average wins

What you put into your brain, impacts the way you think, and results in different outputs in your life.

You have a foundation of knowledge.  And that foundation builds your beliefs.  You base your current thoughts on past experiences.  As a result of those past experiences, you have a certain perspective on life.

The human mind is built to remember pain, and avoid it in the future, however it is also attracted to short term wins, and immediate rewards.   Lets say you drink socially.  Usually it’s no issue, and the more time you hang out with others who do the same, the better you feel about it.  Until one night you overdo it and look like an ass.  You say something you shouldn’t, or got into a fight with a friend, or just generally behaved badly.  The next morning you swear to yourself you’re never going to drink again.

However, over time you keep putting yourself in the situation where it’s socially acceptable to have a drink, and so you do.  As time passe, and the pain from previous lessons fades, sometimes the short term rewards that are on the path to pain, start to look more attractive again. Start to look appealing.  Start to make you want to do those behaviors again.  And before you know it, you overdo it and you’re in pain again even though you’ve been here before.

I heard an interesting definition of learning the other day.  If, after hearing about something, you do nothing with it, did you learn?  You ‘know’ it now, but so what?

The definition is: Learning is changing behaviour.

Thus, you do not truly learn, unless what you’ve learned changes your behavior.  If you don’t do anything with the knowledge, what was the point?  You just wasted your time that you could have been doing something more productive.  That time could have been spent moving you closer to your goal.  And if that time spent was useless, then that’s a shame.

For clarity, nobody is perfect.  You don’t have to be productive every second of the day, always driving to your goal.  That’s simply not sustainable, trust me I’ve tried.  You have to train yourself to build up towards it, and you will have seasons of hard work.  You can sustain extremely hard work for periods of time, but then you have to rest and recover.

What I’ve found is lots of people can spend 5 hours a day in extreme focus and productivity, learning, doing, delivering, practicing, whatever it is.  That is sustainable.  The good news is I’ve gotten farther ahead than most.  Simply by getting enough sleep, and focusing for 5 hours a day, and I’m pretty average in a lot of ways.  And I’ve beaten a lot of people who are pretty exceptional.

So that’s good news for the rest of us.  The average person who sleeps 8 hours a night, and has focused work for 5 hours a day making progress towards something, will beat the exceptional person who does not focus every day of the week.

The average person is exceptional in their focus, discipline, and execution.

And that’s all it takes.