If we are able to proactively engage in healthy activities, negative spirals will be stunted. Sleeping early, going outside to exercise, reading a book or eating healthy food are all ways to achieve this.
Focus on the foundations.
How do we react when we face an obstacle?
Our first instinct may be to feel negative. However, in our lives we are bound to face bad situations from time to time. The only thing we are able to control is our reaction to such situations. Treating it with indifference makes it much easier to overcome the issue.
The obstacle is the way.
In order to create a successful business, there are many skills that we must cultivate. The following are the skills with the most leverage:
1. Engineering
2. Product
3. Design
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Finance
6. Leadership & Management
To be an expert in all of these skills is impossible to achieve within a lifetime. However, if we are able to focus on one or two of these skills deeply whilst also learning the basics of each of the other skills, our ceiling will be exponentially higher.
Looking back at history, the 40 hour work week spanning from 9-5, Monday-Friday was established by Henry Ford in the 1900s. This was decreased from 6 days down to 5 days as a way to better working conditions so that other businesses were unable to compete with Ford. This has now become the standard “full-time” working hours for employees all over the world.
With the progression of modern technology, the efficiency of each worker has increased 10-fold; whilst access to work tools has also become so convenient that many people can even work from the comfort of their own home. So why does the 40 hour standard still exist? Is it still necessary?
The answer is different for everyone. Some roles such as manufacturing rely on the workers to be there for the full amount of time in order to gain the required output from each worker. On the other end of the spectrum, some roles may be extremely flexible with a focus on results; so as long as workers are able to complete set tasks to a good degree, they deserve to get paid.
However, with society progressing with such efficiency, the variability of jobs becomes even larger. This signals that the time of the standard 40 hour workweek is in its twilight years. Companies that are able to adapt their work times the most effectively will be the ones to hire the greatest talent. From this point onwards, we will gain more and more leverage on our time.
What is your purpose?
This is the most important question we must ask ourselves in life. It is the source of energy that we draw from on the daily. The greater your sense of purpose, the more energy you have. Therefore, we must examine our lives under a microscope and discover the areas we care about the most. When we have a purpose, it becomes our North star that gives our life meaning. Strength in purpose.
Many of us have recurring issues with our sleeping patterns and constantly struggle to find ways to fix it. In the end, the most effective way is just to sleep early so that we get the sleep we need and also wake up at an earlier time the next day without feeling groggy. As simple as it is, this may still take some time to get used to; but it is also by far the most tried and tested way to resolve such an issue.
Sleep early to wake early.
When we have systems in place that implement bottom lines, we prevent ourselves from taking actions that do not serve us in the long run. An achievable bottom line that we reach every single day without fail becomes the benchmark for us to shoot over every day.
This means setting minimum conditions that we must abide by in everything we do. For example, we can set the condition that we must complete a minimum amount of work every day before we allow ourselves to rest. This can be a small portion of the work you would complete on a normal day as it has to be a target that is able to be exceeded without much resistance.
Bottom line planning sets us up for consistency and long term success.
Newton’s first law states that objects at rest will remain at rest; whilst an object in motion will stay in motion (unless acted on by an external force).
If we are able to consciously make decisions for ourselves that propel us in specific directions, the energy we are required to exert in the future (ie. inertia) will be significantly reduced.
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.” – Elon Musk
Many successful people got there by having a simple goal that they strive towards on a consistent basis. This doesn’t mean that they necessarily mapped out their path to that goal. That begs the question, are long term goals worthwhile?
Having a rough framework of our path to achieve a specific goal gives us a direction that we can begin to travel in. Along the way, our perspective may change in ways that we never imagined; consequently causing our path to adapt in order to achieve our goal. Sometimes we may even have to question whether our goal is still worthwhile.
When this situation inevitably arises, we should not be discouraged; conversely, we should take this as an indication that we have taken yet another step in our path to achieve our life’s purpose.
A long term plan is most beneficial when we are adaptable.
Yan's blog 