Intention Isn't Enough (But It's a Start)
What a word of the year, a torn achilles, and the book Clockwork taught me about turning intention into action.
I've been picking a "word of the year" since 2019.
I started doing it after I saw Brendon Burchard speak at a Business Conference - one of those practices that might sound a little woo-woo until you try it and realize how much it actually shapes your year. You pick a word. You let it remind you who you want to become. You use it to filter decisions.
That year, my word was intention.
I picked it because I felt like I was reacting too much, instead of being proactive.
I'd been running on react-mode for a while - no routines or rhythm, just figuring things out as they came up. I'm a roll-out-of-bed, throw-on-clothes, brush-your-teeth, take-your-vitamins, run-out-the-door kind of girl. I always have been. And it worked, until it didn't.
I wanted to be the kind of person who got up early. Who had a morning routine. Who ran my day instead of it running me.
So I set the intention. I bought the planner. I picked the word. I told myself I could do this.
And then... I kept hitting snooze.
The 4:00 a.m. Realization
Here's the thing.
I do get up early. If I have to be at production by 5 a.m., I'm up at 4:00. No problem. Up, dressed, teeth brushed, vitamins down, out the door.
I'm not someone who can't get up early. I love being up early to get things done. And I'm also someone who will sleep in until 7 a.m. AND that feels lazy to me because I’ve missed the morning, the chance to create a routine that will help me win the day.
And why don't I get up sooner? Because I stayed up too late. I'm trying to prioritize sleep, and that's important. But I still roll out of bed "late" feeling like I'm already behind.
That realization annoyed me a little. So I can intend to wake up early but if my actions don’t support that, what’s the point?
Knowledge Isn't Power. Action Is.
There's a quote you might have heard: knowledge is power.
Is it though?
Knowledge is potential. It's the raw material. But it doesn't do anything sitting on a shelf or written in a notebook. The person who reads ten business books and never changes how they run their business, only internalizes, isn't more powerful than the person who reads one and acts on it.
Same thing with intention.
Intention is potential. It's beautiful. It's clarifying. It's a starting line. But it's not the race.
The race is what you actually do.
Dream. Decide. Do.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized there were three separate steps I'd been treating as one thing.
Wanting something.
Choosing something.
Doing something.
I'd been lumping them together.
While I worked through this, a pattern emerged. A framework. A phrase:
Dream. Decide. Do.
Dream is the vision. The long game. The version of you you're reaching for.
Decide is the line in the sand. The moment you stop wishing and pick.
Do is the part nobody talks about enough. The showing up. The unglamorous follow-through.
Most people stop at dream. Some make it to decide. The ones who actually grow - imperfectly, over time - are the ones who do.
Where I Actually Lived This
In the fall of 2018, I read Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz.
That book changed the way I thought of my business and how I ran it and what I wanted it to be.
Until then, I'd been the bakery. Every decision. Every order. Every customer email. Every recipe tweak. If I went on vacation, the business shut down. If I got sick, the business shut down. I was the bottleneck, and I'd built it that way without realizing it.
Clockwork made me see something I couldn't unsee: a business that depends on you isn't a business. It's a job you can't leave. And I knew that. It was not a mind blowing concept, I’d read E-Myth. But this - spoke to me and showed me how it was possible.
That was the dream. A bakery that didn't need me in the everyday.
The decide came fast - I finished the book and knew I wasn't going back to running it the old way.
But the do? That part took years. Years!
Hiring people, figuring out how to train them, how to lead a team of 2, a team of 7, a team of 12, a team of 18. Every level brought new challenges. Writing down the things I'd been carrying around in my head. Building systems that worked when I wasn't in the room. Letting things happen differently than I would have done them - and not undoing them.
Then in 2024, I found out exactly how much that work had paid off. We opened our retail shop in March of 2024, and at the end of our opening week, I retore my achilles tendon, (an injury I got 4 months earlier from playing Alaskan kickball at youth group) full tear. Surgery. Six weeks out.
Six weeks. During the most fragile, all-hands-on-deck stretch a new retail location has.
I worked from my couch. The shop ran. Production ran. My team handled ALL of it.
If I'd built the bakery the old way - the one Clockwork called out, the one where I was the bottleneck for every decision - that would have been the week the whole thing buckled.
Instead, it was the week I knew the years of doing had actually built something.
That's the dream. That's the decide. And six years of do showed up when it mattered most.
Where I Still Get Stuck
Even now, I love the word intention - I love possibilities. But even more I love shipping things, meaning getting in and getting the work done. Planners, books, conferences are just tools that help me along the path. Action is the only thing that’s going to get it done. Taking that step, moving forward, doing the thing that you have been thinking about, trying to decide, wanting it to be the right time or waiting for something. Jumping in.
So maybe your word of the year has been intention too and you're ready to move to decide or do. Do it.
I still struggle with it. I still get in my head and get stuck in the planning.
That's one reason I value coaching groups and masterminds so much. I want people around me who challenge me, ask what I'm working on, and help keep me accountable. People who are farther along than I am. People who encourage me to keep moving forward.
Before You Go - A Challenge
What’s something you've been intending to do? Something you've been carrying around for weeks, months, maybe years.
Now answer three questions, in writing:
What's the dream? What do I actually want?
What's the decision? What am I committing to?
What's the do? What is one specific action I'll take in the next 24 hours?
Don't pick the biggest thing on your list. Pick something that you can move on THIS week.
Then do the one thing.
Not the whole plan. Not the perfect version. The one thing.
Because intention without action is just a hope. Intention with action is momentum.
And momentum is how things actually change.