So here it is…my first real podcast. I probably broke ever rule in podcast etiquette hehe but here goes!
This podcast is actually based on a guest post I wrote, Every One Promotes, a few months ago at Glenn Danker’s blog.
I already know how much I suck at speaking and it juices me to know I can at least improve!:)
As far as I can remember I’ve had a strong curiosity to know how things worked. Growing up I’d constantly tair things apart, until one day I figured out that it costs too much. Entrepreneurs love to build business systems, they don’t often have to bother with small details. Once the entrepreneur has mastered his own skills, and his mind, his work becomes very simple. Not easy … but simple. Something we all learn eventually is that the person who knows how to create a simple life, and still get everything he wants, is paid more than the multitasking yes-man who micromanages everything. The more technical a job is, the more average the pay. Even a technical consultant gets paid more for teaching others how to do their work than he does working him self.
If you ask someone to spent four years of their life in college will tell you it was a “great learning experience” but they never learned anything about on the job activities. In other words it got them a job with a yearly salary of 36K, barely enough to pay bills and rent/mortgage never mind other little things that add up…oh and student loans. If you don’t need to know something, don’t muck up your brain. Time is too important. For example, the other day I was installing Kubuntu on a computer for one of the people I serve, and a screen came up asking which processor we use. I didn’t know … so what did I do…take a crash course on computer processors? Hell no…all I did was Google it…it took a max of 3 minutes. No degree needed. No college experience needed…maybe I can spend those 4 years building wealth so I can sun tan while everyone else is still looking for a job.
Why do old companies die, old people live in the past and old habits die hard? This is why…they’re all based on the past! What worked back then wont work now days. Lately, the world has had a habit of rearanging itself every few years. If you stick to your outdated way of thinking you’ll get rearranged out of a job. Don’t pre-suppose that just because something has been done the same for decades or cenuries that it’s been proven. It may been been proven 40 years ago but might not make any sense now days.
There are laws that dictate time and space, there are also laws that dictate our finances, our business, what we do subconsciously, the friends we make and the person we become. Timeless principles don’t change with time but rather prove themselves with time. Make it a habit to get curious about life and learn principles that dicatate life. This way, whether you’re in a down economy or the horse and buggy age you’ll know more about life than the people who study the markets, or stay stuck in practices that were rendered ineffective years ago. Principles are more important in an age where things can change over night than in any other age.
Who makes the most money in a free enterprise system? People who know how to leverage resources, money and time to serve them. These are the entrepreneurs, leaders, CEOs, salespeople, connectors and inventors. In all my reading and learning I constantly look for ways to leverage. How can I leverage time? How can I leverage one spending habit or one working habit that makes a long term difference on my income? Even learning is leveraging. Because if you’re constantly learning to leverage everything, you’re leveraging your life. People who rely purely on conventional wisdom stay at the bottom of the bin.
So again, don’t spend time learning what you don’t need to know. There are very few wealthy PHds, so that should tell you something. Challenge old ways of thinking and learn new ways, the past is the enemy of the future. The past is gone so prepare for the future, all your hope is in it. Learn Timeless Principles…practices are great but even practices go out of date. And finally, learn how to speed seduce and leverage life and use the latest human and computer technologies to simplify and streamline various aspects of your life.
Photo credit by rcameraw
“The most common road to mediocrity is being realistic.” – Will Smith
Ever notice something about realistic people?
… 90% of the time … they’re broke!
Realistic people can’t stand change. Realistic people are usually cynical about change, paradigm shifts, new ideas and anything that clashes with their secure world. Realistic people will snear at you in the beginning … but loose in the end. Realistic people stay stuck in a frame of mind that only exists in usually the past. Realistic people don’t believe they can ever do anything other than what has already been done. Realistic people are mediocre at best.
Who wants to be realistic?
Let me tell you about unrealistic people. The people who make real differences in this world usually aren’t tallying up the odds, and they aren’t coming up with endless reasons why something can’t work. They don’t care what’s realistic. Let me ask you a question, what the hell in this world is realistic? We wake up every day and do things people would have thought were impossible 20-30 years ago. What if you tried to explain the Internet to someone in 1985? You’d probably have been told your brains are fried. Unrealistic things are happening every day. And if you think being realistic is going to create the kind of life you want, you’re sadly mistaken. Even though things are changing so rapidly every day, we still have the time to sit back and decide what is realistic and what’s not. BS! There is no such thing as realistic and there is no such a thing as unrealistic. The only thing that doesn’t change is your belief of what is “suppose” to happen. Only you can change that.
“The 95% of realistic people in this world work for the 5% of unrealistic people.” – Will Smith
The unrealistic people rule the world. Is it realistic to be the chairman of a top Fortune 500 company? Is it realistic to train your whole life to win a gold medal? Is Open Source software outperforming technology giants realistic? It’s scary to think what the world would be like if some of the great inventors of our time would have been realistic people, who payed close attention to the odds against them. We blame this stuff on luck, or someone who had a fluke opportunity. Even success-minded people fall into this trap. But a few of us know this: when you think unrealistically, it opens a new space in your mind that didn’t exist there before, a higher level of thinking. Albert Einstein said that “a problem can’t be solved at the same level of thinking that it was made at.”
Here’s a question to ask yourself: Am I realistic and in what situations am I realistic? Make sure you pay close attention to the answers you give yourself.
Next time someone tells you something is unrealistic, your answer should be … “Compared to what?”
A good belief to instill in yourself is that nothing is impossible if you really want it bad enough and do whatever it takes. Maybe it takes working late and starting early, a sickening work ethic, relentless repetition until it works. Just take someone who has accomplished something, that you would consider, nearly impossible and use them as a role model. What makes your little challenges so hard to defeat? Are you even giving 10% of what you could?
Burnout occurs through a few different sources. When I was still in high school, working between projects and school at the same time was a little stressful and demanded that I get up early enough to kick start the day … and work late enough so I wouldn’t have to even later the next day. Those days are kind of a blur and needless to say both grades and projects suffered. Certain activities get really addicting, there’s always that “just one more day of this crazy coding and I’ll have something ready” months, which seem more like weeks, fly by and it seems as if you’re moving backwards. Sometimes you are. Finally you realize that no matter how hard you work you’re still in the same place as last week, and the week before. Unless you change something.
Your body will only allow you to stare at a computer screen for so long until your eyes turn to chock and your memory slips like a skipping disk. In the case of burnout, you probably blank out in the middle of conversation or zone out when someone asks you a question. Basically, when you burn out, your mind is just overworked. Maybe you have a zillian things to do in a few days time and as the days go by your interest diminishes.
I’m not a big advocate of the 4 Hour Work Week type of thinking. Sure life isn’t all work. But when you find yourself broke, don’t look for a “4 Hour Work Week”, just work towards your dreams and choose your hours as you go. Being committed to your dreams means doing what it takes, it takes more than a few hours a week and it often means raising the bar. Too many people are looking for a fast and easy way to be entrepreneurs. It doesn’t often happen. Even Tim Ferris, author of 4 Hour Work Week, had some major lessons to learn early in his entrepreneurial career.
There are a few things you can leverage to decrease burnout and get more done. They don’t mean that you’ll never be tired again, but you’ll be able to operate at a much higher level and get more juice out of life. My explanation for burnout is running your engine and never changing the oil. The first one is to simplify, organize and eliminate. Much of burnout is just inability to focus well on everything from things that aren’t important to average importance. Don’t decide to start a business, go to college, work a full time job and become an author all at the same time. Decide what’s good in your life and what’s great and choose between the two. You can’t have one or the other and be a success. Will Smith calls it, paraphrased … “being focused, not being in 100 different things at the same time, mastery takes laser like strong focus.” For example, I said no to learning to play guitar, to going to college and to a number of other things. All of these were “good” but I chose to focus on the “great” which was worth much more to me … Say no to more people more often. Schedule your time and set priorities. Don’t give your direct phone number to every client(especially if you have a large client base). Be like an executive at a large organization: checking every activity, finding ways to cut out steps, measuring the gains and the costs, outsourcing to save time and money–innovating to run at a higher level with lower maintenance. Put weight only on the valuable tasks. Put time where it’s valued. Three hours of social networking won’t be the best return on your time. Checking e-mail every 15 minutes will turn a 8 hour day into a 16 hour day. Get rid of access projects and worthless activities.
The second is to take care of your health and rest often. Things like smoking, consuming too much sugar, not taking breaks from staring at a screen for long periods of time or sitting at a desk all day will eventually take its toll on your health. Maybe you don’t exercise enough, maybe you don’t take the weekends off, maybe you don’t socialize enough. This is all vital, not only to your physical health but also to your mental health. Studies show that Americans are one of the most sleep impoverished people in the world. On top of that we don’t get enough oxygen, not breathing deeply enough and not going out side and we don’t drink enough water. And…we literally eat shit, called fast food. It’s an amazement our minds can still function! High productivity calls for high energy, high energy comes from putting the right things in your body.
Scheduling the weekends off to do something fun is something we should all consider non-negotiable. First thoughts are always, “I can’t afford to miss two days of work” … hey, you can’t afford NOT to! Great ideas come on the weekends, the ground work is done on the week days. Keeping the big picture in mind is key to knowing whether your actions are worth doing. And that brings us to number three…constantly reviewing the destination.
It’s easy to just work away like a crazed ape, burn out and crash, and then find out that what you were doing had nothing to do with what you were trying to accomplish. Setting goals is simple, even though most people never do it. If you can manage to join the minority that sets goals, you’re closer but it’s not enough: you actually have to follow through. The second mistake is that people follow through but fail to assess their actions and end up in the wrong direction, or fall short. Constantly tracking yourself is critical in knowing how far you are. Every night ask yourself, what did I do today and how much closer am I to my destination?
You must have reasons enough to trigger that drive inside of you. Some people live off that drive alone. If you can find strong enough reasons to do something you’ll most likely do it with a lot of passion.
We share life experiences and discuss development of leadership skills, discovering better methods of growth in business, the innovation of modern technology, social media and the web.
