One of the most important skills I’ve learned in my career has nothing to do with programming languages, frameworks, or tools. It’s not something you can list on a résumé or easily measure. It’s the ability to take action before things feel clear, comfortable, or guaranteed.
For a long time, I thought career success came from making the right choices. The right major. The right job. The right timing. But over time, I’ve come to believe that most people don’t fail because they choose incorrectly — they fail because they don’t choose at all. They wait. They prepare. They stay in place, telling themselves they’ll move once things make more sense.
Inaction is appealing because it feels responsible. Planning feels productive. Research feels like progress. And in many environments, especially professional ones, thinking without acting is rarely punished. But careers aren’t built through intention alone. They’re built through momentum. And momentum only comes from doing.
Taking Action Is a Skill — and Most People Don’t Practice It
Taking action isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill. Like any skill, it gets stronger the more you use it and weaker the longer you avoid it. The problem is that modern careers reward visible competence, not visible attempts. So people quietly optimize for not failing rather than for learning.
When you avoid action, you’re not standing still — you’re slowly losing ground. You’re not building new skills. You’re not testing assumptions. You’re not accumulating proof that you can figure things out when the path isn’t obvious. Over time, that avoidance shows up as stagnation, even if everything looks fine on the surface.
I didn’t recognize this pattern early on. I just knew I was uncomfortable, unfulfilled, and unsure why.
When Avoiding Action Finally Caught Up With Me
In 2019, I was working a sales job I had no real interest in. My days were filled with repetitive tasks and cold calls that felt disconnected from anything I cared about long-term. I told myself it was temporary, that I’d figure out my next move eventually, but weeks turned into months with no real change.
That discomfort eventually turned into a wake-up call when I was laid off.
At the time, it felt like a failure. But in hindsight, it was the first moment where inaction was no longer an option. I suddenly had to confront the question I’d been avoiding: What am I actually willing to work toward, even if it’s uncomfortable and uncertain?
I had always been interested in technology and building things, but interest alone hadn’t been enough to move me forward. What changed wasn’t clarity — it was commitment. I decided to act before I felt ready.
Choosing Action Without Guarantees
Learning to code was not a clean or confident decision. There was no roadmap promising it would work out. I spent a year without a full-time job, working part-time to get by while teaching myself a completely new skill. Meanwhile, people around me were progressing along more traditional, stable paths.
From the outside, it probably looked reckless. From the inside, it felt like finally moving forward instead of circling the same questions.
That year taught me something critical: action creates information. Every project, every failed attempt, every uncomfortable stretch clarified what I needed to improve next. Waiting would have taught me nothing. Acting taught me everything.
Eventually, that momentum led to my first software engineering role. Not because I had the perfect background or credentials, but because I had built the habit of moving forward without certainty.
The Subtle Return of Inaction
Years later, with a stable career and a clear path in front of me, I noticed the same pattern trying to reassert itself. I was comfortable. I knew what to do to be “fine.” And slowly, I started deferring action again — this time in more subtle ways.
I talked about writing instead of writing. I planned side projects instead of shipping them. I made lists, outlines, and notes that felt productive but never resulted in output.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize I wasn’t stuck — I was avoiding the discomfort of starting again. Once I recognized that, the fix was simple, but not easy: stop optimizing for readiness and start optimizing for action.
When I did, things moved quickly. A personal website existed. Articles were published. An app made it to the App Store. None of it was perfect, but all of it was real.
Why Action Matters More Than Ever
In the age of AI, taking action is becoming a career multiplier. Access to information is no longer scarce. Tools are abundant. The bottleneck is execution — deciding to do something imperfectly and learning in public.
Mistakes are usually small and recoverable. Inaction compounds quietly and expensively.
The people who build leverage over time aren’t the ones who waited for certainty. They’re the ones who practiced acting before confidence showed up.
Final Thought
Humans are powerful creatures. I truly believe that anyone can accomplish anything they put their mind to.
What often gets in the way isn’t a lack of talent, intelligence, or opportunity. It’s the long stretches of inaction we convince ourselves are harmless. The moments where we think we’re being careful, responsible, or patient, when in reality we’re just postponing the discomfort of starting.
Looking back, the most meaningful changes in my career didn’t come from having a perfect plan or feeling ready. They came from the periods where I finally moved, learned through doing, and accepted that progress would be messy. Every time I stalled, it wasn’t because I couldn’t move forward — it was because I chose not to.
That pattern has repeated itself in different forms over the years, and noticing it has been one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned. Not as motivation, not as advice, but as a simple truth about how my life and career have unfolded.
The cost of inaction was never dramatic or immediate. It showed up quietly, as time passing without much to show for it. And the moments that changed everything were rarely bold or heroic — they were just moments where I decided to stop waiting.
You can just do things.