I’ve been reading a lot again. I sometimes wonder, when was the last time I had the urge to jump out of bed in the morning? It certainly has felt like years.
I believe the last time it happened was while writing or promoting an essay over several days, or any other project that was incredibly meaningful and important to me, was a lot of fun, was challenging to figure out, had a deadline, and usually involved accountability to other people.
I have an obsessive personality — I can, and dare I say need to get obsessed with something to feel great. Take that obsessive focus away from me, and I slowly lose my mind. I become distracted, lethargic, start sleeping 12 hours a day, stop working out or taking care of myself, and just feel like sh!t.
Who not How
On another note, I recently started reading a book called Who not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy (more the latter than the former). It made some interesting claims:
- All ambitious people procrastinate. You are not alone, and you are not defective.
- Procrastination is a form of inner wisdom. It tells you that at the moment, you’re not capable of achieving the goal by yourself. You need to find people who can help you get there.
- Who before how. Before you ask yourself, “how do I do this?” you should ask yourself “WHO can help me do this?”
- Only work on things you’re uniquely positioned to do. Find “whos” to help with everything else, and it will propel you faster towards all your goals than you could ever do alone.
This is a powerful, fundamental concept that can be transformative, similar to The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
Being Driven
I read another book recently called Driven, about people who tend to be incredible hyper achievers but are also prone to addictions and damaging behaviours if not focused.
Everything that book described felt like the story of my life. I hated school for the most part and lived in my own world, even though I got decent grades. I would just stay zoned out, and everyone noticed. I get distracted very easily, and leave things unfinished all the time.
But I can also get super absorbed into things — be it a book, or a subject, or a problem. I remember when I was reading the 4th Harry Potter novel, I finished it in less than 2 days, by just reading the heck out of it every hour.
Singular Focus and Ambition
It’s starting to dawn on me that being focused on a day to day basis, comes down to having a compelling vision in your mind and an identity that keeps telling you, “why am I not there yet?”
Day before yesterday, I was watching Underdog Billionaire on Youtube. Seeing Glenn Stearns and Grant Cardone (albeit with camera crews around them) just actively charge towards what they wanted, and do everything they could to gather strong team members one after another, take HUGE risks, and flip bigger and bigger products one after another. They also always made the vision bigger than themselves, and told their honest story, which helped recruit the right, motivated people to the cause. They also didn’t constantly have “plan Bs.” It was constantly, “if this fails, then the whole thing blows up.”
They almost completely ignored their current circumstances and focused on clawing towards the future.
“When climbing a mountain, don’t look down.” Keep looking at the peak.
What is my “peak”? If I don’t look at the peak and the next step every single day, multiple times per day, then I’ll be tempted to look down.
Steps to productivity:
- Putting all eggs into a SINGLE BASKET at a time and bet everything on it
- ELIMINATE TIME SUCKS (swear on your mother you won’t watch TV/anime/movies/Youtube etc until you reach a milestone).
- Delegate every single task that’s not essential. Even DELEGATE THE OUTSOURCING, so you don’t have to waste hours on freelancer websites.
- Do whatever you can to surround yourself with the RIGHT PEOPLE
- Giving those people OWNERSHIP of their respective jobs and getting out of their way
