Secret for achieving excellence
If you took a piece of paper and folded it, its thickness would go from 0.1 mm to 0.2 mm.
If you repeated this process of folding 23 times, then the "thickness" of the resulting paper would exceed the height of the Empire State Building in New York!
Don't believe me? Do the math yourself. The ESB is 1260 feet high (remember that a foot is 12 inches, and an inch is 25.4 mm).
That is truly the secret of excellence in anything. You've got to identify the most important thing to practice, and then practice that very thing every day.
The thing that is compounding exponentially -- as in the case of the paper's thickness in the example above -- is your mind. To be more specific, your mind develops, at an exponential rate, distinctions that enable you to make sharper and sharper evaluations. Tony Robbins talks about those distinctions in his book Awaken the Giant Within.
This is why multitasking, which afflicts almost all white-collar jobs, is not a good thing. Using our paper-folding example, multitasking is like folding once or twice 20 or 30 sheets of paper every day. Your career cannot advance or make progress that way.
The only way your career or your business will grow EXPONENTIALLY is if you FOCUS on doing only one thing, and keep doing it EVERY DAY.
Yanik Silver, the highly successful (and awesomely innovative) Internet guru, advises people to do just one thing and make it a huge success before moving on to the next thing.
It's important to carefully choose the ONE THING that you practice daily. Don't try something too complicated, or try something too easy. The one thing you choose to do, should challenge you enough, yet be feasible.
The secret to striking a delicate balance between what is challenging and feasible, is revealed in the book Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Basically, if you try something that is TOO challenging, you will be stressed. If you try something that is TOO easy, you will be bored (and that's when your mind stop growing; it stops creating the distinctions mentioned above).
Take my case, for example. If, two years ago, I had tried to write a book on "success secrets," it would have been extremely hard. I've never written a book before in my whole life.
Instead, I decided to start a blog. Writing a few paragraphs a day sounds more feasible, although it is challenging of course.
Today, there are 829 posts written, and I only need to package all that stuff into a book to sell on Lulu.com.
Same story with Linkedin User Manual (http://linkedinusermanual.blogspot.com). It has 449 posts, and could easily become a book of 449 pages.
The best part is not even the amount of work you can accomplish by focusing on doing only ONE THING. It's the ease and grace that comes from such focused practice.
For example, many of my posts today come from my recording my voice using an MP3 recorder as I walk outside (sometimes in a park) and enjoy the nice weather.
So blogging is definitely my thing. What is YOUR thing? What do you love to practice every day?
Unless you know the ONE THING that you like or love to practice EVERY DAY, you cannot possibly become the best in your field. Without becoming the best, it is not possible to earn the best income.
But beyond the money aspect, not striving to become the best at one thing will deprive you of happiness.
Indeed, it is happiness that brings about success. Not the other way around.
If you could find the ONE THING that you're happy doing EVERY DAY and that you love to practice EVERY DAY, your life will be transformed. I guarantee it.
The mistake most people make is to "do things" instead of "practicing one thing."
Of course, when I say "practice one thing," I mean focus all your efforts and mental energy on accomplishing one specific result. There may be many things that you do to support you in that goal. But you have to be crystal clear about the ONE result that you strive to achieve.
I will write more on this important topic.
If you repeated this process of folding 23 times, then the "thickness" of the resulting paper would exceed the height of the Empire State Building in New York!
Don't believe me? Do the math yourself. The ESB is 1260 feet high (remember that a foot is 12 inches, and an inch is 25.4 mm).
That is truly the secret of excellence in anything. You've got to identify the most important thing to practice, and then practice that very thing every day.
The thing that is compounding exponentially -- as in the case of the paper's thickness in the example above -- is your mind. To be more specific, your mind develops, at an exponential rate, distinctions that enable you to make sharper and sharper evaluations. Tony Robbins talks about those distinctions in his book Awaken the Giant Within.
This is why multitasking, which afflicts almost all white-collar jobs, is not a good thing. Using our paper-folding example, multitasking is like folding once or twice 20 or 30 sheets of paper every day. Your career cannot advance or make progress that way.
The only way your career or your business will grow EXPONENTIALLY is if you FOCUS on doing only one thing, and keep doing it EVERY DAY.
Yanik Silver, the highly successful (and awesomely innovative) Internet guru, advises people to do just one thing and make it a huge success before moving on to the next thing.
It's important to carefully choose the ONE THING that you practice daily. Don't try something too complicated, or try something too easy. The one thing you choose to do, should challenge you enough, yet be feasible.
The secret to striking a delicate balance between what is challenging and feasible, is revealed in the book Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Basically, if you try something that is TOO challenging, you will be stressed. If you try something that is TOO easy, you will be bored (and that's when your mind stop growing; it stops creating the distinctions mentioned above).
Take my case, for example. If, two years ago, I had tried to write a book on "success secrets," it would have been extremely hard. I've never written a book before in my whole life.
Instead, I decided to start a blog. Writing a few paragraphs a day sounds more feasible, although it is challenging of course.
Today, there are 829 posts written, and I only need to package all that stuff into a book to sell on Lulu.com.
Same story with Linkedin User Manual (http://linkedinusermanual.blogspot.com). It has 449 posts, and could easily become a book of 449 pages.
The best part is not even the amount of work you can accomplish by focusing on doing only ONE THING. It's the ease and grace that comes from such focused practice.
For example, many of my posts today come from my recording my voice using an MP3 recorder as I walk outside (sometimes in a park) and enjoy the nice weather.
So blogging is definitely my thing. What is YOUR thing? What do you love to practice every day?
Unless you know the ONE THING that you like or love to practice EVERY DAY, you cannot possibly become the best in your field. Without becoming the best, it is not possible to earn the best income.
But beyond the money aspect, not striving to become the best at one thing will deprive you of happiness.
Indeed, it is happiness that brings about success. Not the other way around.
If you could find the ONE THING that you're happy doing EVERY DAY and that you love to practice EVERY DAY, your life will be transformed. I guarantee it.
The mistake most people make is to "do things" instead of "practicing one thing."
Of course, when I say "practice one thing," I mean focus all your efforts and mental energy on accomplishing one specific result. There may be many things that you do to support you in that goal. But you have to be crystal clear about the ONE result that you strive to achieve.
I will write more on this important topic.
posted by Super Peter at 12:26 PM
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