The power of getting up and doing the work is that when you taste that success and accomplishment, you want more. But if you never get started, you can never understand the depth of this motivation. All you need is one taste and you’ll always demand more of it. We would probably all have better health if we spent less time in bed, but we need something to get up for.
Fearless initiative
Great empires in history and great companies have one thing in common. They rise from small beginnings by way of fearless initiative. In fact, the fearlessness that they exhibit goes beyond just rising to power or greatness.
There is fearlessness these visionaries exhibit in all endeavors. But as companies (or empires) grow, there is a gradual shift from a fearless pressing forward to a purely defensive mindset. “Protect our market share at all costs!” When they should be seeking ways to expand and fearlessly venture into new territory.
Look at Apple’s great pivot in the early 2000s toward the iPod when they had been a middling computer and software company. They dared to venture and they became great. How can we be more fearless in our ventures? How can we take action, rather than theory, as our solution?
The systems are all around you
Throughout our life, there are methods we use to get things done. The little routine to put your clothes on, brushing your teeth, the way you walk through the grocery store, and the preparation of pulling out your wallet (or purse) before the cashier gives you a total are all systems in your life that you use to get things done.
These are more unconscious to us and they are things we take for granted. However, imagine if you think about every system in your life and work that could be optimized and tweaked and made better. How much more free time might you have? How much less stress would there be when you know how things are getting done?
These 1-2-3 systems are all around us and it’s up to you and me to build them in our lives and businesses.
Consuming makes you weaker
I constantly fight the battle of consuming more than I create. The more you create, the more power and leverage you have. (You also feel much better about yourself.)
However, the more you consume, the more power you give to others. You become the vessel of their effort and they gain while you fall behind.
Creating requires effort and gives you a future. Consuming is the short-term pleasure fulfillment with a long-term debt that crushes you later.
The more you create, the more powerful you become.
— James Clear (@JamesClear) July 15, 2021
The more you consume, the more powerful others become.
Thoughts about children and parents
If you raise your children, you can spoil your grandchildren. But if you spoil your children, you’ll have to raise your grandchildren. Children without the guidance, restraint, and critique of parents are left rudderless. Thus begins an inter-generational impact felt for decades.
No shortcuts
There has never been a dearth of productivity in my life more than when I fell into the “four-hour work week” trap about ten years ago. I think I still suffer from some of the aftershocks of that earthquake.
The experts don’t have shortcuts, work isn’t easy for 99% of people, and the four-hour work week only becomes feasible after you’ve built and established a valuable company.
Life gets harder as you try to make things easier. Exercising might be hard, but never moving makes life harder. Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but avoiding every conflict is harder. Mastering your craft is hard, but having no skills is harder. Easy has a cost.
Humans thrive in the lack of abundance. Having everything you could ever want only causes you to thirst for more and yet be satisfied less by each thing you get.
Don’t look for the shortcut and don’t worry about working hard vs. working smart. Just work and refine a little bit at a time and everything will be OK.
Closest friends and harshest critics
If your closest friends are your harshest critics, what happens when you push them away? Is a freedom from the criticism of caring people a good thing? Well, you first have to convince yourself that they’re not caring people, then it becomes possible to walk away.
Personal decisions vs. business decisions
In personal decisions, we’re concerned about how things feel right now so we make radical changes without deep consideration of how things will be in five or ten years. Running off to start a new life is fun for the first 18 months, miserable for the next half-decade, and simple suffering thereafter. The concern was only about the feelings at the moment, and not where you will be in ten years. A fatal flaw.
With business decisions, we often have the exact opposite approach. We let great opportunities slip by because we're afraid of the future. What if the company revenue is bad in the next five years? Should I still sign that new lease? Should I approve that new budget?
Business decisions should be made with a focus on the now with only a slight peek at the future. Things good for business now, are typically good long-term. However, personal decisions should be looking primarily at the future, with only a slight look at this exact moment. Suffer or do uncomfortable work now for peace and stability later.
Interestingly, they both follow the general axiom of suffering now for a reward later. (Short-term pleasure always comes at a cost. Always.) Business requires hard work, focus, and commitment now. Personal decisions require personal sacrifice now for ease later.
Funny how we make decisions.
Living your life for others
The best version of yourself is a disciplined version of yourself. The best version of yourself can find self-restraint when the future requires it. Don’t focus on what makes the crowds cheer, rather, focus on rightness in the moment. That will bring stability in the future (and maybe some cheers from the crowd, too.)
Keep moving (even when you’re afraid)
Keep moving especially when you're afraid. Standing still is the worst thing you can do.
There is an uncomfortable feeling that comes along with fear. The way fear makes your body feel. The hyperventilation and the coldness that washes over you.
The strange thing is that it’s not just life and safety that people might fear for, it's usually the small stuff. Things which are tiny in the grand scheme of things, yet sometimes we are stricken with a paralyzing fear in the face of these things.
The only chance of overcoming these fears is to genuinely believe that by standing still, we only guarantee that we will fail. We must know that and believe it because it is true.
There is nearly no circumstance into which you will be placed in your life where making the wrong decision means certain death. It simply doesn’t happen in normal life.
Overcome fear by ripping the mask off, examining the thing(s) you fear, and doing something. Do anything. Make a move and get going in some direction. Standing still means you’ve lost by default, so move as if everything depends on it (because it does.)
Opinion: It’s not about how early you wake up
If we have a solid morning, we will have a solid day. A chaotic morning will bleed into a chaotic day. This is the real reason behind the idea that people who get up early are more productive.
It’s not the time, it’s just that at that time, our bodies have been trained to get up and get rolling into our day. Whereas waking up at 11am feels like you’ve lost half the day and we tend to rush through a jumbled mess of rushing to get started with our work to make up for the lost time. Then we have a terrible and unfocused day.
If we agree that we each get eight hours of sleep every night, who cares if you get to bed at 9pm and wake up at 5am and I prefer going to sleep at 2am and waking up at 10am?
Without getting into the science surrounding the circadian rhythm, I tend to believe that it is the solid morning routine that sets you on course for a productive day, NOT the hour at which you awake.
Things I struggle with
I know, I know, the title should say “Things with which I struggle” but I have a hard time writing grammatically correct.
This whole blogging/writing experiment that I began back in 2018 has highlighted to me just how much I think about and know to be the better and right and good way to go about doing things, yet I struggle with so much of what I write about.
The struggle is worth it, to me. If I’m struggling, it means I’m still trying and as long as I’m trying, there is a chance I’ll have some success.
The struggle in pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal also gives depth and meaning to my working life. It motivates and tells me to get up and try again.
I am learning to only promise progress, not perfection. I’ll chase perfection, but be content with my progress in the interim.
Inaction is almost always the wrong choice
Been feeling a little sick the past two days. There's a stomach bug going through my kids and it finally got me for a day or two.
I’ll show up in today’s post with a quote I love from Norman Vincent Peale.
“Action is a greater restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.”
It seems that the plague of inaction has been a problem that men of all types have struggled with.
Turning creativity on and off
I think the most challenging part of doing creative work is being able to turn the creative part of your mind on and off when needed. The most brilliant artists throughout the history of the world were weird people because the creative mind is weird. It doesn’t take the obvious stuff for granted. Everything is possible and nothing is a guarantee.
I’m content being a moderately good artist and not being seen as that much of a weird person. Moderate creativity will have to do.
Turning my creative mind on is usually as simple as shutting off distractions of life, family, the news, social media, and stress, and taking half an hour to disengage from the world. Forget everything I assume and embrace a world of possibility.
Once you have a good idea, you have to get to work. Time to drink your coffee and become a boring structured adult like everyone else. Boring is stable and efficient. But boring isn’t creative. But boring allows you to make creative ideas become physical.
The creative artist that can travel between creative freedom to the focus and structure of real life is the creative that will have pretty good ideas and get a ton of work done over the course of their life.
Striving is winning
strive: 1.) make great efforts to achieve or obtain something. 2.) struggle or fight vigorously.
It’s hard to talk about being okay with losing when you made a good effort and still lost. Winning is important, but if you let the result be the primary motivator, you will soon lose all motivation.
We must find a way to consider striving for the good result the win in and of itself. If the good thing happens after you have strived, that is just a bonus. The striving after some good thing is the win.
This is advice that goes back to Biblical times. The apostle Paul talks about pressing toward the mark, a high calling. He talks about running in a race where only one will win, but there is good in the man that "striveth for the mastery."
This ancient advice is nearly 2,000 years old! It’s still true to this day. Strive, pursue, make a good effort and be happy with that. To strive is to win. The one who learns to strive toward his goal, and be content with it, is the one who wins every single time. Strive.
The honest man’s crime and the vile hypocrite
When the honest man is caught in some crime, he meekly confesses his part in the matter and (hopefully) turns away from doing the bad thing again.
When the hypocrite is caught in some crime (particularly what they have been so quick to judge in others) they never admit to wrong-doing, but they always clothe their evil and crimes with some honest presence or pretended good reason. So the hypocrite has been regarded throughout history as the vilest person.
Fear, sadness, and anger
Fear prevents us from getting started. So learn to start when you’re afraid.
Sadness stops us in our tracks. So practice containing sadness when it starts to become overwhelming.
Anger sparks in us the propensity to make bad decisions. So work to control anger and never let it simmer for long periods.
Getting better at writing
Lately, I’ve been mailing in my blog posts here. They’ve all been written very last minute and just a shotgun blast of whatever happens to be on my mind that morning.
I try to commit to some improvement in my writing every few months. I’ve talked about building more traditional story structures and making my blog posts shorter. Not only have I not been doing either of those things, but I also have not been investing more than 5-10 minutes each day in my writing.
The writing process is for me to practice getting ideas on paper and sharing my thoughts. Improving my writing itself has become another goal along the way.
Do things the boring way and you’ll be more creative
It might sound strange, but focusing on making the routine things in life boring frees up your cognitive memory to be more relaxed, and therefore, more creative.
Inefficiency is doubly damaging because it wastes your time and forces you to expend more cognitive energy to do simple tasks that need to be done but aren’t all that important to push your business forward.
Developing systems is outlining a specific step of steps that you always take to complete a certain task or part of your day (think a morning routine or a way you process client invoices, etc…)
Efficient people are reliable and consistent and they are sustainably so. They are reliable today and will continue to be reliable tomorrow.
If you want to be efficient, reliable, and more creative about the important things in your business, develop systems to make the boring-but-important things automatic and easy to do without having to think about them.
We still have 1/6th of the year remaining
Just like that, the month of November is upon us. I like to start off the week by taking stock of how the year is going and what I can do to improve. I also write down a couple of general “big” tasks that I’d like to accomplish each month. Here we are with only 1/6th of the year remaining.
If the year hasn’t been a good one, you can accomplish more in these final two months than you did in the first ten months. It’s up to you.