Hello, come in, come in.
Have a seat, we’re glad to have you. What time did you schedule with us today? Now? Perfect.
Stand up and follow me into this next room so we get sit down in there instead of in here. Alright.
Light outs. The door closes. You hear a voice.
Welcome to the complacency zone. We know why you’re here. You’re like everyone else who has come in. Their stories are all the same. They loved comfort, or so they thought. Until they realized that they didn’t, and it was too late to do anything but wish things went differently.
We will now ask you a series of questions relating to your life, and please answer with full honesty, or this will do nothing for you.
What beliefs have you been accepting to be true most of your life?
What beliefs have you accepted recently about yourself?
What beliefs do you believe so strongly, that you would never even dare to question them?
How do you know if you’ve questioned all your beliefs if there are some you think not to question?
Cool Story, Eh?
Yeah. Maybe that was going to go somewhere, who knows. Alls I know is my fingers started typing and I liked the work it was producing. And it is a cool way to introduce the topic I am talking about today.
I don’t want to come across a work freak, but I don’t really care if I do. If you do not want to agree with any of this and have balance or do other things, be my guest. But I am gonna sound like one of those mfers who says grind 24/7 and never take a breath, but just know it isn’t THAT extreme.
I realized something today more than I ever have before. We are blinded by our own blindspots. I have heard this said before, and I pondered it for a bit, but its funny when things REALLY hit you. If we have blindspots, we cannot even see them because that is what they are, blindspots.
That means that we have things that limit and stop our success, that we don’t even know about. I don’t know about you, but I am not a big fan of having some invisible barriers that are stopping me from where I want to go. But unless you figure out what they are, you are fighting ghosts and punching the air.
So what was the blindspot area I identified today? Complacency. But like everything in life, there are levels to this. So it is not just that someone is complacent or not complacent. It is not a binary. It’s “how complacent are you.”
For Example…
I realized lately that I am just not doing enough work. And I mean it. I mean lately I have bee the type of guy to act like he is working on a business all day, but in reality he is just working on a business throughout the day. They are 2 different things.
If I said I worked all day, what does that mean? Does that mean I actually worked 16 hours straight. Or does that mean I did a ton of other shit in there that I didn’t tell you about. Probably the second option. And this is what I realized was happening to me.
I was not actually getting done what I felt like I should have been getting done in a day. I have all this free time, and here I am at the end of the day and I did not finish the work I had to do, I didn’t read, and I am cramming in a meditation before bed.
It hit me that this is only because I have a level of complacency. Maybe not in the normal sense, because for most people that means 0 movement at all. None. But for me it means a little movement, but then slacking off the rest of the day and not getting shit done.
That means there are people out there that get done more in 2 hours then I get done in 16, all because of the lack of focus I have, and the complacency I have in that lack of focus. It’s like I’m okay with it, in some sense. Like I have fooled myself into believing I have done the work, even though the work was not effective.
Thought Experiment
Recently I had a random thought pop up. I guess we all have that, 24/7. But this one was more productive than the others. It was a thought that made me realize even with the “level of work” I thought I was doing, that was just my bar. My standard that I set.
If I was working next to my heroes for a day, they would laugh at me. This would be hysterical to them. This is all the work you do in a day? This is what you think deep work is? Getting distracted, talking to someone, checking your phone, making a tweet, eating something real quick?
It hit me that just because I thought I was doing a lot of work, didn’t actually mean that was the case. That was just my opinion of where I was. I imagined what it would be like if I was in a house full of killers.
Not like Michael Myers and Jason. I mean killers in business and life in general. People who were just relentless. That would make fun of me if I stopped working towards my dream for even a minute. That had a level of output so high, I was struggling to keep up.
The type of people where I would tell them, “Yeah I get X done today.”
And they would say, “I got X done, and Y, and Z, and the rest of the alphabet actually.”
It all comes down to your standard of what you’re doing. You make the measuring stick.
Recreate Your Measurement
I realized it was time for me to recreate my measuring stick. It was time for me to think, “What do the people I look up to get done in 1 day.”
I cannot be sure, but I know damn well it is 10x what I get done in a day since I mess around too much. I treat hours like they matter, but minutes like they don’t. News flash: they both do. Minutes makes up hours, therefore, they matter.
I couldn’t shake off the idea that if I just had a few people around me that would make me realize my inputs were so pathetically low, that I would be doing so much more. I would be trying to suck every second out of the day and get some value from it.
And I am gonna dance around this idea for a minute because it really is life changing. Imagine there were those exact types of people around you. Animals. They just don’t stop. They are always trying to figure out how to get better, make the business 1%, take advantage of a new opportunity, and while they do this they are building a social media presence and being consistent, but making sure they take care of their mind through reading and mindfulness.
People influence us. That is the truth. And if you had these types of people around und you, no doubt you would become just like them. You would start to think there is too little time in a day. You will start to do so much shit, and accomplish so many little tasks throughout the day, and still be laser focused on “How tf can I level up.”
If you need to really feel into that to even get work done today, then do it. Because the truth is, it helps me. It helps me to realize that this is nowhere near my max. This not my PR. This is not the full potential that I have in the day. Because we hear a lot about full potential, and we think longer term. After all, that sounds like quite a long journey.
But what about in the micro? Are you hitting your full potential TODAY?
So I’ll leave you with that my friend. I hope this fuels you up, and makes you want to run through 60 brick walls and get shit done.