I’ve often written that humans are prone to act without a legitimate plan because it seems like Motion is Progress. No one will accuse you of failing to do something if you are doing, literally, something, even if your are acting in ways that are nonsensical, harmful, counterproductive. Motion is Progress is a fallacy. Doing something is often a bad idea.

This “syndrome” is explored here by Farnam Street.

Movement offers shelter from failure. When you’re in motion, you feel like you’re doing something. We convince ourselves that as long as we’re in motion, we can’t fail. As long as we’re doing something, anything, failure can’t really find us.

Movement feeds our ego. Our evolutionary programming craves the validation of others. In a world that values action and short soundbites, nuanced conversations are hard. Others don’t have time to really listen to your nuanced story as they run to their next meeting. And telling people that you’re doing nothing results in disapproving looks. Movement offers the drug of validation to the outside world. It is far easier to tell others that we’re doing something than doing nothing. And so we do.

Farnam Street urges that we avoid the false dichotomy: Doing something and not doing something are not the only options.

Doing something isn’t the same as getting results. The problem is we convince ourselves that our only options are to do something or do nothing. We forget the third option, gathering more information. While there will always be pressure to do something immediately with urgency, most of the time that action will be wasted. We’d be much better off if we stop for a moment and gather more information before acting.

The next time you feel the urge to do something for the sake of doing something remember what Thoreau said: “It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”