We are not born for ourself

I suppose we could live as if life was just about you or me and our own wishes and desires. However, the strange thing about only focusing on what we want is that it is incredibly unsatisfying.

Maybe for a moment, it’s exciting. We achieved our goal and got some fancy thing or hit a milestone. Hooray! But then it’s in the past.

As we get more and more, we want more and more. But also as we get more, it becomes less and less satisfying.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we are not merely born for ourselves. There is a greater purpose in the physical realm and a great spiritual purpose to life which does not terminate on how happy we feel at any moment.

It’s probably tied up in fulfilling your moral duty. When you do your duty, you find real happiness and contentment in this life, and beyond.

The destination

It’s the journey. The journey itself is the end goal. Not the finished product. That journey is the work you put in, the process you follow, and the creating you do.

The finished product is just the ashes that are left after a fire.

The fire is wild, organic, all over the place, and occasionally destructive, but it’s where all the movement and energy is.

The more you focus on doing work (i.e. the journey) and not what the work leads to, the more it will lead to better things. But you can’t let that get in your way. You can’t let making good things get in the way of just making things.

Progress can be undone

We move forward or we move backward. If you’re not sure which you are doing right now, you’re probably moving backward. Standing still is sliding backward.

Progress of yesterday is undone by resting and being comfortable today.

We convince ourselves that things will never change. That we’re good right where we are. That it isn’t worth the risk of pressing forward, it’s not worth the extra work and effort. We tell ourselves that we’ve done well and “we’re good.”

Nope. You’re sliding back. You’re losing everything you worked for. You might not feel it today, but you’ll wake up one day and suddenly realize with horror what has happened.

Then you’ll be staring at months of work to rebuild while feeling crushed by the realization that your progress has been undone.

It’s the point when most quit or find an excuse to get out. But you can always start building again.

Or, you can keep up with the work of life and accept that it’s a grind and keep plodding forward.

Learn principles, not formulas.

You’ve probably heard the saying that “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” That’s an idea that is not only for generals but for all of us.

If the plan is a complex attack that comes from the east because the strategy is to disrupt the enemy supply line, but the moment you launch that eastern attack it is blocked and the weather turns bad, you’re not married to that exact plan when you understand the wider strategy of disrupting enemy supply lines. You simply adapt and keep pressing forward with a new or modified plan.

Who cares what color paint and which exact brushes Van Gogh used? The moment you or I try painting, our initial plan of making a masterpiece of completely derailed.

Instead of focusing on the exact formula that Van Gogh used, we should focus on learning his principles. How to paint light and shadow, how to work with perspective, proportion, and colors.

If we know the principles of painting well, we can adapt and create our own masterpiece.

Seldom does the formula of others else apply to us. But principles always apply.

We all make mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes, but the effective person is willing to change when he sees that he’s made a mistake and fix the problem.

It’s usually our first reaction to become defensive when somebody points out a shortfall or error in our ways, yet if we shift our life focus from appearing perfect to the people around us and instead focus on being better in every aspect of life and work, it’s easier to crush the pride that causes us to get defensive when an error is discovered.

We all make mistakes, but only some of us fix them.

Start strong

It’s all about the start. Close down all distractions and start right now. If you don’t start the day will get away and you’ll spend tomorrow trying to make it up. Then when you don’t start tomorrow, you’ll be two days behind.

Before you know it, you wake up and you’re a month, six months, a year, two years, or more behind schedule.

Do you have two years to waste? If you don’t have two years to waste, don’t waste the first three hours of your day.

The first step to productivity, on a day-to-day scale, is to believe that the first three hours of your day must be undistracted and you can have nothing divide you from your plan.

Preparation and assumptions

I took my kids to see some fireworks on Saturday evening. I grabbed my camera and figured it would be fun to get some long exposures of the fireworks shooting into the skies with my kid’s faces lit up by the light of the explosions. Maybe I could capture some fun expressions and some cool moments.

I assumed that the battery was charged as I grabbed the camera and tripod and loaded up the car before driving fifteen minutes into town to see the fireworks.

You probably see where this story is going. I got zero fireworks photos because the camera had so little battery that when I pressed the shutter, the whole camera just shut off and didn’t start back up.

I was too far from home to get a new battery. I assumed and didn’t prepare.

I’m pretty stupid a lot of the time. this episode reminded me of a quote I heard a while ago. “The problem with stupid people is that they’re too dumb to realize it.”

Sometimes that quote makes many of my decisions make much more sense.

Think before you swing

Working on the right stuff is the important thing when we’re trying to be more effective and streamlined in our business. It’s not about how many windows you installed today, it’s about whether that window job was the right one for your company.

We get trapped thinking that the only “real” work is picking up a hammer and nails, but they ensure that the physical effort is correctly used, there is some thinking work that should happen behind the scenes.

Take time for the thinking work–and actually spend the time focused on thinking and being creative–and then pick up the hammer and start swinging.

Adaptation

It takes it out of you when you have a day out of the ordinary. Maybe you went to the zoo with your family. All that walking, the heat, the sun, the driving, the general excitement, and all of that for 8-10 hours. It’s draining.

But the body is pretty awesome. If you do a few big “zoo” days every week, your body will adapt and those 10 hour days feel normal. You aren’t wiped out and you’ve gotten more resilient.

The body adapts. Just because it feels very difficult today, tomorrow, and the third day, doesn’t mean it will be difficult forever. You will adapt.

Hold yourself to the highest standard

How can you expect the absolute highest level of performance from the people around you if you don’t first expect it from yourself?

Everyone sees through the guy who screams at the people around him over everything, they see that he doesn’t hold himself to the same standard he demands of others, they see that he doesn’t hold himself responsible, and they see his sloppiness.

All of that leads to a general lack of respect which people are usually too afraid to vocalize because he’ll flip out and you’ll lose your job and also, he doesn’t accept responsibility so there is a near-zero percent chance that he will ever change.

You can’t change him, but you change you. Hold yourself to a higher standard and I’m going to work on holding myself to a higher standard as well.

Loving to do stuff on your own

The things you do on your own are what matter, not the things that you’re forced to do. When you can learn to love doing the things that you would be forced to do, that’s where you strike the perfect balance of happiness and productivity.

You must develop and practice self-discipline to change your life. It’s difficult and if you don’t keep up with it, you slide backward and lose momentum and punctuality, but it’s the most rewarding thing you’ll probably ever do.

Why choose pain intentionally?

Not making a decision leads to the decision being made for you, and it’s usually the most damaging of potential outcomes.

All across your life, procrastination leads to decisions being made for you. Forced to give up that car you love, forced to lose out on time with your kids, forced to lose a relationship, forced to lose a job, forced to lose your business, forced to live or work in a way that you don’t like, and just generally forced into all kinds of uncomfortable situations.

All of which are usually avoidable by just working and starting at the work right now. No more waiting, just begin.

Procrastination is not choosing to have fun or avoid work, procrastination is choosing to suffer more tomorrow–and suffer with regret.

 
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
— Hunter S. Thompson

It’s about what you do

Not about what you get done. Of course, getting stuff done is a great side effect, but longevity, and consistency, and happiness with what you do is about focusing on the process of doing the work. If anything good comes of it, great.

Spoiler: If you do the work, good things will come of it.

But still, just focus on doing the work and the rest takes care of itself.

We guessed correctly

It’s valuable to think ahead, but also significant to remember that we’re just taking a guess. Sometimes it can go to our head when we get it right. It was us that added the value and had some insight and maybe we’re really brilliant!

This headiness will conceal the fact that we made a guess and committed to one avenue and it worked out for us. We trick ourselves into believing that we're better than we are.

We can make good guesses and bad guesses, so make good guesses but, still, remember that we’re guessing.

 
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
 

Focusing on what it will be like when we get there

Kids ask for what they want and dream big. They see something they want and ask if they can go there and do the thing or get the thing. They don’t have much planned out besides that.

When we get older, we spend all the time focusing on what it’s going to be like when we get the thing or go to the place. For instance, “I can’t move to San Francisco, my bills will be out of control!”

The young person, the kid, he’ll just go and figure it out.

Some call it irresponsible, but it is interesting to note that most of the innovation and explosive entrepreneurial empires happen when you’re younger.

It can be good to be young and dumb when it keeps you free from worrying about what it will be like when you get there. Focus on the dream and not the “responsible” stuff. You’re smarter and more flexible and harder working (especially when you’re desperate) than you may realize.

The worst thing you can do is not finish

What is your definition of “done” for every project you work on?

Do you know? Have you set forth a few parameters which, when met, would mean that the task or project is done?

It’s a vital thing to do, especially for pie-in-the-sky-dreamer-perfectionists like me. I must choose what constitutes done and good enough otherwise I can go a year and a half without doing much in the way of creating new content and developing new products for my businesses.

As the saying goes, “The worst thing you can do to a song keeps working on it.”

That’s pretty applicable to most of what we do.

“Thank you for giving up.”

Thank you for giving up. You were catching up to me.”

That’s what your competition is thinking when you’re slacking. You don’t understand how good you have it because you’re so focused on the negative that does or can happen. So you give up or you sabotage your momentum.

You only hurt yourself and your competition is thanking you.

I'm assuming it's easy to assume it’s easy

Not many things are more annoying than when somebody assumes “it’ll be easy for you to do this extra task that falls far outside of the contract we signed.”

There is patronizing air as they assume all the extra work will be easy. Maybe it’s a bit manipulative because they mask sucking extra work out of you by slathering you with fake adulation.

Anyway, whether it’s the skill set of others or the criticisms you have of the decisions they’re making in their life, it’s important to be humble and leave room for kindness.

Life has its difficulties and just because someone carries it well, doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.