I don’t know if there is a name for that space of time between deciding to act and the actual action but there should be.  My best suggestion is the “post decision pre-action buffer” and though that is descriptive it surely isn’t concise.

Many of us, even if we can’t name it, know all about that space of time.  It is the deep breath before the plunge and the moment of silence before the battle.  But not everybody knows about it.  There are those who skip that moment altogether.

A few weeks ago I was watching Die Hard with Bruce Willis again.  I’ve seen it many times but the character played by Willis, John McClane, always intrigues me.  I think what intrigues me most is how uniquely qualified he is for the situation in which he finds himself.  A quick thumbnail of the plot shows he is the lone police officer in a high rise office building that is being taken over by terrorists.  Alone he takes on this small force and secures the release of their hostages though it wasn’t an easy task.  What made him uniquely qualified was the lack of time between his decisions to act and his actions.  It almost appears as if his decision to act was the trigger that initiated action.

One scene really brings this to mind for me.  McClane was being pinned down by automatic gunfire from two of the terrorists.  In the process, broken glass from the nearby offices was strewn all over the ground.  McClane knew he had to get out of that area if he was to survive.  One problem was that sometime earlier he had lost his shoes.  This meant that his run to safety would be in bare feet across a minefield of shattered shards of glass.  But, he didn’t pause.  He got up and ran.  In fact, a pause there might have meant his life even if the purpose for the pause was to try to preserve his feet.  Decision to act followed by immediate action.  That was John McClane.

I think this quality in somebody is succinctly stated by the Human Torch in the movie, The Fantastic Four.  As he was learning to use his new found powers he started to suspect that the ability to burst into flames would also give him the ability to fly.  To test this theory he went to a balcony dozens of stories above the ground and planned on jumping off.  His sister, wanting him to pause to reconsider his choice yelled out to him “Don’t even think about it!!”.  Over his shoulder, as he jumped from the balcony, the Human Torch answered back with a smile, “I never do!”.  Decision to act and then action.

The Gallup StrenthsFinder labels this talent Activator.  For those of us who decide to act, then pause to collect our thoughts, and then act this may not make much sense.  For us the learning is in the preparation and the thinking.  For Activators learning is in the doing.

This article is from the Super Powers Center Series on “Pop Culture Perspectives on Talent”. Be sure to listen to Alex McManus and Dale Swinburne on the Super Powers Center, Saturday evenings at 6PM (ET).

You may know her as “the bride”, or Beatrix Kiddo, or the Black Mamba. She was the central character of Kill Bill 1 and 2, a film by Quentin Tarantino, played by actress Uma Thurman. A core characteristic of the Black Mamba was that she was a keeper of lists. Specifically, death lists…but, lists none the less. Not only did she keep lists but we know that her death list had been revised at least 5 times. Macabre, though it was, she followed her lists, ticking items off one at a time upon completion, and driven to achieve what was next. She spent little time resting on her laurels but instead saw clearly what remained to be done. And get things done was what she did…emphasis on the done.

What does this have to do with you? Some of you share a talent that manifests the same qualities as the list-keeping Black Mamba’s. To make this point, let’s turn from the world of film and fiction to the real world and get another angle on this “drive to complete” and “to achieve”. National Geographic broadcast a special program titled King Lines that highlighted the world’s foremost rock climber, Chris Sharma.   Peers say that Sharma has pushed the sport farther and faster than anybody else in recent history. His genius on a rock face make him a true maestro.

What drives him forward? A desire to be the best? The ultimate thrill? Let me set the stage.

Always in search for the most challenging climb, a friend of Chris’, suggested a 70 foot limestone arch spanning across deep water located off of the coast of Mallorca, Spain. It had never been climbed before. One problem was that in the climb there was a 7 foot blank spot with no foot or hand holds. To get past that spot required a 7 foot leap to the next nearest hold. If he missed it he would plummet 35 feet to the water below, swim to the support boat, dry off, change clothes, repeat the approximately 25 moves to get back up to that difficult spot, and try again. Chris estimated that he fell at that spot 100 times. He invested 4 months of his life underneath that arch trying and trying and trying to beat it. When he did conquer the jump and complete the climb here is what he said.

“Climbing is this ever evolving thing, although it really is about the goal and succeeding and getting to the top, at the same time it’s a never ending cycle of finding something that you’re really motivated on, obsessing over it and then, once you get to the top, celebrating for a little while and then moving on to the next thing.”

“Obviously really I was ecstatic, really psyched. But climbing is this thing that happens in the process. Once you do it, you’re psyched, but that’s the end of the process. When you complete it, that’s great. But then it’s like, ‘What’s next?’”

What drives Chris? The same thing that drives the Black Mamba: The next item on the list.

That climb in Mallorca has never been repeated. The items on the Black Mamba’s list? She didn’t quit until she was finished. They share the attribute sometimes abbreviated as GTD, that is, Getting Things Done.

In the parlance of the Strengths Finder, the attributes of stamina, hard work, and ticking off completed items parallels the talent theme of Achiever.

Ok, let’s turn to you and your extraordinary powers. Do you suffer from GTD? Maybe you have a method for going through your list of “to-do’s”. Maybe your method is efficient and polished, or maybe your method is madness. If madness is your method you’ll forgive me if I don’t turn to you for help getting through my personal list of “to-do’s”. Instead, I’ll turn to those among us who shine. I’ll turn to those have a proven track record of accomplishing. We aren’t talking about accomplishing things in a certain arena. We are talking about someone who is so good at wiping out their “to-do” list that we’d go so far as to call them an achiever.

You ask an achiever if they’ve gotten anything done yet today and they’ll give you a list of exactly what accomplishments they’ve gotten under their belt. They will also be able to list what they have left to do. In fact, what they’ve done they don’t see half as brightly as what is yet to do. They are driven forward to the next item on the list. It drives them forward to achieve.

There are people all around us with this talent. Some of us, like the fictional assassin, the Black Mamba, or the real world rock climber, Chris Sharma, have nurtured it to the level of a strength. If you have this talent, so can you. So put it on your list.

Dale Swinburne
Senior IMN Operative
Baltimore, MD

Join Alex McManus and Dale Swinburne, Section Chief of the IMN’s Super Powers Center, every Saturday at 6PM (ET) for a live discussion on discovering and developing your super powers. Here’s a link: All Things M.