One of the oldest and most frequently cited geometric axioms is that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  While this is most certainly true in the sphere of mathematics and geometry, the path we take through business and life rarely (if ever) moves in a straight line.  Because of this, much of our ability to realize success is dependent on our ability to adapt to the twists and turns that we are presented with on a perpetual basis.

This is especially important for our financial calculations and decisions.  It is not a secret that most financial planning models are built on the assumption of indefinite steady compounding that is expected to make you rich after a certain calculated period of time.  Of course, real life does not work in that manner.  The stock market does not compound at 9% per year, every year, with no deviation.  In some years … or in the past decade, in many years, gains do not meet expectations or values decline.

Thus, it is not just the paper performance of our decisions, but their ability to absorb uncertainty that is highly important.  The problem is that most people do not fully understand the impact of uncertainty, and even fewer people are not aware of how to make their financial plans sufficiently robust so that they can withstand abrupt, significant changes to the marketplace.

Adaptability is Key

Regardless of whether you are talking about a manufacturing line, a small (or large) business, or a financial portfolio, it is absolutely critical to ensure that your strategy is adaptable to new market realities.  The more you allow yourself to depend on static models, the more you will be susceptible to destructive changes in the marketplace.  This concept must be internalized when planning, executing, and revising our personal and professional strategies.  As reality changes, we must be able to adapt and change with it.

A simple way to understand this concept is by internalizing the following three truisms about business/life:

1. Business/Life is a game
2. The game has rules
3. The rules are always changing

If this feels highly chaotic, that’s because in many cases it is.  We cannot suffice ourselves with learning the rules (both written and unwritten) of business/life.  We must also learn how and when the rules change so that we can adjust our personal, professional, and financial decisions.  An unfortunate fact of life is that none of us possess the power to change the larger reality … we only have the ability to change the decisions we make and influence the decisions that people close to us make so that we can adapt to the larger reality more successfully.

Learning When the Rules Change

Many people make a regular habit of following the news both in print and on the internet.  The typical result of most people’s news consumption is agreement with stories support their political views, and anger at stories that stand in contrast to their personal views.  This typically manifests itself in political arguments over current events with friends, co-workers, and family members.  The only problem is that none of us have the ability to change the political reality of the world at large.  Our vote counts as one of many, many millions, and political decisions do not vary as much many are led to believe.  Politicians are wildly different in their rhetoric (what they say), but their decisions (what they do) are much more closely tied to their incentives.

At first blush, this can easily lead to a belief that the news is useless, and it is optimal to tune out.  While temping, this view is not completely accurate.  The news is not useful from the context of my ability to change the global political reality, but it is useful from the context of understanding what changes are coming in the national and global marketplace.  From this perspective, news and information take on an entirely new light.

Signal and Noise

The key to making use of what we learn through the news is the concept of signal and noise.  Within most transmissions, there is an element of useful information (signal) and an element of useless information (noise).  In everything that we see, sense, or experience, there is something we can learn (signal) and there is everything else (noise).  The challenge that we have as people and as businesses is to act on the signal, and not on the noise.  In practice, this is much easier said than done.  In following the news, we should not be simply looking for stories that either confirm or conflict with our beliefs, but looking for useful information signals that can help us make better personal, professional, and financial decisions.

In the end, each of us will be able to achieve the best results if we realize the importance of adapting our strategy and decisions to a changing marketplace, while using the signals that we gain from our everyday experience to inform better decisions in the future.  By learning to do this on a consistent basis, it will allow us to perpetually move closer to our goals, dreams, and aspirations.

 

Contemporary business theory places great amounts of emphasis on strategy and long-term thinking.  These concepts are most definitely of great importance, but there is one critical aspect of successful long-term strategy that many theories and systems fail to comprehend.  That critical insight is how all strategies, regardless of how large or small ultimately distill down to steps that must be acted upon in the present tense.  Furthermore, these action steps frequently break down into smaller steps.

Thus, it becomes true that the largest, most grand, and most complex strategies all come down to one small step.  That one step is the next step.  Once the next step has been taken, focus shifts tot he step after that, and the step after that, and the step after that.  The long-term perspective must always yield to the immediate action, because long-term results can only be accomplished through a continuous string of actions.

Another way of considering this concept is to understand the relationship between past, present, and future . . . both in regards to thought and action.  The past is beyond our ability to influence, but its insights are ours to discover.  Yesterdays victories cannot be relied upon to sustain us into the future, and yesterdays failures have passed into history.  We cannot exist in the past, because the past is gone.  The present is where we recognize current opportunities and act to capture them.  The knowledge of the past can help us to see opportunities, but they must all be captured in the present.

The present represents both the past of our future and the future of our past.  Todays opportunities will be gone tomorrow, and tomorrow’s opportunities cannot be captured today.  As we look into the future, we see the present that has not yet come to past.  None of us can act in the future until the future becomes the present.  The opportunities of the future are valuable to understand, as they will pass into the present tense over due time.

We must be mindful of the future, but we cannot live in the future.  The future is most certainly inevitable, but all that we do must take place in the present.  Furthermore, it is not practical to indefinitely delay all enjoyment of life for the sake of the future.  Life is for living, and each person must balance the present against the future, without being weighed down by the past.  We must understand that the future can only be built by decisions and actions that we take in the present.  Thus, what we do now is ultimately what is of the greatest importance, since the future necessarily build on the present.

In this way, we realize success by taking one small step . . . our next step.  The steps that we take are shaped by our vision of the future, and our recognition of opportunity.  However, the only way that we can turn this into reality is by taking action in the present.  Each of us has the distinct opportunity to shape our lives by taking action right now.  Success is not a multi-thousand step process, it is a one step process . . . your next step.  By consistently taking action on your next step toward success, it will keep you perpetually moving toward greater and greater achievements.  Each of us can increase the influence that we wield over our lives by taking action right now on one small step toward success.

In the end, achieving our ambitions is both more complex and more simple than most people realize.  The complexity arises from prioritizing between all the things that we wish to achieve and all the decisions that we must make.  The simplicity comes from the fact that all achievements result from individual actions.  And we can achieve our goals by isolating and prioritizing the individual actions that need to be taken.  Thus, one small step … followed by another and then another is the way that we gradually build the stairway to our goals and ambitions.

 

One of the topics that is most frequently written about is time.  Every person wishes that they had more time available to do the things that are important to them.  Since time is so elusive, it is reasonable to conduct a closer examination of the time that we have in a given day, and how we choose to allocate that scarce resource known as time.

Every day contains within it, 86,400 seconds.  One way to gains some insight into how we use the time of each day is to think of the activities we engage in as ‘spending’ our time.  This ultimately begs the natural question of whether we are spending the majority of our time each day on the things that are the most important in our life.  The impact of this question is profound, because time is the single greatest equalizing force in the universe.  All people have the same amount of time in the day.  Regardless of your personal or financial situation, each day contains within it a finite amount of seconds, minutes, and hours.  How you choose to use those precious seconds will shape the future of your life.

Speaking for myself, I prefer to view our daily time in terms of seconds.  By articulating time in terms of seconds, it highlights the extend to which each second is important.  In many cases, it is quite possible to overlook things that we use time on and waste time on by sliding it in-between other activities that take larger amounts of time, and thus delude ourselves into thinking that we are being productive when we are actually wasting large amounts of time on activities that do not support our long-term goals.

Let’s start with the time that we spend sleeping . . . Since rest is an important part of being productive, why don’t we assume 7 hours (25,200 seconds) are spent sleeping?  Most people also have jobs that they work at during the day.  We should also assume 8 hours per day of work (26,800 seconds) and a total of 60 minutes (3,600 seconds) spent driving to and from work.  If we add 30 minutes for each meal and another 30 minutes each morning and evening to get ready, that leaves us with only 19,800 seconds each day to spend on things that aren’t eating, sleeping, or working.

The critical question to ask yourself is what are you doing with those 19,800 seconds each day to improve your life?  Some studies have shown that the average person spends approximately 5 hours (18,000 seconds) each day watching television.  Simple arithmetic shows that if television (or other forms of passive entertainment) occupies 18,000 of the 19,800 seconds that you have available each day to spend on yourself, that you won’t have much time left for self improvement.

What if we shifted things around a little bit and focused on self improvement first and entertainment second?  What if you spent an hour (3.600 seconds) each day reading?  What if you spent 30 minutes (1,800 seconds) each day planning and organizing?  Maybe another 30 minutes exercising to stay healthy?  How about 30 more minutes to analyze your finances and investments?  If you did all of this, there would still be 10,800 seconds left in the day to do whatever you want (including watching television), and would most certainly create a noticeable improvement in your lifestyle and financial situation.

Changes at the Margin

The way that we shift the course of our life is to make small changes at the margin.  It is not reasonable for most people to completely change everything about their life.  However, it is quite reasonable to do one thing differently each day.  In this way, a single small change that is compounded over time can produce tremendous results.  In the case of most people, allocating 30 to 60 minutes (or 3,600 to 7,200 seconds) per day toward an activity that will help their future can pay tremendous rewards over time.

In the end, our achievements of tomorrow will be built on the activities and decisions of today.  In this way, each day becomes a building block for tomorrow.  Each time that we decide to do something productive, it represents a victory.  Each time that we decide to waste time, it represents a failure.  Success results from tilting the balance of victory vs. failure in your favor.  By doing this every day, it can create a tremendous impact over time that creates real value for our personal, professional, and financial lives.

 

For both individuals and business owners, negotiations can prove to be one of the most difficult and most important things that we do.  The largest purchases that most people make frequently involve very intense negotiations.  The ability to gain employment, and earn promotions is also frequently influenced by your ability to negotiate.  Negotiation has a very significant impact on personal, professional, and financial success.  Because of this, it is very important to understand the parts of negotiations that are the most important, along with the parts that are frequently misunderstood.

To many people, the idea of negotiating brings up images of aggressive arguments where both sides attempt to prevail against the other in a pitched battle for power where one side wins and the other side loses.  Another paradigm of negotiation is one where a “win-win” paradigm requires that no deal be made unless both sides realize significant benefits.  The truth of negotiation exists in-between these opposite visions.

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement

The term BATNA, meaning “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement” was coined by Roger Fisher and William Ury of Harvard University, and incorporates many of the ideas published by John Nash in his work on Game Theory.  The idea incorporated in BATNA is that our ability to negotiate is heavily influenced by our alternatives if the negotiated agreement does not occur.

One way to think about BATNA is to imagine that you’re looking to sell a car.  If you have one buyer lined-up who will pay $2,000 for the car, then you will be very unlikely to accept less than $2,000 from anybody else unless you have doubts about the original offer.  Your best alternative is selling the car for $2,000 and that places you in a position of power to confidently list the car for sale at a higher price. Alternatively, if you need to raise cash very quickly and have no buyers lined-up, then you may need to accept $500 or less from the first able buyer whom you come into contact with.  Thus, your best alternative exerts a tremendous degree of influence over your decisions.

How BATNA Influences Our Idea of Fairness

One of the enduring ideas of humanity is the notion of fairness.  The situations that most people perceive as being unfair are those where one side has a significantly better BATNA than the other.  An example of this is if you are walking across a desert, parched of desperate thirst, and run across a truck who offers to sell you a 20 ounce bottle of water for $5,000.  The natural response to this scenario is that the transaction is supremely unfair since the cost of that bottle to the seller is approximately one dollar.  In this situation, the BATNA of the person walking through the desert is a painful death of dehydration.  Alternatively, the BATNA of the seller is their lost time and the expense of driving across the desert to find somebody walking whom they can sell water.

The reason why this feels so unfair is because the alternative of the person walking is death, while the alternative of the person selling the water is simply wasted time.  However, this transaction still makes both parties better off, even though it feels patently unfair.  If the truck were not present to sell the high-priced water, the person walking across the desert would suffer a painful death.  Even when the person driving the truck engages in what is frequently called “price gouging,” he still delivers a valuable service that is critically important to the person in the desert.  Thus, in what seems to be a blinding paradox, some of the transactions that appear to be the most unfair to the “little guy” are actually the most beneficial.  The reason for this is because when the best alternative for the “little guy” is worse that the seemingly unfair exchange, then they are far better off with the deal that feels severely slanted against them.  Thus, by using legislative power to prevent exchanges that feel unfair, it is possible that we are actually condemning the people whom we think we are helping to suffer an even worse outcome.

How BATNA Influences our Negotiations

Another important thing to consider in regards to BATNA is its impact on our personal, career, business, and investing decisions.  Within this insight is two levels of distinction.  The first is that our alternatives influence our decisions.  The second is that our perceptions may differ from reality, and result in decisions that are sub-optimal.  In short, it is very easy to both over-estimate and under-estimate our best alternative.

• Why our Alternatives Matter

  • The simple reason why alternatives matter so much is because we can be more confident in refusing low-quality outcomes when we have a better alternative.  If you are highly educated and experienced in a field that is in demand, you do not need to take the first job offer that comes your way.  If you are able to re-locate with ease, you can be more flexible in finding a new job that allows you to advance more quickly.  If you are a business owner who already has a key customer that generates sufficient revenue to cover your costs, you can negotiate pricing with new customers from a stronger position.  If you are able to assemble investment deals that generate a high rate of return, it will allow you to walk past the traditional financial instruments that are sold for retirement planning.
  • In short, the decisions that you make are bracketed by the alternatives that you possess.  By increasing the quality of your alternatives, you increase the strength of your decisions.  Thus, the ‘real’ way that people achieve success is not just through the decisions that they make, but through developing the alternatives that allow them to make high-impact decisions in the first place.  Most of the best investments require some degree of capital.  If you are unable to pay the monthly rent, high-impact investing is not an option.  Regardless of how educated you are in decision making, those decisions will not become available until you influence the underlying alternatives through preceding actions and decisions.

• Over-Estimating the Alternatives

  • One of the thing that frequently happens in high-stakes negotiations is that one or both sides will over-estimate their alternatives.  This typically results in the adoption of “tough-guy” negotiation techniques, and can create very large problems if the deal falls apart and the assumed alternative do not materialize.  Typically this situation occurs when negotiators fail to invest sufficient research into their realistic options.  The most frequent occurrences of this effect are when one side focuses on the other side’s lack of options more than their own situation.
  • For example, the union frequently notes that management will be in a pinch without labor.  Similarly, management frequently notes that the union members will be in trouble without their wages.  The truth is that both labor and management suffer from a prolonged work stoppage.  It is important to avoid taking your eye away from your own alternatives by excessively focusing on other people’s alternatives.

• Under-Estimating the Alternatives

  • Another way that people can run into trouble is by under-estimating their alternatives.  When this happens, people will be likely to take “the first thing that comes along” instead of searching for their best option.  Typically, this situation occurs when people have a low opinion of themselves and their abilities.  This is not to say that ego and arrogance are in order, but that an honest assessment is critical.

In the end, understanding our alternatives is a critical part of optimal decision making.  It is important to make an honest assessment of what our options look like so that we can avoid the errors of both over-estimating and under-estimating the quality of our alternatives.  This is one of the fundamental keys to negotiating success in our personal, professional, and financial life.

 

One of the things that many people grapple with in their personal lives is nutrition and fitness.  However, this topic can be very daunting for a couple of reasons.  The first is that tracking our nutrition and fitness makes it much more “real.”  Speaking for myself, it is much easier to talk my way around making smarter food choices when I was not keeping track of what I was eating.

This is where the power of a tracking system comes into play.  By keeping track of your nutrition through a free online portal such as Spark People, it provides a very powerful tool for reaching your personal fitness goals.  One of the most prominent difficulties people encounter when trying to stay fit is the natural human propensity to under-estimate the amount of calories that are consumed.  This makes it very easy to over-consume, and equally difficult to move toward our fitness goals.

By tracking our food and exercise, it gives a very powerful tool for pursuing our persona fitness goals. In addition to tracking total calories, Spark People allows you to track the split between carbohydrates, fat, protien, and a vast variety of micro-nutrients.  This allows us to move beyond simply counting calories to gathering a full view of our personal nutrition regimen.

It is important to understand that a pound of fat equals 3,500 calories.  The way that we gain fat is to consumer more calories than we burn, and the way we lose fat is to burn more calories than we consume.  Most of the daily weight fluctuations that most people experience are nothing more or less than water weight.  The way to achieve a weight loss goal is to consume less calories than we burn on a regular basis.  Fortunately, the Internet has delivered tools such as Spark People to help us in tracking our activities and achieving our goals.

 

As we go throughout business and life, many of us will set use goals to focus our attention and activities.  This is a highly important activity, because the process of writing our goals down gives them a feeling of tangible reality that is frequently absent when they exist only within our mind.  Of course, goal setting can be a tricky science since setting goals that are too easy will lead to a lack of achievement, and setting goals that are too hard will lead to discouragement as our goals go by without being met.

One of the intellectual godparents of personal success is Dennis Waitley.  His library of books, speeches, and presentations about achieving your goals have become legend among those who seek to scale the heights of great achievement.  The way that Dr. Waitley describes the ideal formation of goals is that they should be “Just out of reach, but not out of sight.”

Just out of Reach, but Not out of Sight

The subtle wit and wisdom of Dennis Waitley demonstrates the dichotomy of goal setting in a highly poetic and beautiful manner.  Goals should be set just beyond our current abilities and achievement to force ourselves to stretch.  The process of growth requires that we push beyond our current limitations to do things that we previously thought to be unachievable.  This phenomenon also plays itself out in the natural world as well.  Body builders know all too well that muscles grow by breaking down the existing fibers so that they grow back larger and stronger.  In this way, training to achieve new heights means that we must constantly break down what has already been achieved so that it can come back even stronger than before.

In keeping with the metaphor of personal training, it is also important to avoid over training.  Many aspiring athletes fall into the trap of attempting to build their strength and endurance too quickly, and incur injuries.  In regard to our goals and ambitions, setting goals that are too ambitious and too difficult will generate injuries to our drive and ambition.  Thus, goal setting is fundamentally about striking a balance that is ‘just right’ between being too easy and too hard.

Now that You Have a Goal, How do You Stick to It?

Once a person has set their goals, the next step is to continue pursuing that goal throughout the difficulties and temporary failure that frequently accompany worthwhile achievement.  The process of growth and development is frequently uncomfortable, since it involves simultaneously stretching beyond our current limits and temporarily failing to reach our desired goals.  This make sit very easy to become discouraged and possibly even give up on achieving our goals.

The answer to this natural tendency is to find a goal that naturally holds our attention, without consistent conscious effort.  This is the motivation behind David Schwartz’s book: The Magic of Thinking Big.  The insight that David Schwartz unfolds in his book is the transformative effect of setting goals that are big and inspiring.  Of course, this philosophy runs the risk of setting a goal that is too ambitious and results in discouraging failure.

So what is a person to do?  Goal setting is supposed to be about something that is both meaningful and achievable, but sticking to a goal is easiest when the goal is big and inspiring.  These two concepts appear to be in conflict with one another.  So how can we possibly set a realistic goal that is simultaneously big and inspiring?  To answer this, we need to think outside of traditional thought patters.  The first idea to wrap our mind around is the notion that there is no limitation to the size and scope of goals that we can set or undertake.  Thus, it is quite possible (and even recommended) that we select a large, inspiring goal and break that big goal into many smaller steps that are each sequentially achievable.

One Big Goal and Many Smaller Goals

The combination of a single big, inspiring objective, and many smaller goals that are sequential, achievable, and all lead to one single motivating objective.  It is likely that these smaller goals will build upon one another until they result in the single large goal that you set out to achieve in the first place.  The big goal serves to motivate our efforts and keeps our mind on the goal when progress slows and prospects become discouraging.  The small goals serve to systematically grow our achievement and abilities with small, achievable steps.

Thus, the ‘secret’ of goal setting is neither to set “realistic” goals, nor to set “big” ones.  The answer is to do both.  Motivation and ambition are deeply personal and individual sentiments.  The first step in keeping your mind on the goal is to find a primary goal that is inspiring enough to hold your attention without conscious effort.  Once this goal has been selected, break it down into small, achievable steps.

Ultimately, keeping our mind on the goals we seek to achieve is really about making sure that the goal we are pursuing is sufficiently inspiring to hold our attention naturally.  Keeping your mind on the goal is really about finding a big goal that is always on your mind, and consistently reminds of of the smaller goals that are a necessary part of its acquisition.

It is not possible to consistently focus our minds on everything.  Life is a serious of increasing and decreasing focus.  The wealth of information we live in the midst of creates a deficit of attention.  The power of a big, inspiring goal is that it regularly pulls our attention in the direction of our specific goals, and only requires a small amount of incremental focus.  In the end, holding to your goals requires both the existence of an inspiring end-goal, and many smaller goals that all contribute to the single, larger objective.  By keeping the power of inspiration and achievement in balance, it will allow you to steadily move toward achieving the goals and ambitions of your life.

 

It is difficult to walk through a bookstore without encountering numerous books about achievement.  Some are general, concentrating on what it takes to be a winner, while others are specific to certain types of business or certain types of investments.  Sprinkled throughout these shelves at regular intervals will be biographies and autobiographies of highly famous or highly successful people.  Implicit in all of these stories is the ‘formula’ that these people used to achieve success.

The reason why these types of books are so popular is because people want to achieve success themselves.  Everybody naturally wants to do better than they are doing today and acquire more than they already have.  This fundamental desire is what drives the constant improvements of a capitalist economic system.  This desire for achievement is fundamental to the human condition, and is worth studying.

This concept is explored deeper by two books that were both published in 2008.  One is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and the other is  Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.  Both of these books explore the science of achievement in much greater depth than the traditional beliefs that most people have come to accept.  The fundamental thesis communicated throughout the book was that aside from physical characteristics, talent or ability is principally a function of dedicated, targeted practice.  The people who are hailed to the world as “child prodigies” frequently begin a regimen of intense practice at a very young age.  This means that by the time they reach adulthood, they will have practiced far more than their peers.  This is what serves as the foundation for the skills of great musicians, and other people who are regarded as being highly talented at a young age.

Another important characteristic of most child prodigies is that they specialized in an area where their parents possessed considerable knowledge or ability, and their parents were willing to make extensive sacrifices for the sake of their training.  Within the social circles of high achievers, this secret has never been a secret.  All people who achieve great heights and develop exceptional skill are aware of the time, effort, energy, and practice that is required.  As more people are becoming aware of what really creates great achievement, it has spawned a new question that is equally important to answer.  Namely, whether singular focus on a particular line of achievement and mastery is the best way to live your life.

In keeping with this train of thought, what happens when the dreams and ambitions of a highly skilled and practiced artist are realized, but their personal and financial life are ruined because of neglect in pursuit of greater artistic prowess?  What happens when the corporate executive receives multiple promotions, and then is divorced and re-married multiple times?  What about when a championship caliber athlete incurs a career-ending injury and is unprepared for a career that is not playing sports since their education, personal life, family life, and financial skills were all sacrificed to gain greater sports prowess?

In response to these tales of caution, most people will reply that people should live a balanced life.  And this is where the point hits home.  Becoming a great achiever requires that your life be markedly un-balanced … otherwise there is no possible way that you can acquire enough practice and experience to develop elite skill.  Thus, the question becomes more than a simple one of how I can achieve great things, and develops into one of whether I should make the sacrifices that are necessary to achieve great things.  Fundamentally, there are two paradigms at work.  One is the paradigm involves the relentless pursuit of achievement, and the other paradigm is driven by the priority of your achievements.

Relentless Pursuit of Achievement

This is the “ends justify the means” school of achievement, and is the implicit pre-requisite for most people who have biographies written about them.  Under this paradigm, nearly all other aspects of your life are subordinated to the one singular goal upon which your mind has been fixed.  An example of this may be to be a world class pianist, or to be President of the United States.  In order to reach what most consider to pinnacle of achievement, there will be many areas of your life that must be sacrificed.  If you aspire to be President, you must attend many campaign functions, you must associate with many people whom you would otherwise prefer to avoid in order to raise funds, you must place the acquisition of political objective above your spouse, family, friends, and most other associations not directly tied with your goal.  If your goal is achieved, the office must come before everything else in your life.  When you finish your term of service, you will never have the option of becoming anonymous.  The consuming desire to achieve a great goal will eventually result in becoming consumed by that which you originally sought, once it is achieved.

It is important to note that this is not intended to be a “hatchet piece” that rips apart great achievers.  Rather, it is intended to highlight the sacrifices that are necessary to reach very high goals, and understand that the effort spent in pursuit of a single magnificent obsession is effort that cannot be spent on other aspects of your life.  Thus, in order for one to be “great” it is necessarily impossible to be well rounded.  Similarly, if one is to be well rounded it will be exceedingly difficult to become what most consider to be great.

Priority of Achievement

An alternative paradigm to the relentless pursuit of achievement is placing a priority on your achievements.  In this mode of thinking, each aspect of your life has a separate priority weighting.  In some cases, family may be the top priority and in others it may be finishing your degree, or achieving the next step in your career.  The important aspect of these priorities is that they are consciously decided, and they are fluid.  What this means is that your priorities should drive your decisions, and those priorities are likely to change over time as your personal, professional, and financial life evolves.

In a tangential way, relentlessly pursuing a particular achievement is a variant of priority based achievement.  The only wrinkle is that the one singular goal stand by itself as the top priority, and the priorities never change.  The hallmark of priority based achievement is to decide what things (plural) are most important in your life, and pursue them simultaneously with the understanding that some of them will have to wait until later, and that it is extremely unlikely that you will develop world class skill in any of them.  It should be noted that one can be far short of world class skill and still possess exceptional skill.  One can be far from the best and still be very competent.  One can pursue many priorities and be successful at them, even if they are not the best at any.  The point that is most important for us to consider is whether we are living the kind of life that we want to.

This is where a bright ray of sunlight shines for all the ‘normal’ people of the world.  Most people in the business world make very minimal efforts to improve their skills and abilities as they go throughout their career.  This means that it is very possible to develop a substantial competitive advantage with a modest amount of carefully focused practice on the key skills and competencies that will allow you to succeed in your career.  The key is to ensure that your practice is very  careful, very focus, and very concentrated in key competencies that are critical to success.  For those who are willing to learn the focus and discipline necessary to hone and develop the specific skills that are critical to success in their career, it is quite possible to achieve a level of success that is vastly greater than what is considered to be ‘normal’ while still maintaining the balance that is necessary for a complete life.

The real world is a place where we all need to make choices.  Every choice that we make represents a different choice that we cannot make.  Every hour that we spend doing one thing is an hour that cannot be spent doing something else.  Reaching the pinnacle of accomplishment for world class achievers is a goal that requires much more effort and energy than most people imagine.  Each person must decide where their personal priorities should be placed, and adjust their decisions accordingly.

 

In the midst of persistent economic turmoil, there is a growing sentiment that somebody should do something about all of these problems.  This is a natural reaction to what feels like an opaque and impersonal market.  The actions of Washington and Wall Street show no semblance of connection with that of the regular people who drive the economy forward.  In light of this clear lack of interest to do anything that is not oriented toward special interests, there is a persistent feeling that ‘somebody’ should do something.  Unfortunately, nobody seems to really know who that person is, since the governing institutions are pervasively corrupt.

This has become a key point of concern for an increasing population of citizens.  These ‘regular people’ are working hard to build a life for themselves and a legacy for their posterity.  As election cycles come and go with repeated broken promises of reform devolving into ever greater levels of corruption, there seems to be nobody that is going to ‘do something’ about the current situation.

At this point of apparent hopelessness, there is a fundamental insight that has the power to set you free from the shackles of dependence and create a life of power and prosperity.  This insight is that the key question is not one of what ‘they’ need to do; it is one of what ‘you’ need to do.  The future of each individual person is the aggregated total of the decisions that they make over an extended period of time.  While the actions of others (or lack thereof) may be eternally frustrating, they are not the determinant of our future.  It is what we decide to do and decide not to do that creates our future wellbeing.

This is the fundamental reason why it is so important to build a personal portfolio of success.  This can take the form of passive investments such as income properties, a small business, multi-level marketing opportunities, or any of the many ways that are available to earn income and create wealth.  By taking personal control of your financial future, it will create the freedom to pursue your dreams and live your priorities.  Many people will have their future dictated by the actions of Washington and the machinations of Wall Street, but you have the power to write your own destiny.  Using this power wisely is one of the greatest legacies that you can create for posterity.

 

One of the NFL’s greatest coaching legends is former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh.  In one of his books entitled The Score Takes Care of Itself, he lays out his philosophy of leadership that helped to catapult the 49ers from the bottom of the league to three super bowl victories and built a system that won two more after his retirement.

A central theme in Coach Walsh’s philosophy of leadership is teaching.  Not only teaching players, but teaching coaches.  Not just finding people that will fit into your system, but people who are so hungry that they will eventually leave your organization to create new achievements of their own.  This view of leadership and method of coaching is even more remarkable when one considers the competitiveness of the NFL, and how much pressure is placed on coaches to reach impossible levels of success.

This philosophy stands in moderate contrast to the traditional view of a leader as somebody who boldly commands a team to achieve victory.  The leadership philosophy of the commander focuses on what happens in the heat of battle.  The leadership philosophy of teaching is built on the preparation that precedes the heat of battle, and that most people never notice.  The teaching leader does not seek to build a team where everybody does a specific job perfectly … instead, a teaching leader builds a team where each member learns how to grow beyond their current role and become more.  The cohesive team functions like a well-oiled machine until one of the team members leaves or cannot serve as part of the team anymore.  The growing team continually adapts to a changing environment and makes the adjustments that are necessary for success.

This understanding is especially important, since so much media focus is placed on business and political leaders who portray themselves as commanders who are boldly issuing orders to their army of subordinates to achieve victory.  The ultimate problem with such a viewpoint is that it focuses exclusively on what you can see … namely a flashy show that is staged for TV cameras by clever spinsters who have learned to manipulate public sentiment in their favor.  What matters much more is what remains unseen … namely the teaching, coaching, and development that turns a team of individuals into a collection of future leaders.  Popular culture does not reward true leadership … rather, it rewards the “appearance” of leadership.  In the mind of these pseudo leaders, the goal is to appear successful for long enough so that the illusion of success opens up a new opportunity before the lack of teaching and (real) leadership collapses the house of cards.

It is my sincere hope that every person reading this article has a desire to become a teaching leader tho produces real value, instead of a flashy leader who is only interested in the appearance of success.  If that is the case (and I suspect that it is), then it is best to focus your efforts on helping the people you work with to learn.  Help to expand their horizons and be open to learning from them so that your horizons expand as well.  True teachers will frequently learn just as much from their students as their students learn from them.  Teaching and learning are not (and should not be) constrained to the time that you spend in school.  Learning should be a continual activity and teaching should be a main priority of anybody who is tasked with leading a team toward success.

When people talk about the ‘will to win’ it is frequently interpreted as some form of emotional passion.  However, I must deliver a news flash that nearly all leaders (and most team members) are already quite competitive.  The “Real” will to win is a willingness to invest the work and preparation that is necessary to achieve success.  It means years of preparation for an opportunity that has not emerged yet.  It means that when your chance to shine comes, you may not have time to prepare … you must be ready when the opportunity arrives.

Teaching leaders make sure that their team is ready.  Teaching leaders help their team to prepare.  Teaching leaders do not ‘wait’ for an opportunity to come … they know that opportunity will come eventually, and the only question is whether they are ready.  Whether in business or life, always keep this principal in mind.  Be ready for opportunity when it finds you, because it will … and if you’re not ready it will walk right past you.  Teach your team to be ready for opportunity.  Prepare for success, avoid blindly waiting for luck to shine on your fortunes.  Focus on teaching, and your team will grow successful.  Do the right things, and the score will take care of itself.

 

One of the great vagaries of human psychology is the way that people deal with good fortune and blessings.  Some people are gracious for their good fortune, and seek to use it to help others succeed.  Other people feel guilty for their success and seek out ways to assuage their feelings of guilt.  (Strangely, this desire to deal with feelings of guilt do not typically involve parting with the fruits of their good fortune)  Finally, there are those who greet good fortune with a sense of entitlement, and demand that their livelihood be continually subsidized by somebody else . . . presumably as compensation for some wrong that is believed to have been committed against them in the past.

One critical distinction between those expressing gratitude and guilt is that those who feel gratitude express a desire to use their own effort and resources to help others succeed.  Conversely, those experiencing guilt tend to demand that the time and resources of others be confiscated by the government and re-distributed to those deemed less fortunate.  (By a strange twist of fate, the entitlement mentality creates a steady stream of self-proclaimed victims that are in need of assistance from those who feel guilty.)

The great danger implicit in this circle is that confiscating and re-distributing resources does not do anything to increase the productive capacity of the populace.  Those taking and receiving the resources have not produced anything of value in return for those resources.  Unfortunately, this creates a very harmful set of incentives.  Those feeling guilty have an incentive to continue taking and re-distributing so that they can assuage their feelings of guilt without making any personal sacrifices.  Those feeling entitled have an incentive to continue the behaviors that result in their receiving handouts.  (Typically this manifests itself in a reluctance to engage in productive activities, due to fear of losing benefits)
The best thing that any of us can do for ourselves and for our community as a whole is to embrace an outlook of gratitude by endeavoring to use our blessings in a way that helps other people to achieve blessings of their own.