8 Things You Need to Give Up to Go Up Before the End of 2017
Life is simple. There are three steps:
- What do you want?
- What does it cost to get what you want?
- Pay the price.
I can’t help you with step one.
Step three is up to you.
However, step two will trip you up.
Achieving anything has a cost.
The “cost” of something is this: what do I need to give up in order to get it?
When it comes to a short-term goal, you will have to give up significant things in order to hit your goal.
Here is what you need to give up now to be achieve something awesome before 2017 runs out.
1. Stop Rooting for Colors
“We’re often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don’t even realize we’re in the wrong jungle.”
— Stephen Covey
If your actions cannot affect the end results of something, then you must stop paying attention to it.
What am I talking about?
Sports.
Why do we cheer so hard
As a teenager, I remember crying when my favorite team lost a game. I was crushed.
Later
on I found out that half of the team was out partying the night before a
game. As a fan, I was more ready and prepared for the game than the
team was! I used to sit in a fan section and stand, cheer, and yell for
hours during a game.
Let’s focus on the real problem: I was deluded into thinking that cheering for a winning team made me a winner.
Someone
recently asked Gary Vaynerchuk about his favorite football team, the
New York Jets. The guy ribbed Gary a little bit about the Jets. The
comment did not phase Gary. In fact, Gary said one of the most
insightful comments about sports I have ever heard.
“You root for winners. I am a winner. There is a difference.”
Stop cheering harder for people that you have never met than you cheer for people you love.
Stop committing more time to colored jerseys than you do to your own goals.
Colored
jerseys. That is the difference. Maybe you are cheering for your school
or your city. Sure, that makes sense. But I bet there are good people
on both teams. Why are you rooting against good people? It is not
rational.
Plus,
what happens if your favorite player gets traded to a different
team — a team that you hate? Does the player immediately became your
enemy, or a bad person, now that he wears a different jersey color? Does
that team itself actually change? Not at all.
You can still watch sports for fun. I have bonded with my dad and brothers through sports. I know my son loves sports as well.
But you need to stop cheering for jerseys. Or colors. Give it up if you want to move forward.
What else am I talking about?
Politics. Television. Movies. Gossip.
Some
of you who do not like sports probably thought that rooting for colors
only applied to sports. Sorry, no. It applies to many different areas.
Ask
yourself: are the people that I am cheering for going to cheer for me
when I am performing? If the answer is no, then it is time to pause and
reflect. And change.
Stop
rooting for colors. Root for good people to succeed based on doing good
work. But don’t compromise your goals in order to root for other people
who have no vested interest in your success.
Give up rooting for jerseys if you want to hit your short-term goals.
2. Stop Rationalizing
“We are not rational animals. We are rationalizing animals.”
— Christopher Sommer
Everyone
wants to claim perfect rationality. We all want to believe that our
decisions are all logical and coherent. We all believe that we are
smart.
A
study once revealed that over two-thirds of people surveyed believed
that they were above average. Some people are lying to themselves.
In a given moment, we believe that we are thinking about our problems in a logical manner.
But that is simply not true. In fact, our biggest mistakes come from believing that we are being “logical.”
The truth is that most people make a decision with emotion, and then justify the the emotional decision with logic.
But why do you need to give up rationalizing? Because rationalizing means you are making excuses.
Stop.
Someone else has had worse problems than you and has overcome them. Probably multiple people.
One of my favorite quotes about excuses is from Tim Ferriss, who was quoting Olympic coach Jim Conroy:
Just remember: somewhere a little Chinese girl is warming up with your max.
Ouch. But the truth hurts.
If
you are going to hit your short-term goal, you cannot make excuses. You
cannot rationalize. You must think and act based on reality. If you
fail, there is no excuse that you need to tell yourself or anyone else.
Failure is the amazing opportunity to learn and begin again.
Adversity makes weak men break, and strong men break records.
Stop rationalizing. Start moving.
3. Stop giving your ideas to other people.
When you’re a champion, you have a powerful tool available to you. You can lower your voice, pause, look everyone right in the eye and say, “I take responsibility for making this happen.”
— Seth Godin
Stop giving your ideas to other people and then thinking that is equivalent to execution.
There
is a release that you get when you tell someone about an idea. This is
not good. There should be tension until the idea is executed. Then the
release — maybe. Do not let the tension drop until execution is
complete.
I
have worked in the entertainment and artistic fields for some time. One
thing that happens near-daily is that people will contact me and ask me
to read their script, review their book, or look at their artwork.
Implied in this request is that the person wants to know what I think
about his art.
Here is what I think: it doesn’t matter what I think.
Successful
people do not walk around asking what other people think of their
ideas. Successful people execute and get real feedback in the
marketplace — actual data. And then they learn, and either iterate or
try again.
The
truth is this: some of the best ideas do not make a single penny. Some
of the worst ideas make millions of dollars. The only way to know the
difference is to execute and figure out what will happen.
Without execution, there is no value in an idea.
Stop giving your ideas to other people and expecting magic to happen.
4. Stop being good.
“We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”
— Robert Brault
Stop being good: not in a moral sense, but in the sense that good is somewhere on the scale that stretches from bad to great.
There
is a fundamental problem with “good.” It does not last. It is like a
piece of fruit that reaches perfect ripeness. The fruit tastes great at
that moment. But if you wait too long, it does not stay ripe. It becomes
rotten.
Our
own skills and achievements are exactly like the ripening fruit. We
need to be able to recognize the process of ripening and also the
process of rotting. Often, it feels great to be good at something. It is
exciting. But it takes that little something extra to push past the
inertia that starts to set in once we can taste a little bit of the
ripeness.
Here
is the problem: when we are good at something, other people start to
give us recognition. We can settle for receiving recognition instead of
hitting our goals. Don’t settle! The solution is to keep pushing,
regardless of whether we are “good” or others recognize our progress.
Stop when your goal is hit. Not when you are ripe or “good.”
5. Stop thinking that tomorrow exists.
“There are no ordinary moments.”
— Dan Millman
Tomorrow is a lie. It never comes.
Try
waiting for it. You will wait forever. Tomorrow is a figment of your
imagination. It is a thought. It is a dream. It is not going to come and
it will never will.
The only day that actually exists is today.
If you need to act, it must be done today. No excuses. No mercy. Today is all there is.
Just because you fall asleep that does not mean that the rest of the world stops.
When
you need to get something done, never think that you can do it
tomorrow. As soon as you hear yourself think “tomorrow” — stop. Do
whatever you need to do. The cost today is always less than the cost
tomorrow. Always. Never mortgage today to get to tomorrow. Always pay
the lower price now.
You start life at Point A. And you end life at Point B. Every day in between you have to crush it.
Stop thinking that tomorrow exists. It doesn’t.
6. Stop focusing on long-term goals.
Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.
If you want to hit a short-term goal, then you need to temporarily forget your long-term goals.
You
need to sacrifice your long-term goals in order to hit a short-term
goal. It does not mean that you should not have long-term goals. And
this does not mean that you should only think of today. But this does
mean that you need to so intensely focus on what is exactly in front of
you that you do not think about your long-term goals.
When
you are climbing a mountain, your long-term goal is to get to the
summit. But your short-term goal is to take one more step. As you climb
higher, each step becomes harder. You cannot focus both on that next
step and also on the summit. You will end up tripping, slipping, or
getting injured. You must intensely focus on the single, next step so
much that you momentarily forget, or block out, the long-term goal of
the summit.
Achieving
any short-term goal requires the same attitude. Focus on your next
step — today’s step — and be so intensely focused that you do not even
think about the long-term goal — until your short-term goal is done.
Use the gaps — the interstitial spaces after short-term goals are achieved — to return back to the long-term perspective.
I
love the story of the man sitting on the side of a mountain as he reads
an engrossing book. To enjoy the book, he needs to focus on the 12
inches in front of him. He needs to focus on the words on the page. But
to enjoy the mountain, he needs to look up and focus on the magnificence
of the expanse before and above him. Your short-term goal is the book.
But your long-term goal is the mountain. To enjoy the mountain, look up
every once in a while to take in the beauty.
But when you are traversing the difficult path right in front of you, focus on the next step only.
7. Stop letting other people’s problems become your urgencies.
“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent instead of what is important.”
— Stephen Covey
You can’t solve everyone else’s problems. You can solve some. Maybe a lot. But not all. So what can you do?
Pick
the problems that you are going to solve. And then focus intensely on
those. You will have to ignore the other problems, at least temporarily.
If
you are going to sprint for (let’s say) 30 days to achieve a goal, then
you need to focus on your own goals and chosen problems.
Tom
Izzo has said, “Every successful person has a little jerk in them.” I
think this accurately describes what you need to give up.
Successful
people do not seem like jerks because they are mean, but because they
are focusing on their own chosen problems, goals, activities, and not
even giving any time or energy to other people’s problems.
Here’s
another way to think about this: don’t let other people’s problems
become your problems. Or don’t let other people’s urgencies become your
urgencies.
Stop
accepting other people’s problems. If you truly want to help, then set
this as a goal and specifically act in a way that will help who you want
to help.
Do not deny to the world a person who can focus and solve the problems right in front of them.
I
used to do accept every problem that I heard about as my own. The
reason why can be boiled down to one concept: I did not elevate the
importance of my own goals.
If
I were training for the Olympics, then I imagine I could tell everyone
around me: “Sorry, I can’t help right now. I need to train for the
Olympics.” I hope my sacrifice would be self-explanatory at that point.
But for many goals, you treat them differently.
Previously, I would have thought that my goal is considerably less important than the Olympics, in my own mind.
And so when someone would ask me what I’m doing, I would not even think
about my goal, or that my goal requires me to sacrifice.
I
love the people around me. I always want to help if I can. But here is
what I tell myself: If I never achieve, or hit my own goals, then over
time, I will never be able to help others — especially the people that I
love.
And
this doesn’t mean don’t spend time with your family, close friends, or
other important relationships. If any issue arises in those groups,
those issues become my short-term goals that I need to focus on and
solve.
Do not let other people’s urgencies take up real estate in your mind without your permission.
8. Sacrifice perfection.
“Perfection is the enemy of done.”
— Jeff Goins
Perfection
is a god, and she is mean, cruel, and unforgiving. We cast our work
before her, so she can destroy it. For 30 days, we need to ignore
perfection and focus on another deity: execution.
Quality is imperative, but quantity creates quality.
The filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has referenced the book Fear and Art as one of the most influential books in his life. My favorite story from that book is about a pottery class.
In
the pottery class, the teacher divided the students into two groups.
The first group would be graded strictly on quality. Those students
would submit one piece of pottery at the end of the term and the teacher
would grade the single piece on its quality.
The
second group would be graded only on quantity. If 100 pieces of pottery
are submitted, then the student would receive an A, 80 for a B, and 60
for a C.
At
the end of the term, the results shocked the teacher. The students
graded on quantity only had incredibly better pottery. It was not even
close. The students graded on quality initially spent a lot of time on
each piece. But the students graded on quantity rapidly made pieces. The
intense focus on producing lots of pieces in a short time caused the
quantity students to get better faster.
Stop trying to be perfect.
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