the glow-up you're desperate for requires a flop
the art and science of sloppy action | fhg #75
Happy Sunday financial hotties đ Today, we need to talk about the one thing that will make or break your year.
Last week, we talked about the skills for financial literacy. I gave you specific reading, listening and content to learn from. But the only way you change your life with that information is by acting on it, sloppily. You need to flop. You need to do things before you feel ready to do them.
âThe longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the chance is that you will never actually do it.â â John C. Maxwell
Sloppy action. Itâs what perfectionists are violently allergic to because it risks a flop. But the leaps and bounds I have made in changing my mental, physical and financial identity in the last 6 years have come from the moments Iâve moved an inch imperfectly instead of trying to do something really well the first time.
Thinking makes you feel smart, but ultimately gets you nowhere. Doing more than thinking actually moves you forward. You donât have to give up being smart to make progress, you just need to balance it with a bias for action. A Financial Hot Girl principle.
Before you even start to shame yourself for not being able to take action, or for being the cutest, smartest self-sabotager aroundâgive yourself a damn break. Youâre reading this, you will act on it, and thatâs all that matters: the agency you take over your life right nowânot the circumstances that has led to a fried nervous system or a need for perfection.
Give yourself grace and take the sloppy action.
The art of sloppy action
I live by a philosophy where I collect cringe tokens. It has allowed me to face being seen and detach emotionally from the fact that Iâm not doing something perfectly. Which honestly, is a way to regulate my nervous system, which might go crazy over doing something that invites failure or being wrong.
The beauty is that there is no right or wrong way to collect a cringe tokenâbecause you can only collect it through sloppy action.
Treat cringe like a currency, and you master the art of sloppy action. Because paradoxically, the more cringe tokens you have, the less âcringeâ something actually feels.
6 years ago I started a YouTube channel. When my social circles found out, it was humiliating. My face was way too close to the camera. Cringe token (or twoâŚ) collected.
4 years ago, I started TikTok. My confidence was markedly higher. I still made a few mistakes. Another cringe token collected, but my previous token helped.
Now, I start new content series. I trial new formats. I created this brand. My only focus is improving for next time. I donât even know how many cringe tokens I have.
The same applies to my financial and physical habits. The first thing I did financially was invest ÂŁ25 into a Stocks and Shares ISA (that I actually ended up changing because it wasnât the right fit for me). I did this before finishing a finance book and in the middle of my accounting exams.
The first thing I did to get my first chin-up was actually just hanging from the bar, surrounded by grunting men doing pull-ups and squats. It felt embarrassing, but now I couldnât care less.
The more tokens you have, the less you care about how many you have. When your cringe token balance is high, itâs invisible, because it was invested into your confidence, which frees you.
The science of sloppy action
When do you take sloppy action vs actually thinking your decision through a little more? There is a Financial Hot Girl science behind the art, and this is the way I personally like to think through it to avoid staying stuck in the overthinking phase of any mental, physical or financial goal. Think about this like giving value to the cringe token. There are two parts to the science; knowing when sloppy is necessary and how to make sloppy actually happen.
How to know when sloppy is necessary
Determine that the sloppy action is low-stakes:
Will imperfect action cause irreversible damage?
Will I be publicly shamed for a mistake?
Will there be any long-term harm from doing something badly?
Three noâs: take sloppy action.
Determine that the sloppy action is learnable:
Can I get feedback from taking this imperfect action?
Will I gain information about myself, the subject, the habit, by doing it badly?
Does attempting this this build evidence of something, anything, even if the thing is that this isnât for me?
Three yesâs: take sloppy action.
Determine that the sloppy action is reversible:
Can the imperfect action be undone, or will it be irrelevant if wrong?
Can I iterate on the first time I take this sloppy action?
Can I stop when I want?
Three yesâs: take sloppy action.
Donât overthink this, a lot of the stuff we procrastinate is low stakes, learnable and reversible (or irrelevant).
How to make sloppy happen
My favourite way to act sloppy is to use a Minimum Viable Action (MVA). Doing the bare minimum makes it easier to improve, create momentum, and learn as you goâa combination of all the psychological levers you can pull when trying to take action instead of staying frozen as an over-thinker. What is the bare minimum version of an action youâre overthinking?
Examples:
You want to start investing this year. The MVA: a low-stakes, reversible and learnable act of imperfection of investing ÂŁ1 into a Stocks and Shares ISA before waiting until youâve read 5 book.s
You want to be stronger. The MVA: you aim for 2 push-ups on your knees instead of 10, 3x a week.
You want to feel more on top of your personal finances instead of avoiding them. The MVA: you log into your bank account once every morning for a week instead of creating a budget.
A minimum viable action is a) a way to lower the barrier to entry, and b) most of the time, is inherently sloppy because itâs feels nonsensically small compared to your end goal.
Think about if you had the least time and energy available, what version of the action would you consistently take? Thatâs the minimum viable action and the sloppy one.
Some ways Iâm personally taking sloppy action this year:
Posting content without complex edits - instead of hoarding drafts that âarenât good enoughâ
Following pilates workouts on YouTube even if they donât make me 'âwork hard enoughâ, or itâs not part of my plan, instead of only working out âif itâs worth itâ
Reading even just for 5 minutes with the Kindle app on my phone while in a queue instead of âhaving the perfect wind-down routineâ to read
Waking up, putting my headphones on and writing for 20-30 minutes when I wake up instead of waiting for the âmost idealâ environment to focus
Scheduling this monthâs paid resources for you instead of waiting until my whole year is planned out (!)
I also took incredibly sloppy action in December by half-moving this publication to here on Substack and running my old platform at the same time. I delayed this move for months by waiting for the âperfectâ week where Iâd have time to make a clean move (hint: it never came). I just did it in parts, and now weâre hereâgrowing and thriving on a new platform.
There we go, financial hotties. Collect your cringe tokens, act in a minimum viable fashion and be free. Reframe how youâre going to do things messily from now on. And last of all, remember that even if you do flop, no oneâs coming to get you.
âDev xo
Love this - I sometimes just need to take action more even if itâs not perfect