling of constantly working on different tasks, but somehow not really knowing why and what for. We just have a tendency to always keep busy, no matter what. Sometimes doing this leaves this void feeling within ourselves. If this lasts for too long, we feel drained of energy. We get tired. What’s missing is some sort of feedback or result from those tasks. Something that shows us that we are making some sort of progress, that we are doing something with a purpose that makes our own or other people’s lives just a little bit better.

I think this situation has become worse especially since nowadays a majority of us (and most likely including you, since you are reading this article) are mostly spending our time in the digital world. Don’t get me wrong, this is not about you spending too much time online, I’m the same and this is how our world works today. But I do believe, that we — as the human beings that we are — are much better at receiving this feedback we need from tasks that are somehow connected to our offline environment.

This is exactly what differs taking action from just being busy. It’s about the feeling we get from the process, which either does or does not help us to refuel some energy.

Not Taking Action is Like Watching the Traffic

Only having my own life and perspective as a reference, I always quite quickly realized when my current daily life routine was not providing me with feedback and therefore not with any energy. I had this while studying at university, as well as in the jobs that I was working in over the past years. I felt like I’m not really taking action on my own behalf.

Trying to find a metaphor to describe it, I figured that it feels a lot like watching the traffic on a street. I was standing in a fixed position (my job) and was watching the cars passing by (the tasks that I was given).