Achieve More By Doing Less (3 Steps)

The Pitfalls of “Real” Life

Are you trapped in a hamster wheel?

Despite your best efforts and your hard work, you’re getting nowhere. It feels like you’re constantly going around in circles and it feels frustrating.

I used to feel the same way.

From my experience, here are two of the main reasons why that happens:

1. In school, you’re taught that there is only 1 correct answer to a problem. In life, there are many. This way of thinking keeps people stuck doing the same things over and over again (Einstein’s definition of insanity).

2. If you’ve had a job for any amount of time, you know of linear results. It’s the idea that the way to earn more is to work more. To put in more hours and hustle 52 hours per day (oR eLsE yOu’Re a LoSeR!).

Here’s the truth though:

As the saying goes: “There are more ways to skin a cat.” Which is kinda weird, because I don’t know a single person who even tried a single method, do you? Anyway, I’m drifting off. The key is there are MANY ways to get to a single outcome.

Some will be effective.
Other won’t be effective.

And some methods are so effective they allow you to achieve the same goal with 1/10th of the effort required for other methods.

Secondly:

In a job it’s simple: You work and you get money. You work more hours, you make more. In real life however, you get results based on what you produce.

Person A can spend 20 hours on something, using all his skills, best thinking and effort. But if it sucks, he’s not getting much out of it. Meanwhile, person B could potentially produce way better results in two hours of work.

Today, I’ll share 3 ways to become more like person B.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles?

Let’s start off with an inaccurate cliche:

People often say that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. They use it to inspire people to take action. But, there’s a huge flaw in this analogy.

If I’m on a walk, I can simply pause and take a break.

Then, I could continue from the same point I started my break.

Instead think about it like this:

The journey of a thousand miles isn’t a walk. Rather it is you swimming upstream in a river. The difference is that you must keep swimming continuously. If you don’t, the river is going to flow you downstream, away from the goal.

In this analogy, the river represents your bad habits!

• If you don’t follow your diet, snacking makes you gain weight.

• When you’re always wasting money, you’ll never save.

• Pack-a-day smokers don’t live healthy lives.

I’m sure you can think of bad habits in your own life that hold you back.

Action: Thought Experiment

What if you were swimming downstream, rather than upstream?

The river would push you foward!

The first way to achieve more without working harder is adding by subtracting. Meaning what things can you STOP doing that make it way more likely that you achieve your goal?

For example:

• Cut out the dumb expenses and you’ll save more by default.

• What if you avoided sugar and fast food? Even if you did nothing else, you’d get healthier, without diets or exercise.

• If all you did was greatly reduce your screen time, you’d be feeling way happier and healthier.

• Toxic relationship? Sounds extreme, but you’d be better off alone. Now you don’t have another person making you a worse version of yourself daily.

Do you see the point?

When you eliminate the things that keep you stuck, you begin moving in the right direction. And it’s almost automatic.

What can you cut out of your life to reverse your river’s flow?

How I Wasted Tons of Time (Without Realizing It)!

Next, let’s talk about being productive versus just being busy.

Most people are the latter (and so was I)!

Here’s the mistake I made:

Back in the days when blogs were still a hot thing, I had one. The goal of a blog was to build an email list, like the one you’re on now. In order to get people to join this email list, you had to have a lead magnet (something that you give away to get someone’s email).

I spent a LOT of time making various lead magnets.

For this, I wrote multiple ebooks, recorded video trainings and wrote email series.

But, there was a major problem…

My blog was getting roughly 2 or 3 visitors per day!

So while I was focused on the backend, nobody knew I existed…

The problem?

I was doing what felt comfortable. Creating the lead magnet was risk-free, because nobody saw them. Meanwhile, I felt terrified about putting myself out there. I was afraid of other people’s judgment.

Of course, I only realized this years later… (whoopsies)

Note: Fear of judgment? Watch this video to solve that!

I’ve noticed people mess this up in 3 ways:

• Doing what feels comfortable (like I did)

• Keep on doing the same things on autopilot

• Doing what is easy and what they already know

The result is that people end up doing the WRONG things!

In my case, a single hour of promotion would probably have been more useful than 100 hours of creating new lead magnets. Except, I didn’t know HOW (skill issue) and I feared the responses (it was uncomfortable).

Action: Brainstorming Sesh

With that in mind, what is the solution to this?

Here’s the main idea:

If you could think of 100 things that you could do to achieve a goal, only a handful with be highly impactful. Most will have some benefit. Others are complete garbage. And the problem is that your resources are limited.

If you’re not seeing the results you want, you’re probably focused on the wrong things.

Try the following exercise:

1. Start by writing down what your goal is.
   

2. Do a complete brain-dump! Write down EVERYTHING you can think of that makes at least some progress towards the goal.
   

3. Circle the 5 best methods. (I define best as those things that will likely have the biggest impact on achieving your goal.)
   

4. Cross out the other things on the list. You’re not going to focus on the things that only have a small impact.
   
   Note: Did you cross out things you’re currently doing? If so, fanstastic! You have just identified something that is wasting your time.
   

5. Depending on how much you can handle, pick 1 to 3 things you circled. Pick those you think will be most useful. Spend most of your time on these activities rather than those you crossed out.

Pro tip: Not sure which activities will be best moving forward? Start by evaluating the things you’ve been putting off. You thought of these things because you know they’re good for you, but they probably also intimidate you.

Most of the time, they will be your biggest game-changers!

Set Yourself Up to Win By Default

Let’s talk about avoiding distractions and temptation.

Quick question for you:

In which situation would it be easier to resist temptation? Is it the situation where it is right in front of you and you can feel the allure with every fiber of your being? Or is it when you don’t see, hear or smell the temptation at all?

No-brainer, isn’t it?

And yet, you’re likely hold a distraction machine right now.

Or inside of your pocket.

As a simple example, what do you usually do when it rings or vibrates? Chances are, you will look at it. And thus, you disrupt your focus. But what if you had your notifications turned off?

You’d easily avoid all of that FOMO!

Want to Dive Deeper? Watch this video here:

Action: Fixing Your Environment

Ready to start winning by default?

In this section, I’d like to give you some ideas to think about that will help you change your environment so that you win by default.

There are a few things you can do:

1. Remove/limit cues for bad influences.

2. Make your bad habits harder to do.

3. Prominently display cues for good behavior

4. Make it easy to take action on them

5. Get some form of accountability

Let me walk you through an example:

Imagine that you’re working from home all day. If you have a cookie bowl on your desk, you will eat a ton of cookies! It’s simply too easy to grab some. The temptation is constantly at its peak.

But what if the bowl was on the kitchen counter? (1)

You’d eat less, because you wouldn’t see it while working.

What if they weren’t on the kitchen counter, but instead in a cupboard? Or even better, they weren’t in the house at all. You’d have to go to the store to even get a cookie. (2)

You’d eat way fewer cookies.

What if the bowl was on your desk, but it was filled with fruit? (3, 4)

You’d eat more fruit, almost effortlessly!

And if you want to put this process on steroids, include accountability. Can you share daily results about the amount of cookies/fruit eaten with some friends? Can your girlfriend check in on this habit? (5)

Can you track your progress in an app? (5)

The Bottom Line:

Change your environment to help you do the right thing, The more it reinforces, the right actions, the more likely you are to take them. Make it easy to win, and you’re more likely to do so.

Unfortunately, I don’t know your exact situation. So, I can’t suggest specific things. But hopefully, these will give you a good framework to think about changing your environment!

The Truth About Motivation & Winning

There’s another mistake that kept me stuck for years…

Back in the day, I would say things like “When I feel more confident, I’ll do it.”. Or I’d make excuses: “I don’t feel motivated right now”. Back then I used to think you need to be motivated to make progress.

In reality, it’s the exact opposite!

In this audio, I break down how I’ve hijacked unlimited motivation and make progress:

Eliminating Bad Habits

Falling victim to bad habits all the time?

I used to struggle with that for years, until I finally cracked the code. At first, I tried to break my bad habits. But that doesn’t work…

In time, I discovered that there are only 2 ways to eliminate any bad habit forever.

And I share both of them when you watch this video: