Are You Busy or Building?
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
Have you ever had one of those days that felt packed but somehow still left you feeling empty? You know, that feeling where you look back on the day and can't quite name the progress you were so sure you'd made?
Where did the day go? What do I have to show for it?
I've had those days, and odds are you have too. And that's OK. Because I've come to believe those "active-but-empty kind of days" serve an important purpose for those of us working in mission-driven work. Specifically, those kinds of days help us learn the difference between activity and action.
Yep, activity and action. They're similar words, which is what makes them easy to confuse. An activity is when you're busy doing something, but the task on its own doesn't produce much. Action, on the other hand, is the effort aimed at a result. Write a little every day, and eventually you have a book. Reach out to the right people, and eventually you have a partnership.
Activity is motion. Action is motion toward a goal.
They're concepts that can get easily confused in nonprofit communications, where resource-strapped teams spend so much time reacting to everyone else's requests that they lose sight of their own focus, until they've quietly accepted their role as reactive communicators. I still remember one communications director who called for help last year because she'd gotten "so sucked into the day-to-day activities" that she'd become, in her words, "too busy to be strategic."
We don't get stuck in activity because we're scattered or can't think strategically. We get stuck because activity is always right in front of us, and what's right in front of us usually wins.
Action is harder to see and slower to measure—which is exactly why it needs protecting.
Motivational speaker Ryan Avery captures this well. When he fixes on the activity, such as lifting weights at the gym, he turns rigid: miss a day, and he does nothing at all. But when he focuses on the action beneath it, such as getting stronger, he finds room to be both flexible and consistent. He stops measuring success by checking a box for "lifting weights at the gym" and starts measuring whether he honored the intent behind it. The payoff, he says, is less guilt and more momentum toward his goal of becoming stronger.
Swap in a communications team, and the lesson holds well. A team married to "we have to post on LinkedIn every day" measures success by whether the post was published. But a team focused on the action beneath it, such as "deepen a relationship" or "engage a new audience", earns the freedom to choose the best move that week, even when the best move might be to not post at all.
It's the same energy being expended, with a lot more purpose behind it.
So how do you tell activity and action apart in your own day? First, remember what I wrote above: An activity is motion, whereas an action is motion toward your goal.
Activity: Publish the newsletter.
Action: Re-engage a lapsed donor for this year's giving campaign.
Activity: Post daily on LinkedIn.
Action: Schedule calls with five prospective donors.
Activity: Send the press release.
Action: Share a great feature story idea with a local editor.
Notice that the activity never disappears. You may still send the newsletter, but now you're sending it to achieve a specific outcome. This shift doesn't require a new communications plan. If anything, it asks for a smaller, more focused one.
So, the next time a day leaves you feeling empty, resist reaching for a longer to-do list, and ask a better question instead; from "What did I get done today?" to "What did I/we move forward?"
You may not be able to check off as many items on your list, but I guarantee you will have made incremental progress on something much more meaningful.
Bottom line: Activities can fill a day, but actions move the mission forward. Stay clear about which is which, and your days will start to feel full in an energizing kind of way.
This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
