1. Wasting Five Minutes
When you have five minutes of down-time, how do you spend that time? Most people use it as an excuse to rest or laze.
By lazing for 5 five minute breaks each day, we waste 25 minutes daily. That’s 9,125 minutes per year (25 X 365). Sadly, my guess is we’re wasting far more time than that.
I was once told “Of course I get stressed out. If anyone says they don’t get stressed out they’re lying. But one thing that mitigates that is taking time each morning to declare and focus on the fact that ‘I have enough.’ I have enough. I don’t need to worry about responding to every email each day. If they get mad that’s their problem.”
Ferriss was later asked during the same interview:
“After having read The 4-Hour Workweek, I got the impression that Tim Ferriss doesn’t care about money. You talked about how you travel the world without spending any money. Talk about the balance and ability to let go of caring about making money.”
Ferriss responded:
“It’s totally okay to have lots of nice things. If it is addiction to wealth, like in Fight Club, “The things you own end up owning you,” and it becomes a surrogate for things like long-term health and happiness – connection – then it becomes a disease state. But if you can have nice things, and not fear having them taken away, then it’s a good thing. Because money is a really valuable tool.”
If you appreciate what you already have, than more will be a good thing in your life. If you feel the need to have more to compensate for something missing in your life, you’ll always be left wanting no matter how much you acquire or achieve.
7. Downplaying Your Current Position
It’s easy to talk about how hard our lives are. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is. And that we got the short-end of the stick.
But does this kind of talking really help anyone?
When we judge our situation as worse than someone else’s, we are ignorantly and incorrectly saying, “You’ve got it easy. You’re not like me. Success should come easy to you because you haven’t had to deal with what I’ve gone through.”
This paradigm has formally become known as the victim mentality, and it generally leads to feelings of entitlement.
The world owes you nothing. Life isn’t meant to be fair. However, the world has also given you everything you need. The truth is, you have every advantage in the world to succeed. And “All that I have I desire to give you – not only my wealth, but also my position and standing among men. That which I have I can easily give you, but that which I am you must obtain for yourself. You will qualify for your inheritance by learning what I have learned and by living as I have lived. I will give you the laws and principles by which I have acquired my wisdom and stature. Follow my example, mastering as I have mastered, and you will become as I am, and all that I have will be yours.”
Going through the motions is not enough. There isn’t a check-list of things you must do to be successful. You have to fundamentally change who you are to live at a higher level. You must shift from doing to being – so that what you do is a reflection of who you are, and who you’re becoming. Once you’ve experienced this change, success will be natural. Be, then do, then have (see point#3 above).
“After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.” – Jim Rohn
16. Believing Money Is Evil
“For better or worse, humans are holistic. Even the human body does best when its spiritual and physical sides are synchronized… People’s bodies perform best when their brains are on board with the program… Helping your mind to believe what you do is good, noble, and worthwhile in itself helps to fuel your energies and propel your efforts.” – Rabbi Daniel Lapin
I know so many people who genuinely believe making money is immoral, and that people with money are evil. They believe those who seek profits force those weaker than them to buy their products.
Money is not evil, but neutral. It is a symbol of perceived value.
If I’m selling a pair of shoes for $20 and someone decides to buy them, they perceive the shoes to be worth more than the $20, or they wouldn’t buy them. I’m not forcing them to buy my shoes. It’s their choice. Thus, value exchange is win-win and based purely on perception. Value is subjective! If you offered that same person $20 for the shoes they just bought, they probably wouldn’t sell them. They see them as worth more than $20. But what if you offered $30? They still might not sell them.
There is no “correct” price for goods and services. The correct price is the perceived worth from the customer. If the price is too high, the customer won’t exchange their money for it.
We are extremely lucky to live in a society with a system of money. It allows us to borrow, lend, and leverage. Our ability to scale our work would be enormously limited in a bartering and trading system.
Earning money is a completely moral pursuit when it is done with honesty and integrity. In fact, if you don’t feel moral about the work you’re doing, you should probably change your job.
When you believe in the value you provide so much that you are doing people a disservice by not offering them your services, you’re on track to creating colossal value. Our work should be a reflection of us. It’s always their choice whether they perceive the value in what we’re offering or not.
17. Continuing to be Distracted
“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” – Greg McKeown
Almost everything is a distraction from what really matters. You really can’t put a price-tag on certain things. They are beyond a particular value to you. You’d give up everything, even your life, for those things.
Your relationships and personal values don’t have a price-tag. And you should never exchange something priceless for a price.
Keeping things in proper perspective allows you to remove everything non-essential from your life. It allows you to live simply and laser focused, and toavoid dead-end roads leading nowhere.
18. Not Realizing that Focus is Today’s I.Q.
We live in the most distracted era of human history. The internet is a double-edged sword. Like money, the internet is neutral – and it can be used for good or bad based on who uses it.
Sadly, most of us are simply not responsible enough for the internet. We waste hours every day staring idly at a screen. Millennials are particularly prone to distractions on the internet, but nowadays, everyone is susceptible.
Our attention spans have shrunk to almost nothing. Our willpower has atrophied. We’ve developed some really bad habits that often require extreme interventions to reverse.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting the internet – with its constant distractions and interruptions – is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers. One of the biggest challenges to constant distraction is that it leads to “shallow” rather than “deep” thinking, and shallow thinking leads to shallow living. The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2,000 years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”
In his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport differentiates “deep work,” from “shallow work.” Deep work is using your skills to create something of value. It takes thought, energy, time and concentration. Shallow work is all the little administrative and logistical stuff: email, meetings, calls, expense reports, etc. Most people aren’t moving toward their goals because they prioritize shallow work.
“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.” – Cal Newport
19. Pursuing “Logical” Goals
“You need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You need to develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make that your aim. If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make it your business to be there. Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.” – Paul Arden
Most people’s goals are completely logical. They don’t require much imagination. They certainly don’t require faith, luck, magic, or miracles.
Personally, I believe it’s sad how skeptical and secular many people are becoming. I find great pleasure in having faith in the spiritual. It provides context for life and meaning for personal growth. Having faith allows me to pursue that which others would call absurd, like walking on water and transcending death. Truly, with God all things are possible. There is absolutely nothing to fear.
20. Seeking Praise Rather than Criticism
As a culture, we’ve become so fragile that we must combine honest feedback with 20 compliments. And when we get feedback, we do our best to disprove it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias – the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms our own beliefs, while giving excessively less consideration to alternative possibilities.
It’s easy to get praise when you ask family and friends who will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Instead of seeking praise, your work will improve if you seek criticism.
How could this be better?
You will know your work has merit when someone cares enough to give unsolicited critique. If something is noteworthy, there will be haters. As Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, has said, “haters confirm greatness.” When you really start showing up, the haters will be intimidated by you. Rather than being a reflection of what they could do,you become a reflection of what they are not doing.
21. Taking Rather Than Giving
From a scarcity perspective, helping other people hurts you because you no longer have the advantage. This perspective sees the world as a giant pie. Every piece of the pie you have is pie I don’t have. So in order for you to win, I must lose.
From an abundance perspective, there is not only one pie, but an infinite number of pies. If you want more, you make more. Thus, helping others actually helps you because it makes the system as a whole better. It also builds relationships and trust and confidence.
I have a friend, Nate, who is doing some really innovative stuff at the real estate investing company he works for. He’s using strategies that no one else is using. And he’s killing it. He told me he considered keeping his strategies a secret. Because if other people knew about them, they’d use them and that’d mean less leads for him.
But then he did the opposite. He told everyone in his company about what he was doing. He has even been giving tons of his leads away! This has never been seen before in his company.
But Nate knows that once this strategy no longer works, he can come up with another one. And that’s what leadership and innovation is all about. And people have come to trust him. Actually, they’ve come to rely on him for developing the best strategies.
Nate makes pies – for himself and several other people. And yes, he is also the top-selling and highest-earning in his company. It’s because he gives the most and doesn’t horde his ideas, resources, or information.
22. Creating What You Think You “Should” Create
Many entrepreneurs design products to “scratch their own itch.” Actually, that’s how loads of problems are solved. You experience a difficulty and create a solution.
Musicians and artists approach their work the same way. They create music they’d want to listen to, draw painting they’d want to see, and write books they wish were written. That’s how I personally approach my work. I write articles I myself would want to read.
Your work should first and foremost resonate with yourself. If you don’t enjoy the product of your work, how can you expect other people to?
23. Looking For The Next Opportunity
The perfect client, perfect opportunity, and perfect circumstances will almost never happen. Instead of wishing things were different, why not cultivate what’s right in front of you?
Rather than waiting for the next opportunity, the one in your hands is the opportunity. Said another way, the grass is greener where you water it.
I see so many people leave marriages because they believe better relationships are “out” there. In most cases, these people start new relationships and end them the same way the previous relationship ended. The problem isn’t your circumstances. The problem is you. You don’t find your soul-mate, you create your soul-mate through hard work.
As Jim Rohn said, “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.”
24. Waiting To Start
If you don’t purposefully carve time out every day to progress and improve – without question, your time will get lost in the vacuum of our increasingly crowded lives. Before you know it, you’ll be old and withered – wondering where all that time went.
As Meredith Willson has said – “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”
I waited a few years too long to actively start writing. I was waiting for the right moment when I’d have enough time, money, and whatever else I thought I needed. I was waiting until I was somehow qualified or had permission to do what I wanted to do.
But you are never pre-qualified. There is no degree for “Live your dreams.”You qualify yourself by showing up and working. You get permission by deciding.
Life is short.
Don’t wait for tomorrow for something you could do today. Your future self will either thank you or shamefully defend you.
25. Publishing Too Early
At age 22, Tony Hsieh (now CEO of Zappos.com), graduated from Harvard. When Tony was 23 years old, six months after starting Linkexchange, he was offered one million dollars for the company. This was amazing to Tony because less than a year before, he was stoked to get a job at Oracle making 40K per year.
After much thought and discussion with his partner, he rejected the offer believing he could continue to build Linkexchange into something bigger. His true love is in building and creating. A true pro gets paid, but doesn’t work for money. A true pro works for love.
Five months later, Hsieh was offered 20 million dollars from Jerry Yang, cofounder of Yahoo!. This blew Tony away. His first thought was, “I’m glad I didn’t sell five months ago!”However, he held his cool and asked for a few days to consider the proposal. He would make this decisions on his terms.
He thought about all the things he would do if he had all that money, knowing he would never have to work another day in his life. After reflecting, he could only devise a small list of things he wanted:
- A condo
- A TV and built-in home theater
- The ability to go on weekend mini-vacations whenever he wanted
- A new computer
- To start another company because he loves the idea of building and growing something.
That was it.
His passion and motivation wasn’t in having stuff. He concluded that he could already afford a TV, a new computer, and could already go on weekend mini-vacations whenever he wanted. He was only 23 years old, so he determined a condo could wait. Why would he sell Linkexchange just to build and grow another company?
A year after Tony rejected the 20 million dollar offer, Linkexchange exploded. There were over 100 employees. Business was booming. Yet, Hsieh no longer enjoyed being there. The culture and politics had subtly changed in the process of rapid growth. Linkexchange was no longer Hsieh and a group of close friends building something they loved. They had hired a bunch of people in a hurry who didn’t have the same vision and motivations they had. Many of the new employees didn’t care about Linkexchange, or about building something they loved. Rather, they just wanted to get rich quick – purely self-interested.
So he decided to sell the company on his terms. Microsoft purchased Linkexchange in 1998 for 265 million dollars when Hsieh was 25 years old.
A similar concept emerged in a conversation I had about one year ago with Jeff Goins, best-selling author of The Art of Work. I asked his advice about publishing a book I want to write and he said, “Wait. Don’t jump the gun on this. I made that mistake myself. If you wait a year or two, you’ll get a 10x bigger advance, which will change the trajectory of your whole career.”
Here’s how it works. With 20K email subscribers, a writer can get around a $20-40K book advance. But with 100-200K email subscribers, a writer can get around a $150-500K book advance. Wait a year or two and change the trajectory of your career (and life).
This isn’t about procrastination. It’s about strategy. Timing – even a few seconds – could change your whole life.
26. Playing By The “Rules”
“There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different.” – Albert Einstein
Convention is where we’re at. Breaking convention is how we’ll evolve, which requires a gargantuan quantity of failure.
If you don’t have the grit to fail 10,000 times, you’ll never invent your light bulb. As Seth Godin has said, “If I fail more than you do, I win.”
Failure is something to be prized and praised. Failure is feedback. Failure is moving forward. It’s conscious and exerted effort toward something you’ve never done before. It’s incredible.
“The person who doesn’t make mistakes is unlikely to make anything.” – Paul Arden
27. Not Setting Yourself Up To Win Before You Start
“People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” – Thomas Merton
Too many people are playing the wrong game – a losing game from the onset – and it hurts like hell. It’s how you ruin your life without even knowing it.
More important than playing “the game” is how the game is set up. How you set up the game determines how you play. And it’s better to win first, then play.
How does this work?
Start from the end and work backwards. Rather than thinking about what’s plausible, or what’s expected, or what makes sense – start with what you want. Or as Covey put it in 7 Habits, “Begin with the end clearly in mind.” Once that’s nailed down, then dictate the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly behaviors that will facilitate that.
Jim Carrey wrote himself a $10 million check. Then he set out to earn it. He won the game first, then played. So can you.
28. Not Leveraging Every Small Win You Get
No matter how small your wins along the way are, leverage your position!
You have a high school diploma? Leverage your position!
You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy? Leverage your position!
You get an article featured on some unknown blog? Leverage your position!
You have $100? Leverage your position!
Sadly, most people can’t stop looking at the other side of the fence. They fail to realize the brilliant possibilities currently available to them. This is bad stewardship.
There are people you already know who have information you need.
There are people you already know who have capital you can use.
There are people you already know who can connect you with people you should know.
Instead of wanting more, how about you utilize what you already have? Until you do, more won’t help you. Actually, it will only continue hurting you until you learn to earn something for yourself. It’s easy to want other people to do it for you. But real success comes when you take ownership of your life. No one else cares more about your success (or health, or relationships, or time) than you do.
Your current position is ripe with abundant opportunity. Leverage it. Once you gain another inch of position, leverage it for all it’s worth. Don’t wish for more. Wish you were better. And soon enough, you’ll find yourself in incredible positions and collaborating with your heroes.
Success is based on choice.
Success is based on having and maintaining a motivation worth fighting for. It’s based on believing what others might call a fantasy. It’s based on leveraging your position and maintaining the momentum of every step you take.
29. Viewing Your Work as “Work”
The cool part about poetry is that to most poets, how their poems are performed is just as important – if not more important – than what is actually said.
In a similar way, when you go to an event or to hear a speech, you’re usually going to see the speaker, not hear what they have to say. You already know what they have to say.
No matter what type of work you are in, it will be better received if you see it as an art-form. You are performing for an audience. They want you just as much as they want your work – often more.
30. Letting Others Decide How Your Work Should Be
Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle is the Way, explains what he calls “the moment,”which every skilled creative has experienced. “The moment,” is when your eyes are opened to the mechanics and behind-the-scenes of your craft.
Until you have this moment, it all seems like magic to you. You have no idea how people create what they create. After you have this moment, you realize that everything is done by a person intentionally creating a particular experience.
I was recently watching Lord of the Rings and it dawned on me that those movies would be completely different if they weren’t directed by Peter Jackson. Completely different!
Every shot, every set, the lighting, the costumes, how the characters and landscapes look, and how the whole film feels and is portrayed. It all would have looked and felt completely different based on the experience a different director was trying to create.
Thus, there is no right or wrong way. Rather, it’s about doing things your way. Until you experience this “moment,” you’ll continue attempting the correct or best way to do things. You’ll continue copying other people’s work.
But if you persist, you’ll become disillusioned to those who were once your idols. They are people just like you and me. They’ve just made a decision to create in their own way.
The idea of imitation will become abhorrent, freeing you to create as you see fit. You’ll emerge with your own voice and original work. You’ll be less troubled about how your work is received and more focused on creating something you believe in.
31. Seeking Retirement
“To retire is to die.” – Pablo Casals
The most powerful way to punch someone in the face is to aim a foot behind their face. That way, you have full momentum and power when you make contact. If you aim only for the face itself, by the time you reach it you’ll have already begun slowing down. Thus, your punch will not be as powerful as you intended it to be.
Retirement is the same way.
Most people planning for retirement begin slowing down in their 40’s and 50’s. The sad part is, as momentum-based beings, when you begin to slow down, you start a hard-to-reverse decaying process.
Research has found that retirement often:
- Increases the difficulty of mobility and daily activities
- Increases the likelihood of becoming ill
- And decreases mental health
But retirement is a 20th century phenomena. And actually, the foundations under girding this outdated notion make little sense in modern and future society.
For instance, due to advances in health care, 65 is not considered old age anymore. When the Social Security system was designed, the planners chose age 65 because the average lifespan was age 63 at the time. Thus, the system was designed only for those who were really in need, not to create a culture of people being supported by others’ labor.
Furthermore, the perception that people over 65 can’t provide meaningful work no longer makes sense either. Retirement became a thing when most work was manual labor – but today’s work is more knowledge-based. And if there’s anything lacking in today’s society, its wisdom, which people in their later years have spent a lifetime refining.
Retirement should never be the goal.
We are fully capable to work – in some capacity – until our final breath.
My 92 year old grandfather, Rex, was a fighter pilot in WWII. In the past five years he’s written three books. He goes to bed every night at 8 P.M. and wakes up every morning at 4:30 A.M. He spends the first 2.5 hours of his day watching inspirational and instructional content on television. He then eats breakfast at 7 A.M. and spends his day reading, writing, connecting and serving people, and even doing physical labor around his son’s (my dad’s) house. He even walks around his neighborhood proselyting his faith and asking random strangers how he can help them.
I have no intention of stopping or slowing down. Contrary to popular belief, humans are like wine and get better with age.
32. Downplaying The Importance Of Yesterday
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
Our present circumstances are a reflection of our past decisions. Although we have enormous power to change the trajectory of our lives here and now,we are where we are because of our past. While it’s popular to say the past doesn’t matter, that simply is not true.
Today is tomorrow’s yesterday. What we do today will either enhance or diminish our future-present moments. But most people put things off until tomorrow. We thoughtlessly go into debt, forego exercise and education, and justify negative relationships. But at some point it all catches up. Like an airplane off-course, the longer we wait to correct the longer and harder it is to get back on-course.
Time is absolutely marvelous. We get to anticipate the experiences we want to have – which is often more enjoyable than the experiences themselves. We get to have the experiences we long for. And then we get to remember and carry those experiences with us forever. The past, present, and future are uniquely important and enjoyable.
33. Believing You’re Way Behind
In sports and all other forms of competition, people perform best when the game is close. Which is why big magic happens at the end of games, like on-sides kicks retrieved followed by 30 second touchdown drives. But when the contest is decidedly in one opponent’s favor, neither side acts with the same effort.
When you’re winning big, it’s easy to get lax and overconfident. When you’re losing big, it’s easy to give up.
Sadly, you probably perceive those at the top of your field “in a different league” altogether. But when you do this, you perform with less intensity than you would if you perceived the “game” to be closer.
When you elevate your thinking – and see yourself on the same level as those at “the top” – you quickly become disillusioned by the fallibility of those you once perceived as immortal. They are just people. Most importantly, you will begin playing with an urgency that often surpasses even them.
The game is close. The game is close.
34. Listening To Music That Destroys Your Joy and Productivity
“Without music, life would be a mistake” – Friedrich Nietzsche
You can also use music as a trigger for optimal performance. For example, Michael Phelps had a routine he did religiously before each swimming event involving music. He’s not alone. Many athletes use music before events to trigger relaxation from the pressure and even to psych themselves up.
When asked by Time Magazine about his use of music prior to races, Phelps said it kept him focused and helped him “tune everything out, and take one step at a time.” When asked about the kind of music he listens to, he answered, “I listen to hip hop and rap.”
Interestingly, research has found that high tempo music like hip hop can create strong arousal and performance readiness. Other evidence finds the intensity of the emotional response can linger long after the music has stopped. So, while Phelps is in the water swimming, he’s still hyped from his hip hop.
Lastly, research has found that the types of music we listen to impact our level of spirituality. This last point is particularly important to me. Spirituality heavily influences everything I do, from how I interact with my family, to what and how I write, to how I develop and pursue my goals.
