Take Control Over Your Success ( A Deep Analysis )

The Principle of Least Resistance: in a business setting without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors on the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest at the moment.

This is the most common behavior in society today; A parasite to anyone with a purpose and a dream to succeed. The Principle of least resistance in clearer definition outlines that it is human to look for the easiest route. I am starting on this note to emphasize the principle that shapes the lives of many worldwide, the reason why many of us don’t make it.

The path to financial freedom is never going to be the easiest, or laid out path for us to follow. To put it into specifics, we are going to explore my workplace in which we can look closer at this principle:

Every morning we arrive at work, the staff sits in their car until the last minute before they have to open. The staff will call out of work if they believe the work will be too hard the next day because of a recent challenging event ( this happened today as of writing ). My coworkers have ignored work, got upset when they see advancement in others’ careers, and turned down opportunities to better themselves.

This type of work environment is eerily common, which is both a positive and a negative. The reason I went off on a tangent about this yet simple rule, is to prove that your competition has set such a low bar, and it makes it easy to see what not to do. The only thing setting us back from understanding this is having a trained eye for this behavior and taking action.

Apply it to your life: 

• Constantly take notice of your environment and identify the people who follow the principle of least resistance

• Do the opposite of these people, work harder, and smarter, and track this progress

• Become fulfilled by learning who you can teach this principle to, and saving them from falling into the trap of “going with the flow” and never taking accountability for themselves and pursuing their purpose

Pursuing your Purpose: 

Dragging along in life is a common theme for many as we just delve into it, but this is not the way we want to live. Fulfilling your purpose/goals in life is when humans are at their highest satisfaction. This is why I argue to pursue deep work every day as it will have exponential growth towards your goals. Here are a few different arguments for implementing growth into your everyday life:

A Neurological argument for depth: 

In the book “ Deep Work “ a woman who we will call Gallagher has recently found out she has cancer. This was a turning point in her life in which she regularly followed the principles of least resistance, until then. She decided to focus her attention on her work and the things she enjoyed in life by delving into them with deep work. With this spontaneous shift into deep work sessions, she has accomplished:

• Writing a book about her success

• Outlive her doctor’s analysis of time left

• Prove that what your mind focuses on determines quite literally how well you live

The shift from shallow living to deep has changed the course of her life.

A Psychological argument for depth: 

A common misconception is that people will enjoy their life more by relaxing instead of working. Everyone is always looking towards their next vacation or their next day off, this was flipped when looked into through an experiment. A study was done to record psychological periods during mind-limiting work. The study showed that the best moments of the patients were during voluntary efforts to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. This was then called the mental state flow, which summarizes the satisfaction of the mind in overcoming challenging work.

Psychologically why jobs are more enjoyable than free time: 

• They are structured

• Have goals

• Conduct feedback-based results

• Challenges that push our mental state on a daily

Free time is unstructured and requires greater effort to be shaped into something enjoyable.

Adding Deep Work in your everyday life:

Consider a study that highlights the conditions of everyday knowledge workers, 60% of their time is spent on “shallow work tasks”

Here are 4 actionable steps to implementing deep work into your everyday life:

Create a Deep Work routine:

• Schedule out at least an hour every day of distraction-free time to work

Journal your Deep Work: 

• Mark on a calendar every day you do deep work, and how long you enacted in deep work

• Due to the principle of “Rhythmic Deep Work“ this will create a chain that you will be determined not to break.

Analyze your progress: 

• After even a week of deep work, take a look at trends in your habits, personal growth, and improvements from even just a week prior

• Deep work takes time, but celebrate the small wins to push forth your motivation

Compare your Deep Work to others: 

• Create an environment in which you are competing with others to progress

• Share your deep work efforts and if they align work collaboratively, this results in the Whiteboard effect

Learn Hard Things Fast to Become Succesful:

The simple formula to become successful is:

• Find an opportunity to provide value

• Learn a skillset to provide this value

• Build a cash-flowing business around providing this value

The hardest part is to learn a skillset that provides value, which is why it isn’t so easy to become rich.

Finding opportunities to provide value comes easily with a trained eye. Learn what there is a lack of, find people's needs, and execute.

A method that can be used to learn hard things is the TED method:

Trial:

This consists of the actual research and studying part of learning. Absorbing information through:

• books

• courses

• Videos

As you research take plenty of notes, and key points from the information you are absorbing. It makes it easier when you look back to see what you learned when you have an outline of the information you just absorbed.

Error: 

This is considered the action stage in this learning method. You will immediately upon trial learning, take into effect your research:

Learning about copywriting?

• start writing copy

Learning how to trade in the market?

• start trading

As simple as it sounds, the biggest thing holding you back from learning anything fast is not taking action.

Trying something immediately after learning through research reinforces the skill you are teaching yourself. This will set up your brain to form new ideas about the skill you are learning and connect the actual research and error from trying it.

Document: 

This step requires learning from your learning.

As complex as that sounds it is as simple as writing down where you went wrong during the error phase and where to improve. This also consists of brainstorming new ideas to try and document your progress.

• Have a phone/journal on hand while learning

• Simplify your notes into key points and progress points

• Brainstorm ideas of how you can learn differently from your current point

Want to learn from courses but don’t have $1500 per course???

Thank me later.

Where do I get books? 

Here are some great startup books I found on amazon……

Don’t like reading? Try audio….

Additional Resources and Research:

The 4 Deep Work Strategies

What are Lead and Lag Measures, and why they are important

A deeper dive into “ Rhythmic Deep Work “

A comic named Brad Isaac, a comedian who wanted to learn how to write funny jokes and become better at standup comedy. One night after performing a standup act when he ran into Seinfeld, he stopped to talk and ask for advice. Seinfeld started by giving general advice like writing better jokes to be a better comedian, but then later explained how to do that. He proceeded with telling young Isaac that he writes jokes every day, and for every day that he writes jokes he marks X on his calendar. This over days turns into a chain of “X” on his calendar that becomes something he doesn’t want to break. You do not want to break this chain, and you will continue every day to make sure that “X” signifying deep work was completed for the day to keep the rhythm. This is the idea of rhythmic deep work, to create a habit of deep work, and to visually see this pattern. This then turns into a daily effort and becomes a part of your routine.