Forcing Achievement To Come Naturally
Achievement is subjective. Achievement is Success. But achieving something is hard. In its most basic form, achievement is going from point A to B.
Many of us spend all our time working or practicing but not achieving anything meaningful. We are simply spending our valuable time and energy taking the wrong path, thinking it will lead to achievement.
This article will show you how to get from A to B through the course of the achievement lifecycle: Discovery, Development, Deepening. By the end of the article you will be able to take a structured approach towards achieving your goals.
Discovery
Let’s make one thing clear: We need to have an interest in what we hope to achieve. The real question is: How do we find that interest and how do we sustain it over a period of time?
We can only find our interests by experimenting with lots of options. Thats why children take so many classes and adults have hobbies. When we start new things, we will have a genuine interest. As we go on, 1 of 2 things will happen. Either we become bored or it becomes hard.
People quit for both reasons! Quitting out of boredom is fine, it’s time to find our next interest. But many of us confuse difficultly with boredom. Just because we’re not able to do it, we think it’s not for us or it’s not interesting enough.
The discovery phase is way too early to decide whether we are passionate about our current interest. But it opens us up to new options that will end up unveiling our passion. So before you quit your piano class or basketball practice to move onto the next thing, ask yourself Am I quitting because I’m bored or because its too hard?
Development
Once we are able to stick with an interest, it turns into passion. Now it’s time to start developing our skills.
So how do we develop our skills? Is it countless hours of repeated practice? Well. no.
In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth coined the term Deliberate Practice. It’s the process of focusing on your weakest links, identifying what’s causing it, and solving that with total concentration.
Imagine you are studying for a big exam and you can’t understand a certain topic. Instead of rereading it until something strikes you; figure out exactly what you don’t understand in that section, get help (from external sources or just ask somebody), and come back to the original material with this new knowledge.
Here are the steps you can use to structure your deliberate practice:
- Define a stretch goal — goals that will force you to improve your weak spots
- Work with full concentration and effort
- Get immediate and informative feedback
- Implement this feedback and repeat with refinement
Ok but what if I don’t need to practice? What if I am just talented? Well tough luck buddy. Talent can only get you so far, but it’s not nearly enough to achieve something meaningful. Whether you have talent or not, you need to put in the effort. As a matter of fact, effort is so crucial to achievement that Effort Counts Twice.
Talent x Effort = Skill
Skill x Effort = Achievement
The only difference between the talented and those starting from zero is the amount of effort they need to put in to acquire a skill. Without effort, talent and zero are the same.
Remember effort is not a burst of focused work! It’s years of deliberate practice on our imperfections that turns it into achievement. Over the many years of constantly improving, we deepen our skills and passion becomes purpose.
Deepening
What is the difference between passion and purpose? Why is purpose so powerful while passion isn’t?
Passion is short term. Passion is selfish. When we work on our passion for years on end, there is a ceiling to reach. We will call ourselves “masters” after we think we learned everything.
Purpose is beyond us. It’s for a higher cause. We are developing our skills to make other people’s lives better. Until that goal is reached, there will always be something else to learn.
Take this example:
Somebody goes to 3 brick layers and asks what they are doing.
Brick Layer 1: I am building a building
Brick Layer 2: I am building a church
Brick Layer 3: I am building the house of god
Which one of these brick layers is working with a purpose? When he goes to build the next house of god, he will look for ways to make it better and improve the imperfections from the previous time. He will refine his skills every day. His purpose makes his efforts never ending.
Purpose guides our passion and effort into achievement.
Conclusion
I’ve started many many things in my life. Sports, chess, companies, studying, gym, the list goes on and on. I’ve always stopped these after a couple weeks or months of intense work. I’d have no clue where it all went to hell.
Once I started understanding the achievement process, I quickly separated the things I had no interest in from the things I loved. My mind felt activated when doing the few things I was passionate about but I braced myself for rough patches. I knew whenever something didn’t work out, I had to keep going, I had to figure out what was wrong and fixable, I had to work on that with complete dedication.
At one point, I forgot about what I set out to do. I completely lost sight of my goal and fell in love with the process. This love for the process helped me transform my passion into purpose which sent me into a spiral of growth.
My advice anybody wanting to achieve something meaningful is: Pick what you love, don’t settle for mediocrity, keep growing. Everything else will follow.
Discover. Develop. Deepen.
