Habits That Determine 80% of Your Success

By

Thomas Oppong

Copyright © 2021

Contents

Forward      4

If You Are Serious About Long-Term Success, Optimise Learning Over Money      5

People Who Are Successful In The End Are Usually Curious In The Beginning      8

Success Is About How Much Value You Provide to Others      10

Truly Successful People Become Exceptional at One Thing And Use The Confidence to Branch Out      13

The Real Key to Success is How You Navigate The Messy Middle: Lessons From Great Minds      16

If You Want a Different Outcome in Life, Create a New State of Mind      20

To Truly Capitalise on Your Success, Optimize Your Performance      22

The Law of Progression: How to Consistently Get Smarter, Faster, And Better      24

Accumulative Advantage      26

The Expectation Trap: The Mindset That Makes You Overreact to Disappointments      29

Success Comes From Doubling Down on The 20% of Your Actions That Deliver 80% of Your Results      32

The Most Overlooked Skill of Highly Successful People      35

Failing at Things That Matter is Far Better Than Succeeding at Things That Don’t      38

The Fastest Way to be Successful is to Make Others Successful      40

People Who Have High “Integrative Complexity” Skills Achieve More And Succeed Faster      43

Success is a Direct Result Your Relationship With Time      46

Waiting For Your Big Break is The Worst Way to Succeed      48

Lessons From Successful People Can Deliver More Value Than 1,000 Hours of Hard Work      50

The Essentialist Mindset: Doing Less, But Better      53

The Trait That Takes You From Average to Spectacular is Not Your IQ      56

You Don’t Have to be a Morning Person to be Successful      58

The WOOP Method: A Simple Tool For Achieving Any Goal      64

Past Success Often Cause Confidence to Rise Faster Than Ability      67

The Secrets to Warren Buffett’s Incredible Wealth      69

Successful People Have Rules For Themselves That They Take Very Seriously      71

To Succeed in an Uncertain Future, Think Like a Futurist      74

Successful People Don’t Make Sacrifices, They Make Smart Choices      76

99% of Personal Finance Can be Summarized in Nine Words      78

Does Waking Up at 5:30 A.M Make You More Successful?      81

To Succeed in The Long-Term, Think in 5, 10, or 20 Year Time Frames      84

How Successful People Achieve Outlier Success      86

An Important Question About Progress, Growth And Success You Are Not Asking      89

Many of Life’s Toughest Goals Take Lots of Attempts      92

Successful People Are Still Learning      95

The Iceberg Illusion: The Hidden Logic of Success      97

Sustaining Success is Harder Than Becoming Successful      100

Taking a Step Back is as Necessary as Moving Forward      102

When You Are Disappointed in Yourself, Practice Self-Compassion      105

Forward

This book is made up of a few of my best essays about better habits written from 2019 to 2021. For most of this period I wrote for an audience of over 200,000. My interest in philosophy, psychology, technology and learning led me to explore principles, habits, tools, mental models of modern living. This book is one of nine books on life, self, work, success, habits, career, productivity, learning and effective thinking.

My aim as a writer has always been to explore what works, proven principles in life and work, what the experts have already figured out and  how to connect ideas better and make them easy to consume.The essays in this book are a record of my intellectual quest to make sense of our rapidly changing world. They’re the diary of my curiosity. It contains habits, routines, timeless insights and ideas, ancient wisdom and lessons I have learned over the years of exploring what high achievers and successful people are doing differently. Just actionable ideas and insights that stand the test of time.

Thank you for your support, for your trust, and for allowing me to extend my intellectual journey a little bit longer.

Thomas Oppong

Kent, United Kingdom

March. 8, 2021

If You Are Serious About Long-Term Success, Optimise Learning Over Money

A solid foundation will never fail you

You can’t accelerate your success if the foundation is not right. Instead of looking for shortcuts to success that will probably not last, focus on laying a strong and firm foundation for financial growth. Learn better or indispensable skills that will still be valuable in the next 5 or 10 years, embrace lifelong learning and build better routines and habits that can advance your goals.

The power of exponential learning

Optimizing learning over money early in your career changes everything. It sets you up for massive results in the future especially if you plan on earning for decades before you retire.  If your learning curve is flat right now, you are setting yourself up for a massive dip in the future. You may be earning enough to support yourself now, but if you don’t have a plan to improve yourself, upgrade your skills or become a better version of yourself, you will soon become obsolete. Don’t make that mistake. You will miss almost all the opportunities in life if you are not ready to disrupt yourself. When you disrupt yourself, you are looking for personal growth.

“Disrupting yourself is critical to avoiding stagnation, being overtaken by low-end entrants (i.e., younger, smarter, faster workers), and fast-tracking your personal and career growth,” writes Whitney Johnson in her book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work.

One of the best ways to reinvent yourself is to prioritise learning over short-term financial gains. Make learning a daily routine. It’s a better approach to success in all areas of your life. Money has always been important in life, but if you value money over learning, you will become addicted to paychecks and it will determine where you go, how you think, and what you do. That mindset can easily make you irrelevant in the future. As you progress in life, the time that was not spent on learning useful or valuable skills or upgrading yourself will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful. Money is just a buy product of providing value. You can only create value if you have learned and acquired the right skills. Learn skills that can help you provide the best value for your audience, employer or your subscribers. When you value learning above everything else, it will lead you to all of the right choices you need to make to prepare yourself for the future. Every new skill you acquire now or in the future will give you the ability to create more value and improve your odds of success. “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways,” says Robert Greene in his book, Mastery.

“In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them — those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them,” Greene writes. Are you prepared for the future? Become who you want to be by investing in yourself. In the end, by valuing learning above all else, you will set the stage for your creative expression, and the money will soon come to you. A solid foundation will never fail you. It lasts for ages. When you are driven by a learning mindset, you become unstoppable.

“For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head,” says Benjamin Franklin. Don’t be excited about negotiating a good salary. You are still dispensable if you are not growing or improving your skills. Aim to become so good at what you do that you can’t be ignored. Aim to be in control of your financial future. That can only happen if you choose lifelong learning over “good money” in the short-term. The real-world rewards those who provide consistent value. Most people don’t have the patience to seek better knowledge that puts them in positions of control. They become slaves to money — and grow weaker, less capable and trapped in careers that become obsolete with time. They become too busy to realise that doing nothing puts their careers at risk. They are in a hurry to see temporary results. They think in sprints, and forget that life is a marathon.

Aristotle was right, “Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” Life is a balanced system of learning and evolution. Exceptional results require a rare combination of extreme patience and accelerated learning. Do what you have to do to pay the bills but don’t forget to upgrade your skills and embrace the journey of constant discovery in your career. A discovery-driven career can help you become the best version of yourself and attract long-term success.

People Who Are Successful In The End Are Usually Curious In The Beginning

The economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher

They are endless opportunities to improve your life, career, relationships, happiness, health and wealth. But here is the bitter truth, finding them largely boils down to being curious. If you are not open to exploring what’s possible, what works, what doesn’t or what’s valuable for your long-term growth or progress, you could remain stuck for a very long time. Curious people are ‘seekers’ — they actively look for new experiences and challenges that will stretch them, upgrade their skills, expand their worldview and push them to do their best work or do more great work.

We live in the age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher. If you are prepared to follow your curiosity, you will open up new opportunities that can help you in almost all areas of your life. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled, ” says Plutarch. Activating your curiosity can lead to the biggest breakthrough in your life. Einstein did just that even at a young age. “When he was five years old, Einstein’s father showed him a compass. Einstein saw the needle move and wanted to figure out why (Compass). That was the start of his interest in physics.

Curiosity was one of Einstein’s greatest qualities,” writes PhysicsCentral. “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious,” is one of Einstein's famous quotes.

Curiosity is the most essential mindset for finding success in the age of knowledge abundance. Being curious gives you the rare chance to discover extraordinary opportunities. Successful entrepreneurs and innovators are intensely curious about what the world wants and needs. “Curiosity is the engine of achievement,” says Ken Robinson.

Curiosity fuels our imagination. It’s fundamental to our success. Your instinct to explore should grow into an instinct for inquiry. And it ultimately helps you discover amazing things about yourself, your life and career. Nurturing and developing your curiosity will help you discover and ultimately your most amazing work. Aaron Swartz advises, “Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.”

A curious mind can relate and connect ideas better. Maintain an open mind and be willing to learn, unlearn and relearn to find the answers you seek.

Push yourself to see everything else left to be seen. Expose yourself to industries that get your attention. Open yourself up to the universe, which will create endless possibilities for you. In the words of Tony Schwartz, “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously

Smart and successful people are still researching and asking questions. The more they know, the more they realise their own ignorance. Finding your breakthrough begins with the acceptance of ignorance. Successful people love to harbour knowledge by asking in-depth questions that enable them to gather even better information. Curiosity is accelerative. The more you know, the more you want to know.

If you want your career and your life to remain interesting and exciting, cultivate your curiosity. Commit to lifelong learning. Ask better questions. Assume nothing. Question everything, even the obvious.

If you put curiosity at the heart of everything you do, you will find the answers you need to lead to a meaningful and successful life. “Curiosity is more important than knowledge,” says Albert Einstein. Everything valuable and useful in the world has been possible because of inquiring minds full of questions, not by those full of answers or prejudice. Are you willing to challenge what you know to be true? Curiosity causes change. Curiosity creates entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, writers, designers, architects, engineers and every outlier you know.

So, pursue your curiosity instead of seeking confirmation of what you already know. Expose yourself to different ideas, people, places and things you normally ignore. Never shut out your natural curiosity and you will find the answers you seek.

Success Is About How Much Value You Provide to Others

“Your success isn’t about you and your performance. It’s about us and how we perceive your performance.” — Albert-László Barabási

This powerful mindset has changed how I work and pursue success in all areas of my life. It can not only change your career, but it can also change your relationships if you consistently apply it. If you aim to offer value instead of taking value, people will be naturally drawn to you. You will attract more people if you provide them with an immense amount of value. When it comes to money and wealth, the only way to become richer is to create more value for others. In his book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Adam Grant says “The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.”

Success not just about building your reputation. It is really about giving your best without holding back. Doing the best you can to change someone’s life.

Grant writes, “This is what I find most magnetic about successful givers: they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” We are all seeking to achieve success in life and career. And success means different things for everyone. Regardless of what success we pursue, it drives and preoccupies us, and it can sometimes cloud the journey to that ultimate goal.

What you do, and the people you impact on your way to the top, can change everything. The total emphasis on success can have a diminishing return.

Success takes longer than we expect or plan. The process can be draining, hence the need to move the emphasis from success itself to offering value, which ultimately brings the success you crave. Creating and offering value has a trifold return. And it doesn't end there; it’s also one of the best ways to improve and motivate yourself.

There’s nothing wrong with pursuing success — but it’s too easy to lose sight of who you are, you want it so badly. Going after success by any means necessary can backfire. People will see through you. In the long-term you will lose your audience, followers, or customers, unless you show them you care about making a real impact. When you focus on yourself, it repels people. At some point in your career, you’ll find people dismiss or ignore you, especially when they get frustrated.

Becoming a Person of Value is the Ultimate Career Investment. “Try not to become a person of success but a person of value,” says Albert Einstein.  If you find yourself blinded by the hunt for success, remember to focus on providing real value. It’s a lot harder to practice, but your long-term success depends on it. Your long-term goal should be to create relationships and provide a sense of fulfillment. It’s the most practical way to long-term success. More success is attributed to those who contribute value to others than those seek their own glory, says Ngaire Clare. She writes:

When others in your space know you and know the value you’ve already provided you with, they trust you, your brand, your service or your product. They want to engage with and support you in your work, in the same way, you have supported them in theirs.

Offering value is a much better way to approach success and your relationships with others, whether they are exchanging money for it or not. Providing value means becoming a creator instead of a consumer. Creating value is one of the secrets to a happy life. I don’t know about you, but I am happiest when I am stuck in the “flow” of creating and sharing value. The only way I’ve become happier is to create more value for others. To be more useful to others. There’s something satisfying about making a difference in someone else’s life. Brett and Kate McKay of The Art of Manliness explains : …when you create instead of consume, your capacity for pleasure increases, as opposed to your need for it. Being a creator gives you far more lasting and deeply satisfying happiness than consuming ever will. Share what you know. The world needs you to make an impact in your own way. There is value in helping others improve or do better.

In your career, if you focus on adding value to your company or helping the company succeed, you’re more likely to be noticed and considered for a raise or promotion. But if all you care about is your paycheck, you probably won’t progress. When you focus on value, you become driven to create and provide more value for others.

If you always think about how to make more money — you get distracted. You think of how to “optimize” profits, rather than to add new value. The only way to create new wealth (for everyone) is to create more value. When you provide value to others, your success grows organically. People seek more from you, talk about you to others, and share your amazing resources with their connections.

By striving for value, you’ll be successful — no matter where your journey takes you. Don’t be someone that just takes. Be someone that gives. Something amazing that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and attracts more people. Start seeing yourself as a giver. Be a person of value. When in doubt, create more value for others. If you are not sure where to begin, seek to add value to yourself. Improve your skills. Help yourself first, then figure out how you can create value for others. I hope this simple approach to success makes sense to you. If you change your mindset from taking value to offering value, the results will transform all areas of your life.

Truly Successful People Become Exceptional at One Thing And Use The Confidence to Branch Out

Become good at one thing, but open yourself up to other opportunities and skills

Conventional wisdom makes a compelling case for specialising early. Society also tends to value specialists more. They serve a very specific purpose and are extremely adept at navigating it. The new wisdom is — become a visible expert in a niche, get noticed, and use that knowledge and influence to become a prudent generalist.

Many companies recruit for specialist roles but list out requirements for generalists. People who become awesome at one thing but also embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive in a changing world.

David Epstein, author of Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World explains, “Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains. Our most fundamental thought processes have changed to accommodate increasing complexity and the need to derive new patterns rather than rely only on familiar ones. Our conceptual classification schemes provide a scaffolding for connecting knowledge, making it accessible and flexible.”

Many successful people and businesses have consistently relied on this approach to build great careers and businesses. They deepen their knowledge in a single area and make knowledge connections in other niches. The most impactful and influential people branch out across domains at some point even though they are noted for one great thing. Many of the world’s most impactful people, both historical and contemporary have been generalists — Richard Feynman, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, Marie Curie, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. If you’ve built a reputation as an expert in something people want, you can easily explore other ideas at the opportune moment. Today, careers that felt safe and certain can easily disappear. It makes sense to broaden your knowledge, skills, and competencies to become indispensable.

A career path is a work in progress — strive for broadness throughout your career

“The future belongs to the integrators,” says  Educator Ernest Boyer. Most people’s work and life preferences do not stay the same. Becoming good at something else apart from your main domain will make you competitive. To survive the changing world, a graphic designer can easily become good at video marketing. Or better still create online courses to serve even more people. “…if you’re an amazing Perl developer, it helps to have some good understanding of other languages or work on your management, communication or project management skills,” says Rob Pellow, digital design director at Bristol CRM agency Armadillo. “That way, you are offering yourself as more than just a specific type of developer.”

People with exceptional experience or skill in other areas have a strong understanding of the other roles around them and what is required to work with others in a team.

In an increasingly interdependent world, if you have sufficient depth in a few — or even many — domains, you can often be more valuable than a specialist. A successful writer can start a podcast, self-publish a book, host webinars, launch amazing writing courses. Gary Vaynerchuk first came to fame in the late 90’s after starting one of the first online wine sites, WineLibrary. Today, he is the chairman of VaynerX, a modern-day media and communications company. Gary also runs the #AskGaryVee Show on YouTube. He has also written several books.

Gretchen Rubin is a five-time New York Times bestselling author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker — exploring happiness and good habits. The New York Times called her “the queen of the self-help memoir.” Pat Flynn started as a blogger. Today, he teaches his followers about investing in online businesses and generating passive income through posts, videos, podcasts, online courses, books, webinars and speaking engagements. Tim Ferriss has authored five books. His podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, is one of the most popular podcasts today. Tim has been invited to speak at some of the world’s most innovative organizations. He is also an angel investor. The New York Times listed Ferriss among their “Notable Angel Investors”.

There are dozens of more amazing stories like these, and they all point to the same conclusion — severe specialisation stifles potential. In a world of unprecedented technological advancement, we must all strive to make better connections to become the best versions of ourselves. Epstein explains in an interview with for DailyStoic.

We miss out on wisdom if we’re too narrow…Specialists become so narrow that they actually start developing worse judgment about the world as they accumulate knowledge…Breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. Transfer is your ability to take knowledge and skills and apply them to a problem or situation you have not seen before. And your ability to do that is predicted by the variety of situations you’ve faced…As you get more variety, you’re forced to form these broader conceptual models (in the classroom setting called “making connections” knowledge), which you can then wield flexibly in new situations. Establishing yourself as an expert in a single niche is profitable, but to thrive in a changing world, learn to connect knowledge better, improve upon what you already know, and maximise your domain. It’s easier than ever to branch out into a new field or skill set.

The “indispensables” of tomorrow are those who can combine their skills in unique ways. They are those who will be tomorrow’s influencers. If you aspire to a leadership role, acquire other people management skills needed to excel in your niche.

“If you tend to resist new ideas, recognize the value in new experiences and work to open yourself up to more opportunities. If you are the kind of person who often avoids thinking in favour of other activities, add a little more time to your day where you focus on learning something new,” says Art Markman of 99U. Increasingly the advantage is going to people who have broad integrative skills. The more that you broaden and deepen your base of knowledge, the more opportunities you will have to solve problems, share your ideas, and make an even bigger impact. If you develop an appetite for learning and openness, you will make yourself antifragile. Adapt to survive.

The Real Key to Success is How You Navigate The Messy Middle: Lessons From Great Minds

To make real progress, turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better and resilient

Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor once said: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” When you feel like there is no way to keep moving, when things seem hopeless, it’s easy to give up. Standing behind an obstacle wall can feel intimidating. When you are taking the necessary steps to achieve any meaningful goal, you will run into roadblocks. BUT those hurdles, however, can also breed the exact kind of action you need to keep moving. You’ve heard it before: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.” Setbacks create opportunities for you to become stronger, wiser and better. Many people think of obstacles in many ways: As failure. As unfairness. At the end of any conversation. As time to give up. Faced with impossible situations, the likes of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, John D. Rockefeller, Amelia Earhart, Andrew Carnegie, Epictetus, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Thomas Edison turned obstacles into opportunities. These men and women were not insanely brilliant, lucky, or gifted. Their success came from the timeless philosophical principle of turning impediments into opportunities.

Honestly, the key to truly overcoming life’s setbacks is a total change of mindset. Without an overcomer’s mindset, you will relentlessly succumb to your excuses, distractions, and impediments. Some people see obstacles as a puzzle to solve. Others see obstacles as an opportunity to grow. Others see obstacles as threats. Still, others see obstacles as meaning they cannot succeed.

Your view of barriers, hurdles and impediments to achieving your goals affects how you react. Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia overcame the roadblocks that stood in her way and made history. She changed human perception of flying over the ocean.

She once said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

Benjamin Franklin dropped out of school at age ten. His parents could only afford to keep him in school until his tenth birthday.

That didn’t stop him from pursuing his education. He taught himself through voracious reading and eventually went on to invent the lightning rod and bifocals.

Van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists of all time, yet he sold only one painting the entire time he was alive.Even though he made no money, he still painted over 900 works of art. Though his persistence went unnoticed when he was alive, Van Gogh proves you don’t need external validation to be proud of the work you create.

He once said, “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

General Dwight D. Eisenhower once made this announcement when the Allied Expeditionary Forces of the US lost their shit in the face of the rush of German troops (a final blitzkrieg of 13 divisions totalling 200,000 men).

“The present situation is to be regarded as opportunity for us and not disaster,” he commanded. “There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.”

The Allied forces went on to win the Second World War. If you see obstacles as the world being against you or as meaning you failed, you are likely to give up. But the obstacle is always the way. It advances the action you desperately want.

In his book, “The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, Ryan Holiday wrote: “All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go — carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”

Failure shows us the way — by showing us what isn’t the way. Failure is only a setup for a comeback. Failure builds resilience and endurance. With each failure, you’ll learn something new.

In the process of creating or building what you want, you develop strength, wisdom, and unique perspective. Epictetus says, “Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”

What Stands in the Way is the Way Forward

When you work on any big goal, your motivation can wax and wane. Sometimes you’ll feel motivated; sometimes you won’t. But it’s not your motivation that will produce results — it’s your action. The decision to persist. To make progress even when you don’t feel like it. Og Mandino, an American, the author of the bestselling book The Greatest Salesman in the World, said: “I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.” Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results. On Dec. 10, 1914, a massive explosion erupted in West Orange, New Jersey.

Ten buildings in legendary inventor Thomas Edison’s plant, which made up more than half of the site, were engulfed in flames. Machinery worth millions and all the papers pertaining to his lifelong research were burnt to ashes.

Later, at the scene of the blaze, Edison was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “Although I am over 67 years old, I’ll start all over again tomorrow.” Thomas Edison’s persistence was exemplified in his famous quote — “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” A.H. Wilson, his vice president and general manager, told The Times after the flames died down: “There’s only one thing to do, and that is to jump right in and rebuild.” People who persist no matter the obstacles, sooner or later are bound to succeed. Despite the setbacks, it’s in your best interest to turn obstacles into stepping stones. Don’t choose to complain, or worse, to just give up. These choices do nothing to get you across the finish line.

Elbert Hubbard once made a profound statement about the importance of not given up. She said, “A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.” A lack of persistence or “giving up too soon” is one of the most common reasons for failure in any endeavour. A little more persistence, a little more effort is sometimes what you need to get closer to the goal. Once you create a belief that there is an obstacle you can’t overcome, you stop looking for solutions. Greatness is not measured by what is accomplished. It is measured by how many times you pick yourself up and try again.

If you are facing an impediment, remember what Leo Babauta once wrote about choosing to move in the direction of your dreams even if it’s uncomfortable.

Go after the dream, fight the forces of distraction and dullness and self-doubt, rise up to be your best self. You are the writer of your story, the composer of your song, and every moment is a chance to rewrite it, a new draft ready to be crafted into something better.” Challenges scare you but, if you do nothing, they grow and become unsustainable situations. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” says Maya Angelou.

The journey of life can be wonderful, terrible, exciting, frightening, enlightening, confusing, or a beautiful maze. The bitter truth is, the more you accomplish, the more things will stand in your way. There are always more obstacles, bigger challenges. You’re always fighting uphill. Get used to it and train accordingly.

When J.K. Rowling said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I built my life,” she hit the nail on the head. Whatever the obstacle is, tough times happen for everyone. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. It’s important to mentally prepare yourself for the changes that will inevitably come. Real progress is never easy. It’s uncomfortable, stressful, and scary. But always remember, “The Impediment to Action Advances Action”.

If You Want a Different Outcome in Life, Create a New State of Mind

Be proactive about your improvement

If you do what you’ve always done, your outcome won’t be any different, no matter how long you keep trying. Think of it this way: if your input, habits, behaviours, rituals and actions are the same, the output has to remain the same. Albert Einstein was right when he once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To create a new and better outcome, start with your mind. Improve your current perceptions about life and living it. If you want to become indispensable, upgrade your skill.

Your current reality or way of life won’t change if you are not prepared to create the new normal. William James explains it better, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits — practical, emotional, and intellectual — systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter maybe.” A better outcome or life is only possible if you are ready and willing to think, feel and act in a new way. You have to become the new you. That requires a flexible mindset. An open mind to upgrade what you already know. Humans are creatures of routine, so it can be difficult to change an already established lifestyle. But if that life is not serving you, helping you become your best self or advancing your goals, it makes sense to change direction as soon as possible.

Your past habits, routines and behaviours have brought you this far. If you are not happy with what you’ve achieved as a person, don’t wish things were different, be proactive about the next chapter of your life. If you expect a different or better outcome in any area of your life, change your current lifestyle, otherwise, you will keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. If you are not, it’s not too late to change direction. If you are, keep moving. Build on top of what’s already working.

Stephen King says, “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” No matter how strong your habits and rituals have become, if you are not proud of who you are right now, replace them. Build new ones. Change your perception about what’s worth your time and start acting on the new knowledge. You can start by learning from others. Who do you admire most? And why? Whose life do you look up to? Who inspires and motivates you? Do you know what they repeatedly do every day or week? Start digging. Be curious about what’s working for others and those you admire. Upgrade your mindset and level up your habits. It will be challenging, but it will be worth it. “A man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions,” says Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Your new reality starts in your mind. Once you expose yourself to what’s working for others and best practices that can bring out the best in you, start practising them daily.

Start small. Set daily intentions to guide your actions. Wake up 30 minutes earlier than usual to work on your passion project or read your favourite book. Read a few chapters of your favourite self-improvement book. At some point those habits won’t become challenging, they will begin to feel natural. Change takes time, but if you commit to the process, you will see results. “Everything you are used to, once done long enough, starts to seem natural, even though it might not be,” says Julien Smith.

Embrace life-learning. Start managing your time wisely. Invest time in activities that can improve your mind or skills. Spend your attention on valuable activities. Changing your mind about habits that are not helping you is one of the most important things you can do for your life. If you don’t know where to start, focus on what you desperately want to change this year and build a new set of habits. And be patient, when you start changing an old pattern. Don’t rush the process otherwise you won’t stick to it. One step at a time. Invest in your future self, your success depends on it.

To Truly Capitalise on Your Success, Optimize Your Performance

The key to optimization to create regular and consistent daily patterns that work for you, not against you

The one thing that all highly successful people do is to stay organized and do more of what works. They make time to measure their results and follow efficient routines that save time and money. They know what activities are critical to getting results.

Optimization is the process of incrementally improving your processes, systems, or better still how you work. Success in any endeavour is a process — unless you’ve peaked and want to retire. Making progress in life and career requires measurements, upgrades and a flexible mindset to adapt to better systems, rules and principles.

Optimization is a popular concept in the technology world. Launching a product is always just the beginning — constant tweaks and upgrades are required to create something truly extraordinary. The same concept can be applied to how we build our careers and lead our lives — a flexible mindset allows you to make room for improvement, upgrade or reinvention. Find the small tasks you do over and over, and make them better.  The main goal of optimization is to reduce or eliminate time and resource wastage, unnecessary costs, bottlenecks, and mistakes while achieving the objective of the process. Although the natural tendency is to stick with what works, true growth comes from constantly challenging ourselves (and our projects, teams) in small ways every day.

“Despite research that encourages us to build on our strengths, we spend more time fixing what’s broken than optimizing what works. Why? Because any measure of success impairs our ability to imagine something better” argues Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, and Adobe’s Chief Product Officer.

By tracking your weekly, or monthly efforts (and corresponding results) you’re able to identify the processes that are contributing to the results you seek. You gain valuable insights for making improvements and optimizing processes that are not working.

Optimisations also help you track how much progress you’ve made on your primary tasks connected with your ultimate goals. If you’re trying to lose weight, an example could be “work out half an hour” every day instead of sprinting for an hour once a week.

Have a bunch of emails to send? Set out ‘email time’ in your calendar and then sit down for half an hour, an hour, however long you need to take care of them. That way you don’t have to keep getting back to it every ten minutes.

Need to pay your bills? Don’t pay one when you find a moment and another in the next passing break. Put it directly into your calendar —” bill payment at 3 pm” works better. Or better still automate the process if you do it at the same time each month. Get clarity of plan and stick with it. You can also optimise your environment by getting rid of simple distractions like notifications that make concentration even harder. The temptations of distractions are strong. Master your tools and make them work for you.

Rethink your processes for getting work done and improving yourself. Ask yourself: Is there a better way to achieve the same goal? How much time does the process use/waste? Where does the process stall? Which part of the process can be automated to make for high-value work? For effective optimisation, every detail is important. Through regular evaluation, you can stay ahead of yourself and achieve your project or life goals without wasting time and resources that could be used elsewhere.

“Despite the quality of your ideas and output, the impact you will make largely depends on your ability to constantly optimize — to build on your successes and grow them into something greater,” says Scott.

A few changes every week can be the difference between huge improvements and getting the same results every month. Optimise your efficiency and productivity and you will see noticeable strides towards your goals. It pays to regain control of your time, energy, and environment! It’s time to reach your peak and get back to your “prime” to get what you want. It’s important to be intentional about the role of optimisation in your life. Plan it and move on to important things that need your attention. Optimize your way to success, but recognize that, eventually, obsessive optimization can become a detriment to getting real work done. Make the process work for you. Optimize is about being consistent — being consistently productive, not pushing yourself to the unattainable 100%.

The Law of Progression: How to Consistently Get Smarter, Faster, And Better

To make and feel progress, consider going the extra inch instead of the extra mile

When you are invested in the outcome of any goal, the pressure to make progress never goes away. But progress in any field is not linear. It’s easy to judge those who have succeeded or made consistent progress. Successful people choose their goals carefully and take the extra inch approach to make progress. They focus on accessible, deeply practical steps — instead of going the extra mile a few times a year. They make better progress in the long-run.

Every great person you admire didn’t succeed because of one giant move, but because of a series of consistent actions over time. Success is more about endurance and sustainability. Top performers focus more on the process, not just on the outcome. Success is not so much about the final performance, it’s about the continual practice.

“I’m convinced you can do almost anything if you are willing to clarify your goals and then make the incremental investment over time to achieve them,” says Michael Hyatt, an author, podcaster, blogger, and speaker.

Consistency is about building small empowering habits and rituals. It’s the time-tested processes that eventually add up. If you aim to progress properly — week to week, month to month, and ultimately year to year — you’ll avoid work burnout. You’ll always have enough energy and the mental capacity to keep going. Most people don’t follow the law of progression. They create big goals and aim to make progress or complete their goals in a few difficult steps — which can backfire. When you try to rush the process, it may seem like you succeeded in the short-term. But your long-term approach suffers.

Stretch your extra miles out into something far more approachable. A better approach is to focus on the practice (consistent, everyday improvements) instead of the performance. “The thing is, incremental daily progress (negative or positive) is what actually causes transformation. A figurative drip, drip, drip. Showing up, every single day, gaining in strength, organizing for the long haul, building connection, laying track — this subtle but difficult work is how culture changes,” argues Seth Godin.

The approach or mindset can guarantee mental resilience, better results in almost any endeavour, and consistent growth in anything you pursue. Whether you want to be smarter about how you work, improve yourself, or embrace lifelong learning, the simple law of progression can help get to your destination in the best way possible.

“If you’re a software engineer, it could be one extra round of testing before launch. Those working on projects can add one extra idea or concept that wasn’t part of the specifications but takes the task to new heights. Scientists can add one extra experiment, while athletes can add one extra set in the gym,” argues Josh Linkner at Inc.

The progression principle can also to value the process as much (if not more) than the end result — if you enjoy the process, you are more likely to stick to it, which can ultimately help you to achieve the end results. When you do something one step at a time, you’re more intentional. It feels less intimidating and is more manageable. It might feel less exciting than chasing a huge win, but its results will be stronger and more sustainable.

Everything you choose to do will feel more gratifying when you embrace the power of incremental process. Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers on management once said “People often overestimate what they can accomplish in one year. But they greatly underestimate what they could accomplish in five years.”

It's better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward on the wrong path.

In “The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success,” author Darren Hardy explains, “It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.”

Consistency is the difference between making progress and procrastination.

If you’ve been struggling with consistency — in dieting, working out, meditating, whatever — my guess is you are probably focusing too much on intensity — one huge step at a time. The truth is intensity is not sustainable — your body fights back in the end and progress suffers. If you want to be the type of person who makes progress on a consistent basis, don’t try to improve or change everything at once — you’ll ultimately improve nothing. Instead, focus on the small actions that can make the most impact. Make small steady progress you can sustain.

Accumulative Advantage

Success is not a random act

Success sometimes arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities. It is often rooted in hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities that compound over time, a process sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”

These are advantages that tend to snowball into greater and greater opportunities over time. Just as a few dollars invested in the stock market can grow to thousands over a lifetime, a small advantage can compound over the months or years, leading to huge successes later on in life.

The principle is also known as the Matthew effect. The term was coined by sociologist Robert Merton in a 1968 paper which described how the more eminent scientists in a group tend to get the most credit for the group’s work, regardless of who did the work.

Here’s another definition from a New York Times article: “This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory.” There are hidden systems of rewards and advantages that make it easy for some people to make progress. What begins as a small advantage gets bigger over time and begets even more advantages.

“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage,” explains Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Many opportunities further cement the status of those who are succeeding. In most areas of life, it’s those who are successful, who are most likely to attract even more opportunities to move up the ladder.

After years of trying without a break, a single post can open opportunities to be featured in multiple popular sites. When this happens, a writer can attract even more audience, get speaking opportunities, book deals, etc. They get better opportunities that lead to further success. Don’t get me wrong, the people at the very top work much, much harder to stay there or keep performing at their very best. But they are likely to benefit from hidden advantages.

Success is not just a simple function of individual merit. Successful people don’t do it alone. They’re products of particular places and environments. In other words, the small initial edge leads to more opportunities to get better and better.

“People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot,” argues Gladwell.

Society prematurely writes off people at the bottom as failures until they work their way to the top or make better connections to get noticed.

We are far too dismissive of those who fail and too much in awe of those who succeed and give them even more opportunities that make it easier for them to keep rising exponentially. Once you make a decision about who is good and who is not, you are more likely to act on that mindset to get closer to who or what you think is better.

To a large extent, we subconsciously make invisible personal rules that frustrate achievement for those at the bottom. We overlook just how large a role we all play in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings and don’t make decisions independently —we in part like things because other people like them. Social influence plays as large a role in how we evaluate or value most things. It often induces a rich-get-richer phenomenon where popular products tend to become even more popular. Success to some extent is like what biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism. Some of the tallest trees we notice often flourish because no other trees blocked their sunlight, and the soil around them was deep and rich. Or humans gave them the best conditions to do better. This pattern continues until the stronger plant crowds the other out and takes the lion’s share of sunlight, soil, and nutrients. Sometimes the sense of possibility so necessary for success also comes from our time — from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with.

This snowballing pattern of self-amplifying accumulation has led to a lot of success stories in the past and is still the reason for many of the successes we will witness in the future. But we can create our own accumulative advantage with the choices we make and the small actions we take every day — developing the right life and work habits can open more opportunities for you than you realise. People who can take the right actions, more consistently are more likely to maintain that slight edge and accumulate disproportionate rewards over time.

The Expectation Trap: The Mindset That Makes You Overreact to Disappointments

Setbacks do a little bit more than just slow you down. They actually threaten to make you stuck

If you’ve felt disappointed about something, recently, you are not alone. Many people immediately feel disappointed in themselves when they fail to keep their resolutions, reach a goal, or deliver on their deadlines. They feel let down and somewhat defeated.

It’s human nature, but there is a way around it to get back on track immediately after a major setback. Disappointments shouldn’t feel like a trap. Even though it’s an emotion triggered unconsciously, you can deal with it, and keep moving.

Manage your expectations: put yourself in a better mental state. Failure can take a massive toll on your emotions — what’s important is the mindset before and after the disappointment. When we consider taking any action, we form prior expectations (both big and small). And if the outcome is worse than expected, we experience disappointment. If the outcome exceeds our expectation, we feel happy or even motivated to keep pursuing other goals.

In other words, when things go right, you feel happy. But when things go wrong, you feel frustration, regret and yes…often disappointed in yourself.

Expectations sometimes stem from misguided certainty. Expectations can trap us when we cannot see past them. Your expectations going into any situation will always determine how you will feel after the event has taken place. When we lead with them and come out with something very different from our desires, disappointment is typically the result. When an expectation is not met, the result is anxiety, inner turmoil, and disappointment if not managed. Expectations in and of themselves are actually harmless. But they can get the better of us only when they become rigid barriers keeping us from taking the right actions or moving past our disappointments.

In many situations, attachment to the outcome is the real culprit. Whilst you need an emotional connection to your goals, sometimes the same emotion becomes a trap. Instead of staying locked in a constant struggle to get specific results or experience, maintain a flexible mindset about your expectations. “It’s very possible that you initially aimed a little too high and too quickly. A modified objective will provide you with a realistic target you can work towards. And, of course, once you hit that mark you can then raise the bar higher the next time around,” explains Adam Sicinski, Founder IQ Matrix. Set attainable goals, and enjoy the process that leads to the outcome. Bring your consciousness about the outcome (both positive and negative) up to a more neutral or positive level so that you are in a better position to react the outcome— being trapped in the emotional outcome prevents you from thinking logically about both the process and the outcome.

Many people can’t get over their disappointments because they are hung up over what reality should be — a single perception or lens with which they see the world.

They think in terms of binary opposition (black or white), a common mental error that can distort your perception of reality. When you are trapped in dichotomous thinking, everything becomes “this or that”. You fixate on how things “should be” or “must be”.

Example, if you think hard skills are the only most important things employers want, a rejection of your application can make it difficult to process that disappointment.

In your mind, you continue to hang on to the perception that you are the right person for the project or job because your hard skills cannot be matched — but this can be an illusion because your prospective employers may be using a different lens — soft skills.

If you improve your perception about both, you could have learned other equally important skills to increase your chances of getting what you want.

By attaching yourself to a single train of thought, or perception about anything, you increase your chances of getting disappointed. It also prevents you from moving on after a major setback. As long as you are trapped in it, you can’t get to where you want to go. The moment you begin challenging yourself to think objectively about your circumstances is the moment you gain the clarity you need to start figuring things out and getting past outcomes that are not ideal. Think of your disappointments as an opportunity to understand the gaps in your mental framework. Disappointment sometimes comes from the mismatch between reality and expectation. Use them to understand your mindsets, beliefs, assumptions and worldviews. “Disappointment can actually be an incredibly powerful emotion that can help you clarify your personal expectations and pave the way forward toward the attainment of your goals,” says Adam. If you know why you’re disappointed, you’ve got a head start on being able to make a better plan based on new mental models (framework or worldview.

Once you understand why things didn’t turn out the way you expected, you can correct your blind spots, assumptions, and make set measurable, realistic, and attainable goals. Dealing with disappointment requires you to let go of your mental illusions and expectations. “Many people get disappointed with something because they view it as a setback. They feel like they have taken a step back from what they want to be,” argues Celestine Chua, the writer of Personal Excellence.

When you are disappointed, ask yourself: What were my expectations about these circumstances? What expectations did I have about myself? What false perceptions or mental models am I clinging on to? What am I expecting from reality that I’m not getting?” These questions might help you recognize that perhaps your expectations weren’t quite flexible or realistic enough. Question your assumptions about goals, processes of reaching them and outcomes. Become aware of them, improve them and use them to handle the outcomes better. Seek out your personal illusions and improve your mindset. Managing disappointments takes time. As you start living past your disappointments, remember, it’s only temporary. Wallowing in disappointment can weigh heavily on your mind, and can keep you stuck. Although setbacks, roadblocks, and defeats are all obstacles that can stand in your way, cut yourself some slack, give yourself time to overcome them, make peace with your disappointments, learn from them, adjust your perception and regain control to keep moving.

Success Comes From Doubling Down on The 20% of Your Actions That Deliver 80% of Your Results

How do your current actions affect your long-term goal?

Massive success in any pursuit takes a huge commitment of time, energy and resources. Successful people learn what works, apply them without holding back and keep repeating the same patterns that deliver massive results until they find better or smarter options. The same principle applies in life — do more of what works until it no longer does. “Doubling down” is a move that promises a big reward, but only when you commit massive time and energy to your pursuit. Doubling down is how successful people approach life and business.

Success tends to bless those who are most committed to giving it the most attention. When you know what’s actually working, it makes sense to double or triple down on it.

One of the major differences between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former commit an insane amount of time and energy to get what they want, whereas the latter make excuses and commit to nothing or pursue too many things at once.

In The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure, Grant Cardone, explains: “until you become completely obsessed with your mission, no one will take you seriously. Until the world understands that you’re not going away — that you are 100 percent committed and have complete and utter conviction and will persist in pursuing your project — you will not get the attention you need and the support you want.”

What if the only thing standing in the way of your greatness was that you just had to go after what you want obsessively, persistently, and as though your life depended on it? Think about it: What’s the worst thing that can happen if you just totally go for it?

I’ve doubled down writing in recent years. I’m learning more from what doesn’t work but I’m consistently doing more of what’s delivering the results I want — providing value for my audience and sharing almost everyone I learn every day without holding back.

I keep measuring my practices to get a better idea of the necessary few actions I need to take every week.

Reboot your actions for massive results

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein said that. If you keep doing what you’ve always done but expect a different result, you are wasting your precious time. If you want to achieve anything this year, a misalignment between your actions and expectations won’t take you anywhere. When in doubt about what to focus on, double down on what worked last year. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.”

Use the Pareto principle (many outcomes roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes) to your advantage. Knowing that 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. Figure out your actions that deliver the most results, and then double down on those actions. Whatever you want to improve, find out the few actions that move the needle and are responsible for 80% of your success, then you can focus all of your energy on that 20%.

Have you ever wanted any area of your life to run more smoothly? Analyse your current actions. Clarify your actions. Get more insight. How do your current actions affect your long-term goal? Do they provide growth? Stress? Regression? Challenge? Do they make you a better person? If they don’t, stop doing them and focus on the few necessary actions that bring out the best in you. Analyze your cost of time, money and energy compared to potential gains or losses.

Do more of what’s working or what worked in the past and less of what doesn’t and you will feel more productive, healthier, happier, enjoy healthy relationships, and aligned in your life. When you double down, your greatest risks are time, energy and the resources you commit to whatever you choose to improve or make better. If your actions are worth the risk and you keep doing what works, you will reap massive results.

An important question to ask yourself is this: when do I quit? When your actions take more away from you than it gives you in return. When the potential reward is no longer worth the risks and costs. When you find better and smarter options. And when you see a better opportunity and your current actions no more help you make progress.

Not everything is worth doubling down for, and in fact, more things are worth quitting, but in the end, it’s about doing your best to figure out the 20% of your actions are delivering 80% of the results you want.

Choose to double down on your actions when they give you more than they take, when you believe it’s your best opportunity right now to make progress, and when you enjoy it overall, despite the difficulties. Success is not something that happens to you; it’s something that happens because of your daily actions.

The Most Overlooked Skill of Highly Successful People

How to put yourself on a winning path

Patterns are an important part of life. They are clues that can help us do more of what works or less of what guarantees failure. They can be habits, rituals, principles, behaviours, systems and structures that can keep delivering the same results until you find smarter or better options. In his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey writes about the habits, routines, and rituals of hundreds of artists. Even though their routines varied wildly, every one of them had actional daily rituals they followed to put them in an optimal state of mind. Peak performers and successful people swear by rituals and routines.

Success people are good at learning, applying and repeating patterns that deliver results. Patterns in any industry can help you better understand underlying systems, structures and principles that can improve your odds of success in that industry.

If success is what you desperately want, find the hidden patterns of success in your industry, apply them to your present circumstances and keep repeating that works for you. Without pattern recognition, the process for better results can take twice that time.

In the book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, the author says, “There’s one more pattern I see in successful people: They treat success as a learnable skill. That means they figure out what they need and they go and get it.”

They apply successful patterns again and again and again until they recognise a smarter, faster or better one that can deliver the same results in the shortest possible time.

Many of them write books about patterns for the things that succeed. Ray Dalio has mastered pattern recognition. His book, Principles: Life and Work, is a collection of principles that worked for him in the past. He argues, “Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behaviour that gets you what you want out of life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.”

The people we consider universally successful, people whose achievements impress us, and whose experience we want to learn from have built habits, principles that serve them well. What is certain is that there are recurrent success factors you can also apply to your personal circumstances to grow, become a better version of yourself. The good news is that they are accessible to all of us. After 5 years of studying rich people, Tom Corley wrote in his book, “Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.” “From my research, I discovered that daily habits dictate how successful or unsuccessful you will be in life.”

“There is a cause and effect associated with habits. Habits are the cause of wealth, poverty, happiness, sadness, stress, good relationships, bad relationships, good health, or bad health,” he says.

Discover patterns that work, apply and repeat the process

If you want to improve any area of your life, start by getting curious about the patterns/habits that are working for others. Learn from those who are already reaping the benefits of specific patterns or principles. Your job is to work to apply some of what you learn. Do it in a small, controlled way and then look to keep repeating what’s working for until you see results.

“In the long term, your habits will determine your future,” Rafael Badziag, an entrepreneur and expert in the psychology of entrepreneurship, wrote in his book “The Billion Dollar Secret: 20 Principles of Billionaire Wealth and Success.”

Successful habits and patterns are like snowflakes — they build up, and then you have an avalanche of success if you are consistent and apply them frequently.

It took Ryan Reynolds 11 years to bring Deadpool to life, now one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time, and J.K. Rowling got rejected by 12 publishers before a small publishing house took a chance on Harry Potter.

Now that’s a persistence or resilience pattern right there. People who persist do eventually succeed no matter how long it takes. If they keep working towards their goals, keep learning and growing, and stay open-minded, they do make progress, and they do achieve their goals.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told The Guardian that he was “not a big sleeper” and wakes up at 5 a.m. or 5:15 a.m. every day to workout, read, tinker with AOL’s products, and answer emails. According to a New York Times profile, General Motors CEO Mary Barra was regularly at the office by 6 a.m., and that was before she even became CEO.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt told Fortune that he gets up at 5:30 in the morning every day for a cardio workout, during which he reads the papers and watches CNBC. Many successful people are early risers who start their day on purpose. Another productivity pattern many successful people swear by.

You don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn to be successful, but you have to start your day right to make the most of your mornings. People who apply the right patterns, principles, habits usually succeed in the long run. Successful people take their goals seriously. They invest in their future selves. They keep moving the needle forward, little by little, tackling one small milestone at a time. They are flexible — they keep exploring to optimise their approaches to success. And they embrace the growth mindset.

Successful people sometimes find just one or two patterns that work, and then they repeat. They also refine their processes as they go along, so each stream can be 10x more effective after a few years of refinement.

Success isn’t linear. What worked for the most successful people in your industry may not work for you. The habit that changed your favourite influencer’s life may not change yours. But you can experiment and do more of what works for your personal circumstance. You can focus on building or accumulating patterns that work for you.

Most life advice is subjective, applicable to some, but never to everyone.

That is why I suggest you find patterns that work, apply them and repeat if they serve you well. In the real world, there is no single formula for success.

Failing at Things That Matter is Far Better Than Succeeding at Things That Don’t

Succeeding at the wrong goals can make you miserable

Pursuing the wrong goals is one of the worst things you can do in life. In the end, you are likely to end up miserable. William Carey once said, “I’m not afraid of failure; I’m afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.” It’s thought-provoking and very insightful. There are potentially endless pursuits in this life, but few things are truly worth chasing. Part of finding success in life is knowing what to pursue or spend your limited time doing. “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at the things in life that don’t really matter”, says Francis Chan.

Knowing what you want or need and what you don’t need is life-changing. Most people don’t. It’s the reason millions of people have so many regrets when they get old — they pursued the wrong goals. Many people are on autopilot: they are ticking the boxes society expects of them without taking time to reflect or think about what’s really important for their lives. They get really good at doing the same things every day but rarely pause to ask why or question the things they’ve prioritised in life.

Bob Goff, author of Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World writes, “I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

Succeeding at the wrong goals can cost you your life. We should all routinely ask ourselves, “Would I rather fail doing something truly significant and meaningful than to succeed at something that has no meaningful impact in my life? “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat,” says F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Is it more important that I achieve 10% of things that truly make a difference in my life or to achieve 100% of things that are meaningless? How much of your time is spent on the trivial or meaningless? When is the last time you took a risk knowing full well that you could fail? Most people do what they do out of fear of failing. They keep climbing the same ladder because it’s the safest option. You don’t want to climb up the ladder of success to find at the end that it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Montapert once said, “Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress,” There are a lot of things in life you could do to live your best life, and there are a lot of things you could succeed at if only your ladder is leaned at the right wall. There are very few things that can make you happy if only you can make time to pause and figure them out.

Succeeding at the lesser or wrong things at the cost of the greater things is its own form of failure. Don’t be afraid to pursue things, activities and projects that mean the world to you. Even if you fail, you are better off than everyone else who isn’t trying or living a lie.

John Keats encourages us to use failure as a learning experience. “Don’t be discouraged by failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, in as much as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.” Don’t waste your time on fretting about failing. Don’t waste or misdirect your energy on the wrong things. Don’t choose specific paths in life because they are easy or safe. Choose them because they are important to you. Choose them because they bring out the best in you. Choose them because they make you come alive.

“Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things not the strength to suffer,” says Machiavelli.

Choose your battles wisely. The courage to go after meaningful goals in life matters more than succeeding at conventional goals. Live with audacity.

These are a few questions that can help you fail forward and drive toward true and meaningful success: What truly matters to me? Will the things I do today truly make life better for me in 5 or 10 years time? Do I know my real purpose?

Are my current activities helping to fulfil that purpose? What do I need to change right now that can help me pursue the right and meaningful goals?

The incredible and better life you want is on the other side of fear. Too few of us think of our work, or our efforts, in terms of what is really important.

Take a moment to think about the trajectory of your life and everything you are currently doing. Are you still on track to living your best life? Time is short. The stakes are high. Choose to live boldly.

The Fastest Way to be Successful is to Make Others Successful

Many highly successful people have this in common

Zig Ziglar once said, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” Want to be successful? Stop selling. Start helping. The more success you create for others, the more you create for yourself.

Without a doubt, the best way to achieve success is to provide real value for others. Make others successful. This might seem like an obvious thing to do. But most people obsess over how to be successful instead of thinking about how to provide value for others. Helping others to be successful benefits you if you don’t hold back. Brian Tracy was right when he said, “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?”

There is nothing more rewarding than helping others to succeed

Our greatest successes in life and career are often found in building products that can solve people’s problems, teaching others how to be better, faster and smarter. Our most lasting and fulfilling achievements are often earned by helping others fulfil theirs. “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed,” says Napoleon Hill. When you help others, it opens up a whole new level of possibilities for you. Sell a service that delivers massive ROI for others and they will recommend you to others and mention your name when they pass on the knowledge they received from you. Write a book that changes someone’s mindset, and they will leave a review or recommend it to their audience or subscribers.

Write the most valuable post of your career and people who read it will share it with their followers. The compound effect of that can be career-changing. A single post, tweet, book or video can become an unstoppable force for your career. Society rewards generosity. Share what you know with your audience with the sole intention of helping them and give them what they’re looking for (quality content, tools, resources, etc).

Choose to provide value in small doses. Decide to be the person who sees and shares something, every day. It could be in a blog post, a video, a podcast, etc. It can be anything. Don’t hold back and when you are ready to sell your followers a service or product, your true fans won’t hesitate to buy your premium service.

You could even start a 100 days challenge this year and share your best work with the world every day and see what happens or what you could learn. Don’t aim for a massive return on your time.

“What I’ve found is this–after people get to posting #200 or beyond, they uniformly report that they’re glad they did it. Give it a try for three or four months and see what happens…” writes Seth Godin. Don’t even expect to make money from it. Just share the best of what you know. Share yourself boldly into the void. Offer your opinions and perspective. Aim to help someone with the post, even if it’s one person.

You will find your creative voice in the process, get better, find your authentic self, rediscover what you deeply care about, become less anxious about publishing your best content online, learn how to better serve an audience, provide value for others and change your life or career in the process.

The fact is that our greatest successes in life often come from providing immense value for others. This is true in almost every industry. When you focus on helping others succeed your eventual payoff will always be far greater than your investment.

There is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn’t. Those who build lasting success commit to being useful, providing real value, solving everyday problems and helping others get what they want. Seth Godin adds value to his readers every day, and I’m lucky to be able to read them. Value tends to stay with people.

People remember how you changed their perception, lives or careers for years. At some point, they take action, make a connection, recommend your work to their audience for free. The last action is priceless. Is there something you do every day or week that builds an asset for you? Something that creates value for others but belongs to you? Something that makes an asset you own more valuable?

Always remember helping is greater than selling. And long-term success hugely depends on your short-term actions. Your creative work is your most persuasive tool — use it to educate, entertain or inform others.

People Who Have High “Integrative Complexity” Skills Achieve More And Succeed Faster

Those who are willing to embrace diverse skills, experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive

The most successful people in the world are insanely great at recognising and integrating multiple perspectives and possibilities. They consistently get good at reducing their blindspots and gathering smart perspectives (even if they don’t with it) before they make life and career-changing decisions.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an American essayist, and novelist — best known for The Great Gatsby once said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Integrative Complexity skill is the basic foundation for better decision making and good judgement. “The measure of integrative complexity has two components: differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to the perception of different dimensions when considering an issue. Integration refers to the recognition of cognitive connections among differentiated dimensions or perspectives.”

In an ever-changing world, this skill is a superpower. If you want to succeed, thrive and become the best version of yourself in our uncertain world in the future hone your integrative complexity skills. At a basic level, integrative complexity is about how you process information. People who have this skill think there is more than one way to look at things.

They successfully create links between disparate things and bring them into a coherent overall resolution. Highly influential business leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk have this skill in common.

What successful icons have in common

In his book, Principles, self-made billionaire Ray Dalio, writes that he performed comprehensive personality assessments on Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and other “shapers,” or people who shape society and found an interesting skill among them. “All are able to see both big pictures and granular details (and levels in between) and synthesize the perspectives they gain at those different levels, whereas most people see just one or the other. They are simultaneously creative, systematic, and practical. They are assertive and open-minded at the same time,” he writes.

Successful people tend to find patterns in places people ignore. They can be wildly creative or innovative yet highly organized with intense attention to detail and precision.

Solving problems better means actively looking for patterns in ideas and innovative products and finding similarities that link contrasting concepts rather than differences.

Leonardo da Vinci’s observation that “everything connects” informed most of his work. He didn’t differentiate so much between subjects because he believed that they were all inter-related.

Michael J. Gelb explains Leonardo’s life and career principles in his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day:

“The Seven Da Vincian Principles are: Curiosità — An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning. Dimostrazione — A commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Sensazione — The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience. Sfumato (literally “Going up in Smoke”) — A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty. Arte/Scienza — The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination. “Whole-brain” thinking. Corporalità — The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise. Connessione — A recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.”

Making connections between seemingly unimportant things is perhaps one of the most crucial skills you can ever master to stay ahead in life and career.

“There’s the classic example of Steve Jobs taking classes on typefaces — there was no plan on how he was going to use that, but it became really smart for his design aesthetic,” writes Deena Varshavskaya, CEO of Wanelo.

Integrative complexity skill is like a muscle — you can develop it.

To build it, you must actively place yourself in situations that allow you to dig deeper to understand new concepts, principles and ideas to improve your life and career. You could start with one small area to open up to new ideas, and then gradually include more areas of your life. It’s like having a mental map of how things should or must be done— yet being open for improvement, new approaches and mental models.

Roger Martin, the author of The Opposable Mind, calls it “integrative thinking,”. In his book, he defines this way of thinking as:

“The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.”

To improve your “integrative complexity” skills, push yourself to see everything else left to be seen outside your domain. Expose yourself to industries that get your attention. Open yourself up to the universe, which will create endless possibilities for you.

Integrative Complexity thinking is a “habit of thought” that all of us can consciously develop to arrive at solutions that would otherwise not be evident. To thrive in our uncertain world, train your brain to question everything, experiment boldly, and always question the obvious.

Your drive to learn, explore and question the obvious should have the same status as your drive to survive. Integrative complexity skills are the key to your survival in the future. Don’t get tied into rigid rules and narrow prejudices. Be both humble and intelligent — willing to ask questions and satisfy your curiosity. Your future depends on it.

Success is a Direct Result Your Relationship With Time

Investing your time wisely is the only way to greatness

Time is money is meant to spur us to action — to rethink how we spend, save and invest time. Most people have a bad relationship with time. They don’t value it enough to leverage it for massive results in the future. Unlike money, once you spend time, you can’t get more of it. The good news is, we can be thoughtful about how to manage the limited time we have.

We all agree that time is more valuable than money. “Time is not a means to keep or prove your worth in the world, but a means to experience the richness of all that is,” says Elizabeth Grace Saunders, a time management coach and the author of The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment.

There are 168 hours every week. And you have an average of 2,400 minutes to yourself each week. That is a monumental amount of time.

Where could it possibly go? Or better still, how are you spending all those hours? A lot can be achieved in a day or week if you know how you spend or invest your time.

Investing time means that you spend time in ways that will, in the future, lead to multifold returns. When you value time, you convert it into greatness by investing, saving, and spending it wisely.

You can invest quality time in learning a new skill, a better tool that saves you time, healthy routines that protect your mind and body, building better relationships with the people you love, financial tools that can build wealth, great books or passion projects that bring out the best in you. “Investments in the invisible assets of character, knowledge, relationships, and reputation pay better interest rates than any bank that has ever existed,” argues Grace Saunders.

Are you wasting, spending, or investing your time?

Every human being is either wasting time, spending time or investing time. Successful people and high achievers spend a greater percentage of their time on activities and tasks that add value to their lives. They invest in activities that have a long-term payoff in greater knowledge and wealth. As a result, they may achieve more in less time, do more in less time and achieve massive success over the course of their lives.

“Warren Buffett once wisely said, “The rich invest in time; the poor invest in money.” When you invest your time, you are investing your life.

To set yourself up for massive success in 2021, start reviewing your daily routine. You cannot invest your time or spend it wisely if you don’t know how you are spending it.

It’s important to look at everything you do on a regular basis and ask yourself if that really makes your life better?

Track your daily activities for some time to clearly see where your time is being spent. Meetings, phone calls, emails, notifications, small chats, and many other distractions are constantly splitting your attention.

Record ALL your appointments, deadlines, and everything in-between. Analyse the actual time you spend on each activity with what you think is the best amount for each.

Schedule the heck out of your days. Schedule everything in advance.

Make a plan and know what’s going on each day. This helps you figure out how you’re spending your time. Notice where time leaks, then declutter your routine.

Revisit your schedule regularly. Check-in with yourself weekly to see if your schedule reflects what you want it to. You can only do great work if you have adequate quality time to do it. If you don’t own the vast majority of your own time, it’s impossible to achieve your goals. Cut back on everything that brings little or no value to your life.

The easiest way to get back huge chunks of time is to eliminate pointless activities from your life. Limit the time you spend on the internet and smartphones. Review and reduce your commitments. Question all your obligations. Start owning your time and create room in your life. Some breathing space. Some time for what’s most important — your important work, and the things that you love.

Your time is your most valuable resource, even more so than money. Budget time carefully — as carefully as you would money. If 80% of your results will come from 20% of your time, imagine if you got it so right, that you only needed to work that 20%.

Protect your time like a valuable investment.

Owning your time is about knowing what you want and using the time you have productively to get what you want. I hope this helps you to start managing your relationship with time in a healthy way.

Waiting For Your Big Break is The Worst Way to Succeed

Waiting to be discovered or handpicked is holding you back

Most people are waiting for a big break — the day, week, month or year everything falls into place. They live with the stubborn illusion that one day they will make it big without embracing the real work. It’s the worst way to live or aim for success. Waiting for the next big break in your career is probably holding you back. The best way to succeed is to embrace the work ahead and proactively plan the steps and actions you need to get closer to the life you want. Napoleon Hill once said, “Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.” Consistent steps beat one giant leap.  Success is the result of consistent actions and small wins. Even when someone looks like an overnight success, there’s always a lot of work behind them. Stop waiting for permission or approval. The longer you wait, the more deeply embedded you get in your current lifestyle. Your habits solidify. Your beliefs harden. You get comfortable and lazy. “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction, ” says John F. Kennedy.

Waiting for anything outside of yourself to validate your art, your dream, your talent, or your worthiness is an illusion that will leave you empty. “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it,” says Jordan Belfort.

Once you acknowledge this, you will embrace the action habit and you will do everything in your power every day to get closer to your goals or dreams.

There is never a perfect time for you to launch that side project, to write a book, change your habit, or embrace a new habit. There is no ideal time to do anything you care about. So do it now. “We often avoid taking action because we think “I need to learn more,” but the best way to learn is often by taking action, says James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.

The results of action is an incredible feedback loop you can use to get better, improve, make smarter decisions and do more of what works.

You can only get better at anything with experience. And you can only gather experience if you stop waiting for a big break to change your life.

The 100th post as a writer will be better than the 1st. Taking action accelerates progress better than waiting to be chosen. More action = more feedback = ability to make real progress faster. When you take your work and consistent action seriously right from the beginning, you will be ready for every opportunity in the future.

“Opportunities come — either by putting ourselves in the right place at the right time or simply by sticking around long enough. But good opportunities lead to great work when we make the most of them,” says Jeff Goins.

Many people are so busy scanning for big opportunities that they don’t start tackling the small actions that would add up to huge accomplishments. Everything takes practice. The more you work at it, the more opportunities you get to do your best work.

If you are serious about success, stop waiting to be discovered. Get started with small but consistent actions. Those steps will eventually get you somewhere awesome. Don’t wait for something good to happen to you. Don’t waste your productive energy on getting “discovered” or “handpicked.” The only thing that’s guaranteed is the work — focusing on that will get you closer to breakthroughs. Choose yourself, share your authentic work with the world, keep building your audience, take control of your career, and make good things happen for you. The long road to “success” is not a giant leap.

And always remember, the lessons, connections, strength, and confidence you acquire through incremental growth are what make the journey worthwhile.

Your job is to show up every day and work consistently and good enough that it’s worth noticing, sharing and recommending. Great things grow over time like a healthy financial portfolio. Give it time and compounding will take effect. Don’t wait for your big break.

Lessons From Successful People Can Deliver More Value Than 1,000 Hours of Hard Work

Immerse yourself in extraordinary lives

Many successful people are pathfinders. They inspire millions of people to muster courage and strength to go after their dreams. Successful people raise the standards of human achievement. We can learn a lot from them to write our stories of excellence.

The right lessons for your unique experience can save you time, money and deliver more value than 1000 hours of hard work. Highly successful have no obligation to tell us their secrets, techniques and smart choices but it’s surprising how much they share in books, documentaries, autobiographies, courses, AMA’s and interviews.

Since I fully committed to writing and online publishing ten years ago, I’ve been seeking out, reading great books and learning how to become a better version of myself. Seth Godin has been a great inspiration for me. Outside writing, I’m still learning how to live, how to learn, how to prepare for the future and how to build wealth. In the past year alone, I’ve ordered dozens of books to learn from top performers, high achievers and experts in diverse industries.

I’m currently reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics and both Leonardo Da Vinci and Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. It’s always wise to listen to the insights of those who have achieved what you want to achieve and apply their specific lessons to your circumstances.

They’ve been where you are now — they’ve faced similar challenges and overcome the same fears that might keep you awake at night. They’ve gained extremely valuable insights by forging their own paths. By all means, pursue your own true north but it pays to learn from those who have successfully embarked on the same journey.

When you open yourself to insights and lessons from successful people, you are choosing to actively invest in your growth. Even top performers and great achievers are constantly learning. Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist agrees. He once said, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.” “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero,” says Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner.

Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother. Bill Gates reads 50 books per year. Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks.

Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Buffett has invested 80% of his time in reading and thinking throughout his career. According to an HBR article, “Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow.”

To succeed in anything you put your mind to, become a perpetual learner. Don’t stop because you’ve arrived. Keep learning because it’s the only way to stay ahead, reinvent yourself and become a better version of yourself. Lessons and insight from high achievers, can help you leverage your strengths, confront your limitations, seek better opportunities, identify patterns, and push your expertise further despite the failures of the process. To get good at something, invest in yourself in partnership with other experts. Seek better knowledge on your way to the top. Today, right now, applied and practical knowledge is one of the most powerful resources for building wealth and living a fulfilling life.

Immerse yourself in extraordinary lives. Learning from successful people can help you overcome inevitable barriers in the future. To maximise your chances for success in life and career, take some time to learn from people who’re already ahead of you.

There’s nothing more valuable than picking the brain of someone who’s living your desired life. When you are in the process of becoming the best version of yourself, immerse yourself in extraordinary lives and stories of highly successful people.

Warren Buffet had mentors, teachers and other smart colleagues that helped him develop his smart investing style over time.

People like Benjamin Graham, David Dodd and Phil Fisher helped him develop the best investing rules necessary to build his empire. Buffett often describes his investing principles as 15% Fisher and 85% Benjamin Graham. Elon Musk has dominated online payments, rocket flight, electric car manufacturing, and a host of other industries. He credits most of his successes to self-directed learning.

His expertise ranges from rocket science, engineering, physics, and artificial intelligence to solar power and energy. He is an expert-generalist who is also good at applying what he learns immediately. That’s how he has built his industry-changing businesses. He reads to lead. “You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there,” Elon Musk once said.

In his book, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future, Ashlee Vance says: “It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. I don’t want to be the person who ever has to compete with Elon. You might as well leave the business and find something else fun to do. He will outmaneuver you, outthink you, and out-execute you.”

A greater percentage of self-made millionaires read biographies. Thomas Corley, author of Rich Habits backs this up with research. “I found one set of data points very interesting: 68% of the 177 self-made millionaires in my study read biographies of other successful people, while 91% of “poor” people — those with less than $35,000 in annual gross income and less than $5,000 in liquid assets — did not read biographies of other successful people.”

There’s a reason the most successful turn to biographies — guidance, insights and lessons. It’s having access to a mentor for less than $50. Wealth and great careers are built on processes, experiments, mistakes, and failures. Minimizing failure and succeeding faster means figuring out what works faster, better and creates wealth faster.

“Between showing us what’s possible and how past breakthroughs have happened, biographies can help us see how greatness thinks — in a way that textbooks often don’t,” writes Shane Snow, the author of Smartcuts. Whether you seek greatness or wisdom in any area of life, success and failure stories can help you learn from those who have attained astonishing heights in life and career. You never know what kind of inspiration you’ll draw from their stories. By all means, make time to dive into the amazing stories out there. The knowledge and experience of great minds can deliver more value than learning hard lessons by yourself.

The Essentialist Mindset: Doing Less, But Better

Success is built systematically. It’s one thing at a time

Many of us work in an endless stream of tasks, emails, notifications, and meetings — never pausing and never-ending. Pursuing more and more every day without making time for what’s working and what’s a waste of time.

When you don’t purposely and deliberately choose where to focus your energy and time, other people will choose for you, and before long you’ll have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important to you.

You can either make deliberate choices daily or allow other people’s agendas to control what you do! When you forget your ability to choose, you become helpless and end up becoming a function of other people’s choices. You practically give others not just the power but the permission to choose for you. Don’t surrender your power to choose what gets listed on your to-d0 list for the day week or month.

Remember the 80/20 rule

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pareto principle, known also as the 80/20 rule: focus on the few things that get you the most benefit. The principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. You probably have too much thrown at you at once every work day, and you’re too busy juggling everything coming at you to take a minute and evaluate what’s essential, what’s urgent, what you can delegate and everything else that’s a waste of your most important asset. When you force yourself to focus on essential tasks that have a large Return on Investment (ROI), you will be more productive, achieve more and simplify your life in the process.

To effectively pursue less and achieve more, use the MITs rule: Choose three Most Important Tasks for each day, and focus completely on getting them done within a specific time. Any more than that and you might not get them all done.

Achievement is a huge motivator. Progress will keep you going when you stop pursuing more. By restricting yourself to a small number of things, you force yourself to focus only on the essential. Make your to-do list short. Call it a “success list”, says Gary Keller, author “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results”. Gary explains: “Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success. Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list — a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results. To-do lists tend to be long; success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; the other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn’t built around success, then that’s not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.”

Less is more: successful people work from a clear sense of priority. The key to focusing on the essentials in life and at work is to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.

In “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” Greg McKeown writes: “The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage.

In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.” When you are doing too much at a time, you are constantly switching from one task to another, constantly interrupted, constantly distracted. Do less, clear away distractions, single-task, and get more done. When you do too much, your work is spread thinner, you have lower quality, and people won’t spread your work like they should. By doing less, you can create something remarkable. Something incredible worth sharing. Start today — pick what you think is most essential, clear some space, and just work on your most important measurable and attainable goals. Extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous.

It takes courage:

To do less.

To be disciplined.

To single-task.

To stop multitasking.

To slowly cut back on non-essential commitments.

To schedule fewer meetings.

To say no to requests.

To cut out notifications.

To set limits on how many things you do each day.

To focus on the most important tasks first.

To set limits on your work hours.

To focus on the things that make the highest impact, and drop everything else.

But you can do this slowly, over time, and consciously. The result is you’ll have more room in your life for other things. You’ll be more effective with your time. And you’ll be less stressed out. You don’t have too little time to do all the things you need to do. The problem is, you FEEL the need to do too many things in the time you have. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. Life can really be better with less, if what’s left is what you love doing.

The Trait That Takes You From Average to Spectacular is Not Your IQ

The making of an expert

You are unique, and so is everyone else. Success means a lot to every person. It’s a weighted combination of power, status, money, family, and work. You can define success in your own terms, because what brings you fulfillment and meaning is not the same for everyone. People pursue success for different reasons. The fortunate few with a high IQ advantage may find it easy to pursue specific careers in life. And what could take you twice as long to learn and achieve will be an easy pursuit for them.

Deliberate, purposeful and systematic practice have a lot more to do with your success than you think. Talent is overrated. Thousands of hours of hard work can compensate for what you think is a weakness. You can master any skill if you put your mind to it and commit to relentless practice.

In Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin argues that deliberate, methodical, and sustained practice is the way to achieve true mastery. “Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works. More of it equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance,” Colvin writes. You could argue that a set of genes give rise to some particular skill and that Einstein had the physics gene and Mozart had the symphony gene. But guess what? Even those with some kind of talent have to work hard to reach the peak of their selected careers. Einstein and Mozart had to work damn hard to achieve greatness. Mozart once wrote to a friend: “People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.” You can easily attribute insane success to talent. But the ability to keep plugging away despite any setbacks or failures can significantly improve your odds of succeeding at any skill you choose to master. Researcher Dr. K. Anders Ericsson of the University of Stockholm has found that talent is really about deliberate practice. The mix of passion, perseverance, and self-discipline that keeps you moving forward in spite of obstacles can contribute to your success more than your IQ. Your ability to stick with and pursue any goal over a long period of time is an important indicator of achieving anything worthwhile in your life and career.

In an article on LinkedIn, Daniel Goleman, the author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, argues that the trait that takes you from average to spectacular comes from your measure of cognitive control, not your IQ. “The abilities that set stars apart from the average at work cover the emotional intelligence spectrum: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social effectiveness,” says Daniel.

He references studies from the University of Pennsylvania to exemplify the importance of these skills: The students who earned the highest grades weren’t necessarily the ones with the highest IQs, but rather those who kept trying despite setbacks and failures. These studies suggest that one of the most crucial skills you need to succeed is having a talent for working hard. The ability to persevere and maintain goal-focused effort for extended periods is important for your success.

The good news is, you can cultivate the perseverance and mental toughness success requires. Your response to a challenging situation is more important than the obstacles you face, hence the need to develop powerful motivation to help you achieve your goals. Tenacity matters more than talent.

You Don’t Have to be a Morning Person to be Successful

Tap your energy cycle to boost your productivity

New research, published in Nature Communications, confirms that if you struggle to be a morning person, it’s not anything you’re doing wrong — it all comes down to your genes. The authors linked more than 300 genes to your inability to be active in the morning. In other words, there are many reasons you can’t feel more productive in the evening if you are a morning person, or on the contrary, get up very early, and there isn’t much you can do about it, because it’s all genetically predefined. “The genes we found to be related to our circadian rhythms tend to be switched on a lot more in the brain and in the retina,” says Michael Weedon, an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics at the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the study. “This helps us map what parts of the body are important in creating morning and evening people, ” he added.

Being a morning (or evening ) person is a behavioural indicator of your underlying circadian rhythm. The bad news is, if we try to live out of sync with these biological clocks, our health likely suffers. The mismatch between internal time and real-world time has been linked to heart disease, obesity, and depression.

Society favours early risers. Many successful people have been promoting getting up early and working at the crack of dawn, but it’s more important to recognize what works for you and optimize your workflow accordingly.

Myth: early riser = more productive

More hours do not equal more/better work. Waking up at an unnatural time for you can cause sleep deprivation if your body can’t handle it. When you are tired, you lose productivity. You become more irritable and are less functional. For those that are biologically predetermined early risers, waking up at 5 AM may be natural and helpful.

However, for those on a different body cycle, trying to change it, could make you unproductive. In the long-term, it could negatively disrupt your biological sleep cycle and decrease happiness — without making you more efficient or giving anything truly valuable in return. Rising early can be great when it works for you. Some early risers might get more done, but it turns out there are times when getting up earlier can make you less productive. Your circadian rhythm control your daily schedule for sleep and wakefulness

But here is the thing: Everyone has different peak hours. And our biological clocks are different. Your body clock, or circadian rhythm, governs how your body is in sync with all of life.

Your rhythm is different from mine. And what works for Tim Ferris may not necessarily work for you. “If people are left to their naturally preferred times, they feel much better. They say that they are much more productive. The mental capacity they have is much broader,” says Oxford University biologist Katharina Wulff, who studies chronobiology and sleep.

The best productivity hack is just listening to your own body and working with it, not against it. Brian Tracy calls this your prime time. “Your internal prime time is the time of day, according to your body clock, when you are the most alert and productive.”

The single most important productivity advice you need to follow is this: Match your highest priority work to your most productive hours.

The basic idea here is to track your energy, motivation and focus to get a sense of when, where, and how you’re the most productive. Yulia Yaganova recommends at least a three-week experiment where you rate your energy, focus and motivation at the end of every hour, using a scale from one to 10 to find out your peak times.

The growing body of research on ultradian rhythms suggests that our day is driven by cycles that affect how alert and productive we are. The results of this research clearly show that the human body goes through cycles of between 90 and 120 minutes.

Through each of these cycles we are taken from an unproductive trough to a productive peak, and then back again.

This pattern was first noticed by sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman, which caused a mountain of research to be conducted in this area. Another study published in Thinking & Reasoning found out that we tend to think more creatively when we’re tired. A study by Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks suggested that innovation and creativity are often the greatest in moments of fatigue, based on our circadian rhythms.

Fatigue and tiredness have been shown to free up thinking along non-linear paths, leading us to find new solutions to existing problems. So your body’s internal body clock is the best clue to how productive you can be. Star and stick to a routine that brings out the best in you!

Tap your energy cycle to boost your productivity.  Our body clock is a small group of cells made up of unique ‘body clock’ genes. These cells turn on and off and tell other parts of the body what time it is and what to do.A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific tasks. At the beginning of the cycle, we experience heightened energy and focus, and at the end, we may feel scatterbrained and fatigued.

For many people working in the AM feels effortless, but PM’s are always a struggle. If you take note of how your body reacts to work at any time of day, you will be able to figure out when you should focus on getting stuff done, when to brainstorm, and most importantly when you should avoid meetings. When the body’s master clock can synchronize functioning of all its metabolic, cardiovascular and behavioural rhythms in response to light and other natural stimuli, it “gives us an edge in daily life,” says Steve Kay, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the University of Southern California.

Peak productivity, it seems, happens at the same time during your workday, no matter where you are in the world. A two-year global study conducted by project management software company Redbooth found that productivity among office workers worldwide is at its highest point at 11 a.m., and plummets completely after 4 p.m.

John Trougakos, an associate professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto in Canada, says the reason we’re most productive in the morning is down to circadian rhythms, or our internal body clock, which tells our bodies when to get up, eat, and sleep throughout 24-hour cycles.

According to Trougakos, about 75% of people tend to be most mentally alert between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. And a survey that looked into the habits of 2,000 UK workers seems to agree with Trougakos’ research, showing Tuesday morning as the most productive time for Brits. The findings “are consistent with the considerable research on the ebbs and flows of mental acuity,” says Don Drummond, economist and adjunct professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Perhaps it’s no surprise that we get the least amount of work done on a Friday, with Redbooth’s survey showing a 20% drop in productivity across the globe. Sleepiness also tends to peak around 2 p.m., making that a good time for a nap, says Martin Moore-Ede, chairman and chief executive of Circadian, a Stoneham, Mass., training and consulting firm.

To get a little more precise and make sure you’re really matching your best work to your peak times, try experimenting. Tackle complex projects early in the day, make time for brainstorming, meetings and collaboration in the afternoon.

Most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4 p.m., according to recent research led by Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University. But guess what, surprisingly, fatigue boosts creative powers. Problems that require open-ended thinking are often best tackled in the evening when you are tired, according to a study in the journal Thinking & Reasoning. People who work with instead of against their ultradian rhythm perform better. It’s critical that you acknowledge your body’s natural rhythms and align your periods of work and relaxation with them to work in a sustainable productive way. It requires a lot of research on yourself and a big-time commitment upfront, but the personal productivity insights you’ll get out of it can pay off in the long-run.

Experiment for better cycle insights and work to your strengths.

1. Pick a day and start tracking how you spend it.

2. Eliminate any factors that could mess with your energy — changes in caffeine intake is a big one, staying up late is another.

3. Start recording what you’re accomplishing once an hour. Rate your energy level, motivation, and focus every day.

4. Chris Bailey, author of “The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy”, took a year off to experiment with productivity.

He suggests recording scores for focus, energy, and motivation for three weeks, at the same time each day, to find your sweet spot. The longer you track your productivity, the more reliable your insights will be.

You will see trends even after one week of tracking, but the more data you gather, the more reliable your trends will be.

5. Take a few minutes each day to reflect on your previous day/week. Do you notice any patterns? When are you most focused? When do you notice a surge or dip in energy?

What times do you reach for coffee in the day? These patterns can reveal when you’re at your best and when you should take a break to refresh.

6. Write down how you spend your minutes and keep notes on how you felt. Be honest. Sometimes you can identify that you feel “on a roll,” which is a good sign that you’re figuring out something about your productivity.

7. The exact details that you record may vary, but to get the most accurate results you’ll need to be as consistent as possible.

Patterns will show themselves if you start tracking it. Time and activity tracking software like Rescue Time and Toggl can be a big help here.

8. You’re bound to discover some very interesting things about what drives your productivity. If you can diligently track all three weeks, you’ll come out the other side a productivity superhero.

9. Try a combination of things during this process, including waking up an hour earlier, meditating, exercise, and taking longer breaks to find out if they affect your peak times. Do more of what works. The variables you choose to alter are countless. Have fun with it!

10. Once you figure out your most productive time of day, rearrange your tasks and put your important, high-concentration tasks in periods where you’re highly productive and place less important, low-concentration tasks in periods where you’re not very productive.

I did this experiment for three months. I started this practice because I discovered my energy and capacity for deep work diminish after 2 pm. My energy levels quickly spike in the morning, gradually dips after intense focused work.

Don’t limit yourself to a single productivity rule. Experiment and find out what works for you, and give you the greatest return for your time, energy, and attention.

Productivity tools and techniques need to be custom fit not only to you but also to your situation. It’s okay to skip conventional productivity wisdom if something else works better for you.

Getting proper sleep is more important than religiously waking up at the crack of dawn if you can’t make the most of it. Giving yourself an extra hour in the day isn’t enough, it’s what you do with it that matters. You can get things done if you start your day on purpose and plan well in advance, but being an early bird is not for everyone. And, if you are more productive at a late hour, that should be your priority. You don’t have to be a morning person to be successful or productive.

The WOOP Method: A Simple Tool For Achieving Any Goal

Wish. Outcome. Obstacle. Plan

Many people have no problem naming their goals. They know the few things they desperately want to accomplish in life. But they just can’t get themselves to achieve them in a reasonable time. Life gets in the way of their important goals — and they make a litany of excuses for why those goals can’t be checked off their lists.

In the end, they interrupt their best intentions and sabotage their goals.

Ambitious goals are inspiring, but without an attainable action plan, you are setting yourself up for failure. Many people understand the importance of creating goals, systems, and habits to make it in life but they can’t find the motivation to get started or finish what they start.

Research shows that 92% of people don’t achieve their goals. It doesn’t surprise me that only 8% of people actually achieve their goals. Why do so many people fail to accomplish their goals, and what are the secrets behind those who succeed? Lack of clarity, commitment, focus and confidence are a few of the things that stand in their way. Many people want to transform their lives — they want to save more money, invest a percentage of their income, lose weight, start a passion project, commit to a writing schedule, etc., but their current routine has become a stumbling block. They can’t get past their excuses.

Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg, one the world’s leading authorities on motivation author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation has found a few things that don’t help us achieve our goals. She says visualising our goals or positive thinking alone is actually counterproductive. “Positive fantasies and daydreams, as pleasurable they are, they have a problem when it comes to fulfilling our wishes and attaining our goals,” she says. Oettingen argues that visualization fools our brains into believing we’ve already achieved the success we seek. The result: we feel happy and more relaxed and don’t push ourselves to achieve our goals.

She has found out that we are more likely to reach our goals if we take a realistic approach by thinking about what might stop us along the way. Building on over 20 years of motivation research, Oettingen and her team developed a powerful four-stage process known as Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan or WOOP to help people achieve their goals — rather than plans they’d really like to achieve but never do.

WOOP stands for:

W — Specifying a wish

O — Identifying an outcome

O — Specifying obstacles

P — Forming a plan for overcoming each obstacle

“WOOP is a science-based mental strategy that people can use to find and fulfil their wishes, set preferences, and change their habits,” writes the team. It’s a systematic way to increase motivation and change behaviour. “WOOP is like a Swiss Army knife,” says Gabriele Oettingen. “Without us realizing it, the future is connected to the obstacle and the obstacle is linked to the behaviour to overcome the obstacle,” Oettingen explains.

How to WOOP

Step 1: W/Wish

What do you want to achieve? Make it exciting but realistic. Think about something feasible in your life you want to work toward — do you want to write start a business? start an exercise habit? Write a book? It can be anything but it should be measurable and attainable. Summarise that wish in a few words.

Step 2: O/Outcome

What’s the biggest benefit you could receive? What would be the very best outcome of this? Take some time to deeply imagine, see, and feel what it would be like to attain the best possible outcome.

Step 3: O/Obstacles

What will get in the way of reaching the outcome? Thoughts, feelings, irrational beliefs, old behaviour patterns and bad habits are a few of the things that can stand in the way of your wish and outcome. Remember, you’re searching for internal obstacles.

Steps 2 and 3 together can provide you with the motivation needed to accomplish your goal. However, motivation alone is not enough to get to where you want. Identify your obstacles and everything that can prevent you from achieving your goals.

Step 4: P/Plan

Finally, create a plan to overcome the obstacles you identified in step 3.

Create an if-then plan: if [the obstacle] occurs, then I will [take my chosen action]. This is also known as implementation intentions. Example, if your schedule makes it impossible to find time for your passion project, then take a lot at it again, make time and add your new habit.

If your obstacle is getting distracted by notifications when you are trying to get things done, then turn off the notifications or turn off the phone.

If you wish to write on Medium every day, but your obstacle is procrastination, then set a specific time daily to write and commit to it.

Think of an if-then plan that connects your own inner obstacle with your chosen action.

In order to successfully use WOOP, learn to follow the process. According to Gabriele Oettingen, it is important to follow the sequence of the steps: “If you first imagine the obstacle and then the result, the method will no longer work.” Achieving any goal is a process. Using WOOP can help you learn more about what you want, your internal and even external obstacles and how to overcome them. It’s a simple but great strategy you can use to do more, accomplish goals and get things done. It’s more effective than relying on willpower alone.

Past Success Often Cause Confidence to Rise Faster Than Ability

The moment your past becomes bigger than your future, you seize to grow

Complacency is one of the biggest enemies of success — it has derailed many careers and businesses than we can ever imagine. Past success is more than capable of limiting future growth — unless you are constantly looking for new ways to improve yourself or skills. If you assume that your new status will remain for a very long time, you are setting yourself up for immediate failure. When you experience success, we can easily lose sight of your basic values and principles. With success comes confidence, and that is probably the most dangerous obstacle to your next step or breakthrough. Success often requires a combination of skills. Growing past your achievements requires a different kind of skills, discipline and mindset. The more convinced you are that you’re doing it right or know everything you need to keep making it, the less open you are to embrace new ideas. Success can be an expensive disease because it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

“The world is now changing far too fast to get over-attached to anything you’ve done or anyone you’ve been. Don’t ever be the former anything. Be willing to reinvent yourself over and over,” says Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist and the author of Willpower Doesn’t Work.

Successful people do more to keep what they have. Sometimes they master both the skills needed to maintain their success and new ideas to keep their eyes on the important things. “Everything in the economy is cyclical. Nothing great or terrible is likely to stay that way for long, because the same forces that cause things to be great or terrible also plant the seeds to push them the other way” argues Morgan Housel, a partner at Collaborative Fund and the author of The Psychology of Money.

“People and companies, whose behaviours are changed by their own success, are vulnerable to the same cycles,” he adds.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results

When you become successful, give yourself permission to let go of what you’ve recently achieved and continue to aim for growth instead of holding on to the new confidence you’ve gained. After every success, you have no control over whether what you make next will be successful, so it pays to give it the same commitment as your recently successful work. You do have control over whether or not you will allow it to cloud your growing experience. Always focus on growth instead of success.

The best way to prevent your personal sabotage is to continue to grow in skills and knowledge. Keeping success and getting better requires that you focus on daily growth or life long learning — the daily habit of improving yourself and mental models.

And don’t forget to accept the role of luck — its far greater than we realise. Whatever you have recently achieved, try to not fall in the trap of attributing your success to skills and hard work only. An element of luck plays a role in many success stories — it can be connecting with the right person at the right time, receiving unexpected support or stumbling upon a valuable piece of information.

As Nassim Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness, “Mild success can be explainable by skills and labour. Wild success is attributable to variance.” Successful people who have survived financial crises and inevitable economic changes over time challenge themselves, learn from their multiple perspectives, reinvent themselves and their skills. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach once said, “The moment you have arrived is the perfect time to start out again.” The world is continually changing.

The road to success is riddled with many obstacles. Your past success is a common and overlooked one. Whatever you have achieved, don’t consider yourself to have made it and don’t be too quick to see yourself as an expert in anything.

Instead, become blind to everything that is behind you and push your way forward relentlessly to become the best version of yourself. Stay hungry, and be open to new opportunities to grow. You are not your success. Keep evolving. Think about the successes in your life and career. Are still reinventing yourself or growing in false confidence? Don’t allow your past successes to stand in the way of your next one. Don’t rely on past glory for future success.

The Secrets to Warren Buffett’s Incredible Wealth

The most powerful force in the universe

I want to tell you about a bookI find very useful. It’s not just any book — it’s Morgan Housel’s new book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. The reason I want to tell you about this book is because of this quote I read in it that I’m still pondering. It’s thought-provoking. As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $80 billion. Of that, $19.7 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $70 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him.Consider a little thought experiment.Buffett began serious investing when he was 10 years old. By the time he was 30 he had a net worth of $1 million, or $9.3 million adjusted for inflation.What if he was a more normal person, spending his teens and 20s exploring the world and finding his passion, and by age 30 his net worth was, say, $25,000?And let’s say he still went on to earn the extraordinary annual investment returns he’s been able to generate (22% annually), but quit investing and retired at age 60 to play golf and spend time with his grandkids.What would a rough estimate of his net worth be today?Not $80 billion.$11.9 million.99.9% less than his actual net worth.Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years.His skill is investing, but his secret is time.That’s how compounding works.

I am a huge fan of the compounding effect. It’s one of the most powerful forces in the universe. One of the best things you can do your life and is to understand the logic of compound — the exponential increase in the value of an asset over time. Gary Foreman from The Dollar Stretcher wrote, “What is compound interest? It’s interest earning interest.” In other words, a small action repeated over time can make a huge difference in your life, career, relationship and finance. The great Albert Einstein once said: “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” Most people want radical change, now. Real growth and progress doesn’t work like that. It takes time, patience and consistency. Warren Buffett has been stressing the the importance of compounding for over six decades — it’s made him billions. “I always knew I was going to be rich, so I was never in a hurry to”, Buffett once said.

If you’re serious about living an extraordinary life, you can use the compounding principle to your advantage to improve every area of your life. Those small daily actions add up — they count. Deliberate actions performed daily for weeks, months, years and decades changes everything. Morgan’s book is full of personal money nuggets of deep wisdom.

Successful People Have Rules For Themselves That They Take Very Seriously

Your quality of life can improve when you set clear and results-oriented rules for how you live

Rules apply in almost all areas of life. Over the course of your life, you’ve learned from personal experiences, your family, smart friends, colleagues, authors, people you admire. At this point in your life, you probably have certain key “nuggets” of wisdom that you hold on to — rules, values, morals, ethics, and principles that increase your chances of success in life. Those are your personal life rules.

“Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behaviour that gets you what you want out of life,” writes investor Ray Dalio in his bestselling book, Principles. These are some of the principles that shape and guide my life as I pursue the life I want and the best version of myself:

● Life is an endless series of experiments and learning opportunities.

● Question existing perceptions, assumptions, principles at all times

● Read for at least an hour a day — grow 1% every day.

● Work on high-value tasks first thing in the morning

● Spend the last 30 minutes of each workday planning for the next day.

● Invest at least 5% of income in low-cost index funds

● Turn off all notifications that distract “focus mode”.

● Exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes each time.

These are rules, not goals. Rules are about taking action. The right rules can help you achieve your goals — and through the process, you become the best version of yourself. Rules can help you build better habits. The most successful investors, entrepreneurs, athletes, charismatic leaders, and global influencers take their personal rules very seriously. They’ve learned over the years what works or feeds their purpose and what doesn’t. And they keep learning and improving their principles in life.

Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist once said, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.”

Warren Buffet built his personal investing principles over the years.

He had mentors, teachers and other smart colleagues that helped him develop his smart investing style over time.

People like Benjamin Graham, David Dodd and Phil Fisher helped him develop the best investing rules necessary to build his empire. Buffett often describes his investing principles as 15% Fisher and 85% Benjamin Graham. Buffett once said, “A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” Buffet reads to invest. “Rule №1: Never lose money. Rule №2: Never forget rule №1,” is one of his investment rules. Successful investors tend to hold themselves to certain rules about money. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey and many other successful people also set aside at least one hour a day for deliberate learning. Elon Musk values self-directed learning. He is a polymath and learns beyond his industry. He reads to lead.

“You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there,” Elon Musk once said. In the course of his career, Elon Musk has dominated online payments, rocket flight, electric car manufacturing, and a host of other industries.

In a conversation on Reddit, Musk discussed his approach to learning and the structure he uses as such: “One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” If you are constantly finding ways to feed your mind to become a better writer, investor or entrepreneur, learning is likely one of your important personal values or rules. Jeff Bezos understands that failure is feedback when you have a big vision to achieve. He has used this principle to launch dozens of projects.

When he sets his mind on a project, two things can happen: he either achieves his desired result or gets feedback. Everything is an experiment in progress.

“You really can’t accomplish anything important if you aren’t stubborn on vision,” Bezos said in 2016. “But you need to be flexible about the details because you gotta be experimental to accomplish anything important, and that means you’re gonna be wrong a lot. You’re gonna try something on your way to that vision, and that’s going to be the wrong thing, you’re gonna have to back up, take a course correction, and try again.”

If you take the time to study the most successful people you know, you will notice a pattern. Wherever they excel, they tend to have personal rules that inform their actions or decision-making process.

“These uncommonly capable people have figured out something that should be obvious: your quality of life improves when you set clear standards for how you live. You gravitate back towards “so-so” in any area where your standards are unclear. It works — both ways — like magic,” writes David Cain of Raptitude.

Clear rules about life and living it, how you work, what you feed your mind and body, how you relate with others, how to build a better career or generally how to become a better version of yourself can increase your odds of success in any field.

Jim Rohn once said: “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.”

You need rules to lead a principles-centred life to get what you want — rules that can be applied, measured and improved. They don’t have to be the same ones, you can add to them as you grow. Keep an open mind about your experiences, lessons and always keep measuring and improving your “nuggets”.“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And always remember to create rules for better and smarter living not to restrict how you live or limit your experiences in life.

What are your life and career rules?

To Succeed in an Uncertain Future, Think Like a Futurist

The art futuring is fast becoming a necessary skill in the new age of uncertainty

Are you prepared for what might happen next month or next year? The future has always been uncertain. Today right now, the future is even more uncertain. We’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty right now. Many people can’t cope — they are stressed and overwhelmed. “Deep uncertainty merits deep questions, and the answers aren’t necessarily tied to a fixed date in the future. Where do you want to have impact? What will it take to achieve success?” writes Amy Webb, a quantitative futurist and professor of strategic foresight at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Futurists plan for the future in a whole new way. They think through multiple scenarios to make sure they are prepared for almost all possible scenarios. They may not know what could happen, but they are proactive about the unknown.

“For any given uncertainty about the future — whether that’s risk, opportunity, or growth — we tend to think in the short- and long-term simultaneously,” says Amy.

Futurists attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present into a future they’ve prepared for.

“At its best, futures thinking is not about predicting the future; rather, it is about engaging people in thinking deeply about complex issues, imagining new possibilities, connecting signals into larger patterns, connecting the past with the present and the future, and making better choices today,” writes Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future We are in the midst of a historical transformation — the art of futuring your life and career is a necessary skill in an extremely uncertain world.

Despite the mass uncertainty we face right now, if you can’t figure out your long-term plan for tomorrow, next month or next year, you will feel stuck, react more to others demands, procrastinate more, and give up sooner when challenged.

Make “futures” thinking a way of life

We are facing huge challenges in the world today, but you can’t thrive, grow or make the most of your life if you approach your present difficulties with short-term thinking.

Futures thinking skill is essential right now to better navigate your life and to make better decisions in the face of so many uncertainties. People who excel at managing the uncertainties of tomorrow think like futurists. John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” Take a moment and envision your life in, say, 2 or 5 years from now. What you’re imagining? Most people focus on a single future. What their life or career could look like if they take certain steps or actions.

Futurists think about multiple futures instead — they open themselves to all kinds of possible scenarios and solutions. Multiple perspectives are at the heart of futures studies — they actively consider alternatives. “The best way to predict your future is to create it, ” says Abraham Lincoln. When you make a smart long-term decision about your future, you are effectively thinking backwards, and getting ready to live the future you want. If your first and best case scenario about your life or career doesn't work out next year, do you have another perspective you can explore?

Futurists have a long term perspective. Thinking like a futurist involves paying attention to what’s changing, what doesn’t change and how to better prepare yourself for what’s next. It means maintaining an open mind and running through various possibilities to find potential outcomes or imagining many possible futures. A good futurist is always learning — for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. Learning new career skills and how to manage your emotions in difficult times can give you an upper hand — it puts you in control of what can disturb your peace of mind.

Robert Anton Wilson argues that “The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want.” Whether you foresee an unknown and difficult future or a bright future because opportunities abound, it’s your responsibility to prepare for both.

“If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely,” says Seth Godin. When you think like a futurist, you can know what’s coming faster — that makes it easy to prepare better for disruptions in life and career. Preparation puts you in control of what might be coming. You can’t predict the future, but you can be better prepared for possible scenarios. With long-term thinking, proactive action, and an open mind, you can still thrive tomorrow and create better experiences for your life and career. Today, right now, think about every possible scenario that could happen in your life in the next year or two and figure out how to best plan for every possible scenario. If you are able to take these steps each day, you will be thinking like a futurist. You will be able to better anticipate and prepare for all possible future scenarios. With a sense of what your farther future might look like, you will be ready to take the best action for your life.

Successful People Don’t Make Sacrifices, They Make Smart Choices

The sacrifice fallacy

Smart work and better choices are two of the most important things that can increase your odds of success — it applies in almost all fields. Nothing spectacular happens without them. There are no shortcuts to lasting success, only smartcuts.

Everyone aspires to be successful. But incredibly successful people don’t give up anything for success — what they do instead of sacrifice is to make better and smart choices. They have options, but they choose what can make them better, bring out the best in them and lead to the achievement of the ultimate goal. They choose freedom over restrictions. “Successful entrepreneurs don’t sacrifice job security to run their own business. They choose freedom over dependency,” writes Michael Mehlberg.

They choose to build something amazing they can be proud of over what may not guarantee fulfilment.

Athletes don’t sacrifice comfort to win gold medals, they choose to pursue something that brings out the best in them over relaxation.

“I never made sacrifices; I made choices”— Greg Seattle, Olympic Gold Medalist.

When faced with the choice, you don’t sacrifice the best option, you choose exactly what you want to make the most of life. “If you think it’s a sacrifice, you shouldn’t do it, says Tony Robbins. Tim Hererra writes in The New York Times, “The people at the top of any given field didn’t get there just by working hard. Yes, hard work is necessary but just as important is being smart about the work you’re doing, and focusing on doing the things that will help you improve.”

Success means a lot to every person. It’s a weighted combination of power, status, money, family, and work. People pursue success for different reasons.

Everything I do is a choice. I choose to spend quality time writing every day. What could I have done differently? I’m not sacrificing fun, holiday or something else that may be superior to doing my best work. I prioritise everything I want accordingly.

You don’t need to sacrifice everything to do the best work. I choose to read every evening instead of spending all that time just watching TV. I’m not sacrificing the best shows or movies. I’m improving my mental models by reading a book.

I choose to spend quality time with the people I care about. I also choose to rest or plan for downtime, I’m not sacrificing work.

Don’t sacrifice —think smart choices and better outcomes

Don’t focus on what you are missing — think about what you are gaining.

“If you change your mindset from” I’m sacrificing something” to “I’m choosing something,” you’re prioritizing your life,” writes Darius Foroux. To make the most of life, don’t focus on what you are missing, don’t think you are sacrificing — think smart choices and better outcomes. To become productive, prioritise what can deliver the best results — the right tools, environment, quality sleep, better diet and amazing physical exercise. Don’t think about sacrifices — focus on what you getting in the process.

Think about the best use of your energy, intellect, and time as you try to seize the most meaningful outcomes with the least wasted effort. Learn to succeed with less stress and struggle. If you are sacrificing sleep to be successful you are doing it wrong — work with your body, not against it. Maximum achievement requires making consistently healthy choices. Millions of people have become too preoccupied with “the grind,” and it’s actually burning them out. In the end, you can put your health at risk.

Don’t think about success in isolation. Build better relationships. Question your routines, choices, and actions and keep doing what can guarantee progress, better outcomes and a better life for you and those you care about. Don’t succumb to the sacrifice fallacy — you don’t need to suffer to build or create your best life, but you have to be able to make better choices and prioritise what’s important to your end goal.

99% of Personal Finance Can be Summarized in Nine Words

Your financial future depends on this rule

Morgan Housel said that. He is a partner at The Collaborative Fund, an expert on behavioural finance and history and former finance columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. He argues that, to master personal finance, remember to apply this simple personal finance rule that is captured in almost every personal finance book:

Work a lot, spend a little, invest the difference. Here is the complete quote on The Motley Fool: “There are 56,956 personal finance books on Amazon.com. In aggregate, they contain more than 3 billion words. This seems absurd because 99% of personal finance can be summarized in nine words: Work a lot, spend a little, invest the difference. Master that, and the other 2.999 billion words are filler.”

In his recent book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, And Happiness, Morgan explains the strange ways people think about money and how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics. Money matters can become more complex as you age — you have more responsibilities, needs, wants and a lot of things to take care of. But once you master this simple personal rule, you can have complete control over your money. Here’s a breakdown of Morgan's quote, and what it can mean for your personal finance.

Work a lot

Nobody is great without work. Hard work is always the baseline of great achievements. Nothing spectacular comes without it. Being productive is hard work. Setting goals, making plans to achieve them, and staying on track is hard work. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice. The most accomplished people needed years of hard work and smart choices before becoming world-class.

Warren Buffet is one of the most successful investors of the 20th century. He started his business career extremely early and had Buffet found his passion early on and threw his complete self into it! He has been working hard and smart since his first small business by the age of 13. With a net-worth north of 82.3 billion USD (2020), Buffett is still working, lives modestly and is one of the world’s most generous philanthropists. He once said: “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” To improve your finances, find ways to increase your income and work hard to earn more over time. Don’t wait for opportunities, create them. When you learn to embrace hard work instead of running from it, you gain the ability to execute on your big goals, no matter what it takes to achieve them.

Spend a little

Spending less than we earn is one of the most fundamental principles of all personal finances, and yet so many of us have such a hard time doing it! Basically, improving your personal finance comes down to finding ways to increase your income and decrease your expenses. “Most people’s biggest expense is interest, which comes from living beyond your means, and buying things they think will impress others, which comes from insecurity. Avoid these two and you’ll grow richer than most of your peers says Morgan Housel. The Japanese believe that tidiness in your finances is as important as tidiness in your home. “Most children in Japan get their first training in personal finance at a young age from their parents.

They are taught that the more money they save, the higher the quality of personal items they can buy in the future,” writes Melo at Moni Ninja. If you’ve never tracked your expenses, begin to do that starting today. Then evaluate how you’re spending your money, and see what you can cut out or reduce. Decide if each expense is absolutely necessary, then eliminate the unnecessary.

Invest the difference

“Invest in as much of yourself as you can, you are your own biggest asset by far.” — Warren Buffet. You are your biggest investment. To get better at improving your finances, improve your perception of money and investment. The more you educate yourself, the better your finances will be. Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist agrees. He once said, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.” Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Buffett has invested 80% of his time in reading and thinking throughout his career. You can invest in yourself by learning how to build something of value to a lot of people, learning a skill that makes you indispensable in the future, or by reading selected books on specific topics you care about. Once you build a better investment perception, you can start investing in the right financial products.

You can invest the difference by setting up an investment account that makes it easy to put invest a percentage of your income every month. To build long-term wealth, invest just a small percentage of your income into a broad-based fund every month. Once a month, I buy more shares of selected Vanguard Index Funds. The cost is low, and the risk is also relatively low.

With a long enough time and a sufficiently high-interest rate, the growth is always impressive. Morgan says, “Two things you can do to make yourself a better investor increase the amount of time you’re investing for and the humility you put into your ideas.” Here’s one of the most widely quoted pearls of wisdom of Warren Buffett you should remember when you start investing: “Rule №1: Never lose money. Rule №2: Never forget rule №1.” And finally, “learn more from your bad investments than your good ones,” says Morgan.

Does Waking Up at 5:30 A.M Make You More Successful?

You can be just as productive on the schedule that works for you

What you do in the morning can set you up for a successful day. Many successful people swear by routines and habits that can prepare them for a great day.

Some of the most popular habits among high achievers include meditation, running, yoga, reading and journaling. What you do before you are fully engaged in active work can make a huge difference to the rest of your day.

“For many people, this turns out to be a time of day you can have for your own priorities, before everybody else in the world needs their piece of you,” says Laura Vanderkam, the author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast.

The real question is: Do you have to wake up at 5:30 am to start your day right? Should everyone leap out of bed at the crack of dawn to be productive?

“Many successful people have been promoting lack of sleep, getting up early and working crazy hours, while it is actually more important to recognise what works for you and optimise workflow accordingly,” says Paul Koger.

In their book, Spall and Xander talked to successful business leaders, military generals, university presidents, Olympic athletes, fashion models, artists, the President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo and other high achievers. After over 300 interviews, they learned that while there isn’t one “best” morning routine that works for everyone, there are best practices that some of the most successful people follow every day. As the authors say: “What we discovered as we got deeper into the process of interviewing people about their morning routines is that almost none of the world’s best and brightest leave their mornings to chance.”

Your morning routine should suit you

Your morning routine should not feel like a chore. If it does, you’ve got to experiment with other habits that can help you land on the right routine that will unlock greater energy, focus, and calm first thing in the morning. You should be looking forward to waking up every day.

Mornings can be rough, especially if you’re not the type of person who jumps out of bed ready to take on the day. Your mornings won’t feel like you’re living your best life if you work against yourself. Aristotle once said, “It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.” How then do you make your mornings work for you? If your current method of getting up each morning doesn’t feel right to you or doesn’t work, try something else, experiment and find the optimal or ideal time for you. “We want you to experiment until you’ve formed a morning routine that works for you — one that makes you feel awake, alert, physically and mentally healthy, and psyched up to have a great day,” the authors explain.

What works for Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert or Richard Branson may not work for you. Don’t compare your morning routine to other people’s rituals. Find minor tweaks that work a little bit better, and repeat. Aim for small gains, not big returns.

“The world’s most successful people aren’t worried about what time others wake up. They wake and work on the schedule that works for them,” writes Adam Grant.

It’s important to make slow progress without huge costs to your health. Be patient in developing this skill. There’s no rush. It takes time.

There will be an adaptation period if you’re shifting your wake-up time, so give it time whilst your body adjusts to the new routine. Don’t force yourself to instantly change your wake up time to 5:30 am. If you’re fighting overwhelming fatigue or if getting up early seems virtually impossible, cut back a few minutes each morning, not hours.

If your alarm goes off at 8 am at the moment, try 7.45 am, not 6 am.

And then 7.30 am after a couple of days. Start slowly, by waking just 15–30 minutes earlier than usual. Get used to this for a few days. Then cut back another 15 minutes. Do this gradually until you get to your goal time. It will take some time to adjust, but the effects on your energy will be minimal, plus it’s the most enjoyable and it has a lower chance of failure. Think about what you could do with that extra time. Even an extra 30 minutes per day is enough to exercise daily, read a book or two each month, meditate daily, or start a passion project that could become your life’s work.

Start slowly until your body adjusts to the new routine.

By starting small you focus on making the behaviour automatic before you worry about making the behaviour big enough that it produces a useful outcome.

I experimented with a few different things in the past and figured out what worked for me. You should do the same. Soon you’ll know what things work for you, and you’ll enjoy starting your day. Practice makes permanent, especially if it’s working for you and you are enjoying the process or routine. One way to make mornings easier is to give yourself something to look forward to when you get up. Give yourself a great reason to get up. You can plan your morning the night before.

According to Laura Vanderkam in her book, “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” “The best morning rituals are activities that don’t have to happen and certainly don’t have to happen at a specific hour. These are activities that require internal motivation.” Your daily morning routine is the foundation for your life. If you start off each day with an arbitrary script, then you’re going to get random results.

With the right routine, your early mornings can be as productive as everyone else who makes the most of their mornings.

Mastering your mornings will set the tone for your entire day. Your prime time is your ultimate weapon. Use it wisely, and you might just see your productivity soar.

To Succeed in The Long-Term, Think in 5, 10, or 20 Year Time Frames

Thinking in longer time horizons

Humans can be pretty good at short-term thinking — but we’re not very good at thinking about the long-term consequences of our present actions. The pressures of modern life make it incredibly difficult for us to project the implications of our choices and decisions far out into the future. “As we live longer in more complex and interconnected societies, short-term thinking is being displaced as the main factor for a successful and sustainable future; now long-term planning is key for such achievements,” argues Stelian Nenkov, a Senior Quantitative Researcher at WorldQuant.

We easily confuse desires, wants and needs and tend to choose short-term gains over long-term benefits. “A proper goal is something that you really need to achieve. Desires are things that you want that can prevent you from reaching your goals. Typically, desires are first-order consequences,” writes Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, Bridgewater Associates.

To make smart life-changing decisions, don’t confuse ‘goals’ and ‘desires’.

Be careful of your one-off decisions, they are laying the groundwork for a pattern of behaviour that can have future consequences you didn’t imagine. The compound interest of those decisions have huge implications over the course of a lifetime.

Long-term thinking is the best short-term strategy

Thinking in 5, 10, or 20-year time frames is one of the best heuristics for making life-changing decisions. The decisions you make today aren’t anomalies, they’re laying the groundwork for the life you’ll be leading 20 years from now. Thinking about the long-term implications of your short-term decisions forces you to consider their true implications. Every major decision, whether it’s choosing a career path, accepting a job offer, choosing a life partner, deciding to have children, quitting a job, starting a business, or moving to a new city has major implications on your life.

Legend has it that when Jeff Bezos left his high-paying Wall Street job to start Amazon, he applied what he now calls the “Regret Minimization Framework” to make a decision. Here’s his explanation of his decision model: “If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, ‘What will I think at that time?’ it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later, ” Jeff Bezos once said.

Bezo’s ‘Regret Minimization Framework’ is applicable for anyone making a life-changing decision. When you think long-term, you are likely to evaluate the consequences of your actions today with a lot of caution. Will you regret your decision not to pursue your life’s purpose or dream career in the next 10 years? Make a decision today you won’t regret in 20 years. Don’t make a decision you will be happy with tomorrow. There is a difference. Don’t sabotage your future self. Most people over-optimise for the short or medium-term when they think they are optimising for the long-term. A better strategy is to take short-term steps with a focus on the long-term. “Most people overestimate what they can do in 1 year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years,” says Bill Gates. If you think about the long term, then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later. In any major decision, if you get stuck when it comes to making decisions, try this.

1. Flash forward to your 80-year-old self and think “Would I regret not doing this?” If the answer is yes, do it right away, screw the results.

2. Or, flash backwards to your 15-year-old self and ask “Would 15 year old me have wanted to do this?” If the answer is yes, do it right away, screw the results.

Every decision gets you closer to either your best future self or worse self.

Later in life, you don’t want to look back and feel regret for neglecting certain areas of your life (finance, career aspirations, etc.) because you didn’t take the necessary steps to make things better in the future. The need to draw on our capacity to think long-term has never been more urgent. The only way to overcome the tyranny of the now is thinking in longer time horizons. Understanding the risks ahead of time and then planning how best to minimise them is the best recipe for long-term success.

Our shortsightedness can create a wide array of problems for us in the future. It’s time to start thinking about the long-term consequences of your decisions today and their impact on the life ahead of you.

How Successful People Achieve Outlier Success

Successful people achieve more because of luck, cumulative advantage, social capital and grit.

Remember the 80:20 rule? Or better still the law of the vital few — 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Well, it also applies to wealth distribution — 80 percent of the wealth in the world is owned by 20 percent of the people. Yes, the top 20% own 80% of everything. The 80/20 rule is more prevalent now than ever before. Why does this happen? Why do a few people enjoy the bulk of the rewards in life? Are people rewarded for their talent and intelligence? “Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else. And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people,” writes MIT Technology Review.

Here is the bitter truth: the most successful people are not the most talented among us — luck, cumulative advantage, social capital and grit have a lot to do with their wealth.

Success is not exclusively due to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, efforts or risk-taking. According to Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy, luck has a lot to do with success. “It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones.” “And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.” “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” they said. There is more to success than pure intelligence. Success sometimes arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities. It is also often rooted in hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities that compound over time, a process sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.” These are advantages that tend to snowball into greater and greater opportunities over time.

Just as a few dollars invested in the stock market can grow to thousands over a lifetime, a small advantage can compound over the months or years, leading to huge successes later on in life. “It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage,” explains Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success. Don’t get me wrong, the people at the very top work much, much harder to stay there or keep performing at their very best. But they are likely to benefit from hidden advantages.

More often than not, successful people don’t succeed alone. They are products of specific places and environments. In other words, the small initial edge leads to more opportunities to get better and better.

Many successful people are also in a constant state of adaptation — continually unlearning old ‘rules’ and relearning new ones. We live in an ever-changing world which is unlikely to ever slow down. What mattered yesterday (e.g. skill, knowledge, social circle, etc.) very much so might not be worth a dime tomorrow.

Wealthy people keep evolving — they are constantly improving their social capital — connections and personal relationships. Change used to be slow and incremental: now it is rapid, radical and unpredictable.

“Developing a network of talented people to work with — sometimes closely, sometimes loosely — is an essential part of a great career,” writes Sam Altman.

The ability to keep an open-mind, acquire better knowledge and improve your social capital can have a huge influence on your success. Beyond luck, social capital and cumulative advantage, grit (mix of passion, perseverance, and self-discipline) can also contribute to your success. The ability to change (or be changed) to fit new circumstances — is a crucial skill for success in any endeavour.

In his book, “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE” Phil Knight said:

“So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

Grit is associated with perseverance, resilience, ambition, and the need for achievement. It involves maintaining goal focused effort for extended periods of time. The good news is, you can cultivate or better still grow your grit. It’s a skill that can be learned and practiced over time.

Greatness and extraordinary success aren’t reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone. Don’t wait for opportunities, create them.

You can create your own accumulative advantage with the choices you make and the small actions you take every day — developing the right success habits can open more opportunities for you than you realise. Take control of your own potential and shape yourself into the person you wish to be.

An Important Question About Progress, Growth And Success You Are Not Asking

If everything is too good, you’re probably stuck not being awesome

Humans are deeply wired to avoid pain. When given a choice, you are likely to choose the path of least resistance over discomfort, even when the latter will bring you long-term progress, personal growth, and success. The desire to achieve success is universal. Everyone wants success in all areas of life. But many people have put off any form of discomfort and are seeking shortcuts to almost everything. An easy way out to success. But you can’t create enduring success in any endeavour without effort, some level of discomfort — there is no success without considerable effort.

The good news is that you absolutely can make progress or succeed. It is well within your grasp. The sad truth is that not everyone will experience the success that is potentially available to them.

What pain are you prepared to temporarily endure to get closer to your long-term goal?

What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how far you can go in life, career and business. “What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life,” writes Mark Manson.

People want to be successful in all areas of their lives without discomfort, without the sacrifice, without pushing past their comfort zones, without the delayed gratification.

Growth is hard. There will be challenges. But done with the right perspective, investing in your growth and success is still one of the best investments you’ll ever make.

Success is a climb —a journey uphill. Truly successful people know that. They’ve prepared themselves for the uncomfortable journey. That mindset helps them overcome hurdles, obstacles, temporary failure and setbacks.

If you are not willing to do anything to “disrupt” your comfort zone in — at least temporarily — then achieving lasting success is going to take a much longer time.

Nothing spectacular comes without hard work — getting organized is hard work, setting and taking actional goals is hard work. And staying on track is even harder.

People don’t fail to succeed, they fail to make the effort to succeed. To succeed in any endeavour of your choice, you need a commitment to intentional effort.

Greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires uncomfortable steps. The best people in any field are those who devote quality time to their crafts. Vladimir Horowitz, a classical pianist and composer said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. The all-time-great football receiver Jerry Rice — passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow — practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up. Bill Gates saw the dawn of the PC and worked hard to put a computer on every desk. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil and took advantage. Theodore Roosevelt did everything anyone ever told him he couldn’t do. Very few have ever failed with the hard work approach to making it in life. You may rise slowly, but you are sure to rise.

There are no shortcuts to lasting success, only smart cuts. Many people will do what’s easiest and avoid hard work — and that’s precisely why you should do the opposite. Lasting success can only be achieved if you put in the work.

Jim Rohn says “Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”

There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice. The most accomplished people needed years of hard work and smart choices before becoming world-class. Stephen King once said “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

Henry Ford says, “The harder you work, the luckier you get” — the more successful you get! Your success is entirely up to you. If you want to succeed, then your commitment to temporary discomfort must be absolute. Next level success requires next level discomfort. Truly successful people don’t just tolerate discomfort, they embrace it and keep moving. Some degree of discomfort is inherently good for your growth and progress.

Jerry Dunn once said “Don’t limit your challenges; challenge your limits.”

The secret to success lies in the very thing you’re avoiding. Those things that seem to break you down and humble your spirit. Seek out discomfort. Be deliberate about doing things that push your limits magnificently. “Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something others are unlikely to do because they’re hiding out in the comfortable zone.” says Seth Godin.

Difficulty helps us to grow. If you want long-term success, stop avoiding what’s hard, and embrace it now. If you’re truly pushing yourself to improve — in any capacity whatsoever — you are uncomfortable. When you are challenged, you are asked to become more than you were. That means creating new perspectives, acquiring new skills and pushing boundaries. Learning to be comfortable with discomfort is one of the most important skills you can ever have to live a truly fulfilling life and a successful life.

Becoming comfortable with discomfort won’t just make you successful — it will make you resilient, stronger and prepare you for your next challenge.

Many of Life’s Toughest Goals Take Lots of Attempts

Most changes in life require time and processing

Lasting progress is not a sprint. It requires time, consistency of effort and patience. Just like any healthy portfolio, it takes time to mature or deliver the results you want or expect. Your best work and life can only emerge with patient attention, time, and strategic action. I can’t stress this enough. Whatever you are seeking to change or improve — career, relationship, health, wealth or happiness, you need to consistently practise good habits. And be prepared to start over if you fail to achieve what you seek.

You didn’t reach that career goal, try a different approach. Want to build wealth? Choose long-term investment over short-term gains. Want to be happy? Make it your responsibility and start doing more of what makes you come alive. If your relationship is not working, try something else that brings out the best in both of you.

By all means, keep moving — even if you fail. Research shows that if your goal is to avoid failure, you’ll actually increase the chances that you’re going to fail.

Ultimately, your mindset about success and failure plays a key role in the outcome you want. The more you insist that failure isn’t an option, the more likely you’ll fail.

I’ve failed more times than I’ve succeeded since I committed fully to pursuing my own path in life and career — I’ve lost both time and money in the process. But I keep moving and adapting. Almost everything you want to do or improve is just a different approach away. That means if your current actions are not leading you closer to your goals, develop a new system to guide how you use your time when you are awake, when you first start working, when you finish your workday, and even how you use your evenings.

Your heroes miss their goals too — but they are better at doing more of what works, and reinventing themselves. Don’t stay still — evolve, adapt or reinvent the wheel if you have to. Life is a giant puzzle. Everyone has a different piece to figure out themselves. Everything won’t go as planned. Things you can never predict in your career are going to happen. Be prepared to adapt or improve yourself to stand the test of time.

Want to feel healthy all the time? Take ownership of your mind and body — change your diet, add better habits — move more, prioritise a few minutes of exercise into your routine. If you’re truly pushing yourself to improve — in any capacity whatsoever — you will need a lot of attempts. It will feel challenging.

But when you are challenged, you are asked to become more than you were. That means creating new perspectives, acquiring new skills and pushing boundaries.

The more you offer yourself measured doses of unfamiliar, high-pressure experiences, the better your chances of making better and informed decisions, solving problems, and becoming the best version of yourself.

I love what J. B. Truant says in his book, “The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You”. It’s one of the best calls to actions I’ve ever read, “Nobody’s going to give you the gift of awesome. Nobody’s going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody’s going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody’s going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself. Grab it. Become it. Claim it. Write a treatise. Create an event. Champion a cause. Build something great. Speak your mind. Make the call. Build the business. Author of the book. Send the email. Do it. Do it.” Never miss an opportunity to show up. You’ll suck at most things in the beginning. It takes time, persistence, and patience to create anything worthwhile. Many of us lack the proper structures to support the behavioural changes our life goals require. Making meaningful and long-lasting changes in life depends on your ability to build better habits that become the firm foundation for lasting progress.

Commitment, consistency and patience are the hardest skills I have had to learn to make lasting progress. In his brief 1890 work, Habit, William James- a writer, philosopher and physician considered to be one of the fathers of modern psychology laid out observations on forming new and lasting behaviours, “Put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way,” he wrote. “Make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might, and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.”

Leverage compounding growth. You probably know the effects compound growth can have on an investment over a number of years. With a long enough time and a sufficiently high-interest rate, the growth is always impressive.

Warren Buffett has been preaching the importance of compound interest for six decades, and it’s made him billions. “All who have been educated in basic finance know this about compound interest, but far too few think about their decisions in the same way, even though it works the same way,” argues Stephen Guise, the author of Mini Habits and the founder of Deep Existence.

The principle of compounding applies in many areas of our lives: health, fitness, personal development, productivity, business, and relationships.

Acting rationally, consistently, has long-term effects. “It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary, writes Darren Hardy,” author of The Compound Effect.

Cumulative discipline pays!

You are at this point in your life because of the way you have treated every ‘today’ for decades. You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. You can determine a better future, by making better decisions today.

You can reap huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. The change you want won’t require a single sprint — it demands a meaningful marathon mindset. You reap what you sow; you can’t get out of life what you’re not willing to put into it.

Successful People Are Still Learning

Life-long learning is the single best investment of our time

I believe knowledge is the new money. In the age of information overload, those who can sort the valuable from the worthless will ultimately win. Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist agrees. He once said, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.” Knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable and priceless — your skills, knowledge, and competency (past, present) are either helping you advance your career or hindering your progress in life.

At a fundamental level knowledge is gradually becoming its own important and unique form of currency — it often serves as a medium of exchange and store of value.

If you want to become a well-rounded person, get good at quickly learning from every experience, experts and knowing when to apply that knowledge.

An active literary life can make you effective, productive, and healthy. The most successful people we know today don’t stop learning about career and life growth. They continually expand their knowledge in order to get out in front of the pack and stay there. “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero,” says Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner. Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother. Bill Gates reads 50 books per year. Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks.

Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Buffett has invested 80% of his time in reading and thinking throughout his career. According to an HBR article, “Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow.”

Why do the world’s smartest and busiest people find time for deliberate learning while others make excuses about how busy they are? What do they see that others don’t? The answer is simple: Learning is the single best investment of our time. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

The point here is that successful people are outstanding performers. Outstanding performers are lifelong learners.

Everything is a learning process. Those who have mastered failure, setback, and perseverance succeed better. The “ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated” pursuit of life, career and self-knowledge is important for personal maturity. Digging deeper to become your best self will separate you from everyone else who isn’t trying.

Even if you don’t know exactly what you’ll need to learn, you can’t go wrong cultivating a growth mindset — a learning theory developed by Dr Carol Dweck that revolves around the belief that you can improve intelligence, ability and performance.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn,” argues Alvin Toffler, a writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies.

He is right! The ability to keep an open-mind, acquire better knowledge and apply it when necessary can significantly improve your life and career.

Between deadlines, meetings, family life and everything else in between, there isn’t much time to get to know yourself or improve yourself. But you can change that. As long as you are ready to take responsibility for your career.

Broad, deep learning can make you a better person. “If you’re a business person who typically only reads business writing, commit to reading one book this year in three areas outside your comfort zone: a novel, a book of poetry, or a nonfiction piece in science, biography, history, or the arts,” writes John Coleman, coauthor of the book, Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders.

No matter where you are on the career ladder, it’s important to continue learning and develop new skills. It’s the only way to survive in the 21st century. Albert Einstein said, “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

To embrace life-long learning, I see my life work in progress. I mean, I’ve never arrived… I’m still learning all the time — about what works, paths to take, those to avoid, emotions to tame, when to speak up, relationships to nurture, what makes me come alive and how to be a better person.

Learning drives adaptability. We live in an ever-changing world which is unlikely to ever slow down. So, what mattered yesterday (e.g. skill, knowledge, social circle, etc.) very much so might not be worth a dime tomorrow.

The ability to change (or be changed) to fit new circumstances — is a crucial skill to career growth. Change used to be slow and incremental: now it is rapid, radical and unpredictable. To succeed today, you must be in a constant state of adaptation — continually unlearning old ‘rules’ and relearning new ones.

Learning is an investment that usually pays for itself in increased earnings. More than ever, learning is for life if you want to stay relevant, indispensable and thrive in the changing world of work.

The Iceberg Illusion: The Hidden Logic of Success

Perception of reality is never the same for everyone

Success is like an iceberg — what people see is very different from reality. Most people don’t count all the costs successful people have paid overtime (below the surface) to get to what they see (above the surface). People only see the end goal, the glory, the monumental win. But time and time again, it’s been proven that persistence, dedication, commitment, sacrifice, failure and disappointments are some of the real factors that contribute to the final win we see. James Clear, entrepreneur and author of Atomic Habits once wrote, “When your screen is filled examples of the strongest, richest, and smartest, it’s easy to overvalue the outcome and undervalue the process.”

Often in life and business, things are not what they seem — the messy middle is what really creates true success. Just like an iceberg, success has a deep side we rarely see.

The unseen hours, necessary failures, setbacks, crisis of confidence, the loneliness, the late nights and early mornings; and, all the wobbling that comes before the walking — much less running, are what builds success.

I love how David Perell, host of the North Star Podcast puts it, “We see trophies, not sweat. We see diplomas, not homework. We see performances, not rehearsals.”

John Hayes, a professor at Carnegie Mellon once studied thousands of musical pieces between 1685 and 1900. His work was driven by a single question: “How long does it take to become a world-class musician?” Her’s what he found: Every composition was written at least a decade after the musicians started to take their work seriously. There were only 3 exceptions, (written in years 8 and 9). In follow-up studies of poets and painters, he found the same result. The results don’t surprise me — the long slow walk to success is real and practical.

In Mathew Syed’s book, Bounce, he beautifully sums it all up: “When we witness extraordinary feats … [of sporting or artistic prowess], we are witnessing the end product of a process measured in years. What’s invisible to us — the submerged evidence, as it were — is the countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer. What we do not see is what we might call the hidden logic of success.”

Years of trying, perseverance, commitment, and relentless practice will eventually make you look like an overnight success. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice. The most accomplished people needed timing, sacrifice, disappointments, and smart choices before becoming world-class. Greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires an insane commitment to purpose.

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to their crafts. Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practised his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz, a classical pianist and composer supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it.

If you want to achieve some really big and interesting goals, you have to learn to fall in love with the messy middle and not give up.

Every successful person you know endured the long slow walk to success. As they reached the pinnacle of success, they grew more experienced, made fewer mistakes, improved their decision-making skills and did more of what works or delivered the results they wanted.

To succeed embrace the messy middle

The journey to achieve anything worthwhile in life is not linear. There is no perfect system. There are principles, frameworks, and models that can guide you. But you have to put up with the unseen factors. Scott Belsky, author of The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture, explains, “Sadly, most people are not patient enough to reap the fruits of their own labour. Great teams gain their strength and resilience while toiling their way through the valleys, not just from relishing the view from the peaks.”

To become world-class at anything, you have to learn to love your messy middle. Your job is to show up every day, hone your craft, and get to the point where taking action or making the best choices becomes unconscious and automatic.

Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.

And there are about 870 paintings by Vincent van Gogh existing today. His earliest date from 1881 and the latest from July 1890.

The greater your capacity for endurance, the more rewards fall within your grasp. If you’ve chosen a significant purpose for your life, it’s going to require time to get there — any meaningful purpose eventually becomes an iceberg.

Extraordinary success isn’t reserved for a preordained few. It’s available to you and to everyone — if you are willing to embrace the messy bottom.

Sustaining Success is Harder Than Becoming Successful

What successful people do in between successes defines how they can succeed in the future

Long-term success in any endeavour requires two things — getting something and keeping it. Getting what you want in life and career is not easy. Maintaining what you’ve got is even harder — getting rich and staying rich. Getting fit and staying fit. Losing weight and maintaining that weight. Getting market share and keeping market share. Becoming a millionaire and staying a millionaire. Research shows over 50% of Americans will find themselves in the top 10% of earners for at least one year of their lives. More than 11% will find themselves in the top 1% of income-earners at some point.

And here is an important fact — close to 99% of those who make it into the top 1% of earners will find themselves on the outside looking in within a decade.

Getting something often requires a lot of risks. Keeping it may often require contradictory skills, discipline, making room for error and even more risk-taking.

“The world is now changing far too fast to get over-attached to anything you’ve done or anyone you’ve been. Don’t ever be the former anything. Be willing to reinvent yourself over and over,” says Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist and the author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. Successful people do more to keep what they have. Sometimes they master both the skills needed to make and maintain what they have– Warren Buffett is a great example. But it’s rare. Which is why downside reversion to the mean is such a repeating theme in history.

“Everything in the economy is cyclical. Nothing great or terrible is likely to stay that way for long, because the same forces that cause things to be great or terrible also plant the seeds to push them the other way” argues Morgan Housel, a partner at Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. “People and companies, whose behaviours are changed by their own success, are vulnerable to the same cycles,” he adds.

Keeping success requires that you focus on daily growth or life long learning— the daily habit of acquiring knowledge. You must also, on a daily basis, hone your skills, perfecting them until you become an expert. It also requires building rich relationships with other success-minded people — people open closed doors to even more opportunities. And most importantly sustaining success requires that you create multiple streams of income. In his book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life: Strategies that Transformed 177 Average People into Self-Made Millionaires, Thomas Corley says about 65 percent of the millionaires in his study had at least three streams of income.

Becoming successful can be the biggest impediment to staying successful

Getting successful can be the biggest impediment to maintaining that success because the more successful you are at something, the more convinced you become that you’re doing it right. If you don’t question your assumptions, mental models, success habits, principles and actions daily, your success can be your downfall. The more convinced you are that you’re doing it right, the less open you are to change or embrace new ideas. The desire to keep things the same can be the beginning of your downfall. Success can be an expensive disease because it contains the seeds of its own destruction. It pays to be vigilant.

Staying successful involves a few other simple things — self-awareness, modesty, and the ability to delay gratification with a portion of your income.

Most people don’t focus on the “what-if’s” that could disrupt their lifestyle but planning for these uncertainties can literally save your career.

Successful people put themselves to the test, move the needle, challenge themselves, learn from their multiple mistakes, reinvent themselves and their skills, and iterate their breakthroughs in the process. Success isn’t just what you have, or what you’ve accomplished — it also means that you are continually pushing new boundaries internally and externally. Some people succeed to a certain degree, and then shift their minds to a fixed-mindset. They stop pushing themselves. They drift into complacency and a mind that was once sharp dulls into apathy. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach once said, “The moment you have arrived is the perfect time to start out again.” The world is continually changing. Success requires growth and change. When you succeed big at something, don’t sit there for long. You can only be new once. Keep evolving.

Taking a Step Back is as Necessary as Moving Forward

From a step back, a leap forward!

Everything about stepping forward offers positive implications. Everything worth pursuing is ahead of us. Regardless of the destination, most people (who feel they are on the right track) are fairly certain that they are moving up, over, ahead or onward, and that they are on the right track. I am an advocate for action and getting things done. But the importance of stepping back, and measuring your progress is as crucial as the action you take to advance your long-term goals. Sometimes you have to take a step back, a time out from your life.

Never go so fast that you forget to review your progress. It pays to take a break in order to move forward, especially when life is not linear. A successful career doesn’t always move in a consistently upward trajectory. Most careers don’t follow a classic vertical progression.

Guy Gavriel Kay once said, “There are no wrong turns. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”

Everyone prefers progress to be smooth, constant and straightforward, it rarely is. In all pursuits, it’s prudent to stop and take a step back in order to go forward.

Taking a step back from an immediate problem can make it clear that your current approach isn’t working. If you feel stuck, it’s even more important to take a break and access where you are headed. If you feel as though you are taking far more steps back than forward. And your steps require a great amount of effort – so much trying, so little happening. But you have nothing to show for it, invest time in your reflection.

Take the time and introspection required to figure out what exactly it is that you are trying to achieve to determine the right path to get there.

When you take a break and review your actions, you will clearly see where you are on your journey in life and career, where you need to go next and how they compare to your progress in the past. This will give you more confidence in planning what you need to do to move positively through change and transformation. Time invested in reflection is not time wasted. Sometimes you have to take one step back in order to achieve two ahead. Greatness is like a spring, you take a step back in order to spring ahead. Instead of burdening yourself with speed, start asking yourself — “What do I need to stop?” How did I perform? How do I compare to my own standards? What’s a new experience you can add to your life or career? Lucy Hawkins, a career adviser at the University of Oxford argues: “Take a step back and ask yourself: if you could click your fingers and instantly change things to make them better, what would the result be? What would be the things you’d notice that were better? It might be a little different from your current situation, or it might be something more major. There might be steps you can make towards it right now, or it might be the change you have to research and plan for. But getting a clear picture of what ‘better’ looks like, is the key.”

Every action you take does not necessarily help you move forward. Review your processes, systems, values, and steps and do more of what works. More of what brings results. More of what delivers.

When you audit your life, performance improves.  Maturity is knowing what works and what doesn’t. Some good steps outlive their usefulness. We are creatures of habit. And our brains like routines. And until you make time to review what’s actually contributing to your progress, you could spend a lot of time doing everything you don’t need on your journey to a better life. Until you change what you do daily you may never change your trajectory. If you have to get feedback from others, get it.

Seriously think about what you have to stop doing. Not all change is necessary, but without change, there cannot be any progress. If you don’t see the point in taking a step back every now and then, you can no longer change, grow and improve. If you’re not changing forwards, you’re changing backwards because we are always changing, says Richie Norton. The good news is, after a successful reflection, you don’t have to stop doing everything you have built or improved over the years. Sustaining and sticking to what’s working is as equally important as stopping what’s not producing results. Celebrate the things that are working and sustain them. There is no easy route to anywhere worth going. Taking a step back allows you to get clarity and perspective.

Clarity comes through reflection and strategic thought. Take some time every quarter or six months to evaluate where you are right now. Sometimes, the best long-term life strategy may require what seems, at first glance, to be a backward move. Taking a step back enables you to think about your life and career in the broader context of your life — it allows you to see the forest instead of getting lost in the trees. The most successful people maintain a focus on the present, review their short-term goals whilst they keep their eye on the future. People who have planned their lives prudently — perhaps by taking a calculated step back will be able to step happily forward. Make sure the actions you take today are helping you move in the direction you eventually want to go.

When You Are Disappointed in Yourself, Practice Self-Compassion

Don’t allow past and present disappointments ripple through to the core of who you are. Pick yourself back up!

Disappointment in ourselves is something we all share. You’ve probably had at least one time when you could have pushed yourself a little bit further to reach a goal, change a habit, or meet a deadline. We all get frustrated when this happens.

Learning how to thrive in spite of even your most epic disappointment is the key to bouncing back as soon as possible. Most people experience disappointments almost every week. They feel they are not living life to their own standards and values. They expect more from themselves.

When you are disappointed, your mood quickly changes. The feeling can significantly affect your progress in life. Disappointing yourself can make you question your choices, ambitions, self-worth, and your abilities. Robert Kiyosaki once said, “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.”

Be kind to yourself. If you recently failed to deliver a career-making presentation, missed a deadline, said something you absolutely should not have said to a loved one, a colleague at work or a friend — your life is not over! Everyone will not remember this mistake for the rest of your life. Our failures are rarely as big as we imagine them to be. Ask yourself, will this matter one year from now? “Being overly critical of ourselves can increase anxiety about a setback. But overthinking, or ruminating on what happened, is like agonizing self-criticism on repeat,” Rachel Simmons wrote in The New York Times’s guide to overcoming failure.

Accept and acknowledge your disappointments. The first step, as always, is awareness — name it to tame it. Pause for a moment, and turn inward to find out if you're feeling frustrated or disappointed with yourself for anything. If you notice a negative shift in your attitude, get in touch with your emotions by asking yourself why you feel the way you do. Try to zero in on the real issue rather than continuing to feel emotionally distressed. Instead of overthinking your many disappointments — which makes it harder to live life to the fullest, accept what went wrong, remind yourself of your successes in the past, and find ways to do better next time.

Overthinking any mistake, disappointment, or personal failure — asking questions like, “How could I have said/done that?”, or “What’s wrong with me”, can damage your self-worth or motivation. “The first step to correcting a monumental blunder is to be honest and critical with yourself and to acknowledge that it was indeed a mistake. This is much easier said than done, but unless we’re nakedly candid with ourselves about the mistake itself, there’s no way to move past it,” writes Tim Herrera in The New York Times. If you know why you’re disappointed, you’ve got a head start on being able to make an action plan. When you take the time to learn from your disappointment, you’ll be more prepared for your next actions.

“In a study, executives and engineers who deliberately confronted feelings about job loss felt more control over their situation and had a much higher rate of re-employment in the following months,” says Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist. But acknowledgement is only helpful if you can get past it. Your priority should be moving on quickly from it and making progress. The point is to remember you are more than your disappointments.

Practice self-compassion. In the past decade, self-compassion has emerged as an important quality for mental health and well-being. Respond to your inadequacies or disappointments with understanding, patience, and acceptance, rather than with harsh self-criticism. Dr Julia Breines, who studies how social experience influences the way people treat themselves, explains, “The ability to forgive ourselves for mistakes, large and small, is critical to psychological well-being. Difficulties with self-forgiveness are linked with suicide attempts, eating disorders, and alcohol abuse, among other problems.” Self-compassion can also help you bounce back stronger, make better choices, and live life to the fullest despite your shortcomings. “People who have higher levels of self-compassion tend to handle stress better — they have less of a physical stress response when they are stuck in traffic, have an argument with their spouse, or don’t get that job offer — and they spend less time reactivating stressful events by dwelling on them,” writes Carrie Dennett in The Washington Post.

Pursue realistic and attainable goals. Disappointment is directly tied to the expectations we place on ourselves. If you are aiming for nothing less than perfect, you will be disappointed. High expectations are great, but to reduce your disappointments, match your actions with your expectations. Making sure you’re prepared is an important way to protect yourself from future disappointment. Do you give yourself enough time to reach your goals? Do you set clear and measurable boundaries? Asking the right questions and understanding how your plans can fail is crucial to plotting your next big endeavour. Whatever you plan to do or achieve, dig deeper to expose any of the flaws in your plan. Help yourself win more. Disappointments are difficult to deal with, but with the right personal support system, you can always bounce back and keep moving. With patience, you can get back on track to build the life you want.

About The Author

Thomas Oppong is a writer, curator, entrepreneur and researcher exploring the principles of life and work. His personal blog hosts all his writing on self-improvement, psychology, learning, philosophy, health, personal finance, and more. He also runs AllTopStartups, a small business resource blog. Thomas also founded Content Intelligence Media. His goal is to help his readers master the best of what the experts, top performers, and behavioural scientists have already figured out. More than 60,000 people have subscribed to his life and career newsletters: Postanly Weekly and Career Growth Insider. His readers include intellectually curious people from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Apple, BBC and HubSpot. His work has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, CNBC, Observer, HuffPost, The Good Men Project, Quartz, Thought Catalog and Pocket Worthy.

Table of Contents

Forward

If You Are Serious About Long-Term Success, Optimise Learning Over Money

People Who Are Successful In The End Are Usually Curious In The Beginning

Success Is About How Much Value You Provide to Others

Truly Successful People Become Exceptional at One Thing And Use The Confidence to Branch Out

The Real Key to Success is How You Navigate The Messy Middle: Lessons From Great Minds

If You Want a Different Outcome in Life, Create a New State of Mind

To Truly Capitalise on Your Success, Optimize Your Performance

The Law of Progression: How to Consistently Get Smarter, Faster, And Better

Accumulative Advantage

The Expectation Trap: The Mindset That Makes You Overreact to Disappointments

Success Comes From Doubling Down on The 20% of Your Actions That Deliver 80% of Your Results

The Most Overlooked Skill of Highly Successful People

Failing at Things That Matter is Far Better Than Succeeding at Things That Don’t

The Fastest Way to be Successful is to Make Others Successful

People Who Have High “Integrative Complexity” Skills Achieve More And Succeed Faster

Success is a Direct Result Your Relationship With Time

Waiting For Your Big Break is The Worst Way to Succeed

Lessons From Successful People Can Deliver More Value Than 1,000 Hours of Hard Work

The Essentialist Mindset: Doing Less, But Better

The Trait That Takes You From Average to Spectacular is Not Your IQ

You Don’t Have to be a Morning Person to be Successful

The WOOP Method: A Simple Tool For Achieving Any Goal

Past Success Often Cause Confidence to Rise Faster Than Ability

The Secrets to Warren Buffett’s Incredible Wealth

Successful People Have Rules For Themselves That They Take Very Seriously

To Succeed in an Uncertain Future, Think Like a Futurist

Successful People Don’t Make Sacrifices, They Make Smart Choices

99% of Personal Finance Can be Summarized in Nine Words

Does Waking Up at 5:30 A.M Make You More Successful?

To Succeed in The Long-Term, Think in 5, 10, or 20 Year Time Frames

How Successful People Achieve Outlier Success

An Important Question About Progress, Growth And Success You Are Not Asking

Many of Life’s Toughest Goals Take Lots of Attempts

Successful People Are Still Learning

The Iceberg Illusion: The Hidden Logic of Success

Sustaining Success is Harder Than Becoming Successful

Taking a Step Back is as Necessary as Moving Forward

When You Are Disappointed in Yourself, Practice Self-Compassion