Do I need more patience, or more action?
We know good things take time. But in practice, time feels a lot longer than that maxim lets on.
Exercise feels long because it’s hard on the body. Before you start, “good things take time” sounds true and useful. Halfway through the strain of actually doing it, that maxim doesn’t help you much at all.
So it can be genuinely hard to know: is the reason I’m not hitting my goal that I need to push harder, or wait longer, or change what I’m doing altogether?
One answer is just to do it a little longer. But you don’t want to run the same action with no results for too long either, because you’ll run out of playing time.
The real trick is the balance between more action, different action, and more time. Like a good cake, if you get the ratio right, it comes out delicious.
Cause and effect
Cause and effect is important to notice. They say if you don’t measure it, it can’t improve.
Some things are easy to measure. How many words you wrote on a page. How much weight you can lift at the gym. Other things are harder to pin down.
But if we can figure out a way to quantify the things we actually want to improve, to measure them somehow, we start to see the cause and effect of our own actions. When I do this, this happens. And once you can see that, you can adjust.
So what do you want to improve at? And how can you measure it, so you can actually improve it?
Given the option, I’ll flake out
Have you ever made a plan with a friend to go out, and in the lead-up you know that if you hadn’t made the plan, you probably wouldn’t leave the house?
It’s cozier inside. Less resistance, less energy spent getting ready. And the truth is, both options are genuinely good. Home is comfortable. Out might mean a great night, a deeper connection, being there for something your friend needs. When both are good, we take the path of least resistance.
You know the feeling when they text an hour before: “can we rain check, I can’t do it”? That rush of relief. Now you don’t have to go out.
That’s the tell. Given the option, most of us will flake, even though there’s so much to gain from doing the thing.
So I think it’s important to make commitments outside ourselves, to people or structures that hold us to things that aren’t easy or comfortable. Because left to our own devices, we’ll take the out every time.
Life is a puzzle, not Russian roulette
I think it’s important to remember that life is a puzzle, not Russian roulette.
With a puzzle, you try a piece. Maybe it doesn’t fit. That’s fine, you put it down and you try another one. It probably won’t fit either. Still fine. You just keep trying pieces until one does. Nothing about a wrong piece ends the game.
Russian roulette doesn’t work like that. Get it wrong, and you don’t get to play again.
We do well to remember that most things in life are a puzzle, not Russian roulette. The piece that doesn’t fit isn’t a verdict. It’s just information. Put it down, pick up the next one, and keep going.
Know what game you’re playing
The other day I was scrolling and landed on one of those YouTube shorts, a couple of guys who started a pizza business. But instead of doing the obvious thing, opening their own brick-and-mortar shop like every other pizza place, they went to petrol stations. Petrol stations were already everywhere. Already built, already trafficked, already trusted. So instead of building their own version of that, they put pizza ovens inside them, put their own staff in there, and piggybacked off infrastructure that already existed. That was the whole idea of the video: you don’t have to build your own building. These guys grew exponentially just by thinking differently about where the game gets played.
And I watched that and thought, that’s such a good idea.
And then, I’ll be honest, for about thirty seconds I caught myself actually wondering if I should start a pizza restaurant out of petrol stations here. Which, when I say it out loud, is obviously ridiculous. But it’s worth pausing on why my brain went there, because I don’t think it’s actually about pizza.
It’s easy to think “I’m in business, this is about business, so this is basically the same thing as what I’m doing.” And it is similar, on the surface — I’m providing value to people, I’m helping them get better outcomes, I’m building something people didn’t have before. That’s not nothing. But it’s also a completely different game underneath. Selling pizza through existing infrastructure and helping people implement real change in their lives are not the same set of rules, even though they rhyme.
That’s the thing I want to name here: it’s really important to know what game you’re playing. And when you come across another game that rhymes with yours — same energy, similar shape, a clever move that clearly worked for someone else — it’s worth checking whether it’s actually your game, or just a game that looks like yours from a distance.
Because if you get enticed by something like that, you’ve got two honest options. One — you actually want to change games, and if that’s true, at least know that’s what you’re doing, with your eyes open. Or two — you don’t want to change games at all, you just spotted something useful. In that case, don’t take the whole game. Take the element. Pull out the principle that made it work and see if it applies inside the rules you’re actually playing by.
What you shouldn’t do is get sidetracked chasing something because it looks easier, or looks like it’s growing faster, or looks smarter — when really it’s just different. Different isn’t better. It’s just a different set of rules for a different game.
So know the difference. Know what game you’re playing. And stay in it.
Obstacle and Intention
This is the one reason why everyone in the entire world loves movies. It’s called obstacle and intention.
A character has a thing they want to do, an intention. And they have an obstacle, something standing in their way. We love watching people overcome an obstacle to get their intention.
You’re in a movie called your life.
Thinking of it this way, obstacle and intention, is really useful because it helps us get clear about two things: A, our intention, what we want. And B, what is the obstacle?
Have you ever thought about what actually stands in your way? For instance, if you wanted to cut down on eating sugar, that’s your intention. Your obstacle might be that there’s just a lot of sugar lying around your house. Without this frame of obstacle and intention, you might not have even seen that obstacle so clearly.
Start treating your life a little bit like a movie. What is your intention? What’s the obstacle? And instead of just fighting the obstacle, you could just remove it and be the hero of your own story.
Stop Drifting
Ever feel like you’re drifting through life?
Here’s one thing I learned that changed everything for me: drifting through life, or drifting through an experience, comes when you don’t actually know what you want.
Have you ever heard someone say you can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you want to go? It’s like jumping in the car, opening Google Maps, but never putting in a destination. Just driving, and driving, and then wondering why you’re never getting there.
The thing that really, really helps me is to set an outcome, to set an intention. What that means is simply stating what you want.
If you wake up in the morning and you’re heading to work feeling bored or feeling angry, it’s probably because you’re just at the whim of whatever your day brings. Setting an outcome is being intentional about what you want that day to bring. It’s as simple as: today I want to find out three new facts about my coworker. Or, today I want to find a new way to have fun with my family.
Just simple little objectives you give yourself. And what that means is you’re not just at the whim of the day. You’ve set yourself a destination.
Stop drifting through life. Set an outcome for the day.
Magic Moments
Do you have magic moments in your life?
A magic moment is anything you really, really enjoy. A cool conversation with a stranger. Someone smiling at you for no reason. Sitting down to your favorite show with your favorite snack and just thinking, life is good.
We have to record our magic moments.
And I don’t mean pulling your phone out and filming yourself having a good time. I mean starting a list somewhere, a note on your phone, whatever works for you. So much happens every single day in our lives that our brains simply cannot store all of it. What we want to do is train our brain to remember the things that were actually good.
Because here’s the thing: your life is just a collection of memories.
If that collection is made up of the hard things, the tough moments, the stuff that dragged you down, then you’re going to feel like you’ve had a hard life. But if you start recording the awesome little moments you genuinely loved, you’re training your brain to notice them. You start unpacking your week and suddenly you’ve got ten, twenty of these magic moments sitting there.
And what happens if you keep doing that every single week, for a whole year?
You end up with a whole list of awesome stuff.
We have to record these things. Otherwise, we’re just going to forget them.
Honour the subconscious
Your brain needs time.
Sure, you can put in all the input… but give the brain some time to rendezvous with the heart and invite the soul as well.
When we let the subconscious work away in the background, we emerge again with new resources.
The mind, dreams, emotions, physiology and memory are a mysterious petri dish.
Who not how
Once you know what and why, you shouldn’t ask how.
You’ll end up doing it yourself.
Ask “Who?”
Then find a person to carry out the how.