An action of A on X is a map F : A × X → X such that F | X = id : X → X. The restriction F | A : A → X of an action is called a cyclic map. Special cases of these notions include group actions and the Gottlieb groups of a space, each of which has been studied extensively. We prove some general results about actions and their Eckmann-Hilton duals. For instance, we classify the actions on an H-space that are compatible with the H-structure. As a corollary, we prove that if any two actions F and F of A on X have cyclic maps f and f with Ωf = Ωf , then ΩF and ΩF give the same action of ΩA on ΩX. We introduce a new notion of the category of a map g and prove that g is cocyclic if and only if the category is less than or equal to 1. From this we conclude that if g is cocyclic, then the Berstein-Ganea category of g is 1. We also briefly discuss the relationship between a map being cyclic and its cocategory being 1.