43. Mellow Massive Action
Massive Action is a tool that I learned about from my coach and mentor, but it’s pretty widely taught in the coaching world. And it’s very simple.
Basically, it’s taking action until you get the thing you want. You don’t give up. You don’t stop trying. You just keep going until you make it happen.
But as recovering high-achievers, perfectionists, and people pleasers, we are really good at taking action until we reach burnout. So when people like us learn about Massive Action, we can end up using it against ourselves.
We can go down a path of believing that if we want to achieve a goal, we have to spend every waking moment taking action towards it. And this is not what Massive Action means - the only thing that is a recipe for is burnout.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t use Massive Action in your own life. It just means you might need some extra guidance about how to use it well.
And that’s why in this week’s podcast I’m teaching you exactly how to take massive action in a way that won’t burn you out or leave you desperately needing a vacation from your goals. I call it Mellow Massive Action, and it might be just what you need to start working towards your goals in a more sustainable and consistent way.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How high-achievers and perfectionists end up using Massive Action against themselves.
What Mellow Massive Action is, and why it works so much better for my clients.
The work it took to rewire my brain to avoid burnout while still taking action.
How to see where Mellow Massive Action could change your experience of working towards a promotion, a raise, or whatever you’re going after.
What you can do to ditch burnout and start working towards your goals in a more sustainable way right now.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we are talking about massive action.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, happy Wednesday. I am reading such a good book right now. I think it's been a while since I've mentioned one of my books I'm reading to y'all. It's not because I'm not always reading, I am pretty much always reading. Usually at least one book, sometimes multiples. I know I'm like one of those crazy people, I'll be like sometimes reading even multiple fiction works at the same time.
And I know a lot of people are into like starting a book and finishing it and going all the way through. And I think that is awesome, but that is not always how I want to do things. And I get almost all of my books from the library because I'm a huge library lover and nerd.
And the thing about getting books from the library is, even with audio books and eBooks, which is what I get most of the time, they take them back after three weeks. So it's just like when you check a book out in person, they just rip them right back off your phone.
So sometimes I'm not a fast enough reader to get all the way through a book before the library takes it back. And then they're not always available again. I'm often reading stuff that I've had to have on hold. And so then I have to put it on hold again.
I do realize a solution could be to buy the books, and I'm a big fan of buying books too. But there's something so nostalgic and delicious to me about the experience of using the library. And it's an institution that I want to support because I want books to be available for everyone. And they have so many other resources.
Anyways, this is not a commercial for the library. I am not affiliated, I just love them. They were one of my safe spaces as a kid and I just am a die hard fan of libraries.
Okay, so the book I'm reading is One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. And Casey McQuiston also wrote Red, White and Royal Blue, which I read earlier this summer. My friend and I actually, we listened to it on audio on the road trip down from Seattle when I moved here. And it was phenomenal, highly recommend.
I'm only less than halfway into One Last Stop but I'm so into it so far. So if you like to read fiction and you like queer romcom books, go check it out.
Okay, now let's jump into what we're actually talking about today, which is massive action. So massive action is a tool that I learned about from my coach and mentor Kara Loewentheil, but many people teach about it. I think Tony Robbins teaches about it, Brooke Castillo teaches about it.
Any coach who's certified by the Life Coach School, which I am, teaches about it or talks about it, or even if they don't, it's in their toolkit. It's one of the tools that we learn in certification. And it's this really amazing tool.
It's very simple. Basically, all massive action means in the way that I learned it is you take action until you get the thing you want, period. You don't give up. There's no point at which you stop trying. You just keep going until you get the thing you want.
To put this in the most stark terms and the way I've heard it explained before is you try until you either get the thing you want or you die. That makes it sound like we're doing something dangerous. We're not doing hopefully anything dangerous.
I'm certainly not using it to do dangerous things. But it's the idea that we're not like, oh, I tried for five minutes, or I tried for five years, or I tried for 50 years so now it's time to stop. With massive action you just keep going.
Here's the thing though, I'm a high achiever and recovering perfectionist, recovering people pleaser. And a lot of my clients are also. And we are really good at achieving ourselves into burnout. And so when my people learn about this idea of massive action, sometimes they do what I would call using it against themselves.
So they're like, “Well, massive action means until I hit my goal I have to spend every waking moment doing something.” And I'm like, “Absolutely fucking not, no.” To me that's not what massive action means, that's called recipe for burnout.
Now, one of the things that I teach is that burnout comes down to using fuel that burns us out. Like emotional fuel that doesn't help us keep going and make us resilient. And if you want the deep dive on that, I have a whole podcast episode on it.
But I also think even when we're using positive emotion as fuel, if all we're ever doing is working, that can get a little out of balance and a little out of whack. And that can also create burnout. Even when it's something we really want and we're like using our best energy at it.
I do think rest is essential for most people. There are maybe a few people in the world for whom their work is so much play also that they don't want to do that or don't need to do that. I'm open to the possibility that this is not true for everyone.
But I think for my clients, and for me, what I've learned in coaching myself as well as my clients is that trying to work on something all the time usually is not effective. And when I say it's not effective, I mean it usually actually slows me down in getting what I want. And it often creates pockets of burnout where then I have to like pause and recover from my own actions and activities.
So the way I teach massive action is what I like to call mellow massive action. Sounds so chill, doesn't it? Mellow massive action. I'm like the least mellow person I've ever met in my life. I'm a very intense person. I'm not mellow at all.
But what mellow massive action is, is it's this idea if I'm going to work on this thing, potentially forever, potentially for the rest of my life, how do I need to work on it in a way that's sustainable? How do I need to work on it in a way that's going to allow me to keep working on it?
A lot of people that I work with, and myself personally, we have learned to operate in bursts. So we'll be like, nose down – Is that what we say? Nose down, head down. Nose to the grindstone, whatever the phrase is. We're like all in, we're going really hard and we're like working our butts off. And then the burst like runs out and we either need to rest or we need to relax or we just stop working.
For me, what happens is my brain pretends it gets bored. That's how my brain does it. My brain is like, “I'm bored of this now.” So even though this is the goal that I picked and the thing that I want, it's like I work and work and work and work. And then my brain presents to me that it's bored. And I think that's just my brains way of saying, “I need a break and you're not letting me take a break when I ask for one. So I'm going to do this other thing.”
And yes, this sometimes still happens to me, because like I'm always saying, I have coaching tools and they're incredible. And I'm also still learning all the time and still catching my brain doing little quiet burnout behaviors.
And basically, even though I've rewired a lot of my brain, there's often more stuff to rewire. Since coaching is my main focus in work, I spend a lot of time thinking about this and kind of getting into the cracks in between the things I've already addressed, if that makes sense.
So here's how you use this tool, for anything you want that you don't already have, and that could be a new job. It could be a promotion, it could be making a certain salary, anything like that. But also non work things. We know I'm a work coach but I like to talk about all the things because I'm a rule breaker and that's fine.
I'm like a rule follower and a rule breaker at the same time. People contain multitudes, we’re paradoxes. I'm sure you're a paradox too. But anyways, it also works in dating. Dating is an area where people will go for it, they'll be trying to find a partner and they'll do that for a while. And then they'll get fed up and they'll take a break.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a break. I think it's an essential piece of doing things. But I think when we come at it from a mellow massive action lens we're actually able to do it in a much more sustainable way.
Because we're looking at it going, “Okay, I'm willing for this to happen immediately, and I'm also willing to work on it for the rest of my life if it doesn't happen immediately. And if both of those are true, how do I want to show up to it in a way that is going to be both the massive action and the continuing to take action to get the thing I want? But also going to be mellow in that it's going to be able to be a part of my larger life and something I can weave into my life so that it doesn't take over and I don't get so fed up with it that I basically throw my entire goal in the trashcan.”
So a way that I see a lot of people do it is the opposite. Where we have a goal and we get super fucking obsessive about it. And every day and night we're biting our nails and thinking about it and making plans. And if you're me, you're in your little Notes app in your phone writing 7000 ideas. And then three months and you're exhausted from all of that, or as my brain likes to be bored of all of that.
And then you just fizzle out. You're just like, “Oh, I'm not going to work on that for a while, I'll just take a break.” You're totally allowed to do it that way. I don't think it feels very good and I don't think it's as fun. So I prefer the mellow massive action concept, which is like, “Okay, if I'm going to weave this into my life, and potentially it's something that could take a really long time because some goals do and that's okay. How do I want to weave it in?”
Probably I don't want to be doing it all day and night every day, and biting my nails about it, and being obsessed. So instead thinking about how do I weave this in in a way where it becomes a part of my larger life and it's a sustainable habit and practice?
Okay, so let's look at an example. Let's say right now you're an individual contributor. So you have a job and it's great, but you want to move into management. You want to stop being an individual contributor and you want a management position. And then the question is, how are we going to employ mellow massive action?
So the way I see some people do it, the non-mellow version, the obsessive version is to make that your only focus in life and go all in on it. Which sounds good but can backfire. And read seventeen books on management and bring it up in everyone on one with your supervisor. And then in three weeks be mad that it hasn't happened yet.
And it may sound like I'm being a little melodramatic here. But I'm actually kind of thinking of my previous self. Because I am really capable and intelligent and when I decide I want things, a lot of times I can get them pretty quickly.
But when I was in corporate, I wanted to try management. And I remember bringing it up and bringing it up, and then being upset that nothing was happening immediately. And that was not useful. And I think then I kind of did sort of give up on it and just be like, “Oh, it's not working. Nevermind.”
Versus a mellow massive action would be like, “How do I weave this desire in, in a way where I'm going to be able to keep working on it? I'm not going to give up on it if it doesn't happen right away. And I am able to do it sustainably over the long haul for as long as it takes.” And so that might look like making a little plan of like, “Okay, I'm going to spend an hour on this a week.”
That might not sound like enough. To a lot of people that's not going to sound like enough because we're so used to thinking that success comes from that obsessive, intense high focus. But an hour a week is 52 hours in a year. So that's over an entire workweek spent.
And I think we tend to overestimate what we can do quickly and underestimate what we can do in the long term with consistent effort. Also, if we're doing it obsessively, usually we don't last a year. We might still get in 52 hours of effort. But then if we just give up after that and we're not able to keep working on it and we ditch the goal and we pick a new goal, then we're kind of not getting anywhere. All we're really doing is practicing being intense and then giving up.
Versus mellow massive action we're like, “Okay, I'm going to spend an hour on this a week for as long as it takes.” And so then a year in we're 52 hours in. And then if we don't have what we want, we can just keep going versus giving up.
And what might you be doing along the way? You might be reading books, like management books, blah, blah, blah. You might be reading blogs, you might be hiring a coach and talking to them. You also might be talking to your supervisor. You might be applying for roles at other organizations. You might be doing informational interviews with other people about how they made the leap from being an IC to being a manager.
But what you allow yourself to do when you do it this way, is you allow yourself to keep going. And that's essential. I think so often the difference between people who hit their goals and people who don't hit their goals is people who hit their goals keep going.
This happened to me a lot in the beginning of my business. And it still happens to me a lot, let's be honest. But in the very beginning of my business, I think I've told this story before, I wanted to make six figures in the first 12 months of business.
I did not do it. I didn't even get to 20% of six figures. I didn't even get to 20% of my goal. That was a year in, so that was a lot more than a burst. Although I was there, so I will also tell you there were a lot of bursts in that year because I was still kind of figuring out a lot of what I'm teaching now. I had a lot of the tools but I was learning them also experientially, through my life and through the act of starting a business.
Okay, so at that point I could have given up. I could have been like, “It's not fucking working.” But I had this concept of massive action. And so I was like, “Oh, this sucks. It's not what I prefer. I would really like it if I had hit my goal and I had a bunch of money in the bank and was toasting with pink champagne.” But that wasn't where I was.
And so the question was, I stop trying or I can keep trying. And I decided just to keep trying. So when we do, when we keep trying, when we keep going, we're much more likely to get to our goal. And we're not always correct about how long our goal will take or how long it “should” take.
Like a lot of people think, “Oh, I'll just apply to like five jobs.” Sometimes you apply to five and you don't hear back from any of them. And you apply to another five and you don't hear back from any of them. And you apply to another five, and then you get an interview.
I mean, definitely, when stuff we're doing isn't getting any results we might want to examine that stuff and decide if maybe a slightly different approach would be helpful. But I see so many people who try some shit and it doesn't work. And then they just throw their hands up in the air and give up. So that's not massive action or mellow massive action.
But I think a lot of my people misinterpret the traditional teaching of massive action to mean Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go until you get your goal. Whereas I'm like, how do you need to be going towards your goal in a way that's not going to burn you out along the way?
Okay, so let's review. Massive action is the concept of taking action until you get what you want, basically, forever. Inside that concept you just keep going. But when I see people try to apply this concept, I see them trying to massive action in a way that's not sustainable over the long term.
But to me, half the point of massive action is if you're going to do this action, possibly indefinitely, it needs to be sustainable and something you won't give up on. If we make it so massive that it's almost undoable, then of course, we're going to give up on it. And then we're going to judge ourselves for failing at massive action, which is not helpful.
Versus mellow massive action, which is, I'm going to commit to taking this action until I get what I want. If I'm doing that indefinitely, what does that need to look like? How do I do that in a sustainable way so that I can show up to the commitment of doing it for as long as it takes?
I want you to think of one goal in your life. Again, maybe it's to get to a certain pay level. Maybe it's to get a raise in your current position. Maybe it's to hop industries. Maybe it has nothing to do with work at all because like I said, before I talk about all the things. Maybe it's to get a partner. Maybe it's to stop fighting with the partner you have. Maybe it's to change something in your parenting.
Whatever it is, I want you just to pause and think about how have I been starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping, deciding on this goal and then giving up? What would happen instead, if I took mellow massive action, if I committed to that?
And here's the thing, when we commit to massive action, mellow or not, we're making a commitment. It's not like I'm just going to try five things and see what happens. Massive action is for the long haul. And I think that's a beautiful thing because it really kind of forces you to choose.
We can't be doing massive action on everything at once. We need prioritization and when we choose what we're going to massive action on, that helps us understand what our priorities are in life. And sometimes we also choose what we're not going to massive action on and that's okay too. And then let that thing go for now. You can always choose to massive action on it later.
Okay, so what are you going to massive action on? I guess I'm using massive action like it's a verb even though it's not, but go with me. What are you going to choose to massive action on? How is that going to look so that it can be sustainable and you can be willing to show up and do it for as long as it takes to get what you want?
And if you want support figuring out how to apply massive action in your own life. Here's what you should do. You should sign up for a consult with me. Just on the consult call alone, we can look at how massive action can help you in your life. Mellow massive action, my friends. And even if we don't work together, you will leave that call forever changed. So you can sign up on my website, korilinn.com. All right y'all, have a great week. Thanks, bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, happy Wednesday. I am reading such a good book right now. I think it's been a while since I've mentioned one of my books I'm reading to y'all. It's not because I'm not always reading, I am pretty much always reading. Usually at least one book, sometimes multiples. I know I'm like one of those crazy people, I'll be like sometimes reading even multiple fiction works at the same time.
And I know a lot of people are into like starting a book and finishing it and going all the way through. And I think that is awesome, but that is not always how I want to do things. And I get almost all of my books from the library because I'm a huge library lover and nerd.
And the thing about getting books from the library is, even with audio books and eBooks, which is what I get most of the time, they take them back after three weeks. So it's just like when you check a book out in person, they just rip them right back off your phone.
So sometimes I'm not a fast enough reader to get all the way through a book before the library takes it back. And then they're not always available again. I'm often reading stuff that I've had to have on hold. And so then I have to put it on hold again.
I do realize a solution could be to buy the books, and I'm a big fan of buying books too. But there's something so nostalgic and delicious to me about the experience of using the library. And it's an institution that I want to support because I want books to be available for everyone. And they have so many other resources.
Anyways, this is not a commercial for the library. I am not affiliated, I just love them. They were one of my safe spaces as a kid and I just am a die hard fan of libraries.
Okay, so the book I'm reading is One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. And Casey McQuiston also wrote Red, White and Royal Blue, which I read earlier this summer. My friend and I actually, we listened to it on audio on the road trip down from Seattle when I moved here. And it was phenomenal, highly recommend.
I'm only less than halfway into One Last Stop but I'm so into it so far. So if you like to read fiction and you like queer romcom books, go check it out.
Okay, now let's jump into what we're actually talking about today, which is massive action. So massive action is a tool that I learned about from my coach and mentor Kara Loewentheil, but many people teach about it. I think Tony Robbins teaches about it, Brooke Castillo teaches about it.
Any coach who's certified by the Life Coach School, which I am, teaches about it or talks about it, or even if they don't, it's in their toolkit. It's one of the tools that we learn in certification. And it's this really amazing tool.
It's very simple. Basically, all massive action means in the way that I learned it is you take action until you get the thing you want, period. You don't give up. There's no point at which you stop trying. You just keep going until you get the thing you want.
To put this in the most stark terms and the way I've heard it explained before is you try until you either get the thing you want or you die. That makes it sound like we're doing something dangerous. We're not doing hopefully anything dangerous.
I'm certainly not using it to do dangerous things. But it's the idea that we're not like, oh, I tried for five minutes, or I tried for five years, or I tried for 50 years so now it's time to stop. With massive action you just keep going.
Here's the thing though, I'm a high achiever and recovering perfectionist, recovering people pleaser. And a lot of my clients are also. And we are really good at achieving ourselves into burnout. And so when my people learn about this idea of massive action, sometimes they do what I would call using it against themselves.
So they're like, “Well, massive action means until I hit my goal I have to spend every waking moment doing something.” And I'm like, “Absolutely fucking not, no.” To me that's not what massive action means, that's called recipe for burnout.
Now, one of the things that I teach is that burnout comes down to using fuel that burns us out. Like emotional fuel that doesn't help us keep going and make us resilient. And if you want the deep dive on that, I have a whole podcast episode on it.
But I also think even when we're using positive emotion as fuel, if all we're ever doing is working, that can get a little out of balance and a little out of whack. And that can also create burnout. Even when it's something we really want and we're like using our best energy at it.
I do think rest is essential for most people. There are maybe a few people in the world for whom their work is so much play also that they don't want to do that or don't need to do that. I'm open to the possibility that this is not true for everyone.
But I think for my clients, and for me, what I've learned in coaching myself as well as my clients is that trying to work on something all the time usually is not effective. And when I say it's not effective, I mean it usually actually slows me down in getting what I want. And it often creates pockets of burnout where then I have to like pause and recover from my own actions and activities.
So the way I teach massive action is what I like to call mellow massive action. Sounds so chill, doesn't it? Mellow massive action. I'm like the least mellow person I've ever met in my life. I'm a very intense person. I'm not mellow at all.
But what mellow massive action is, is it's this idea if I'm going to work on this thing, potentially forever, potentially for the rest of my life, how do I need to work on it in a way that's sustainable? How do I need to work on it in a way that's going to allow me to keep working on it?
A lot of people that I work with, and myself personally, we have learned to operate in bursts. So we'll be like, nose down – Is that what we say? Nose down, head down. Nose to the grindstone, whatever the phrase is. We're like all in, we're going really hard and we're like working our butts off. And then the burst like runs out and we either need to rest or we need to relax or we just stop working.
For me, what happens is my brain pretends it gets bored. That's how my brain does it. My brain is like, “I'm bored of this now.” So even though this is the goal that I picked and the thing that I want, it's like I work and work and work and work. And then my brain presents to me that it's bored. And I think that's just my brains way of saying, “I need a break and you're not letting me take a break when I ask for one. So I'm going to do this other thing.”
And yes, this sometimes still happens to me, because like I'm always saying, I have coaching tools and they're incredible. And I'm also still learning all the time and still catching my brain doing little quiet burnout behaviors.
And basically, even though I've rewired a lot of my brain, there's often more stuff to rewire. Since coaching is my main focus in work, I spend a lot of time thinking about this and kind of getting into the cracks in between the things I've already addressed, if that makes sense.
So here's how you use this tool, for anything you want that you don't already have, and that could be a new job. It could be a promotion, it could be making a certain salary, anything like that. But also non work things. We know I'm a work coach but I like to talk about all the things because I'm a rule breaker and that's fine.
I'm like a rule follower and a rule breaker at the same time. People contain multitudes, we’re paradoxes. I'm sure you're a paradox too. But anyways, it also works in dating. Dating is an area where people will go for it, they'll be trying to find a partner and they'll do that for a while. And then they'll get fed up and they'll take a break.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a break. I think it's an essential piece of doing things. But I think when we come at it from a mellow massive action lens we're actually able to do it in a much more sustainable way.
Because we're looking at it going, “Okay, I'm willing for this to happen immediately, and I'm also willing to work on it for the rest of my life if it doesn't happen immediately. And if both of those are true, how do I want to show up to it in a way that is going to be both the massive action and the continuing to take action to get the thing I want? But also going to be mellow in that it's going to be able to be a part of my larger life and something I can weave into my life so that it doesn't take over and I don't get so fed up with it that I basically throw my entire goal in the trashcan.”
So a way that I see a lot of people do it is the opposite. Where we have a goal and we get super fucking obsessive about it. And every day and night we're biting our nails and thinking about it and making plans. And if you're me, you're in your little Notes app in your phone writing 7000 ideas. And then three months and you're exhausted from all of that, or as my brain likes to be bored of all of that.
And then you just fizzle out. You're just like, “Oh, I'm not going to work on that for a while, I'll just take a break.” You're totally allowed to do it that way. I don't think it feels very good and I don't think it's as fun. So I prefer the mellow massive action concept, which is like, “Okay, if I'm going to weave this into my life, and potentially it's something that could take a really long time because some goals do and that's okay. How do I want to weave it in?”
Probably I don't want to be doing it all day and night every day, and biting my nails about it, and being obsessed. So instead thinking about how do I weave this in in a way where it becomes a part of my larger life and it's a sustainable habit and practice?
Okay, so let's look at an example. Let's say right now you're an individual contributor. So you have a job and it's great, but you want to move into management. You want to stop being an individual contributor and you want a management position. And then the question is, how are we going to employ mellow massive action?
So the way I see some people do it, the non-mellow version, the obsessive version is to make that your only focus in life and go all in on it. Which sounds good but can backfire. And read seventeen books on management and bring it up in everyone on one with your supervisor. And then in three weeks be mad that it hasn't happened yet.
And it may sound like I'm being a little melodramatic here. But I'm actually kind of thinking of my previous self. Because I am really capable and intelligent and when I decide I want things, a lot of times I can get them pretty quickly.
But when I was in corporate, I wanted to try management. And I remember bringing it up and bringing it up, and then being upset that nothing was happening immediately. And that was not useful. And I think then I kind of did sort of give up on it and just be like, “Oh, it's not working. Nevermind.”
Versus a mellow massive action would be like, “How do I weave this desire in, in a way where I'm going to be able to keep working on it? I'm not going to give up on it if it doesn't happen right away. And I am able to do it sustainably over the long haul for as long as it takes.” And so that might look like making a little plan of like, “Okay, I'm going to spend an hour on this a week.”
That might not sound like enough. To a lot of people that's not going to sound like enough because we're so used to thinking that success comes from that obsessive, intense high focus. But an hour a week is 52 hours in a year. So that's over an entire workweek spent.
And I think we tend to overestimate what we can do quickly and underestimate what we can do in the long term with consistent effort. Also, if we're doing it obsessively, usually we don't last a year. We might still get in 52 hours of effort. But then if we just give up after that and we're not able to keep working on it and we ditch the goal and we pick a new goal, then we're kind of not getting anywhere. All we're really doing is practicing being intense and then giving up.
Versus mellow massive action we're like, “Okay, I'm going to spend an hour on this a week for as long as it takes.” And so then a year in we're 52 hours in. And then if we don't have what we want, we can just keep going versus giving up.
And what might you be doing along the way? You might be reading books, like management books, blah, blah, blah. You might be reading blogs, you might be hiring a coach and talking to them. You also might be talking to your supervisor. You might be applying for roles at other organizations. You might be doing informational interviews with other people about how they made the leap from being an IC to being a manager.
But what you allow yourself to do when you do it this way, is you allow yourself to keep going. And that's essential. I think so often the difference between people who hit their goals and people who don't hit their goals is people who hit their goals keep going.
This happened to me a lot in the beginning of my business. And it still happens to me a lot, let's be honest. But in the very beginning of my business, I think I've told this story before, I wanted to make six figures in the first 12 months of business.
I did not do it. I didn't even get to 20% of six figures. I didn't even get to 20% of my goal. That was a year in, so that was a lot more than a burst. Although I was there, so I will also tell you there were a lot of bursts in that year because I was still kind of figuring out a lot of what I'm teaching now. I had a lot of the tools but I was learning them also experientially, through my life and through the act of starting a business.
Okay, so at that point I could have given up. I could have been like, “It's not fucking working.” But I had this concept of massive action. And so I was like, “Oh, this sucks. It's not what I prefer. I would really like it if I had hit my goal and I had a bunch of money in the bank and was toasting with pink champagne.” But that wasn't where I was.
And so the question was, I stop trying or I can keep trying. And I decided just to keep trying. So when we do, when we keep trying, when we keep going, we're much more likely to get to our goal. And we're not always correct about how long our goal will take or how long it “should” take.
Like a lot of people think, “Oh, I'll just apply to like five jobs.” Sometimes you apply to five and you don't hear back from any of them. And you apply to another five and you don't hear back from any of them. And you apply to another five, and then you get an interview.
I mean, definitely, when stuff we're doing isn't getting any results we might want to examine that stuff and decide if maybe a slightly different approach would be helpful. But I see so many people who try some shit and it doesn't work. And then they just throw their hands up in the air and give up. So that's not massive action or mellow massive action.
But I think a lot of my people misinterpret the traditional teaching of massive action to mean Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go until you get your goal. Whereas I'm like, how do you need to be going towards your goal in a way that's not going to burn you out along the way?
Okay, so let's review. Massive action is the concept of taking action until you get what you want, basically, forever. Inside that concept you just keep going. But when I see people try to apply this concept, I see them trying to massive action in a way that's not sustainable over the long term.
But to me, half the point of massive action is if you're going to do this action, possibly indefinitely, it needs to be sustainable and something you won't give up on. If we make it so massive that it's almost undoable, then of course, we're going to give up on it. And then we're going to judge ourselves for failing at massive action, which is not helpful.
Versus mellow massive action, which is, I'm going to commit to taking this action until I get what I want. If I'm doing that indefinitely, what does that need to look like? How do I do that in a sustainable way so that I can show up to the commitment of doing it for as long as it takes?
I want you to think of one goal in your life. Again, maybe it's to get to a certain pay level. Maybe it's to get a raise in your current position. Maybe it's to hop industries. Maybe it has nothing to do with work at all because like I said, before I talk about all the things. Maybe it's to get a partner. Maybe it's to stop fighting with the partner you have. Maybe it's to change something in your parenting.
Whatever it is, I want you just to pause and think about how have I been starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping, deciding on this goal and then giving up? What would happen instead, if I took mellow massive action, if I committed to that?
And here's the thing, when we commit to massive action, mellow or not, we're making a commitment. It's not like I'm just going to try five things and see what happens. Massive action is for the long haul. And I think that's a beautiful thing because it really kind of forces you to choose.
We can't be doing massive action on everything at once. We need prioritization and when we choose what we're going to massive action on, that helps us understand what our priorities are in life. And sometimes we also choose what we're not going to massive action on and that's okay too. And then let that thing go for now. You can always choose to massive action on it later.
Okay, so what are you going to massive action on? I guess I'm using massive action like it's a verb even though it's not, but go with me. What are you going to choose to massive action on? How is that going to look so that it can be sustainable and you can be willing to show up and do it for as long as it takes to get what you want?
And if you want support figuring out how to apply massive action in your own life. Here's what you should do. You should sign up for a consult with me. Just on the consult call alone, we can look at how massive action can help you in your life. Mellow massive action, my friends. And even if we don't work together, you will leave that call forever changed. So you can sign up on my website, korilinn.com. All right y'all, have a great week. Thanks, bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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