How Everyday People Are Stronger Than Superheroes — A Storyteller’s Approach to Productivity

Superheroes

Have you ever wondered how superheroes manage to get so much done while still having a personal life? Since the time of Ancient Greece, heroes have been idolized for the great strength and cunning. Achilles was admired for his bravery and strength. Batman runs a multinational billion-dollar corporation and somehow still manages to have steel-cut abs, a girlfriend, and save countless lives. Someone might reply to this, “I’m too busy to bother with any of that stuff.” Perhaps, you look at them and wish you could emulate their strength, their intellect, and their ability to achieve the impossible — maybe then you would have an edge in this competitive world! — only to immediately realize that they have something you never will. Well, I’m here to tell you something: the true power of a hero isn’t superpowers at all; it’s something anyone can have if they want it bad enough. The answer lies in developing superhuman willpower, and all it takes is a simple shift from a Busy-mindset to a Narrative-mindset. This mindset pushes you to approach your own life with the same narrative flow used by entertainment writers since the time of Homer to tell the most compelling stories. So ask yourself, “How can I live like a hero?”

Willpower

Superheroes have faults. They must deal with emotions, relationships, and every day challenges, just like you and me. While no one can grant you super speed, a genius mind, or unimaginable wealth, today I’ll show you how to take the first step towards achieving on the same level as our modern day idols and heroes.

Willpower is the singular defining characteristic of all superheroes. As the story goes on, they define their goals and put the effort in until the story concludes. No matter the situation, they approach their goals in a logical sequence. For every situation, they consider all the logical points and venues to come up with their next step and then they immediately execute the plan.

Read any Batman comic and you’ll see that Batman is always ten steps behind his enemy until the final moment when he jumps one step ahead, thus securing his victory. He does this by working towards a goal one step at a time and solving the immediate problem in front of him rather than trying to solve a massive problem all at once. This approach is a necessity of storytelling. Each confrontation forces him to make a decision to solve the immediate problem he faces. If he tried to jump to the conclusion right at the beginning, not only would it be a boring story, he would be potentially caught up in every trap set by his villain.

Writing about willpower is easy, but actually achieving the willpower and discipline needed to realize your goals is extremely difficult. I could try to motivate you all day long about honing your discipline, removing doubts, and building healthy habits — but that’s been said and done before, and it hardly ever helps. Superheroes seem to be granted willpower by default, much like any superpower, and it may seem equally as unachievable as lifting a car over your head.

So let’s take it a step further.

Answer this riddle: “What does a villain gift to a hero?” The answer may not be so obvious — a good villain grants the hero a reason for being or, in other words, he grants the hero a story.

Storytelling

Anyone who has ever read a book or watched a movie may already be familiar with the concept of story arcs — a simple storytelling technique used by writers to develop characters and plotlines to their satisfying conclusions. Most stories go something like this: our hero is minding her own business when all of a sudden some life altering event interferes with her daily routine — this is called the Inciting Incident in storytelling. The hero must resolve the threat she faces, often while dealing with the drama of a personal life. The story usually concludes with a clear-cut ending, all of the hero’s big problems have been resolved one way or another, they’ve learned a personal lesson, and the slate is cleaned for a new adventure.

Unfortunately, life has no satisfying conclusions — life is continuous, fluctuating, unpredictable, and then you die. Life is messy and wild. It can be simultaneously good and bad, clear and confusing, but hardly is it ever cut-and-dry like a movie. Unlike what I mentioned above, real life is more like a TV show or a comic book, with ebbs and flows. A hundred different things can be happening in your life at once, seemingly colliding and interweaving like waves in the ocean.

In comic books, this sort of storytelling is described as The Levitz Paradigm (LP). LP is a storytelling technique that adds continuous layers to the typical method of storytelling, allowing them to continue for years and years. LP is actually used in almost every modern story, including the Harry Potter Series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, CW’s The Flash, Breaking Bad, and many more. But what began as a way to extend the life of comic books actually bears a striking resemblance to real life.

Plot Juggling

Developed by comic book writer Paul Levitz, the LP goes something like this. A hero faces an enemy or an obstacle — this is called Plot A and it gets the most screen time. Meanwhile, another challenge emerges in the form of a hidden enemy — Plot B. Finally, another plot develops, maybe a love interest or a social issue — Plot C. This trend continues for as many plots as the writer needs. As our hero solves Plot A, Plot B suddenly emerges with full force and graduates to Plot A; Plot C becomes Plot B and so on. You get the idea. Like a series of constantly developing and interlocking waves, one story reaches a climax as another develops and a brand new one emerges.

So what does this achieve? It gives our hero the illusion of a real life. The audience is able to watch this story develop one installment at a time, meanwhile living their own lives. These fictional lives become a part of your real life. It makes stories impossible to put down because you never feel like there is a solid conclusion. It gives the writers never ending streams of storylines and the viewer a consistent stream of entertainment and characters to fall in love with. One plot at a time, everything is resolved, yet nothing is ever ends.

Every Life a Story, Every Person a Hero, Every Obstacle a Villain

Where do these stories come from? Besides the writer’s head, it’s just a part of their daily lives. Every day they walk out their front door to face whatever enemies come knocking. They face these challenges because they have no choice. If they don’t solve the issue no one will. Just like us, they must go up against these seemingly insurmountable odds. The difference? They have superpowers to help them. You don’t. You have to do it all on your own. Yet something makes achieving your goals seemingly impossible. It seems like you’re always busy finishing an urgent task, caught up in emails, solving minor issues, and never getting any closer to creating your ideal life. A thousand-and-one things need to be done and somehow you’ve achieved nothing at the end of the day. The lives of superheroes are simple, your life… not so much. This is called The Busy Trap — the feeling that you’re too busy every single day to do anything you want to do, but when the sun sets you feel like you’ve effectively accomplished nothing. This Busy-mindset is an extremely negative mentality that provides the illusion of productivity and the work humans need, but none of the achievements we crave.

However, there is a method to deal with this and it draws directly from what we know about storytelling. All it requires is the reframing of goals and challenges into stories. Think about your own life for a moment; all the obstacles you face, all your relationships and goals, the daily stories you tell yourself. Imagine the biggest thing in your life right now. Maybe it’s your job: a new promotion or a lay off; your love life: blossoming or falling apart; your passion project: coming together or moments away from abandonment. Whatever it may be, consider this your Plot A. That is where your story is headed and what you spend the most amount of time on. This is your main goal. As you go along, other plots emerge — your dog gets sick, your bills mount up, you lose your job, but Plot A never goes anywhere. It’s ever present because a good story needs a conclusion. This is the Narrative-mindset.

Unresolved Stories

So now you have a goal, but some mental block keeps it just out of your grasp, or perhaps you believe you are incapable of achieving that goal. Realistically, that simply isn’t the case. Everything that humans have achieved seemed impossible at one point, but regular people with superhuman willpower told stories about themselves that pushed them to break through imagined limitations. Much like any fictional or historical story, your goal is a story that desperately needs resolution. If you don’t work actively towards completing the story, then no conclusion is ever reached, and you shift from hero to audience member. As the audience member, you know it’s there, but like the unwitting hero you don’t take active steps towards fixing the problem or achieving your goal. When you give up, the story waits underground like a doomsday weapon. The weapon fires and you’re left in the wreckage to pick up the pieces of your life.

For most people, these unresolved stories become a massive source of anxiety and depression. Ignoring plots and letting them go unresolved for too long causes them to grow stagnant. Much like TV shows, stagnant plotlines are boring. They cause problems in your life, make you stall your life with bad dialogue, and force you into undesirable no-win scenarios. When a protagonist ignores a challenge, it comes back to bite him in the ass every time. Instead, they take it one step at a time until the story concludes and before you know it, you’ve won.

The Narrative-mindset is a completionist-mindset, but like stories other plots of seemingly greater importance always emerges to take its place. This is the ultimate illusion of The Busy Trap: there will always be something you think you must take care of immediately so that you can never complete your real goals. You put off plans and relationships because you’re too busy and new things are constantly coming up. You mistake things for more urgency than the plot A, choosing instead to resolve everything at once while letting your main goal go out of focus.

Take a hint from the superheroes, resolve one plot at a time and let the others fall into place. You are only human and, unfortunately, the ability to work on everything at once is impossible, even for the superhuman. That’s why comic books are written one panel at a time; it’s why TV shows only have one scene at a time.

This isn’t a choice between having the willpower to achieve your goals or abandoning them outright. You have NO choice. Life has given you this storyline and it is your job to see it through. Every hero has a weakness, a kryptonite, but the weakness doesn’t define them. It forces them to think differently, to act in such a way that they can overcome their weakness. Even when the villain seems to have won, the hero rises again to take the ultimate victory.

Next time you doubt yourself or face a villain that seems impossible to defeat, just remember that lesser men have defeated greater odds. The superheroes were created as ideal versions of us: heavily flawed people that can achieve anything if we have the willpower to write our best stories.