Four Ways to Take Control of Your Life and Actually Get Stuff Done

Mitch Morse
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read
Image from www.pexels.com

“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” — John Wooden

We all have certain pet projects we want to knock out. And even if we don’t have an income-related side hustle in the works, we most certainly have personal improvement side hustles (i.e. goals). They might not be written down, but deep down we all have goals — whether it be a promotion at work, more frequent date nights with your significant other, or learning a new skill in your spare time. At the epicenter of our human core is a yearning for improvement — a desire to be better.

The problem, of course, is that this force of positive self-evolution is met by the equal and opposite forces of Fear and Resistance (as discussed here). We all let goals fall to the wayside — we all have that one item on a to-do list that never gets crossed off and is eventually laid to rest with its counterparts in our graveyard of personal goals. We have work, school, family, friends, and a plethora of other time commitments to juggle. Our pet projects might need 100 hours of time to accomplish, and in our busy lives finding 100 hours of spare time feels impossible.

But is it impossible? A fine line exists between impossible and difficult, and odds are your goal lies on the difficult side of this line. So there’s bad news — accomplishing your goal is going to be difficult, but there’s also good news — your goal can be achieved. Next week, we’ll be diving into our first monetary investment at Full Time Side Hustle. But this week, we want to share some of the tools that we have used (and will continue to use) to take control of our lives and hold ourselves accountable.

  1. Embrace Failure. This idea or goal that you want to chase down — it might fail. Before you embark on your journey, come to terms with the fact that there is a nonzero chance that this venture will fail. And that’s okay. Read that again. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to fall flat on your face, so long as you dust yourself off, realize you’re still alive, and determine why you fell so hard. The best way to truly learn and grow is to analyze our own failures so that we don’t make the same mistakes twice.
  2. Love the Process; Let the Results Fall Where They May. Let’s say your previous blog post only received eight page views. If you don’t enjoy the process of writing, it will be incredibly difficult to write the next one, because we are naturally results-oriented. But, if you view your project as art (and yourself an artist), you can devote yourself to your craft. An artist paints because she loves to paint. He sings because he enjoys doing so. Regardless of fame, profit, or notoriety, the artist will keep doing art. Make your project or goal your art — do the work; love the process. When you’re hard at work on a Friday night or early Saturday morning, recognize that. When you feel the Resistance or the Fear, but you push forward anyway, acknowledge that. Your post only got eight page views, but you still stayed up late to write the next one. Most people would have quit, but you kept going because you love the process of creating your art.
  3. Sharing Ship Dates. The two points above form the launching pad for your journey, but you may still have second thoughts on actually pulling the trigger and holding yourself accountable for doing so. In Linchpin (and various other works), Seth Godin discusses the concept of shipping — sending work out into the open. It’s one thing to type up a blog, but to ship it requires you to hit “Publish” — to share your work with the world. People might criticize your hard work, or they might love it and ask for more — the only way to find out is to ship. The best way to commit yourself to ship is to write down your ship date (in pen) and share it with someone you trust (e.g. business partner, best friend, significant other). If your ship date is Tuesday at 7:00pm, that means you hit “Publish” by Tuesday at 7:00pm. Write it down and tell your trusted accountability partner(s) about it. If you’re looking to hide, the best way to do it is to not commit to anything; but if you want to complete projects and follow through on ideas, share your ship dates. Commit.
  4. Make Bets. You can embrace failure, fall in love with your work, and share your ship dates, but the Resistance and the Fear are not going away any time soon. You will still feel a strong temptation to push it to next week, or wait until “things settle down.” But if you truly want to accomplish a goal or move forward with a project, you can overpower your temptations with a simple monetary bet — a slight nudge that can yield the results of the powerful push we need. Your bet can take various forms — a onetime bet for a future date (e.g. I will open the doors to a business on November 30, 2018) or a series of small bets (e.g. I will go to bed before 11:00pm every night for the next month). The keys are (1) to write the bet down on paper (or in a Google doc), (2) to choose a dollar amount that will actually motivate you, and (3) to make the bet with someone you trust who will actually make you pay up if you lose the bet. Here are a couple of examples that may be helpful in structuring your own bets:
Image from www.pexels.com

Example Bet #1: I will launch the first episode of a podcast by September 30, 2018.

  • If not, I will pay $75 to my brother on September 30, 2018. Before agreeing to the bet, we will record the details in a Google doc, and we will both sign off on the terms.
  • Note the reward for success isn’t monetary; the reward is the fact that I will have launched a podcast. A good way to come up with the monetary value is to ask: “If I could pay money to guarantee my goal is accomplished by this date, how much would I pay right now?”
  • Also, note the bet value will vary by person — a millionaire might scale this bet up to a $1,000 penalty. Someone without stable income might scale it down to $20.

Example Bet #2: I will read twenty pages of a book every single day for the next two months.

  • For each day that I do not read twenty pages, I must pay my significant other $5.
  • Note that for this series of smaller bets, the amount due on any single day is only marginally painful, but it quickly adds up if I miss an entire week.
  • There are various other ways to structure motivational bets such as these — if you’re interested in creating one, we would love to help you help yourself.

We could not be more excited to share the details of our first investment in next week’s post. In the meantime — keep going. Keep shipping. Let us know how we can help you in your own journey.


Full Time Side Hustle is a blog created by Mitch Morse and Alex McCarty. For more about us, click here.

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Originally published at www.fulltimesidehustle.net.

Mitch Morse

Written by

Kansas City native. altMBA graduate. Co-founder of Ohm Capital Partners. Trying to be slightly less ignorant than I was yesterday.

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