3-2-1 GO
Do things that matter and live your call to action
"If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen."
Attributed to Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, this quote echoes in eternity for one very specific reason - its clear reverence of action, of doing, rather than sitting idly lost in thought.
Its author is now more commonly known as Erasmus, and he was a preeminent scholar of the northern humanist Renaissance. He was the first editor of the New Testament, and was also an important figure in the revival of literature and classical study in the 16th century. It likely goes without saying that Erasmus was about as stereotypical an academic figure as one can imagine. And yet, here we can see that even he was an ardent advocate of taking action. In fact, he was such a practitioner of getting out into the world and doing things that his prodigious activity eventually led to study abroad programs bearing his namesake. Hundreds of years later, university students in Europe refer to their year studying abroad as their Erasmus.
It’s a testament to his perpetual state of hustle and bustle that he left such a tangible legacy on the field of active study and the philosophy of living. Erasmus embodied the art of living, being well by doing good.
The doing of things, the preference for action over pontification is a time tested system of belief, a way of being even, that has been present in some form in nearly every generation of philosophical thought.
Just Do It was born as the action-oriented slogan of Nike in 1988.
Move fast and break things has been the north star mantra of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg since the inception of his generational social media darling.
Bias for action as a philosophy of life and work has curious staying power. How many other things can you think of that have made their way from the time of the humanist renaissance to modern technology?
Not many, I’d wager.
So what is it about doing things that’s so noteworthy? How did something so mundane and self-explanatory as just getting sh*t done become relevant in and of itself?
For starters, doing is just practical. You can’t be what you don’t do. The outcomes of our lives are born in the actions we take.
Actor. Writer. Creator. All of these states of being. These identities are born through acting, writing, and creating.
We can’t earn the noun without acting the verb.
This pathway to actualization of our higher selves is linear. The outcomes cannot come before the actions.
This doing as a philosophy of living a better life by doing good is a practice of humanism. To do is to be human.
Take it from Teddy Roosevelt. Given his near manic commitment to civic causes and insane daily schedule in service to those causes, we can gauge that he was about as passionate an active humanist as can be found in recent history. According to acclaimed historian David McCullough in his book Mornings on Horseback, which covered Teddy’s first two decades of life, the young man was an absolutely whirlwind of activity during his time at Harvard. Later on during his political career, he would come to be known for his advocacy of action in service to ones duty and responsibility to state. Teddy was an ardent and outspoken advocate of the citizen-doer, the sovereign individual striving in service to kin, community and country.
His most famous thoughts on the matter came in 1910 during his Citizenship In A Republic speech given in Paris. It gave rise to the now widely famous Man In The Arena quote, often used by doers to justify their incessant commitment to action.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
The passage emphasizes the importance of action and striving towards worthy goals in life over idle criticism, laziness and inaction. Roosevelt was a passionate believer that a country’s success depended on disciplined work and character, and that democracies require leaders of the best character to hold all citizens to the highest standards.
Life today may be a far cry different than what Teddy Roosevelt experienced on a daily basis, but modernity has a way of making people feel unbearably busy whether it’s the modernity of the early 1900s or early 2000s. Whether or not we actually busy is besides the point, as what matters is what we do with the time that’s been given to us.
So what do we do with this time? When we can do just about anything in a world ripe with abundant opportunity, what is the best thing to do?
This question has burdened folks like me and you for ages now. Just take it from our friend Erasmus. We can confidently asses that his even taking the time to acknowledge the dilemma of thought vs action meant it was prevalent enough a problem then as it is now that it warranted attention. If this issue paralyzed people hundreds of years ago, people with far less distractions and opportunities, how are we to figure out our way with it?
In a world of platitudes and mantras emphasizing mindless action for the sake of fulfilling our higher calling by way of doing, I thought of ways we can address this inherent tension. How do we do, so that we can engage with our best selves in a life of strenuous action, while having the confidence that what we are doing **is worthy of our time?
In an attempt to make a commonly held yet typically poorly defined mantra of just doing it more accessible, I came up with some ways of thinking through taking action.
I’m labeling it the 3-2-1 framework, and it can be applied to answer the question “what should I do”?
Maybe you want to become a writer. Or a videographer. Maybe you want to travel the world. Or learn to code. Or to paint. Perhaps you’d like to become a hobbyist comedian. You can see the problem.
In a world inundated with options, it’s hard to know where to start. This framework for deciding what to do is intended to guide thoughts and feelings about choosing a pursuit worthy of your time while fulfilling your personal call to action.
3 points of research
Find an example of this being done successfully.
Find an example of this being tried and failed.
What is an example of someone in the space that you’d like to emulate
I find these items helpful to research in considering an endeavor because they provide context on what to do and not to do if you decide to pursue it, as well as how a role model might look.
2 questions
What’s the best possible outcome of me doing this?
What the worst that could happen if I do this?
Considering upside and downside is important! Which is more notable? Does the potential good outweigh the potential bad?
1 thought experiment
If I do this and it goes modestly well, how will my life look in one, three and five years?
I love considering how I’d feel about something if it just went alright. Not bad, but not great either. It’s easy to latch onto something when the upside is massive if it goes well, or to shy away from something if the fallout is terrible if it goes wrong. But I find that considering the middle ground results has a way of really level setting the truth of how we feel about it.
Using this framework has been massively helpful to me in making decisions on things I’ve considered doing over the last few years. It comforts me knowing that I’ve put in the work to ensure what I plan to do is the right course of action, so that I pursue it with that much more conviction.
This 3-2-1 framework got me into recreational skydiving, it convinced me to help build a mentorship program for students at my alma mater, and it even helped me decide to start writing humaneyes.
Nothing quite like Meta’s famous mantra or Just Do It… yet.
But like Erasmus becoming the namesake of travel, study and life abroad hundreds of years after his death, maybe if I do enough now, it’ll matter one day.
Weekly Roundup
My favorite things that I read, watched, and listened too this week.
Inflection Points - Bits of Wonder
Bits of Wonder is a veritable library of knock-you-over-with-its-power writings on connection, clarity, and consciousness, and this piece from Kasra is no different. We are all always so close to the path we dream of being on.
How Far Away is the Moon - Veristasium
I’ve been a fan of Veritasium for years. It was one of the first YouTube accounts I geeked out on. So, imagine my surprise and delight when I found an old video I’d never seen before that brilliantly demonstrates - in the succinct, gut-punching way that only Derek can manage - how big of a universe we inhabit, and how beautifully insignificant we really are.
Bruno Latour - We Have Never Been Modern - Philosophize This!
Stephen West says that his “only goal in life is to make a podcast that brightens people's lives a little bit”. Well, he sure succeeded. I stumbled across this episode of Philosophize This! covering the duality of modern epistemology and damn. It hit home. Never have I felt so seen and heard by a first time listen to a brand new podcast find.