Transcription
The moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself—that's the moment you may be starting to get it right. This is a quote from Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite fiction writers. It's from his University of the Arts commencement speech.
But let's bring it back to my story. A few months ago, I had a birthday party. It was great; a dozen friends and I gathered for a few days of sun, beach, barbecue, and catching up, as we do every year. Then, on the last day, I didn't get up until 11:30. That's late even for me, knowing full well that the last few remaining friends were leaving about 30 minutes later, around 12:00 noon. The sad reality is I was afraid of being alone. I was afraid of being lonely. So, like a child, I hid my head under the covers—that's literally—and hit snooze until I just couldn't postpone reality any further.
But why am I telling you this? Why am I being so self-indulgent, telling you this ridiculous story? It's because we all like to appear successful—a nebulous term at best—and the media likes to portray certain standouts as superheroes. These people on the magazine covers and so on. Yes, sometimes these dramatic stories of overcoming the odds are super inspiring, but often, just as often, they lead to an unhealthy conclusion. Maybe an inner monologue which is something like, "Well, maybe they—whoever they happen to be—can do it because they're incredible. They have no faults; they're just chopping the day and winning at all moments. But I'm just a normal person; I can't do that."
The reality is most superheroes—these superheroes—are nothing of the sort. They're just as weird and neurotic as we are. They're strange creatures who do big things despite lots of self-defeating habits and self-talk. So, to personalize this, let's bring it home. I am definitely no superhero. I'm not even a consistent normal—whatever that is.
So let me give you a little laundry list. Not too long ago, I cried while watching Rudy on an airplane, and that was cause for concern for a lot of people around me. I repeatedly hit snooze for one to three hours past my planned wake time because I simply didn't want to face the day. I considered giving everything away, moving to Montreal, Seville, or Iceland; the location kind of depends on what I'm trying to escape. I've used gentlemanly websites to relax during the day when clearly I had other urgent and important things to do. I wore the same pair of jeans for a week straight just to have a constant during weeks of chaos.
So, listening to all that, you might think it seems pretty dysfunctional, right? I assume so; I certainly hear it that way. But around the same time, especially in the latter few weeks of that, I also was able to increase my passive income by 20%, bought my dream house, and got to the point where I was once again meditating twice per day for 20 minutes per session without fail. So, not winning any gold medals in meditation, but incredibly helpful and stabilizing. I cut my caffeine intake to next to nothing; that usually means pu-erh tea in the morning and maybe a green tea in the afternoon. I've had no more than one cup of really strong coffee per week. There's a lot to that, but suffice to say, much improved sleep. I signed one of the most exciting business deals of the last decade, including working on a collaboration that is first of its kind for me. I completely transformed my blood work, including a few biomarkers I've been working on for years.
And I realized, as the next point, once again, that let's just call it manic depressive symptoms are just part of entrepreneurship. Last but not least, I have come to feel closer to all of my immediate family members.
So where does that leave us? Personally, I suck at efficiency, which is doing things quickly or doing things super well, but I have a few tricks. So here is my coping mechanism: it is an eight-step process for maximizing efficacy, which is doing the right thing.
Number one: wake up at least an hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind killer, so don't go immediately into reactive mode.
Number two: make a cup of tea—I like pu-erh tea—and sit down with a pen or pencil and paper. I like to do it analog.
Number three: write down three to five things, and no more, that are making you most anxious or uncomfortable. They're often the things that have been punted from one day's to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. Most importantly, usually, the most important means the most uncomfortable, or very frequently it does, with some chance of rejection or conflict. To find the most important, you can often just look for the most uncomfortable with some chance of rejection or conflict. So write down those three to five things.
Step four: for each item, ask yourself, "If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?" Also ask, "Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later?" That's a nod to Gary Keller, "The One Thing," so thank you for that, Gary.
Step number five: look only at the items you've answered yes to for at least one of those. Those are the high-leverage items; if removed...
Number six: block out at least two to three hours to focus on one of them for today. Let the rest of the urgent but less important stuff slide; they'll still be there tomorrow.
Step number seven—and I'm repeating to be clear—block out at least two to three hours to focus on one of them for today. This is one block of time, uninterrupted, no distractions, no social media. Cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 12 minutes does not work.
Step number eight: if you get distracted or start procrastinating, have to everybody—don't freak out and downward spiral. Just gently come back to your one to-do. Congratulations, that's it! That's the whole thing. This is practically the only way I can create big outcomes despite my never-ending impulse to procrastinate, nap, or otherwise fritter away my days with all sorts of distractions. And it works—works really, really well.
I've come to learn that if I have 10 important things to do in a day, it's 100% certain that nothing important will get done that day. So you got to pick one thing. On the other hand, I can usually handle one must-do item and block out my lesser behaviors for two to three hours a day in the beginning of the day. That's what works for me.
It does not take much to seem superhuman and appear successful to nearly everyone around you if you learn to single-task—single, single, single, single-task one. In fact, you just need a simple rule: what you do is more important than how you do everything else. And doing something well does not make it important. So, material over method, the what over the how.
If you consistently feel the counterproductive need for volume and doing tons of stuff, maybe you should put a few things on post-it notes, put them in your bathroom, and the first that you can add is: being busy is a form of laziness. Lazy thinking and indiscriminate action do not mean that more equals more in the positive sense. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions you need to take.
And when, despite your best efforts, you feel like you're losing at the game of life, just remember: even the best of the best feel this way sometimes. It happens to everybody. And when I'm personally in the pit of despair, I recall what iconic writer Kurt Vonnegut said about his process. I highly recommend his books—amazing guy. And here's the quote: "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
So don't overestimate the world and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think, and you're definitely not alone. We're all in this together, and everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.