Behind the grind.

Maybe you shouldn’t be reading this right now. Perhaps, you have...

You consume heavy doses of exceptionally impressive inspiration each day from a million sources, surpassing the quantity needed to keep you in check. You make daily commitments to accomplish your goals and you hammer away in high spirits. Yet, you are still as far from making history and setting records as the sun is from earth.

To you however, you are just operating optimally. However, many other ‘little things' matter truly.

This is not a “how to make history" guide. For that, you have the rudimentary instruments in your arsenal already—hard work, commitment, consistency, intelligence, diligence and a lot more “…ence”.

In this article however, I will bank on these assets you own, to zoom in on some ‘little things’ that occur behind the grind, but influence what happens on the grind and beyond.

Just as hardwork and similar qualities are super important to accomplish feats, other ‘little things' matter too’. I will crystallize a number:

NO PRIZE FOR FIRST PLACE

You won’t be celebrated if you underperform, we are never proud of mediocrity. Even if you transcend expectations, you might not still be celebrated.

Your decision to learn Chinese isn’t a cross country marathon, no one is going to hand you a $1000 cheque for speaking Chinese fluently after many months of self-directed learning. It was your personal decision and you toiled away to achieve your goals. Apart from you, no one really cares.

In fact, besides the traditional academic setting, you hardly get to sit down with an examination paper to access your competency after you achieve your goals in a particular learning domain. This is always true for decisions you make without external influence. Your ability to deliver exceptionally when needed is the only indirect assessment that sets in later in the future.

Many times, thoughts that no one is going to assess you as you progress pops up on a good day, like a notification. And your efficacy gets influenced by these thoughts, even though you still strike the grind hard.

Of course, one day off is not enough to get you derailed. But many days of these “pop up notifications” will surely do. You make idle the important instruments you need to outperform, and your competence zeroes.

That life is as short as the life of a wave is not newsworthy. At every point, blow the bellows hard.

MANY FAKE TASKS

For any particular task carried out to achieve a goal, there is always a fake alternative.

Consider setting a goal to read 100 books on how to master the art of writing. That sounds ambitious and smart. You prefer this to picking a pen to scribble down your thoughts everyday, as an active strategy to build your writing skills. 100 books is fake and more difficult. Too fake. Active writing is real.

People choose harder tasks because they believe “hard and exhausting” means “productive”. This is a very poor and dumb metric for productivity. A task becomes easy only after you have invested enough time and energy.

Fake activities also appear to be soothing and enjoyable, but doing nothing is always better than doing something fake.

With nothing, the urge to find something to do gets stimulated. Plus, you have your energy being conserved for real tasks.

In the long run however, the fake activities sum up to nothing but a good waste of sweat, the same way the real tasks accumulate to move you closer to making history. With your hardwork channelled to high-yield real work, a phenomenal level of competence becomes inevitable.

PRODUCTIVE DISTRACTIONS

Maybe you shouldn’t be reading this right now. Perhaps, you have deadlines to meet and personal targets to hit, but you decided to give this a quick read on sighting the notification.

That is an excellent instance of a productive distraction.

Productive activities become distractions when you engage in them at the wrong time. Many hours spent on productive but distracting activities could have been dedicated to your priorities for an optimal performance. Provided you fully understand your priorities, you should be a master in the art of saying NO to juicy offers when they come in at the wrong time.

A gentle reminder—Even with tons of hardwork and diligence, if you don’t set your standards straight, your performance will be affected.

YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL

50 hours of real work a week, committed to a particular goal is enviable. Many out there operate on a similar level, and some others even do better. Think about 80+ hours with unfractured attention.

“Even if you are one in million, on a planet of 6.8 billion, that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you”, says David McCullough.

The world's population hit 8 billion already, many years after McCullough said that. So now, it is like about 8,000 people just like you. That narrows down to 1 in 8,000 similar people. Clearly, you are not special.

See, no one wants to be relegated. Just like yours, billions of noses are glued to the grindstone. Regardless however, variations will still exist between individuals' performances. For many reasons behind this, you are in control. And for others, the ball is not in your court.

While you have figured out the true purpose for wanting to achieve your goals, and hitting the grindstone each day obsessively, you also should identify and ensure that all other ‘little things' that come to play along the line are well tamed. These are the things that occur behind the grind, which is in your full control.

What other ‘little things’ behind the grind came across your mind as you went through the article? How do you intend to eliminate them to enhance your competence? Let me know in the comments section.

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Bye for now, Trybers.