A Bias to Action

I'm learning a lot lately from the the site The 99%, thanks to Matt Snyder, the most notable of which is the concept of developing a bias to action.

The site (a resource of Behance) is based on the famous Thomas Edison quote: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

The basic premise is that creative ideas in and of themselves are only as valuable as your ability to act on them. Through their network of freelancers, articles on creativity and productivity, and Scott Belsky's new book Making Ideas Happen, they're encouraging creatives to act more on their ideas.

The ethic that Behance has ingrained into their company's culture and their business tools, such as Action Method (a project management system), is that it's better to act now than later, to do something versus nothing, to get an idea out the door today.

And I like that a lot.

Of course, there are exceptions, but as a whole, we creative types tend to over-think things and slow the process of delivering on something because we're afraid (or failure or success as my friend Josh pointed out).

These days, there's too much veneration of ideation and fruitless brainstorming sessions. Especially in the creative field, we need more people to do stuff. To "ship" as Godin says.

Ideas don't change people. Change changes people.

On the site, you can find numerous articles on a bias to action. Check them out (you won't regret it).

What's something — big or small — that you need to act on today?