Benjamin P. Hardy's Blog, page 3

How To Unlock Insane Focus On Command

Photo by Simon Abrams on UnsplashDeep is different than cheap…

There’s a fundamental difference between cheap work and deep work.

In today’s world we emphasize, prioritize, and optimize for cheap work. However, cheap work can only get you so far.

Cheap work is frantic and busy. Cheap work is exhausted and burned out. Deep work and true productivity are none of those things.

Change your definition of productivity, change your life.

In this article, I’ll show you:

How to re-define focus to unlock your deepest mental powersHow to set and achieve “impossible goals” through a focused mindsetHow to remove the blockades and barriers preventing you from having what you truly want

The first thing you need to do is define what productivity means for you.

Really quick: there are actually 3 ways to enjoy this article:

1. Watch this YouTube video:

https://medium.com/media/a92b26ffcdb38842739abe6a4d3eedf0/href

2. Listen to this episode of the Dr. Benjamin Hardy Show (available on any podcast streaming service)

3. Continue reading this article (includes bonus content from Dr. Hardy’s team not available anywhere else)

1. Define What Productivity Actually Means

Most people define productivity as effort spent.

Their thought process goes like this: “If I spend 100 hours doing something, it must be valuable.”

The reality, however, is that that effort doesn’t actual equal results. Productivity is not linear.

For example, you could be putting huge amounts of effort into something, without really learning anything at all. This is the trap that Stephen Covey warned of, where your ladder is leaning against the “wrong wall.” On the flip side, you could also make a mental connection or breakthrough that only takes a few seconds.

To succeed, you’ll need to re-define what productivity actually means.

What is productivity?What is accomplishment?What do these things mean to you personally?

To define this for me, I have weekly meetings with a coach to leverage and increase my own productivity. One of the core questions we always ask each other is this:

“What was your deepest level of focus this week?”

Deepest does not necessarily mean longest.

For a long time, I defined focus by how long I was doing something, or how much effort I spent.

Because of this question, I have learned to re-define what focus means.

Focus is the measure of transformation that takes place between two points.

In this case, my measuring or reference point was between my last conversation with my coach.

Focus is not the length of time spent doing something.

Focus is not the quantity of things done.

Focus is not the amount of effort you spend.

Focus is the measure of transformation that takes place between two points.

That’s it.

This is a crucial distinction most people don’t understand.

The progress you make matters infinitely more than the time you spend doing something. There are many misunderstood ideas implemented in wildly incorrect ways operating on faulty assumptions in the self-help world, such as the “10,000 hour rule” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. This rule stipulates that to become really good at something, you should spend 10,000 hours doing it.

The research of the actual 10,000 hour rule, however, focused on the transformation that the learners exhibited during those 10,000 hours. One could spend 10,000 hours practicing poorly and still not become a master.

True productivity is transformation.

True productivity is progress.

Looking back on one of the weeks I spoke with my coach, I realized I actually had made massive changes and massive progress towards my goals. I didn’t spend massive amounts of time on the key things, but the time I did spend, really mattered.

Rule #1: Focus is transformation and progress, not effort and time spent.

2. Focus On Quality, Not Quantity

If you’re focused on quantity, you’re trying to do more and more. Once again, productivity is not measured by time and effort.

If you’re focused on quality, you’re thinking about the next transformation you need to take. You’re thinking about who you ultimately want to become. You’re trying to become truly better with work performed.

This difference is easily observed in the way businesses operate. For many years, Microsoft focused on competing against Apple’s iPod through the Zune. Microsoft fiercely tracked and measured the numbers of MP3 sales and strategized how to capture more of the MP3 player market share.

They were playing a competitive game, based on quantity.

In the middle of this battle, Apple finished development of and launched the first iPhone, rendering both the Zune and the iPod irrelevant and outdated. The MP3 player market and competition has been rendered useless by a substantially newer and better technology.

Quality, not quantity.

Quantity is a baby crawling faster.

Quality is the baby who learns to walk.

Walking is a different game than crawling.

If you want to accomplish deep work, you’ll have to start solving much bigger problems.

When you solve bigger problems, you do what you truly want to do, rather than competing with other people. You learn to walk, instead of crawling faster.

Rule #2: Define whether your focus is a quantity (competitive) game, or a quality (infinite) game.

3. Catch Bigger Fish

In the book “Catching the Big Fish” by David Lynch, he likens consciousness and creativity to an ocean.

If you dwell at the surface, you can only see small fish. You are solving small problems and receiving small rewards. Cheap work.

If you only see small fish, you are working at a shallow level. As Cal Newport has said, shallow work is comprised of “noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”

When you go deep into the ocean, you find bigger problems. You start to see bigger fish.

When you start catching bigger fish, you’re experiencing greater transformation. You’re operating on a different playing field.

If you want to have massive focus on command, go deeper into the ocean. Start chasing bigger goals, and thus catching bigger fish.

The goal determines the process and therefore your actions. If the goal you’re trying to solve is much bigger than anything you’ve ever done, you’ll be forced to focus on results and quality. You’ll be forced to focus on bigger fish.

Dr. Alan Barnard, a top researcher in constraint theory, teaches that when you operate from “impossible goals,” you start to question your assumptions. You start asking better questions.

What are your impossible goals between now and the end of 2023?

What parameters do you need to change, in order to get there?

When it is literally impossible to reach your desired target than by any other way except going deep, you’ll know how. This is how deep focus is achieved.

Elon Musk is an excellent example of this. He teaches that when you go for something impossible, you have to stop operating from conventional thinking.

You stop operating from your past assumptions when you set impossible goals.

You also stop listening to the assumptions of other people.

You question the assumptions that are behind your goals and your desires.

You remove the assumptions that are no longer helping you reach your goal. In fact, you’ll remove everything that is unnecessary to accomplishing your goal.

You’ll stop operating from your past self.

You’ll become more curious, more open, and more focused.

You’ll find new ways to succeed.

You’ll start transforming.

You’ll start engaging in “deliberate practice” to reach your goal, rather than “habits.”

There’s a lot of talk about “habits” in the self-help world, but in reality, the definition of a habit is merely doing the same thing over and over again.

Coincidentally, this quote often attributed to Albert Einstein essentially likens habits to insanity.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Habits are a behavior that does not improve over time. Habits are the same behavior, repeated many times. Habits are automatic, reflexive responses to stimuli. Habits are always on autopilot. Habits are not focused.

“Deliberate practice,” on the other hand, is the art of doing things differently than how you currently do things.

Deliberate practice isn’t about the number of reps, it’s about the iterative improvement between those reps. The micro-improvements between those reps compound, resulting in a transformation.

Deliberate practice forces you to think creatively. It is, at its core, the exact opposite of habits. It requires you to show up new, differently, and better, every day.

One day of true, deliberate practice, is worth more than a year or even a lifetime of habits.

When you go for impossible goals, you’ll engage in deliberate practice, and progress rapidly to your future self.

Rule #3: Set much bigger goals, and discipline yourself to the exercise of deliberate practice to reach those goals.

4. Remove Friction

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket can travel at speeds of up to 18,000 miles per hour. Your car can probably go a little over 100. What enables this difference?

Air has less friction than land. Thin air, or space, has even less friction than that. The less friction, the more speed.

To go really, really fast, you’ll need to remove and eliminate friction.

“Focus on doing fewer things for great effect, rather than doing many things with side effects.” — Gary Keller & Jay Papasan, The One Thing

This is a fundamentally different level than what most people are accustomed to. Cheap work is about adding things, and that’s what most people instinctively reach for, in order to “feel” productive.

Deep work is about removing friction standing between you and the result. Deep work is about what Author Greg McKeown call less, but better.”

When you go for less, but better, you’ll become committed to removing every form of friction in your life, both internal and external.

Internal friction comes from not being honest about what you truly want.

As Robert Brault taught, “We are kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”

You remove internal friction by being honest with yourself about your core goal.

What are you actually trying to accomplish?What do you truly want?

You’re likely doing too many things because you have competing priorities. In short, you haven’t decided what you truly want.

It takes a lot of courage to renegotiate your assumptions and ultimately your standards. Many of your current goals and priorities are keeping you too broad to actually focus.

External friction comes from any goal, circumstance, situation, or person, that’s not helping you become and stay focused. External friction can take many forms.

You may still be operating from assumptions you haven’t questioned yet. You may still be operating from what other people are doing or by your own conventional wisdom of how it should be done.

As you strip more and more internal and external friction away, you will make massive progress and massive transformation.

Rule #4: Remove any and all external and internal friction between who you are and who you want to be

5. Be Measured, Not Unmeasured

“What is measured, improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.” — Karl Pearson

Cheap work is unmeasured.

When you’re operating at a shallow level, you’re not measuring your progress. When you’re not measuring, you can’t improve.

When you’re in deep work, you intentionally measure your progress. The goals you are working on when working deeply are too big and too important not to.

What you measure, you manage.

Measure meaningful progress in the few things that matter to you.

My team measures and reports key metrics every week and every month.

Those metrics become increasingly clearer and simpler as I become increasingly focused on my goals.

It’s not about time and effort, it’s about genuine progress. Key metrics measure transformation with complete objectivity. If you’re measuring and reporting key metrics regularly, you’ll be forced to simplify and decide what really matters.

You can know what you’re committed to, largely by what you say “no” to.

“I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

The more things you remove, the fewer things will remain, and you will ultimately have more skin in the game with the things that are left. You’ll have created conditions that literally force you to focus. In psychology, this is known as a “forcing function.”

Rule #5: Focus is about doing a few things extremely well, and relentlessly measuring and improving those things.

Conclusion

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport hypothesizes that deep work is becoming increasingly rare at the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable, due to our hyper-distracted world and the opportunities in today’s economy.

Deep work is something you can totally have.

Deep work means letting go of the wrong mindsets, smaller goals, and the wrong processes.

Deep work is how you unlock insane focus, whenever you want.

Ready To Upgrade?

I’ve put together a unique training that is EXTREMELY potent… unlike anything I’ve done before.

It’s only 27 minutes and goes away soon.

This training will show you how to achieve your impossible goals and accomplish your deepest work BEFORE 2023 is over.

Watch the free training here before it goes away.

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This 7–Step Plan Will Make You A Millionaire

Photo by Surface on UnsplashI read 200+ books on money and these are the fundamentals…

Over the past 15 years, I have read hundreds of books on how to succeed, and specifically, how to make money.

There are many truths I’ve learned.

There’s also a whole lot of fluff out there.

In this article, I will share the core fundamentals of money — what really works.

Along the way, you will also learn:

How to change your mind to become compatible with far more moneyHow to implement the systems that will make you richHow to begin thinking and feeling wealthy, in the moment, today

Are you ready? Let’s get started.

Really quick: there are actually 3 ways to enjoy this article:

1. Watch this personal video training from Dr. Benjamin Hardy on Youtube:

https://medium.com/media/9b57c742b5fbda670e54aebfb1f6eeb9/href

2. Listen to this episode of the Dr. Benjamin Hardy Show on any podcast streaming service

3. Continue reading this article

1. Really, Really, Want To Make Money

“Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming, or good-looking.”

“They become rich and powerful by wanting to become rich and powerful.” — Paul Arden, bestselling author of It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be

Before you become wealthy, you have to want to become wealthy.

This may seem obvious, but deep down, most people, don’t really want to be wealthy.

This is evidenced by their behavior. They want other things more than they want to be wealthy, which then influences the result that they get.

Your level of commitment to becoming wealthy is evidenced by the results you have right now.

Do you want more money?

Why do you want more money?

How much money?

When do you want to have that money?

How do you want to obtain that money?

The single best way to want to make money, is by writing down that you want to make money.

Spending time in your journal will inform both your purpose and your strategy for becoming wealthy.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill teaches that to be successful, one must have a definiteness of purpose. A burning desire. A chief aim of what one wants, before one can get it.

What do you really want?

Write it down.

Think about it.

Visualize it.

When you do this, you will find yourself wanting it more and more.

Having a purpose and a WHY for acquiring money will both inform the process that you use to get there, and make your desire to get there far more powerful.

“When the why is strong enough, you will figure out the how.” — Attributed to Bill Walsh

When you have a purpose and a why, your “how” will become much more powerful. You’ll develop an emotional connection with your future self. When you’re emotionally connected to your future self, you will make better financial decisions in the present.

You’ll be capable of acting the way he or she would act.

You’ll make decisions that a far wealthier version of you would make.

You’ll stop doing things that would prevent you from accomplishing your goal.

If you really want to be successful, be honest enough with yourself to write it down and be truthful about it. Be as blunt and honest with yourself as you can.

“All progress starts by telling the truth” — Alcoholics Anonymous

Recently, I was on a podcast with Ed Mylett. He shared the story of 2 women, one of whom is honest about her true WHY, and one of whom is not. The honest woman has the self-described WHY, “I want to be famous.”

In the context of the story of the woman who is completely HONEST about her why, he said:

“Your REAL why can sometimes be embarrassing…99 out of 100 people would never admit or acknowledge [that they want to be famous] because it doesn’t seem as sanitized or as perfect as it should be. Most people…have a why that sounds good, but it’s not the real why.” — Ed Mylett

When you get very honest with yourself, you not only clarify what your deepest desires are, but you proactively shape and deepen them.

You’ll find that you actually create your WHY, rather than discovering it.

You create your purpose, rather than discovering it.

You create your future self, rather than discovering it.

Either you want to make money, or you don’t.

How much money do you want? By when? And why?

Write these things down.

Let your future self dictate, filter, and ultimately determine who you are and what you do.

When you truly want to make money, you’ll naturally want to become the person who can get you there.

2. Transform Your Identity

Your identity is two things:

Your current storyYour current standard

Your story is how you see and view yourself. Your standard is measured by everything you currently say “yes” to. Everything you say “yes” to, or “no” to, is driven by your identity. Thus, your identity is not only the story you have about yourself, but that which you are most committed to.

To become wealthy, you need to upgrade your identity. You can’t outperform your current identity.

For example, if your identity is trapped in $10,000, you’ll never have more than $10,000. Your subconscious mind will always act in ways to ensure you never deviate from the standard you are comfortable with.

The amount of money you have right now is the “floor” of what your subconscious mind finds acceptable.

To have more money, raise the floor of your subconscious. Elevate the minimum standard of what is acceptable, and what is not.

You will have to do this before you have the money that you want.

The fastest way to elevate your floor is to do things that your former self wouldn’t do. When you take actions only your future self would take, you begin operating from their mindset.

Give yourself permission to do this. Realize that you are now far different from who you were in the past, and therefore your future self and and should be far different (and far wealthier) than who you are in the present.

“The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.” — Dr. Daniel Gilbert

You shatter the idea of your past self when you act in ways that they wouldn’t act.

You’ll craft and write a different story, and a different narrative, for yourself.

You’ll become wealthy much faster than you previously understood was possible.

You’ll upgrade your subconscious mind

You’ll raise the floor.

Let’s learn about one of the most powerful ways to upgrade your subconscious next.

3. Give Away Money

One of the most powerful things you can do to transform your identity such that you want success, feel like you deserve it, and feel that you can have it, is to give away money.

“You have to feel that you deserve good things or else your subconscious might very well sabotage all your best efforts. If you don’t truly feel that you deserve great financial success, then you are battling an almost insurmountable obstacle; your subconscious. Giving away gifts to charity is an excellent way of once and for all persuading your subconscious that you deserve what lies ahead. In this way, your subconscious will not only end its sabotage, it will begin actively to assist you in your quest.” — Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Over the last 5 years, I have given away enormous amounts of money to organizations and charities I believe in. I’ve also given money away to random people.

Once, I was in an Uber with a lady who was telling me about her desire to go back to college. She needed some money to pay for her tuition.

I asked her how much it was.

It was a little over a thousand dollars. I just gave it to her.

I paid her tuition bill so that she could go back to school and show her daughter that she was capable of succeeding. This was amazing to me. Furthermore, it boosted my desire to make more money, so that I could give even more.

When you give money away, you focus on gratitude and abundance.

When you give money away, you attract more money into your life.

When you give money away, you’ll see yourself as someone who can have money.

Giving away money will make you feel AMAZING.

When you give away money, it increases your desire to give more.

You’ll want to make more money, so that you have more money to give away.

Giving away money will help you ‘tap into’ the identity of your future self, rather than your past self, in the deepest way possible.

Connecting with your future self takes place across 3 levels:

SeeingFeelingKnowing

Before you can tap into the identity of your future self, you must imagine it. Many people struggle with this. They don’t actually want money, because they have unhealthy beliefs that it will make them a bad person.

When you give large amounts of money away, you’ll shatter negative beliefs you may hold regarding money. You’ll be able to see your future self, as someone who has money and a healthy relationship with it.

Next is feeling. Feeling takes place in the form of an emotional connection. When you have an emotional connection to your future self, you’ll start boldly moving forward and acting as that person.

Then, your action will take form in tangible results. When you actually see the impact that your money has when given generously, you tap into knowing.

As Florence Shinn has said, “Faith knows that it has already received and acts accordingly.”

Giving away money puts you into this mindset.

4. Develop Rare, Unique, And Valuable Skills

To have more money, you need to become really good at what you do.

As Jim Collins said, “good is the enemy of great.”

You increase your income by increasing your value in the marketplace.

You can develop skills and abilities that are both highly profitable and useful. It is entirely up to you.

In our book 10X Is Easier Than 2X, Dan Sullivan and I discuss the concept of “unique ability.”

If you commit to developing rare, unique, and valuable skills, over time, people will pay you 10x as much for the same amount of work. You will have developed a unique ability.

This is also of the core concepts in the book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport.

In the essay “How to Make Wealth,” famed entrepreneurial thinker Paul Graham teaches the fundamental difference between wealth and money.

Money is paper. Money is a finite game.

Wealth is something that you create. Wealth is an infinite game.

If you develop skills and abilities, you are creating wealth.

Your new skills and abilities don’t take away from anyone else. They increase the collective good that can be accomplished in the world.

This article doesn’t take away from anyone or anything else.

There is no finite pie when it comes to wealth.

If you create valuable products or provide valuable skills to others, you do not take a piece of the economic “pie.” You increase the size of the pie.

Because of this, there is no limit to the amount of wealth you can create.

When you commit to developing wealth through rare and valuable skills:

You embrace your uniquenessYou embrace what you intrinsically want and desireYou don’t compete with anyone else

It’s your choice whether or not you want to develop mastery.

Mastery is the difference between making enormous amounts of money, and not.

Next, let’s explore a powerful way to build mastery in your life FAST.

5. Invest in Yourself

When I decided to become a professional writer, I invested in a $197 course from a blogger named Jon Morrow.

That course taught me how to write viral blog posts, how to structure and organize my articles, and how to get my work published on big platforms like Forbes and Harvard Business Review.

That course closed a gap between my former and future self.

By investing in myself, I proved to myself that I could succeed.

When you invest in yourself, you shatter subconscious blocks.

When you invest in yourself, you’re telling yourself a different story, one that you can be, do, and have, on a higher level.

Investing in your skills can pay enormous dividends.

Before I invested in myself, I was paying the price of what sales coach and author Myron Golden calls “the price of not knowing.” After I invested in myself, I went on to become the #1 writer on Medium.com for several years and published 6 books.

You should invest in your network. You can literally pay money to be in rooms where you are the dumbest person in the room, and the “average” or norm for the other people there is much higher than you were previously used to.

When I got my first book deal, I immediately took nearly all of the money I received and invested it into joining Genius Network, an entrepreneurial mastermind group.

You are the average of the people you spend the most time around. You can be intentional about those people, and then acclimate to their level.

You also should be clear about being in networks of people who align with what you are currently trying to accomplish. As an example, I was in several networks for 5+ years that I am no longer in, because my goals have shifted. Even this week, I invested in joining a network of people aligned with my current goals.

As Dr. Marshall Goldsmith famously taught in his book of the same title, “what got you here won’t get you there.”

In your life and business, there is a 20% that brings you results and an 80% that is getting in the way.

If you spent 100% of your time (instead of 20%) on the skill that excites you and bring in money, how quickly could you put in 10,000 hours into that skill?

There’s a few things that you do in your life that change everything. There are many things that lead to very little, if not no, financial results.

It doesn’t take that much time to get excellent at what you do if you hire people to handle the 80%. Invest in a team, hiring other people to fill the 80% that doesn’t help you move forward. Dan Sullivan and I wrote about this in our books Who Not How and 10X is Easier than 2X.

Ideally, you find people where your 80% is their 20%. Then, you don’t have to train them. Find people who are already good at doing the things you need help with.

Your first “who” should be an assistant to take care of your logistics: your email and your schedule.

If you have someone to organize you, you can spend much more time in a flow-state, going DEEP into the skills that matter most.

Many people view hiring of employees as a cost, not as an investment. In reality, your “who’s” free up time to enable you to go much deeper into your craft.

Invest in your skills.

Invest in your network.

Invest in your team.

Next, a way to approach the way you invest in assets.

6. Automate Becoming Wealthy

When I hired my financial advisor, that was an investment. It cost me money and time.

That investment also provided me with amazing advice.

With anything you want to do well, make it your priority to hire people who already can do it really well — at the highest level. Accountants, tax advisors, financial and wealth planners, lawyers, whoever who need to move towards your future self.

Investing in assets is ultimately how you build wealth.

Every Monday, because of an arrangement my financial advisor and I set up, money leaves my bank and goes into my investment account.

That system that has been set on auto-pilot for years. I set it and forget it.

By simply investing every single week, you’re going to make a lot more money.

This is systematizing your future self.

This is systematizing becoming a millionaire.

7. Don’t Lose Money

“Rule #1, don’t lose money. Rule #2, never forget rule #1” — Warren Buffett

Don’t lose money unnecessarily. This is stated in lots of books.

Oftentimes we have to learn this through experience. Hopefully you don’t!

Even me, I’ve lost huge amounts of money on dumb investments.

Chasing things with greed.

Chasing things I’m not aware of.

Taking investment advice from friends who are not experts.

Try not to lose too much money, and hopefully you don’t lose it all.

One of my favorite books on this topic is Peaks and Valleys, by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

It’s ultimately one of the best books I’ve ever read.

In the book, he explains that the great things in life happen because of what people learn in their “valleys,” and the bad things in life happen because of what people do in their “peaks.”

Often, as you start making more and more money, you’ll flush that money down the toilet, because your subconscious and your identity haven’t yet adjusted to that new standard.

The goal is to go from peak to peak to peak, and continually upgrade your subconscious and your standard.

Sometimes life happens. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes and situations. Learn your lessons.

“Lessons are repeated until they’re learned.” — Frank Sonnenberg

If you lose money, it’ll take you twice as long to get back to where you were.

If you’re in a financial valley right now, you were inspired to be led to this article today. You have the capability to learn and move forward to create a peak. Learn the lesson, and then evaluate how not to repeat the same mistakes again.

You’ve got this.

Conclusion

These core fundamentals I’ve learned from hundreds of books are all ways in which you can become very financially successful.

Want to succeedTransform your identityGive away moneyDevelop rare, unique, and valuable skillsInvest in yourself, your network, and your teamAutomate wealth (through investing in assets)Don’t lose money

The choice to implement any or all of these is entirely up to you. When you make the decision to become wealthy, so many other aspects of your life will change. The decision to provide more value to the economy is entirely up to you.

Go for it.

Ready To Upgrade?

I've put together a unique training that is EXTREMELY potent... unlike anything I've done before.

It's only 27 minutes and goes away soon.

This training will show you how to achieve impossible goals success BEFORE 2023 is over.

Watch the free training here before it goes away.

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10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Achieving 10X growth is exponentially easier than striving for 2X growth. Most find this idea confusing at first because simply imagining 10X growth causes them to think they need to do 10X more work to achieve it. However, being a 10X entrepreneur is nothing like what most people think.

10X is not the outcome; it’s a counterintuitive process you can apply every time you want exponential growth in your life and business. To make 10X possible, you must focus on expanding what Dan defines as your four most important freedoms — time, money, relationship, and purpose. As your time becomes 10X more valuable, you increasingly multiply the money you earn both in terms of amount and profitable satisfaction. As money becomes a tool you can increasingly access with greater ease, you will engage with a growing number of other freedom-motivated individuals. As both your professional and personal life fills up with 10X more unique and collaborative relationships, you will realize that your most powerful purposes in all areas become 10X more lasting and positive for everyone involved. You will be impressed by what your life has become, and the meaning and impact you’re having.

10X is fundamentally about quality vs quantity, and the quality of your freedoms determines the results you achieve.

I recently published 10X Is Easier Than 2X: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less with the world’s leading coach for highly successful entrepreneurs, Dan Sullivan.

Grab a copy now to learn how to 10X your life: https://bit.ly/10xIsEasier

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Win An In-Person Mastermind + $5,000 Cash

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

For this week only, if you purchase 25 hardcover copies of BE YOUR FUTURE SELF NOW, you will get:

12 months of full access to my AMP-GOLD program, which will systemize and transform your life ($997)Full access to my new BE YOUR FUTURE SELF NOW COURSE ($197)

For those who purchase the 25 copies, if you desire, you will also be entered into a contest/challenge. Between now and January 1, 2023, you will utilize the principles and strategies in BE YOUR FUTURE SELF NOW to upgrade and transform your life as much as possible. On January 1, you will submit a 1-page written document describing and providing evidence of your progress and growth.

We have over 4 months left in 2022.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going big.

The top 3 winners will be flown to my office here in Orlando, and spend a full day with me in person. We will mastermind your FUTURE SELF and set you up to achieve more in 2023 than you have in the previous 5–10 years. It will be a transformational and peak experience. These top 3 winners will also be awarded $5,000 cash.

You can buy 25 copies at the Porchlight link below for a large discount (approximately $402 + shipping) or just purchase them on Amazon at the link below(approximately $550 + potential shipping).

Please email ben@benjaminhardy.com with the receipt of your purchase and we’ll get you immediate access to your online programs, as well as access to the community of people also engaging in this transformational challenge.

Once you get your books, please share them. It will change lives.

PORCHLIGHT LINK:

https://lnkd.in/gWTSH6AG

AMAZON LINK:

https://lnkd.in/gYHrPwCR

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The Simplest “Hack” to Being Productive, Not Busy

Photo by William Christen on Unsplash“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.” — Derek Sivers

“We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”— Robert Brault

In psychology, decision fatigue occurs when your mind is overwhelmed by options.

You’re caught in paralysis-by-analysis.

It’s the exact opposite of how highly successful think.

Don’t believe me? Check out this quote from Michael Jordan: “Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.”

Another important quote is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” It appears the true origin of this quote likely comes from the novelist, Clare Boothe Luce, who said, “The height of sophistication is simplicity.”

Regardless of who said it, there are a few important ideas here, which if you get, will make your life 10-times easier while also producing 10-times better results.

Here are the bullets of the main ideas, then I’ll lay out for you the most simple and friction-free solution to extreme productivity.

Big ideas:Perfection = when you’ve stripped something down to its most essential. As Michelangelo said of his work in creating the famed David statue, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”Busyness = a life that is out of control and uncommitted on a specific future result.The reason people don’t succeed = people fail in life, not because they’re incapable, but because they dedicate the majority of their life to “clear paths to lesser goals.”Decision fatigue = you haven’t made a decision; you’re caught in paralysis-by-analysis.Decision = you’ve cut-away alternative options to what you’ve committed yourself to. Making a decision is how you end the paralysis of decision fatigue.Simplicity = required for success at whatever you do. In order to be simple, you must remove everything that is non-essential.Productivity = doing the few “right things,” very very well. This is rare in a world of distracted and uncommitted people.The strategy:

Now that we’ve got those epic truths out of the way, here’s how you do it. I suggest you apply this concept for the “weekly” and “monthly” basis to start. You could, however, apply this principle for the year, decade, and even your entire life.

Let’s start with monthly. In the case of this writing, it is March of 2022. All I need to do is ask myself: What absolutely MUST get done in March?

Not, what would be nice?

Not, what do I have scheduled?

No.

What ABSOLUTELY must get done in March?

What are the critical few things that truly matter in March?

What things, if they don’t get done, will create significant challenges to my Future Self?

What are the few things I’ll regret not doing?

Chances are, if you’re thinking about your own March of 2022, there are a lot of items on your mental to-do list, or even on your schedule. But how much of that stuff TRULY must get done?

How much of it is “fluff”?

Let me give myself as an example here. I write books professionally and am currently writing a book titled 10X IS EASIER THAN 2X. This book is set to be published in October of 2022. I was supposed to have my rough draft to my editor 3 weeks ago. Due to slowed production of printing and materials (COVID-19 stuff), I need to complete this book by Mid-April at worst. I am still nowhere near being done with even the first draft.

I also have a high-level coaching program that requires four 90-minute group coaching sessions from me per month. I can’t get out of those without creating significant problems in my business.

Finally, I have a lower-tier version of that coaching program that requires me to create four 10-minute training videos per month.

Thus:

If I were to strip down everything to its utter core, of what I need to accomplish in March, it’s this:

The full first draft of 10X IS EASIER THAN 2X, and really, it’s got to be refining itself a lot by the end of March.Four 90-minute group coaching calls for PLATINUM.Four 10-minute epic training videos for GOLD.

That’s it.

That’s the stripped-down version.

A portion of the daily email I get from my assistant every morning.The psychology:

When I look at it that way, it’s very doable. I have more than enough time.

The problem is: When I think about my March, it feels like I have tons to do. A reason for that may be appointments or meetings on my schedule.

It could be other goals I have, like creating YouTube videos.

The 80/20 rule says that 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do.

Also, if you want to create a 10X bigger future, only the critical “20%” of your life will scale to 10X. 80% of your current mindsets, skills, activities, and even relationships will scale to 10X where you’re currently at.

What got you here won’t get you there.

Are you willing to commit?

If you want to be productive, you need to be focused. If you want flow, you need clear goals. Flow doesn’t operate very well without constraints.

If you want to be happy, you need less, not more.

Feeling stressed and feeling like you have a thousand things to do will kill your productivity. It will kill your flow. It will kill your results.

Success at anything requires clarity, commitment, and courage. It requires courage because in order to actually achieve something significant, you’ve got to block almost everything else out.

There are VERY few things that deserve your time and attention. There are very few activities and relationships that are actually moving the needle for you.

To be productive, you must do less. The few things you actually do prioritize, you must get VERY good at. You’ve got to do what Cal Newport calls “DEEP WORK.”

You cannot do deep work if you’re trying to do 10 things at once.

You’ve got to strip everything down to the bare essential.

What is the critical 20% that will scale to your 10X bigger and better Future Self?

Who do you really want to be?

What actually matters?

What TRULY must get done?

If you get better at achieving what MUST get done — the “important” first, and then absolutely required “urgent” — then progressively your life will become more successful.

You’ll have more focus.

You’ll have a clearer mind.

You’ll have more flow.

You’ll have less distraction and decision fatigue.

You’ll be living your life, not someone else’s.

Strip everything down to the essentials.

Clearly define what MUST get done. Then, to the extent you’re committed and courageous, eliminate as much as possible from your schedule and life that doesn’t fit.

Only get done what MUST get done for your Future Self. Then, add the few other “important” things that are important, but not 100% critical. They are nice and they fit the filter, but distinguish those from the MUSTS.

Want a free Kindle book?

Grab a free Kindle code for THE GAP AND THE GAIN here. This book will change your life.

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13 Signs You’ve Leveled-Up As A Person

Leonardo DiCaprio with a Swan, 1997Photography by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair

According to meta-analytic data, confidence isn’t what leads to success. Instead, successful behavior is what creates confidence.

Unlike dopamine which only lasts short-term, confidence is something you own, once you’ve earned it. Short-term pleasure and long-term joy are two fundamentally different outcomes.

Once you’ve begun succeeding at any endeavor, you’ll reach a threshold where you must decide if you’re ready to go to the next level. Most people get comfortable at a certain stage because they don’t want to deal with the emotional purging involved in up-leveling.

When you decide to up-level and go bigger, your life becomes very difficult for a short period of time. You may have mastered algebra, but now you’re in a calculus class and feel completely disoriented.

All of a sudden, the confidence you used to have feels completely gone. You’re now wondering if you want to do this whole math thing… or whatever it is you’re doing.

Despite having a firm foundation, you feel like you’re standing on nothing, and that everything around you is falling apart.

Have you up-leveled lately? If so, this list of 13 will be familiar.

Don’t fret, you’ve been through this before. You’ve come this far. You’ve battled hard. You’ve triumphed.

Now things are feeling rough. But it won’t be long until you get your stride back. But this time, you’ll be more evolved. More able. The stakes will be higher. You’ll have more help and support. Everything will mean more.

Here’s how you’ll know if you’ve recently leveled up:

1. Your Confidence Temporarily Drops

“If you’re freaked-out, that means you’re a professional.” — Shane Snow

If you’ve been successful in the past, and for some reason feel derailed, don’t take that as a sign you’re on the wrong path.

Chances are, you’ve up-leveled without realizing it. Said Dr. Stephen R. Covey, “We control our actions, but the consequences that flow from those actions are controlled by principles.”

When you’ve mastered one set of principles, your life will improve. You’ll become more competent, successful, and confident. Your interactions with other people will be far deeper and more meaningful. Your social group will shift from people solely interested in entertainment to people interested in solving problems and growth.

However, once you’ve mastered a certain level of principles, you’ll become aware of and exposed to higher-order principles. Immediately, you’ll feel like a child again. You don’t know how these rules work. You’ll begin making mistakes.

Your confidence will drop. People will say, “You don’t seem like yourself.”

You’ll wonder if you’ll ever be able to feel that same powerful feeling again. Don’t worry, you will.

2. Everything Will Feel Like It’s Falling Apart

Just before author Napoleon Hill’s greatest success in life, he went through several months of depression.

Despite knowing deep within himself what he was capable of, he became paralyzed and incapable. He was at rock bottom. His life, finances, and relationships began falling apart.

Once the pain became severe enough, something happened. A switch flipped. He snapped. In his own words, “I was seized upon by my ‘Other self’” which had zero fear, was completely clear, and operated with definiteness of purpose.

With this immediate clarity, he was able to get direct insights about how to achieve his goals. But this acceleration and advancement came after several months of failure, defeat, confusion, and depression. He had up-leveled and was facing bigger challenges and responsibilities than he ever had before. Said historian Will Durant, “I think the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.”

It took a while for him to adapt to the higher-order demands of his new situation. But adapt he did. And adapt you will. You haven’t yet risen as high as you’re about to because you’ve never been demanded as much as you are now.

There’s a fear of success lurking within you. You’re not sure if you really want to keep ascending. But you already know within yourself that you will. You’re resolved. It’s done. You know it’s happening. You’re being pulled.

3. You’ll Begin To Question Yourself and Your Goals

In the midst of your confusion and lack of performance — as your world is seemingly falling apart — you’ll begin to question yourself and the path you’re on.

First, your life isn’t really falling apart. It’s better now than it’s ever been before. You’re living at a much higher and more powerful level than ever before. You’re just adjusting to what that means. You’ll rise up.

But in the meantime, you’ll question. Clarity will lack. You’ll be surrounded by fog. You’ll feel disoriented.

It’s during these moments that you’ll need to stick to your core practices for clarity. You’ll need to deepen your learning, deepen your meditations/prayer. Even still, for a period of time, the clarity that once seemed to have an infinite flow will feel dried-up.

It will be very disheartening.

4. You’ll Feel Alone — Even Among Close Friends

Despite developing deeper and better relationships — you’ll feel alone. The alone time you need is necessary. At the same time, though, you need to maintain connection.

You’re as sick as you’re secrets.

Isolation won’t help you get where you need to go. The more successful you become, the more connected you’ll need to be. If you become isolated and stay isolated, you’ll lose your mind. In that case, everything will permanently come crashing down. In the words of Greg McKeown, your “success will become a catalyst for failure.”

So, take the time you need to get clarity. But be even more vulnerable and honest now with your “inner circle.” You need them now more than ever. This doesn’t mean you won’t feel alone. You absolutely will feel alone. But just like the lack of confidence, this feeling will shortly go away. You’re growing and be purged.

You’ll soon see the people in your life with more love and gratitude than ever before. Your humility for all they do for you will peak. Your joy for the little things will surmount any achievement or goal you desire.

5. You’ll Feel Numb To What Used To Inspire You

For a time, you’ll feel totally disconnected from your passion, craft, and mission. What used to keep you awake at night with excitement now finds you sleeping-in in attempts to avoid.

The external pressure feels too much. It’s harder to focus. It’s harder to get into the zone. Harder to feel inspired. Harder to care.

This numbness isn’t because you don’t care, though. You’ve advanced in understanding. You’ve adapted. You’re being double-teamed now. Your brain is being forced to deal with more at once. This is how you advance. This is how you develop deeper mastery and subconscious ability to perform even under the severest of conditions.

Seek the breakthroughs. They’ll come. The light will break through. And soon enough, it will come through with more intensity than you’ve ever experienced before.

6. You’ll Start Going Through The Motions and Continue to Succeed — But It Won’t Be As Enjoyable

For a while, it will feel like you’re going through the motions. You’ll have so much momentum that muscle memory will take over. But your heart won’t be in it for a short time.

You’ll still succeed. But it won’t matter to you, because you didn’t push yourself. Succeeding will become boring because you’re not in alignment with your why.

You’re close, though, to reconnecting.

7. You’ll Start Making Uncharacteristic Mistakes — And You Won’t Be Bothered

With your temporary lack of confidence and stability, you’ll begin dropping balls that were easy to hold before.

Small things that were once easy to figuratively lift will feel extremely heavy and difficult.

Initially, you’ll be freaked out by the balls you’re dropping. But at the same time, stability and sanity are more important. So you’re willing to drop some pretty big balls.

To other people, the consequences seem impossibly big. But your mind has already been stretched. You have a much, much bigger vision. Although once big, these balls are now small in your mind. Your security is internal, so you know you’ll be able to solve whatever problems may arise. To quote Josh Waitzin in The Art of Learning, “Sometimes limits need to be pushed.”

8. Countless Opportunities Present Themselves — Distractions

“A ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ is irrelevant if it is the wrong opportunity.” — Jim Collins

One of the problems with your situation is that more and more opportunities seem to be presenting themselves.

You leveled-up for a reason. You learned how to do things other people haven’t discovered. You’ve developed what Cal Newport calls, “rare and valuable skills.”

Your discernment will really need to sharpen if you’re going to make it to the top of this level and up to the next. Most people “sell-out” at some point. The opportunities become too compelling and the vision fades into oblivion.

The only opportunities that matter are the one’s that deeply resonate. Stay close to people you know deep down really care. There will be plenty of people out there who will tell you what they think you want to hear. And they’ll be compelling… and you’ll probably fall for it a time or two.

But don’t buy it this time. The people you decide to maintain on your journey of life will determine your long-term success and inner-peace.

9. You‘ll Be Faced With A Crucial Decision

It’s at this point that you’re faced with the crucial decision — will you connect deeper with the WHY that brought you here? Or will you succumb to the pressure?

Pressure can busts pipes… or it can make diamonds.

Here is your moment. Your situation is poised. Everything you’ve done has brought you to this point. Now is your time to rise up or let up.

In order to reconnect with your WHY, you’ll need to un-commit to several “opportunities” that were nothing more than appealing distractions. You’ll need to have some hard conversations with the people who matter most. You’ll need to get back to your core. You’ll need to get back to the drawing board.

It’s at this point that you can take all you’ve learned in the past and go bigger than you’ve ever gone before.

10. You’ll Need to Adjust — What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

The biggest fear of growth is the challenge that will be demanded. Now is your time to adjust to the newness. Embrace it.

Newness brings flow. It allows for more angles on the same beautiful experiences, relationships, and meanings you’ve had in the past.

11. You’ll Need to Recommit — It Won’t Be Easy, But It Will Come (You Can’t Go Back)

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

You need to get definitive again — like you were when you first caught fire. You’ll need to get back to the beginner’s mind. You’ll need to want it bad enough to get extremely consistent again. No more lack of consistency. Now is the time to be more consistent than ever before.

12. You’ll Quickly Adapt To Your New Lessons — Growth Will Come Shockingly Fast

Prepare for faster growth than you’ve ever experienced before. Your momentum is now multiplied and compounded.

You’re no longer alone on your quest. You have lots of teammates and supporters who will help you. Not only that, but something inside of you expanded beyond the dimensions of what you could create. Now, you’re creating, building, connecting, and living. It’s a sight to see.

13. Enjoy It

Let it happen.

Enjoy it.

You’re on to something great right now. Your confidence is back.

Free ebook?

Click this link to get a free kindle version of my latest book, THE GAP AND THE GAIN. This book will show you a unique way to increase your happiness and success as a high-achiever.

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21 Behaviors That Will Make You Brilliant at Creativity & Relationships

Einstein

When you see things from multiple perspectives, you realize you can achieve almost anything you want in far less time than you imagined.

Yet most people have fixed and limited views about themselves and what they can accomplish.

They have fixed and limited views about the resources available to them.

They have fixed and limited views about time, and how long things must take to accomplish.

In this article, I squash all of those limiting perspectives and provide concrete strategies you can use to achieve your goals. There are no fixed limits.

Here’s how it works:

Core Principles1. Set absurdly ambitious goals

“When 10x is your measuring stick, you immediately see how you can bypass what everyone else is doing.” — Dan Sullivan

Goals are most likely to be accomplished when:

They are intrinsically motivating. As Napoleon Hill explained in Think and Grow Rich , “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”They must be difficult, or else they won’t be motivating.They must be time-bound, to create a sense of urgency. Shorter timelines are one way to go 10x, since they force you to shed artificial constraints and think more creatively. As billionaire Peter Thiel is known to ask: “How can you achieve your ten-year plan in the next six months?”

As with all things in life, you get what you want. If you prefer to make excuses and justifications for a lack of progress, then just admit you prefer your current station in life. Self-acceptance can be a beautiful thing.

However, once you desire progress more than convenience, obstacles no longer stop but propel you. As the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is famous for saying, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

2. Reframe subconscious patterns and get bold insights via auto-suggestion

“What is impressed in the subconscious is expressed.” — Dr. Joseph Murphy in The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

While awake, your conscious and subconscious mind are often at odds with each other. For example, you’re trying to be positive, but your subconscious patterns simply won’t let you.

Yet, while transitioning from being awake to being asleep, your brain waves move from the active Beta state into Alpha and then Theta before eventually dropping into Delta as we sleep. It is during the Theta window that your mind is most receptive to reshaping your subconscious patterns. Hence, Thomas Edison is known for having said, “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”

As a result, just before you fall asleep, it is key to visualize and even vocally state what you are trying to accomplish. When you repeatedly state a desired goal, visualization is key because you want to have as emotional an experience as possible. You need to feel what it would be like to have what you seek.

You can absolutely trust that by planting these subconscious seeds, thoughts will pop up at you, often at random intervals. You need to record these thoughts throughout your day. The bigger the goal, the bolder will be the required action to attain it. The clearer your why, the more inspired will be your how.

If you’re serious, you’ll need to act immediately upon the impressions your subconscious is transmitting to your conscious mind. If you brush off these insights, you’ll get less and less of them. You’ll demonstrate to yourself and the source of your inspiration that you don’t really want the changes you claim to desire.

3. Learn and work in counterintuitive environments

1905 was Albert Einstein’s breakthrough year where he published four research articles, known as the Annus Mirabilis papers, which went on to substantially alter the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter.

Interestingly, when Einstein published these papers, he was not working in an academic setting, but rather at the Swiss Patent Office. His work in this counterintuitive work environment allowed him different reflective angles and questions than a typical physics lab.

As Elon Musk’s wife, Justine, has said:

“Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life.”

When you work in a different context from the majority of people in your field, you can make distinct and unique connections. You can integrate and cross-pollinate different ideas. You can avoid dogmatic thinking and expectations. You can learn to integrate ideas from seemingly dissimilar fields.

4. Learn from counterintuitive resources

“What does following in the footsteps of everyone else get you? It gets you to exactly the same conclusions as everyone else.” —  Ryan Holiday

As Holiday explains, if you read what everyone else is reading, you’ll think like everyone else thinks. If you think like everyone else thinks, you won’t be able to come up with anything unique.

Follow your curiosity. Chase down obscure leads. Find stuff that no one else has found. In this way, your work will be truly valuable to others.

5. Focus on the process (not results) of those who are succeeding big

“Success leaves clues.” —  Jim Rohn

Focusing exclusively on results is one of the primary reasons the current academic system is broken. Kids are being taught to train for the test, rather than seeking novel and unique ways of doing things. No two kids are wired the same, nor should their contribution, creativity, and talent be viewed from the same standard.

When you want to develop expertise at something, rather than focusing on the results of those at the top of your field, study and emulate their process.

What are they doing?

Once you get process-oriented, as opposed to results-oriented, you realize you too can achieve amazing results. The process, or your behavior, is completely within your control. Conversely, when you focus solely on other people’s results, you can quickly become overwhelmed and give up.

6. Ignore what almost everyone else is doing

In the book Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, Tim Grover explains that the world’s elite don’t compete with other people. Rather, they make others compete with them. They set the tone and make others react to their environment.

Most people are competing with other people. They continuously check in to see what others in their space (their “competition”) are doing. As a result, they mimic and copy what’s “working.”

Rather than worrying about what others are doing, live your values. Put first things first. Spend more time with your loved ones and away from work. While working, follow your own curiosity, not what others are doing.

7. 80/20 Analysis of highest leverage activities

“Today everyone is a generalist, a deliberate move on the part of most as a reaction to the economic times.” —  Leonard Smith

When studying the process of those you seek to emulate, don’t try to do it all. Everyone has their own strategy. Even those at the top of your field have imperfect strategies.

Find the patterns. What are the key things you must master? Master those.

Then innovate beyond those patterns when you’re ready, so your process comes to exceed the process of those you admire. Eventually, your results will exceed theirs as well.

8. Over-learn high leverage activities

Learning something new is all about memory and how you use it. At first, your prefrontal cortex — which stores your working (or short-term) memory — is really busy figuring out how the task is done.

But once you’re proficient, the prefrontal cortex gets a break. In fact, it’s freed up by as much as 90%. Once this happens, you can perform that skill automatically, leaving your conscious mind to focus on other things.

This level of performance is called automaticity, and reaching it depends on what psychologists call over-learning or over-training.

For example, if you want to quickly learn how to write viral articles, study several hundred headlines of viral articles. If you want to write a book, study just the table of contents of hundreds of books. These are your lay-ups.

Start with small sets of information, then expand from there. By over-learning a particular category of learning, you’ll be able to better understand how it relates to the whole. You’ll also quickly be able to apply what you learn. You’ll quickly see the patterns others miss. Time will slow down for you as your cognition expands.

9. Learn to apply, not to procrastinate “the work”

“The key secret to success is not excessive expertise, but the ability to use it. Knowledge is worthless unless it is applied.” —  Max Lukominskyi

Learning is best done while you’re doing the activity. Public education has taught people they must first master theory, then attempt to transfer that theory into the real world. In a similar way, people’s love for information via the internet has led them to use “learning” as a form of procrastination.

A better approach is “context-based learning,” where you learn while doing. The key principles of context-based learning include:

Learn a concept in its simplest form.Put your rudimentary knowledge to practice in a real-world scenario.Get coaching and feedback (feedback often comes in the form of “failure”).Apply the feedback through repetitious practice.Get coaching and feedback.Repeat until proficient (see #8 just above).

Interestingly, researchers examined the effects of role-playing on the self-concept of shy adolescents. One group of adolescents got traditional discussion-based training while another did role-play based training. The group that did role-plays experienced a significant positive change in their self-concept, which has a significant impact on their behaviors.

In our digital world, simulation training — based on role-playing real-world scenarios — is becoming increasingly popular.

Additionally, research has found that getting consistent feedback is essential to effective learning. You can use this. By making your work public, you get immediate feedback.

Getting immediate feedback has been found to be a flow trigger. It heightens performance. Especially when the feedback is real world, and there are real consequences for success and failure.

10. Focus on quantity in the beginning

“Plant a lot, harvest a few.” — Seth Godin

In the book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant explains that “originals” (i.e., people who create innovative work) are not reliable. In other words, not everything they produce is extraordinary.

For example, among the 50 greatest pieces of music ever created, six belong to Mozart, five are Beethoven’s, and three Bach’s. But in order to create those, Mozart wrote over 600 compositions, Beethoven 650, and Bach over 1,000.

Similarly, Picasso created thousands of pieces of art, and few are considered to be his “great works.” Edison had 1,900 patents, and only a handful we would recognize. Albert Einstein published 248 scientific articles, only a few of which are what got him on the map for his theory of relativity.

Quantity is the most likely path to quality. The more you produce, the more ideas you will have — some of which will be innovative and original. And you never know which ones will click. You just keep creating.

11. Track only a few things (ignore everything else)

“If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any.” — Jim Collins in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t

If you want to improve at something, you need to quantify it. If you don’t quantify it, you don’t really know what’s happening. As Thomas Monson explains, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

I can personally attest to this principle. When I started measuring a few metrics, such as each set in the gym, my income, and how much time I spend in “flow” while working, I dramatically improved in these areas. The reason is simple: tracking helped me become aware and objective about my weaknesses. Thus, I knew exactly where I should focus and could do it systematically.

12. Heighten expectation for what you can accomplish

“I think the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.” — William Durant

I started working out with my current workout partner about two months ago. He’s nearly 20 years older than me, and can lift substantially more weight than me.

One of the first things he told me was, “Most people never get stronger simply because they don’t put themselves under the weight.” As a result, our first several workouts involved me being heavily spotted while benching and squatting way more than I ever had before. The purpose was to feel the weight.

It hasn’t taken long at all to increase my strength while working out with my new partner. He’s raised my expectations. Yet I don’t let his expectations dictate what I can do. As will be shown in the following section on mentorships, the expectations of those around you create the context for your growth and potential.

But you don’t need to be bound by those expectations. For instance, just because many of my favorite writers publish twice per week, I decided to hold myself to a different standard when I started writing. In large measure, you get what you expect you will. According to Expectancy Theory, one of the core theories of motivation, motivation involves three components:

the value you place on your goalyour belief that specific behaviors will actually facilitate the outcomes you desireyour belief in your own ability to successfully execute the behaviors requisite to achieving your goals

Learn from the best. But don’t be bound by their standards. Run at your own pace, even if that pace is faster than those you aspire to be like.

Mentorships13. Surround yourself with people with higher expectations than you have

According to what psychologists call “The Pygmalion Effect,” other people’s expectations of you heavily influence how well you do.

When you’re a child, the expectations of your parents “set the bar.” Interestingly, these expectations form an invisible barrier from which it becomes very difficult to exceed.

For instance, scientific experiments have been done on fleas, wherein they’ve been put in a glass jar. Without the lid on the jar, the fleas can easily jump out. However, the fleas can be trained to stay in the jar by putting a lid on it. After only three days, the lid can be removed and the fleas will be constrained by an invisible mental barrier.

Not surprisingly, the “next generation” of fleas is also constrained by this new and invisible barrier. The Pygmalion effect explains why: the next generation develops the same expectations for themselves as their parents have for them.

If, however, you were to take one of those fleas out of that jar and place them in a bigger jar, surrounded by fleas jumping much higher, mirror neurons would fire and that flea would soon be able to jump higher. Mental barriers would shatter, soon to be replaced by the mental barriers of those in the new jar.

When seeking mentorships, it’s important to realize that the expectations of your mentor reflect the flea’s jar, and invisible barrier, as opposed to your inherent ability. There is no fixed ability. Nothing, and nobody, has an “absolute” value. Everything is contextual.

Even still, by jumping into a much bigger jar, you’ll quickly grow. Actually, you may learn to jump much higher than you ever imaged with the help of a caring mentor. Thus, it is extremely important for you to surround yourself with those who have high expectations for you. It may be difficult, frustrating, and humbling to develop and grow. But if you stick to it, you’ll eventually reach a new invisible cap.

14. Expect to expand and adapt

Human beings are highly adaptive. For instance, Viktor Frankl reflected on his experience as a Nazi concentration camp victim and sleeping comfortably next to nine other people on small beds. Said Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Yes a person can get used to anything, just don’t ask us how.” Indeed, this was one of the most surprising aspects of living in a concentration camp, the rapidity at which the shock and horror became apathy and “normal.”

No matter how far-reaching and discontinuous the jump from one environment to the next, a person can and will adapt, whether that means going from zero kids to three (trust me), or from completely inactive to exercising with professional bodybuilders.

Take, for example, Collin Clark, a 20-year-old who lost 64 pounds and 30 percent body fat in six months. The process was simple; he went to the gym and began to emulate the bodybuilders who were there. Eventually, one particular bodybuilder took an interest in Collin, and became his mentor. By working out daily with a bodybuilder, Collin transformed. The example of Collin Clark is particularly notable, as he has down syndrome.

When you first enter a new and larger jar, you’ll feel excited and perhaps even intimidated by all the jumping room. However, like gas which spreads to fill the space it’s been given, you too will adapt. Thus, you won’t want to overstay your welcome. Remember, the jar is a reflection of other people’s expectations.

Hence, the next point:

15. Don’t get stuck with one mentor

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.” — Lao Tzu

High-quality friendships should last forever. High-quality mentorships, on the other hand, should not last forever.

One mentor can only take you so far; they can only give you one “jar.” If you want to evolve beyond that jar, you’ll need a new mentor. And this is exactly what any true mentor would want for you as well. It’s not about “them.” They are investing in you. It is through your best work that they can live on forever.

16. The mentor sets the expectations, but the mentee sets the tone

Although the mentor’s expectations and abilities reflect the size of the jar, it is the mentee that sets the tone for the relationship and how well it will go.

I’ve been in mentoring relationships where I’ve been a good mentee and a bad mentee. In each case, it was not the mentor, but me, who determined how well the relationship went. No one cares more about your success than you do. It is up to you how far you go in life.

Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect, has said, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.” Thus, you should be highly selective about the mentors you seek. If you aren’t intrinsically motivated to “set the tone” with your mentor, ask yourself: Do I really want to be like this person? If the answer is no, then they are the wrong mentor.

When you have the right mentor, you’ll know, because you’ll feel extremely lucky to have even a few moments of their time. You’ll do all you can to deepen the relationship, provide value, and learn. You’ll be willing to bend over backward to help them. You’ll take on greater responsibility. You’ll make their life easier. You’ll make them look good.

17. Give credit where credit is due

Although you are responsible for your own success, you are not the sole cause of that success. Far from it. You are not independent of all the help you’ve received. More accurately, you are the product of all the help you’ve received.

You are standing on the shoulders of giants. Acknowledge them for that. And never forget where you came from. Also, never speak poorly about your mentors or those who have helped you along your journey. This does nothing for you. I’ve made this mistake and destroyed important relationships with people I deeply admire — people who invested lots of time and energy into me.

As Ryan Holiday explains in his book, Ego is the Enemy, always be a student. Remain humble. Don’t let ego take over, or it will lead to your inevitable demise.

Mental Models

In this final section, I will detail beliefs required for rapid growth.

18. Think astronomically

“You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.” — Robin Williams

There is some brilliant new research on the concept of Awe, which has been defined as a feeling that arises when you encounter something so strikingly vast (in time, scope, complexity, ability, or power) it provokes a need to update your mental schemas.

Awe, or having a peak experience, can happen during an optimal sports performance or even a deep spiritual experience. When you become mindful, you can experience awe even during mundane moments.

Research has found that experiencing awe can expand your perception of time, alter your decision-making abilities, and enhance your well-being.

I can personally attest to these findings. I’ve experienced awe several times. I strive to experience it as often as possible, which for me provides a much richer and deeper perspective of life.

Awe alters your experience with time because it helps you see things more astronomically. From the perspective of light, for example, time stands still. Thus, this moment, from the perspective of light, is both an instant and an eternity. Time fades into the background of infinite possibility. Nothing becomes impossible. No distance too far.

Awe alters your ability to make decisions because you no longer fear trivial things such as other people’s perceptions, failure, or even death.

Lastly, awe alters your well-being because the mind and body are one. When you improve one aspect of your life, all others organically improve as well. Thus, when you experience a deeper connection with yourself and the universe, you live differently. You see yourself differently, and that perception has the power to alter your biology. Your emotional state also matures and becomes more healthy as well.

19. Think laterally

“Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.” — Shane Snow in Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

Most of the United States presidents spent less time in politics than the average congressman. Moreover, the best, and most popular presidents, generally spent the least amount of time in politics. Rather than spending decades climbing the tedious ladder with glass ceilings, they simply jumped laterally from a different, non-political ladder.

Ronald Reagan was an actor. Dwight Eisenhower laterally shifted from the military. Woodrow Wilson bounced over from academia. These men spent considerably little time in politics and became fabulous presidents. They reached the top by skipping the unnecessary “dues-paying” steps. Insanely productive people think the same way. Rather than climbing up ladders the traditional ways, they think of alternative routes. They skip unnecessary steps by pivoting and shifting.

Shane Snow himself used this tactic to get published on some of the biggest media outlets in the world within six months of blogging. How did he do it? He started by pitching articles to low-level blogs with basically no bar of entry. After getting a few articles published on those, he leveraged his new position and pitched to slightly higher-level blogs.

He did this by sending editors of the slightly “better” blogs an email reading something like: Hello, I’ve written at these blogs which reach similar audiences as your blog. Here’s an article I think would be a great fit for your audience.

Because the editors of those blogs knew about the blogs Snow had been published on, he was able to be published on theirs as well. He followed this pattern over and over until, within six months, his work was published at Fast Company, WIRED, and others.

20. Think more flexibly about “limits” on resources

One of the faultiest and most crippling mindsets people have is over-categorizing things, and then being bound by those categories. Psychologists call this having a “pre-mature cognitive commitment.”

When you see things from only a singular perspective, you’ll assume there is a limited supply of that thing.

Money, from most people’s perspective, is a limited resource. However, research has found that after basic needs are met, what people really want is a state of mind. Yet, that state of mind doesn’t have to be tightly bound within the cognitive category of money.

Consequently, from a mindful perspective, you can look at certain things, like money or even yourself, from multiple viewpoints. You don’t have to get stuck with fixed and rigid definitions. In nearly any case, you come to realize that what you want is always available to you, if you’ll simply alter your viewpoint. As Ellen Langer, Harvard psychologist has said, “If we examine what is behind our desires, we can usually get what we want without compromising.”

The most detrimental thing we can view from a limited standpoint is ourselves. Don’t let your own assumptions and categories determine what you are. You have no clue who you are or what you can become. Different angles and more flexible definitions allows for limitless possibilities.

21. Think more flexibly about “limits” on time

“It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time.” — Ernst Mach in The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development

Time is an abstraction, which we conceive by the change of other things. For example, the changing of the seasons, or the aging of a child.

Many people have rigid notions, for example, about how long certain things must take.

You can’t finish high school until you’re 18 years old.

You can’t be successful until after you’ve paid your dues.

If you break your leg, it must take a few months to heal.

These fixed notions about time are constraining and limiting. Change can occur at different magnitudes and qualities depending on the context. For example, there is a concept called, “Spontaneous Remission,” wherein an illness or disease surprisingly and immediately changes.

When I started my writing career, I was told it would take me at least three to five years to get the amount of subscribers needed to get a literary agent and subsequent book contract. I was told this by a highly credible source, actually a literary agent herself. However, that was based on her assumptions of time and resources, which resources also included my abilities and motivations.

She had no clue of my context, desires, and abilities. Thus, her assumptions about how long it would take me were absurd. Yet, she was just going off what she had seen, which caused her to be mindless about the situation. Within months of the conversation with that literary agent, I was in the position she said would take several years.

Takeaway: Let go of your beliefs about fixed limits of time. Time is a unique concept, which few of us understand. It need not be linear nor lead to entropy. Again, many scholars are seeing that these are nothing more than assumptions, or fixed mindsets about how things work.

Conclusion

Achieving your goals is very doable. It need not take as long as you may have previously assumed.

There is no fixed limit on how much you can learn and grow. There is no fixed amount of time it must take.

What are you going to do?

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a very time-sensitive “FUTURE SELF” training (goes away January 14th). If you’re ready to go 10X in 2022 (and avoid the biggest threats), watch this ASAP.

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One Behavior Separates The Successful From The Average

Fitness motivation

A certain farmer had become old and ready to pass his farm down to one of his two sons. When he brought his sons together to speak about it, he told them: The farm will go to the younger son.

The older son was furious! “What are you talking about?!” he fumed.

The father sat patiently, thinking.

“Okay,” the father said, “I need you to do something for me. We need more stocks. Will you go to Cibi’s farm and see if he has any cows for sale?”

The older son shortly returned and reported, “Father, Cibi has 6 cows for sale.”

The father graciously thanked the older son for his work. He then turned to the younger son and said, “I need you to do something for me. We need more stocks. Will you go to Cibi’s farm and see if he has any cows for sale?”

The younger son did as he was asked. A short while later, he returned and reported, “Father, Cibi has 6 cows for sale. Each cow will cost 2,000 rupees. If we are thinking about buying more than 6 cows, Cibi said he would be willing to reduce the price 100 rupees. Cibi also said they are getting special jersey cows next week if we aren’t in a hurry, it may be good to wait. However, if we need the cows urgently, Cibi said he could deliver the cows tomorrow.”

The father graciously thanked the younger son for his work. He then turned to the older son and said, “That’s why your younger brother is getting the farm.”

Successful People Initiate

Most people only do what they are asked, doing only the minimum requirement. They need specific instructions on most things they do.

Conversely, those who become successful are anxiously engaged in a good cause. They don’t need to be managed in all things. They don’t just do the job, they do it right and complete. They also influence the direction for how certain ideas and projects go.

Most importantly, those who become successful initiate. They reach out to people, ask questions, make recommendations, offer to help, and pitch their ideas.

Being successful requires being proactive and not waiting for life to come to you. It means you’re on offense, not defense. You’re active, not passive.

In every organization, there are a select few employees who would be difficult to replace. For the most part, most people are like the older son in the story. Most people could be easily replaced. Most people are passive and reactive. They require specific instructions. They need to be governed and managed in all things.

Initiation always involves some degree of risk. You’re putting yourself out there and there is a chance you could fail.

Conversely, doing only what you’re told entails no risk and carries no responsibility. It’s playing safe.

Conclusion

Are you an initiator? You absolutely can be.

But if not, one thing is for certain: Life isn’t going to wait for you.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a very time-sensitive “FUTURE SELF” training (goes away January 14th). If you’re ready to go 10X in 2022 (and avoid the biggest threats), watch this ASAP.

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How To Write In Your Journal To Improve Yourself and Achieve Your Goals

Camee Adams blog***Note: I wrote this article over 4 years ago. In this article, I literally show old journal entries. It’s funny looking back and seeing where I was even 4 years ago, and how much my life has changed since then. I’ve gone from 0 to 6 kids (we adopted 3), completed my PhD, published 4 books, made millions of dollars, came much closer to God, and for the most part — created my dream life. This is one of the many benefits of journaling — getting a glimpse into your former self, who was a different person than you are now. My conviction about journaling is only 10X bigger, 4 years later. Please enjoy this article and use it to create the life and breakthroughs you want.

Of all the things that have been helpful to me in personal growth and goal achievement, using my journal daily is at the foundation.

Writing in my journal every single day is the glue that holds everything else together.

My journal is the context for my dreams. It’s my favorite place to be.

It’s where the mental creation happens. And because my mental creation recurs on a daily basis within my journal, the physical creation is organic. It’s simple.

Achieving highly specific goals becomes very, very predictable. Confidence becomes a continually growing loop where ideas quickly become realities.

In this particular article, I’m going to detail the nuts and bolts of specifically how I use my journal, on a daily basis, to achieve any goal I set.

To be clear: although journaling is something I believe should be done on a daily basis, there are particular times and places in which it is most effective.

When you’re out of your regular routine (whether away for a weekend, having a “disconnected” day, or on vacation)During your morning routine immediately upon waking up

Your journal is not only where you record your insights and inspiration, but it’s where those insights become solidified and real. Your journal is where you begin thinking deeply about your insights and ideas, and where you strategize and plan the execution of those insights and ideas.

Your journal is the context for making your ideas into something much, much more tangible. You use your journal for:

Crystallizing and clarifying your ideas and insightsAffirming to yourself that you can make your ideas and goals realMaking strategic plans for making your ideas and goals realGratefully acknowledging the outside factors playing a role

The rest of this article will break down specifically how I use my journal:

when I’m away from my daily routineduring my morning routine

… in order to:

crystallize and clarify my thinkingaffirm to myself my ideas and idealizations will become a realitymake strategic plans to make my ideas a realityto express gratitude for the brilliant things happening in my lifeYou Need Some Space to Reset and Recover

In fitness, you push yourself to your limits during a workout and then allow adequate time for rest and recovery.

It is during rest and recovery that you actually experience the benefits of your exercise.

If you don’t allow for adequate rest and recovery, then your workout efforts are wasted. Not only are they wasted, but your future workouts won’t be as good, because you won’t be rested or getting stronger. You’ll plateau.

Herein lies the difference between calculated and systematic productivity and being busy. Most people are always plugged-in, always going, and thus are busy. Hilariously, they think being busy is being productive. It’s not.

Similarly, your body needs rest and reset cycles from digesting food. This occurs in the form of fasting. When you fast for 18+ hours from digesting food, your body is given the space for recovery. If you never give your body space to recover and reset, then you miss out on countless benefits.

The same is true of your mind. The best ideas and insights occur away from your work. They happen while you’re relaxing, or often while you’re thinking about something completely unrelated.

When it comes to having clarity about your life and goals, you need to give yourself a reset, regularly. The most successful people in the world purposefully carve out time in their regular schedules for unplugging, recharging, and resetting.

Take the famous example of Bill Gates, who took “Think Weeks” where he would completely remove himself from work and all forms of communication. All he would do is think, learn, and rest. And he admits that his best ideas for Microsoft came during those rest and recovery weeks.

You may not have a full week to rest and recover. Instead, you could begin to schedule in “disconnected days,” where you take a day off work and give yourself the full day to simply rest and recover. During that time, it would be helpful to leave your regular environment, and perhaps drive 30+ minutes away to get adequate space.

During these disconnected days, you could spend a good amount of time thinking, relaxing, learning, and then writing in your journal.

The reason you want to get out of your day-to-day routine and environment is so you can step out of the trees and see the forest. You need some fresh air. You need to breath and reset — just like fasting for your body — from the constant stress of going.

During these disconnected moments, it’s best to remain fully present and unplugged from your work and life. This is very hard for most people, as most people are addicted to their technology and work. Hence, psychological research is finding the importance for psychologically detaching from work on a daily basis. Only those who truly detach — mentally, emotionally, and physically — can re-attach when they start working again. In order to get absorbed and engaged in what you’re doing, you need to rest.

Rest is where you grow and recover, so that you’re empowered to get better and better at your work (or fitness) when you’re there.

So you want to get away. Completely outside of your busy life and allow some time to reset. A crucial component of this resetting is pulling out your journal and writing a lot.

But before even writing in your journal, you want to get your mind in the right place. That’s why taking 30+ minutes to get out of your regular environment and preparing yourself mentally is key. While preparing yourself, you may read or listen to some inspiring content. You may do a workout. Or talk to a close friend or family member who always seems to put you in an amazing mood.

You want to put yourself into a peak-state before you start writing. Naturally, being out of your regular environment will trigger positive emotions, especially if you know you’re going to spend the next few hours diving deep into learning, recovery, planning, and visualization.

Other specific strategies to enhance your journaling experience are meditation and prayer. There is a great deal of confusion regarding what meditation is and what it’s for. The mainstream belief, which stops so many people from developing meditative habits, is that meditation is about stopping your mind from thinking.

This isn’t what meditation is for. Meditation is for getting clear on what you want, and ultimately, about living a better life. Meditation can take on many forms. As can prayer. To me, both go hand-in-hand. And giving yourself some time to pray and meditate just before you write in your journal puts you in an elevated mental state to write from.

You want to write from a position of confidence, resolve, hope and expectation. This mental context will determine the quality and depth of the ideas and emotions you experience while you write.

Without this mental preparation, your efforts will yield minimal results at best. To quote Charles Haanel, considered to be the father of modern self-improvement: “Remember that no matter what the difficulty is, no matter where it is, no matter who is affected, you have no patient but yourself; you have nothing to do but convince yourself of the truth which you desire to see manifest.”

Of course, your elevated state can and does occur after you’ve started writing, especially while writing what you’re grateful for. This whole process, the pre-journaling routine and the journaling process itself, is intended to take you deeper and higher into yourself, your dreams, and your ambitions.

Once you actually start writing, here are a few things that are helpful to focus your writing on:

Start with gratitude and appreciation for everything happening in your life. Take plenty of time to reflect on and write about all the details of your life and relationships. Write about all the people who matter to you. Write about how far you’ve come. Write specifics about what is happening, and what has happened, since the last time you had a recovery session. Recording your history is a crucial component of journal writing. It provides context to your ideas, goals, and plans.Be radically honest with yourself about what’s going on in your world in your journal. After you’ve just expressed gratitude and appreciation for the brilliance (and struggles) in your life, you need to be honest with yourself about where you’re not showing up. While in a peak state, you need to commit to making specific changes. Write down the key changes you need to make to achieve your dreams and ideals. Write down everything that comes to mind. Journaling is a powerful therapeutic and healing tool. While writing about the things you need to change, openly write about the frustrations and difficulties that have led you to where you are. Write about why you’ve struggled to make these changes in the past. Be very honest and vulnerable with yourself. No one else is going to read what you’re writing. The purpose of this writing is for you to get clarity, and to re-establish your priorities and focus. If you can’t be honest in your own journal, how can you expect to be honest in the rest of your life?Write about your big-picture dreams. These could be framed as your life vision, your 3–5 year goals, or your goals for the next 3–12 months. It’s good to take some time and think about what you’re trying to do from the big picture before you zero in on the specifics right in front of you. A key component of writing big-picture is that it reconnects you with your “why.”It’s very easy to lose sight of your why during your daily routine and busyness. Additionally, there is a huge difference between “means” goals and “ends” goals. And your ends goals are the things that truly matter to you. They are the things you want in and of themselves, not because they will enable you to do what you really want. For example, getting a college degree so you can get a great job is a means goal. But what is the end? The end is what really matters, and you can save a lot of trouble by beginning and continuing with the end in mind. You can avoid pursuing goals that are societal expectations.

Below are images from my own journals related specifically to my goals. Some are from more recently, and I threw an oldie in from early 2016. The purpose of showing you these images is not to focus on the content of my journaling or goals, but to focus on the continual process of using your journal to frame and achieve your goals.

It’s effective to have a condensed or similar version of this recovery journaling session during a weekly planning session. Every week, it’s important to reflect on your previous week, and to make better plans for the following week.

Weekly planning sessions are essentially an expanded version of your morning journaling ritual, which will be detailed below.

Specifically, in your weekly planning session — which should happen in your journal, you can write about the following things:

How your previous week went (the good, the bad, etc.)What you did well (your “wins”)What didn’t go well (what you didn’t do, who you didn’t reach out to, where you fell short)Record any significant events (like great moments with a friend, family, or a breakthrough in your work)What your plans are for the following weekHow you intend to take what you learned from your previous week and do better next weekWrite down your bigger picture goals (in a short bullet-point list as a reminder of your “why” and “end” goals)Write your proximal goals (things you’re immediately working toward over the next 1–6 months)Write specific to-do’s you must do the following week (including plans regarding your morning routine, learning, relationships, work, fitness, etc.)Your Morning Journaling Ritual to Get Yourself Into a Peak State, Daily

Every big decision you make should be done while in a peak state. Decisions are things you’re truly committed to. One of the most effective ways to get into a peak state is by leaving your routine and environment. You need some time to disconnect and reset.

During this recovery session, it’s key to not browse the internet, social media or email. It’s good to have your phone with you, but only to act upon insights you get while writing in your journal, while listening/reading a book, or while pondering/reflecting.

Often, you’ll get insights about key people in your life. You should immediately make communication of some sort with the people who come to mind — whether that means sending them an email or text, or giving them a phone call. Recently while writing in my journal, I got the insight to send flowers to some people who have recently helped me. I immediately pulled out my phone and ordered flowers to their address. Then I continued my journaling.

The remainder of this article focuses on your daily morning journal session. Most people start their day in a reactive way. The first thing they do is look at their smartphone and immediately get sucked into a digital world of other people’s information and agendas. They’ve set themselves up to live the remainder of their day in a distracted and reactive manner.

Having a morning routine is important for a few key reasons:

To reconnect deeply with yourself and your whyTo put yourself into a peak state, such that you can achieve the dreams and vision you’re seeking in your lifeTo frame yourself for what you really want to do that dayTo live proactively, not reactively, so that you avoid self-sabotage

A morning routine can entail many different things, such as fitness, meditation, prayer, working on a creative project, etc.

All of those things are incredible. However, there is one thing I believe to be the most essential in the morning: writing in your journal. Writing in your journal is more powerful than simple meditation for the same reason that writing your goals down is more powerful than leaving them in your head.

Meditation and prayer are powerful ways to make your journaling session more effective. However, meditation, prayer, and visualization in and of themselves are not enough. You need to write down the insights, plans, and goals you have. And you need to write them down daily.

Meditation, visualization, prayer, and journaling are all powerful activities that go very well together. But the journaling portion is where you solidify, clarify, affirm, and strategize your insights, goals, and plans.

Journaling makes the other keystone activities 10X or 100X more powerful. If you’re not using your journal daily, then your meditation, visualization, and prayer will be far, far less effective.

The key purpose of a morning routine is to put first things first. To focus on the important stuff in your life, rather than the urgent. The goal is to put yourself into a peak state so you can then operate from that state in all you do, every single day. This is how you get out of survival mode and get massive momentum in your life. Momentum leads to confidence, which then leads to bigger and bigger dreams, better service and value you can provide, and more congruent life.

Thus, fitness and creative projects are great morning activities. However, nothing should come before priming yourself into the state of being you plan to operate from for that day. Here’s where meditation and journaling come in.

Your conscious and subconscious mind, as well as your creative brain and energy levels, are in optimal condition immediately following sleep.

Writing in your journal first thing in the morning is essential for training your subconscious mind to achieve your goals. As Napoleon Hill wrote in Think and Grow Rich, “The subconscious mind will translate into its physical equivalent, by the most direct and practical method available.”

This morning journaling session only needs to be 5–15 minutes.

When you write your goals and dreams down first thing every morning, you deepen your own sense of belief and desire in your goals. If you don’t believe you can achieve your goals, you won’t. If you don’t really want to achieve a certain goal, it probably won’t happen.

So, every morning, you need to put yourself into a place where you’re reminded of it, you believe it, and you want it badly. As a result, you’ll work hard that day, and every day, to not be distracted nor derailed from what really matters to you.

It’s also powerful to write your goals in an affirmative and definitive way. For example, if you want to make $100,000 or run a marathon, write:

I’ll be making $100,000 by [date]I’ll run a marathon by [date]

Write your goals down down daily. Then, in your morning mental state, you should write down everything you need to do to achieve your goal. This includes people you’ll reach out to. It includes things you’ll do this week, and even this day related to that thing. Here are some examples from my own journal:

The image above on the left actually shows the planning session I had the night prior. Consequently, during my morning routine, I usually briefly review and revise my plans made the evening before.

Another thing you can do in your morning journal session is writing about the ideas you have. For example, it’s during this 15-minute journal session, usually right before I go into the gym, that I write down ideas for articles I want to write. Your brain is very creative first thing in the morning. Your energy levels are also very high, especially if you don’t immediately plug into your email or social media.

If you’re trying to do creative work, or really any work in general, it’s very effective to write ideas or plans down first thing in the morning. You’ll get amazing insights that will make the actual work you need to do so much easier.

As it relates to my own writing, I can spend a few minutes sketching articles ideas in my journal, which then makes writing an actual article 100X faster and easier. Once I sit down to write, the main thinking and framework are done. All I need to do is open my journal, remind myself, and then write.

Here’s some examples of my journal ramblings as they relate to ideas and things I’m working on or thinking about.

Conclusion

Your journal is your most powerful resource for manifesting your dreams. Writing in your journal compounds and deepens the essential activities of meditation, visualization, and prayer.

If you’re serious about achieving specific and big things in your life, you need to put yourself into a peak state and make a firm decision from that state. Usually, that will require getting out of your normal, day-to-day routine, where you can get clarity.

However, making that “decision” isn’t enough. You then need a routinized and daily way of triggering yourself back into a peak state. You need to daily operate at the level of your decision if your decision will become a reality.

Every morning, you can use your journal to prime yourself into the person you need to be — that day, and every day — in order to make your dreams a reality.

You do this by writing your goals and dreams down in the affirmative every single day. You then write down all the ideas, thoughts, plans, and strategies that come to your mind about what you need to do in order to achieve those goals. You write down the distractions you need to remove from your life that are stopping you from getting where you need to go.

You also use your morning journal for ideation and creation. Your brain is very creative and your subconscious mind is very susceptible first thing in the morning. While writing about your ideas, you’ll get a ton of creative breakthroughs that will enable you to do amazing work.

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This Morning Routine will Save You 20+ Hours Per Week

Your first three hours will make or break you.http://bit.ly/2x3wBNi

The traditional 9–5 workday is poorly structured for high productivity. Perhaps when most work was physical labor, but not in the knowledge working world we now live in.

Although this may be obvious based on people’s mediocre performance, addiction to stimulants, lack of engagement, and the fact that most people hate their jobs — now there’s loads of scientific evidence you can’t ignore.

The Myth of the 8 Hour Workday

The most productive countries in the world do not work 8 hours per day. Actually, the most productive countries have the shortest workdays.

People in countries like Luxembourg are working approximately 30 hours per week (approximately 6 hours per day, 5 days per week) and making more money on average than people working longer work weeks.

This is the average person in those countries. But what about the super-productive?

Although Gary Vaynerchuck claims to work 20 hours per day, many “highly successful” people I know work between 3–6 hours per day.

It also depends on what you’re really trying to accomplish in your life. Gary Vaynerchuck wants to own the New York Jets. He’s also fine, apparently, not spending much time with his family.

And that’s completely fine. He’s clear on his priorities.

However, you must also be clear on yours. If you’re like most people, you probably want to make a great income, doing work you love, that also provides lots of flexibility in your schedule.

If that’s your goal, this post is for you.

Quality Vs. Quantity

“Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.” — Dan Sullivan

If you’re like most people, your workday is a blend of low-velocity work mixed with continual distraction (e.g., social media and email).

Most people’s “working time” is not done at peak performance levels. When most people are working, they do so in a relaxed fashion. Makes sense, they have plenty of time to get it done.

However, when you are results-oriented, rather than “being busy,” you’re 100 percent on when you’re working and 100 percent off when you’re not. Why do anything half-way? If you’re going to work, you’re going to work.

To get the best results in your fitness, research has found that shorter but more intensive exercise is more effective than longer drawn-out exercise.

The concept is simple: Intensive activity followed by high quality rest and recovery.

Most of the growth actually comes during the recovery process. However, the only way to truly recover is by actually pushing yourself to exhaustion during the workout.

The same concept applies to work. The best work happens in short intensive spurts. By short, I’m talking 1–3 hours. But this must be “Deep Work,” with no distractions, just like an intensive workout is non-stop. Interestingly, your best work — which for most people is thinking — will actually happen while you’re away from your work, “recovering.”

For best results: Spend 20% of your energy on your work and 80% of your energy on recovery and self-improvement. When you’re getting high quality recovery, you’re growing. When you’re continually honing your mental model, the quality and impact of your work continually increases. This is what psychologists call, “Deliberate Practice.” It’s not about doing more, but better training. It’s about being strategic and results-focused, not busyness-focused.

In one study, only 16 percent of respondents reported getting creative insight while at work. Ideas generally came while the person was at home, in transportation, or during recreational activity. “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor,” says Scott Birnbaum, a vice president of Samsung Semiconductor.

The reason for this is simple. When you’re working directly on a task, your mind is tightly focused on the problem at hand (i.e., direct reflection). Conversely, when you’re not working, your mind loosely wanders (i.e., indirect reflection).

While driving or doing some other form of recreation, the external stimuli in your environment (like the buildings or other landscapes around you) subconsciously prompt memories and other thoughts. Because your mind is wandering both contextually (on different subjects) and temporally between past, present, and future, your brain will make distant and distinct connections related to the problem you’re trying to solve (eureka!).

Creativity, after all, is making connections between different parts of the brain. Ideation and inspiration is a process you can perfect.

Case in point: when you’re working, be at work. When you’re not working, stop working. By taking your mind off work and actually recovering, you’ll get creative breakthroughs related to your work.

Your First Three Hours Will Make or Break You

According to psychologist Ron Friedman, the first three hours of your day are your most precious for maximized productivity.

“Typically, we have a window of about three hours where we’re really, really focused. We’re able to have some strong contributions in terms of planning, in terms of thinking, in terms of speaking well,” Friedman told Harvard Business Review.

This makes sense on several levels. Let’s start with sleep. Research confirms the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is most active and readily creative immediately following sleep. Your subconscious mind has been loosely mind-wandering while you slept, making contextual and temporal connections.

So, immediately following sleep, your mind is most readily active to do thoughtful work.

So, your brain is most attuned first thing in the morning, and so are your energy levels. Consequently, the best time to do your best work is during the first three hours of your day.

I used to exercise first thing in the morning. Not anymore. I’ve found that exercising first thing in the morning actually sucks my energy, leaving me with less than I started.

Lately, I’ve been waking up at 6AM, driving to my school and walking to the library I work in. While walking from my car to the library, I drink a 250 calorie plant-based protein shake (approximately 30 grams of protein).

Donald Layman, professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Illinois, recommends consuming at least 30 grams of protein for breakfast. Similarly, Tim Ferriss, in his book, The 4-Hour Body, also recommends 30 grams of protein 30 minutes after awaking.

Protein-rich foods keep you full longer than other foods because they take longer to leave the stomach. Also, protein keeps blood-sugar levels steady, which prevent spikes in hunger.

I get to the library and all set-up by around 6:30AM. I spend a few minutes in prayer and meditation, followed by a 5–10 minute session in my journal. The purpose of this journal session is get clarity and focus for my day.

Journaling about your dreams is one of the fastest ways into a peak state.

So I write down my big picture goals and my objectives for that particular day. I then write down anything that comes to my mind. Often, it relates to people I need to contact, or ideas related to a project I’m working on. I purposefully keep this journal session short and focused.

By 6:45, I’m set to work on whatever project I’m working on, whether that’s writing a book or an article, working on a research paper for my doctoral research, creating an online course, etc.

Starting work this early may seem crazy to you, but I’ve been shocked by how easy it is to work for 2–5 hours straight without distractions. My mind is laser at this time of day. And I don’t rely on any stimulants at all.

Between 11AM–noon, my mind is ready for a break, so that’s when I do my workout. Research confirms that you workout better with food in your system. Consequently, my workouts are now a lot more productive and powerful than they were when I was exercising immediately following sleep.

After the workout, which is a great mental break, you should be fine to work a few more hours, if needed.

If your 3–5 hours before your workout were focused, you could probably be done for the day.

Protect Your Mornings

I understand that this schedule will not work for everyone. There are single-parents with kids who simply can’t do something like this.

We all need to work within the constraints of our unique contexts. However, if you work best in the morning, you gotta find a way to make it happen.This may require waking up a few extra hours earlier than you’re used to and taking a nap during the afternoon.

Or, it may require you to simply focus hardcore the moment you get to work.A common strategy for this is known as the “90–90–1” rule, where you spend the first 90 minutes of your workday on your #1 priority. I’m certain this isn’t checking your email or social media.

Whatever your situation, protect your mornings!

I’m blown away by how many people schedule things like meetings in the mornings. Nothing could be worse for peak performance and creativity.

Schedule all of your meetings for the afternoon, after lunch.

Don’t check your social media or email until after your 3 hours of deep work. Your morning time should be spent on output, not input.

If you don’t protect your mornings, a million different things will take up your time. Other people will only respect you as much as you respect yourself.

Protecting your mornings means you are literally unreachable during certain hours. Only in case of a serious emergency can you be summoned from your focus-cave.

Mind-Body Connection

What you do outside work is just as significant for your work-productivity as what you do while you’re working.

A March 2016 study in the online issue of Neurology found that regular exercise can slow brain aging by as much as 10 years. Loads of other research has found that people who regularly exercise are more productive at work. Your brain is, after all, part of your body. If your body is healthier, it makes sense that your brain would operate better.

If you want to operate at your highest level, you need to take a holistic approach to life. You are a system. When you change a part of any system, you simultaneously change the whole. Improve one area of your life, all other areas improve in a virtuous cycle. This is the butterfly effect in action and the basis of the book, The Power of Habit, which shows that by integrating one “keystone habit,” like exercise or reading, that the positivity of that one habits ripples into all other areas of your life, eventually transforming your whole life.

Consequently, the types of foods you eat, and when you eat them, determine your ability to focus at work. Your ability to sleep well (by the way, it’s easy to sleep well when you get up early and work hard) is also essential to peak-performance. Rather than managing your time, then, you should really be focused on managing your energy. Your work schedule should be scheduled around when you work best, not around social norms and expectations.

Don’t Forget to Psychologically Detach and Play

Research in several fields has found that recovery from work is a necessity for staying energetic, engaged, and healthy when facing job demands.

“Recovery” is the process of reducing or eliminating physical and psychological strain/stress caused by work.

One particular recovery strategy that is getting lots of attention in recent research is called “psychological detachment from work.” True psychological detachment occurs when you completely refrain from work-related activities and thoughts during non-work time.

Proper detachment/recovery from work is essential for physical and psychological health, in addition to engaged and productive work. Yet, few people do it. Most people are always “available” to their email and work. Millennials are the worst, often wearing the openness to work “whenever” as a badge of honor. It’s not a badge of honor.

Research has found that people who psychologically detach from work experience:

Less work-related fatigue and procrastinationFar greater engagement at work, which is defined as vigor, dedication, and absorption (i.e., “flow”)Greater work-life balance, which directly relates to quality of lifeGreater marital satisfactionGreater mental health

When you’re at work, be fully absorbed. When it’s time to call it a day, completely detach yourself from work and become absorbed in the other areas of your life.

If you don’t detach, you’ll never fully be present or engaged at work or at home. You’ll be under constant strain, even if minimally. Your sleep will suffer. Your relationships will be shallow. Your life will not be happy.

Not only that, but lots of science has found play to be extremely important for productivity and creativity. Just like your body needs a reset, which you can get through fasting, you also need to reset from work in order to do your best work. Thus, you need to step away from work and dive into other beautiful areas of your life. For me, that’s goofing off with my kids.

Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied the “Play Histories” of over six thousand people and concludes playing can radically improve everything — from personal well-being to relationships to learning to an organization’s potential to innovate. As Greg McKeown explains, “Very successful people see play as essential for creativity.”

In his TED talk, Brown said, “Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity… Nothing fires up the brain like play.” There is a burgeoning body of literature highlighting the extensive cognitive and social benefits of play, including:

Cognitive

Enhanced memory and focusImproved language learning skillsCreative problem solvingImproved mathematics skillsIncreased ability to self-regulate, an essential component of motivation and goal achievement

Social

CooperationTeam workConflict resolutionLeadership skill developmentControl of impulses and aggressive behavior

Having a balanced-life is key to peak performance. In the Tao Te Ching, it explains that being too much yin or too much yang leads to extremes and being wasteful with your resources (like time). The goal is to be in the center, balanced.

Listen to Brain Music or Songs on Repeat

In her book, On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, psychologist Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis explains why listening to music on repeat improves focus. When you’re listening to a song on repeat, you tend to dissolve into the song, which blocks out mind wandering (let your mind wander while you’re away from work!).

Wordpress founder, Matt Mullenweg, listens to one single song on repeat to get into flow. So do authors Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss, and many others.

Give it a try.

You can use this website to listen to YouTube video’s on repeat.

I generally listen to classical music or electronic music (like video game type music). Here’s a few that have worked for me:

One Moment by Michael NymanMake Love by Daft PunkTearin’ it up by GramatikTerra’s theme from Final Fantasy 3Duel of Fates from Star WarsStop crying your heart out by OasisGive up by Eligah Bossenbroek (so beautiful)Heart by StarsThis cover of Ellie GouldingFragile by Daft PunkSon of Flynn by Daft PunkCool by AlessoSun Through the Clouds by Matthew MorganTesting by CKYBorderline by MadonnaEvery You and Every Me by PlaceboMain Titles composed by Alan Menken for The Little MermaidHalcyon On and On by OrbitalThere Goes the Fear by DovesNever Follow Suit by The Radio Dept.

These days, I mostly use Focus@Will (I have no affiliation).

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a very time-sensitive “FUTURE SELF” training. If you’re ready to go 10X in 2022 (and avoid the biggest threats), watch this ASAP.

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