Josh's Weekly Insights - January 28, 2026

“Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

-Carrie Fisher

When I am coaching, I hear a lot of leaders mention that their team members are not taking action. However, during those conversations they never mention not taking action. What they actually say is, “My team member said they are about to do it” or “My team member didn’t have time yet…”

Have you ever been in that space? About to take action but things come along and derail you.

Here is a secret: Most of the time that means you are avoiding the action and looking for reasons not to do the most important thing. You know it is important or you wouldn’t be “about to do it”, you just wouldn’t do it because it doesn’t matter. However, you know the task at hand is important, but you find reasons to avoid it.

Let’s look at some reasons we avoid doing the right thing:

1) It is hard. If your task is hard take the words of a good mentor and leader of mine to heart, “Choose the hard right over the easy wrong.” If the task will be hard, ask yourself if it is the right thing to do. If it is, take action and do it.

2) You are afraid. We often avoid tasks (even easy ones) because we haven’t done them before or don’t feel comfortable with them. Fear makes a task much worse than it usually ends up being because we carry it around dreading it instead of getting it done. If you are afraid, work on making yourself face your fear. The more you do, the easier it gets to overcome.

3) You “don’t have time” to do it. This is a fancy way of saying “I didn’t prioritize it.” If you are struggling with your time management, are others in your position getting it done? If so, recognize that they aren’t getting it done because they have more time in the day but because they made it a priority. Rearrange your priority list if you aren’t getting the most important things done. And if you aren’t sure, work with your leader to straighten out your list to better align with what they view as “most important.”

Ultimately,

we have to be action oriented if we want to create lasting change. Nothing changes on its own, so it is up to us to make it happen.

Now get out there and crush your week!