One Authentic Action
Ask what your true self wants right now — then just do it.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Harrison built this exercise out of irritation with the advice to 'just live an authentic life' — she found it vague and unactionable. Instead, you turn inward and ask a concrete question: what do I need right now, or what does my true self want to do in this exact moment? Then you do that thing, even if it's odd, even if it gets in the way of today's productivity. Because you only genuinely want things that are intrinsically important to you, the action itself becomes a probe into your own values. She positions it explicitly as a hack: if you don't want to do the full extrinsic/intrinsic goal audit, just start acting intrinsically and follow where it leads. Her closing advice on the show was the same shape — give yourself ten minutes, ask what you need, and don't judge the answer.
Origin
The exercise appears in Harrison's book New Happy. She created it because generic authenticity advice annoyed her — it felt vague and broad with no translation into action.
Core principles
- 01'Live authentically' is useless as advice until it becomes a single action.
- 02Any action you genuinely want taps something intrinsically important to you.
- 03It works as a shortcut when you don't want to do the full goal audit.
- 04Not everything in life has to be optimised for productivity.
- 05It is radical precisely because we spend most of the day on autopilot pleasing others.
How to run it
- 1
Turn inward and ask
Stop and ask yourself what you need right now, what you want to do, what your true self wants in this exact moment. Give it around ten minutes of unjudged attention.
Pro tip Frame it small: what would I like to spend the next 10 minutes doing?
- 2
Don't judge the answer
Whatever surfaces, accept it and learn from it. The answer may be strange, unproductive, or something you'd never normally do.
Watch out Screening answers for respectability re-imposes the same external voice the exercise is meant to bypass.
- 3
Do it anyway
Take the action even if it interrupts your productivity for the day. The doing is what moves you toward an authentic and meaningful life.
Pro tip Bias toward actions where the goal is explicitly not to make money — baking a cake counts.
- 4
Follow the path it lays
Treat each authentic action as a step that reveals the next one. This is the shortcut route to intrinsic living without a formal audit.
In the wild
Hala suggested the point is doing something where the goal isn't to make money — maybe you just want to bake a cake. Harrison agreed emphatically: maybe the cake is exactly what unsticks you on a problem, maybe it's just enjoyable, maybe you share it with your kid.
→ The mundane, unmonetisable action reframed as legitimate — not everything has to be optimised for productivity, and optimising everything backfires.
Common mistakes
Waiting for a big authentic gesture
People assume authenticity requires quitting the job or moving country. Harrison's version is a ten-minute action available right now.
Optimising the exercise for productivity
Judging the answer against whether it makes money or advances a goal defeats the point and, per Harrison, ends up hurting you.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone stuck on autopilot who wants a low-friction entry point into intrinsic living without a full goal-setting exercise.
Not ideal for
People needing structural change to their goals or circumstances — a single authentic action is a nudge, not a plan.
From the transcript
“This is an exercise where I encourage people to just turn inward and ask themselves, what do I need right now, or what does my…”
“It's a little bit of a hack — if you don't want to go through the whole goal setting audit you can just start acting…”
“Not everything in life has to be optimized for our productivity, and in fact doing so ends up backfiring and really hurting us.”
“I would recommend that you give yourself just 10 minutes to spend with yourself and ask yourself what you need right now.”
From the episode
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