Transcription
Everyone, Sam Ovens here, and in today's video, I want to talk to you about improvement from subtraction. You've probably noticed I'm sitting by this fire. I'm sitting by this fire because it's pretty damn cold this morning. It's quite funny; when I first moved to this new place in LA, it was really hot. I thought, "What the hell are these three fireplaces doing in this house? What purpose do these three fireplaces serve?" Because this place is hot, and it seemed kind of like a stupid thing. But now that we're in winter, I can see what these things are for. While LA gets quite warm during the day when the sun comes out and all of that, at night and in the morning, there's a real cold snap. It actually gets quite cold over here, which I wasn't even aware of. So that's why I'm sitting by this fireplace today.
What I want to talk to you about today is improvement from subtraction. Right now, it's January 2nd, 2019, and this is the perfect time to think about what you want to achieve this year and how you're going to achieve it. It's not just about setting goals; it's also about thinking, "What actions do I need to take so that I can achieve these goals?" If what you want to achieve is something that you haven't achieved before, then it's quite obvious that it's going to take a change in behavior to get it. If you continue behaving the same way you behaved last year, then you'll get what you got last year, right?
This is the thing that people don't understand about goals. You don't just set a goal, and then it just comes true. You have to set a goal and then change your behavior. You have to change a lot of things: who you are, what you do, your habits, your routines. You have to change a lot of things. If you want change, it takes change to get it. Over the past few days, I've taken some time to reflect on the year that's been and pretty much all the years that have been since I started in business about six or seven years ago. One thing that fascinates me a lot is that it's often the subtraction, the removal of things, that helps me make the biggest leaps and bounds in progress.
What I mean by that is a lot of people think, "If I want to improve my life, achieve this goal, grow my business, or do whatever, then I need to do more stuff. I need to add more things to the plate." What I've noticed is that this isn't the way. It's not about doing more; quite often, it's about removing things. There's a special type of thing that is so easy to remove, and it has profound effects on your results. It could be summarized pretty simply by just saying, "Don't do stupid [ __ ]." That's basically the best piece of advice I could give you.
What I mean by that is I think Warren Buffett describes it best. He said, "I want to know where I'm going to die so that I never go there." What he's trying to say is that by avoiding errors, especially catastrophic errors, that is one of the best strategies for winning. A lot of people don't look at it like this. A lot of people are optimists, and so what they do is they look at just the upside of things. They think, "Oh, if I go to these networking events or if I build more products, start more businesses, then that's more potential upside." But what they never look at is the downside.
A really important thing in business and in life is to look at both the upside and the downside. You should really pay more attention to the downside than the upside. What you're really optimizing for, your number one priority, is survival, and after that, it's winning. A lot of people just try to win and don't pay any attention to the downsides or to survival. I see this everywhere throughout the human race.
I'll give you an example in the health and fitness industry. If you want to be healthy and fit, then all you really need to do is sleep eight hours a night, exercise 5.5 times a week, eat healthy food, and stay hydrated. That's it; that's all there is. But it's made infinitely complex with all of these diet plans, different supplements, various shoes, training equipment, apps, and tracking stuff. It gets very complicated. Then what you end up with is people who have $400 shoes, all of these apps and technology, a Fitbit, and things like that, but they eat unhealthy food, drink alcohol, and don't get enough sleep. That just doesn't make any sense. They're focusing on things with very little upside and avoiding the things that have massive downsides.
This was true for me in business too. When I first got started, I would focus on doing more things. I would try to master funnels, landing pages, ads, and copywriting. Don't get me wrong; these things helped, but I was blatantly ignoring some of the big stupid things I was doing. Mainly, the number one thing was going out pretty much every Friday and Saturday and getting drunk. I thought, "Oh, that just doesn't matter," and I would focus on learning more tactics.
But what I didn't realize was that if I went out and got drunk, it wasn't just that I wouldn't be productive Saturday or Sunday; I wouldn't be productive Monday, Tuesday, or pretty much Wednesday either. By the time I got back to having no brain fog and being focused and alert again, it was pretty much Friday, and that's the night I'd be out drinking again. It had very massive consequences on my productivity and mindset.
When I moved to New York about three years ago, I just stopped drinking completely. Honestly, that is the one thing that has made the most difference in my business and in my life: just stop drinking and going out. I haven't been drunk in three years. That is so simple, right? A lot of people will write that off. They'll think, "Oh, that's too simple. I want something more tactical, something more advanced, like what color or shade of blue should I have on my call-to-action button to get an increase in conversion rate?"
Honestly, most of you are not going to get much of an upside by split-testing button color. Where you're going to get most of your upside is by removing the doing of things that are stupid. That is where the biggest gains are. If you're someone who smokes weed all the time, if you stop, you'll get a huge upside. If you drink alcohol, if you stop, you'll get a huge upside. If you eat a lot of bad food or sugar, you'll have a big upside. If you have a bad habit with sleep and you fix that, there's a massive upside.
It's not just people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol; it's also people who are addicted to social media. If you break that habit, you'll have a huge upside. If you're addicted to watching TV series, Netflix, or reading news, or if you're addicted to your smartphone and the apps on it, another big one is gaming. If you are a professional gamer and want to be a professional gamer in life, then by all means, continue to play games because that is what you're trying to do.
But where I see a massive problem is with people who want to be professional businesspeople, start a massive company, and be entrepreneurs, but they also want to be professional video game players. That's very hard to do. You have to really commit. People who are really good at gaming will just play video games all day; that is their life. People who are good at business will just do business all day; that is their life.
So if you are in business and you really want to be an entrepreneur, and that's more important to you than gaming, then stop playing games. Go smash your Xbox or PlayStation, or uninstall the games off your computer, and just stop doing that. This is pretty much my point for today's video: improvement from subtraction. You don't need to add more things to your plate to get an improvement in your goals, in your life, in your business, or everything. You just need to look at the things that you're doing that are stupid and then remove them.
I can tell you the big ones I did: partying, drinking, and eating bad food. I didn't used to exercise at all; I was fat and lazy, and my mind was always foggy. My mood was very chaotic and wavy. By removing sugar, fast food, processed food, sleeping properly, exercising properly, and through meditation, I was able to really calm this turbulent wave pool of emotion to a nice flat water surface.
What I'm talking about here is my emotions. If you go out, drink alcohol, and your sleep is all over the place, and if you're also not getting enough sleep or exercising and eating bad food, your emotions are going to be all over the place and unpredictable. In the middle of the day, for no apparent reason, you might just start feeling worried, frightened, anxious, scared, or sad for no actual factual reason. If that starts happening to you, then you really are kind of screwed.
You should respond to stimuli that your body should respond to. If you walk out and there is a massive dog that looks like it's going to attack you, then you should respond to that. You should get anxious, scared, and your fight-or-flight response should turn on, and you should get the hell out of there. That's what it's for. But what happens with people who don't sleep properly, eat poorly, or drink alcohol is that without any stimuli from their environment, all of these different states get triggered, and their moods are all over the place for no apparent reason.
When your emotions and mind are like this big turbulent wave pool, it's very hard to get things done, make rational decisions, and grow a business or do anything meaningful. Just by removing those things, you can get massive upside. I'm telling you this because it's honestly just so simple. It's a lot easier than other things. I could do a video on advanced Facebook ads training, building out marketing automation campaigns, or all sorts of different stuff. But really, the biggest gains you've got to make this year are by just not doing stupid [ __ ].
Seriously, make a list of all the stupid stuff you do and then stop doing it. You'll have massive gains. Only once all the things you do that are stupid are removed should you even look at doing more advanced things. It makes sense to do the simple, massive gain things first before getting into the advanced, small gain things. If you're working on those advanced things, if you're like the person trying to lose weight and be healthy, taking supplements, wearing $400 Nikes, and on the latest diet plan but going out on the weekend, drinking, and getting no sleep, then you're an idiot, and you should fix it.
It's the big things, the simple things, that have massive compounding effects, and you want to focus on those first. Once you've exhausted all of those, then you want to look at the more advanced things. That is how you'll make the most improvement.
So that's it for this video today. I just wanted to make this a quick one to show you how to plan for the new year. When you're making that New Year's list of things you're going to achieve and your New Year's resolutions, instead of trying to add more stuff, try to take away dumb stuff. That is how you'll get the most gains this year in 2019.
Now, if you liked this video, just click that like button and also click that subscribe button. I release videos like this once per week, and I also release customer interviews, livestream Q&As, and things like that. Thanks for watching this one, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video soon.