I routinely write “No hurry, no pause” at the top of my notebooks as a daily reminder.
You can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other.
One former Navy SEAL friend once texted me a principle used in their training: “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Now, it’s not about owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.
No hurry, no pause.
Life doesn't have to be as hard and complicated as we make it.
Each of us has, as Robert Frost wrote, "Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."
No matter what challenges, obstacles or hardships we encounter along the way, we can always look for the easier, simpler path.
1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers
2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night. The former scrambles your priorities and plans for the day, and the latter just gives you insomnia.
3. Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time If the desired outcome is defined clearly with a stated objective and agenda listing topics/questions to cover, no meeting or call should last more than 30 minutes.
4. Do not let people ramble. Forget “how’s it going?” when someone calls you. Stick with “what’s up?” or “I’m in the middle of getting something out, but what’s going on?”
5. Do not check e-mail constantly — “batch” and check at set times only.
6. Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers.
There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone. Do an 80/20 analysis of your customer base in two ways–which 20% are producing 80%+ of my profit, and which 20% are consuming 80%+ of my time?
7. Do not work more to fix overwhelm — prioritize.
If you don’t prioritize, everything seems urgent and important. If you define the single most important task for each day, almost nothing seems urgent or important. Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of letting little bad things happen (return a phone call late and apologize, pay a small late fee, lose an unreasonable customer, etc.) to get the big important things done. The answer to overwhelm is not spinning more plates — or doing more — it’s defining the few things that can really fundamentally change your business and life.
8. Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should.
Work is not all of life. Your co-workers shouldn’t be your only friends. Schedule life and defend it just as you would an important business meeting. Never tell yourself “I’ll just get it done this weekend.” Review Parkinson’s Law in The 4-Hour Workweek and force yourself to cram within tight hours so your per-hour productivity doesn’t fall through the floor. Focus, get the critical few done, and get out. E-mailing all weekend is no way to spend the little time you have on this planet.
It’s hip to focus on getting things done, but it’s only possible once we remove the constant static and distraction. If you have trouble deciding what to do, just focus on not doing. Different means, same end.
Crossover is a partial myth, but not useless. A three minute ice bath will teach you about your adrenaline response (mental and physical) immediately and it can be done safely. But to sit down and do some really deep hard work on something challenging, that’s pretty domain specific. In other words, deliberate cold exposure can be useful, but it teaches you about an extreme state. To get tougher and better at the thing you have to do the thing. For example, I have a countdown stopwatch that I used to use to log how much real work I did each day and at the end of the day I see and log that. You can work up to some pretty intense and long work bouts that way…and you find it you still have lots of time for family and relationships. If you really work instead of the partial focus that most people engage in that is.
Doing hard stuff requires distress tolerance. Building distress tolerance requires doing hard stuff. There is no easy entry point. It gets easier by way of recognition. You think “I’ve been here before”. Pretty soon you’re seeking that state. That’s how you make hard stuff easy.
Here’s the truth: If you’re half in, you’re actually all out. Even 90% in gets you nowhere. There’s something magical in that last little bit, simply because so few are willing to do it. That’s where you unlock new levels to the game. And it does not take talent, just courage.
Let’s clarify this deliberate cold exposure thing once and for all. There is so much nonsense out there about cold and fear of cold, etc. It’s pretty simple when you look at it through the lens of the hormones and neural circuits involved. It also makes clear how to do it right.