I’ve been racking my brains about what earth shattering revelations to include in today’s blog; not exactly writer’s block, more a question of what to choose from the wealth of ‘stuff’ (technical term there!) in my head. Then I remembered a piece of advice we often give our coachees, especially when they are stuck or stalled at a task.

Do you sometimes find yourself in that state – not being sure what to do (next), perhaps having so many options that it is difficult to choose which one to take? For some people, this is a recipe for doing nothing on the basis that there may be a better choice, or whatever I do may be inappropriate. Of course, doing nothing achieves nothing – and I am not talking here about a deliberate decision to defer action, but about ‘stuckness’ when inaction becomes the default.

So, what’s the simple piece of advice?

When you are stuck do something, do anything.

If you continue stuck, then you cannot get whirling around Kolb’s learning cycle – an essential part of his four stage learning cycle is action, followed by consideration of the effects of the action (feedback), figuring out what’s going on and finally devising and trying new approaches. In a nutshell, this is the source of the learning mantra “There is no failure, only feedback”. Taking action, any action generates feedback and so gets the learning cycle spinning.

So, the next time you find yourself stuck, just remember that any action is better than no action – and learn from the feedback.