5 Simple Ideas You Can Use To 10x Your Growth In Life
How you do anything is how you do everything
I am sure you have come across many life-changing ideas and concepts through books, blogs, and podcasts. Has any idea actually changed your life? If yes, then that’s great, but if it’s a no, why not?
I know why, because you haven’t applied them, you just read and forgot about them, or maybe you are searching for one magical idea that can completely change your life at once.
The truth is, magical ideas do not exist. It is just the simple ideas applied consistently over time that change your life in the long run.
Here are few ideas that can massively improve the quality of your life if applied consistently:
#Idea 1- Stay in the Race and You Win The Race.
Have you ever felt like you gave up on a certain goal very early, and if you had just managed to stick to it, or even if you took slow and steady steps, you’d be soo much closer to achieving that particular goal?
We tend to give up on our goals or anything that doesn’t give us instant results, and because of this, we instantly kill our goals. People who achieve their goals know that success is the result of doing something for a long time.
Winners don’t rely on rapid progress as motivation; they stick to doing what they should and don’t stop until they achieve their goals. Just by staying in the race, they get closer to winning it.
If you just manage to stick to the goals even if it feels impossible to proceed, you eventually get better, and things that felt soo hard to do become easier. Just give it time.
Action Tip- Always give your plans at least six months by setting a deadline. Keep taking action towards your goal for these six months irrespective of failures or growth; this will help develop grit not to leave things halfway.
#Idea 2- Try Really Hard and you make things worse.
I recently read a book titled ‘A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)’ by Barbara Oakley; there was one simple concept that helped me learn things better, the idea of shifting thinking modes while learning new things.
Focused Mode vs Diffused Mode
- Focused Mode- It is pretty straightforward; it is focused. You use it while performing something you have learned or understood already. Example- While doing basic multiplication or addition.
- Diffused Mode- Diffused mode is all about distractions and letting your mind wander. That’s the beauty of the diffused way of thinking; You allow your brain to diffuse and gather creative ideas. Almost all your ideas are the result of diffused thinking.
Ever noticed how sometimes, while meditating or trying to sleep, amazing ideas come out of nowhere? On the other hand, while trying really hard, you can’t seem to get good ideas. That’s what we do wrong; trying too hard is a focused way of thinking, and for creative problems, you require your mind to be relaxed and in a diffused way of thinking.
How to Shift from focused to diffused mode?
Brilliant Inventor Thomas Edison thought to have a clever trick to shift to one mode or other. Whenever faced with a complex problem rather than intently focusing on it, Edison used to take a nap. But he did so while sitting in a chair, holding a ball bearing in his hand just above a plate on the floor.
As he relaxed, his thoughts moved freely. When Edison fell asleep, the ball bearing would fell from his hand. The clatter woke him up so he could grasp fragments of his diffused thinking to create new approaches.
The key is to do something else until your brain is consciously free of any thought of the problem. It can be listening to music, Gym, or, like Edison, taking a nap.
Action Tip- Whenever faced with any complicated problem or stuck in a creative rut, Instead of trying too hard, Do something relaxing, not even thinking about that problem. You will notice the next time you try to do it; It will feel easier.
#Idea 3- How you do anything is how you do everything
Have you seen the movie ‘The Karate Kid’ ( the one with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith)? There is this one lesson in it that helped me learn the importance of tiny things in life.
The boy named Dre goes to learn karate for the first time, excited to learn big moves to stop huge boys from bullying him. Instead of teaching him big karate moves, his teacher tells him to drop his jacket on the floor and pick it up as ideally as possible. The boy feels frustrated to be doing that, but he understands the critical lesson behind it later.
The key lesson was-: how you do anything is how you do everything. Yes, if you want to do big things perfectly, you have to make it a habit of doing small daily tasks perfectly.
Even Navy seals practice this idea by making their bed first in the morning as perfectly as possible because they know that everything is connected. If they can’t even make their beds ideally, how are they supposed to fight and win against their enemies.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.- Aristotle
Action Tip- Make it a habit of doing small things irrespective of their importance, perfectly and neatly. Practice excellence by making your bed daily perfectly.; this will create a habit of creating excellence in anything you do.
#Idea 4- The “Act as if” Principle
Do you smile because you feel happy, or you feel happy, so you smile? I know this is just like the ‘Chicken- egg, who came first’ type of question. But it has a fascinating theory behind it.
Researchers conducted an experiment and attached electrodes to each participant’s face to find the answer and told them that they were just recording their faces’ electrical movement, as they made different types of faces.
When the participants made smiling faces, the researcher discovered that they felt happier, even though those people were just smiling for an experiment.
The key observation was that our emotions are the result of our behavior, not the other way around.
Philosopher William James theorized, If you want to have a quality, act as if you already have it. So if you want to feel confident, act as if you already are, and you will start doing what confident people do.
Even I verified this theory by acting like Cristiano Ronaldo while playing soccer. I started walking like him on the field, taking deep breaths, wanting to score goals. My performance skyrocketed just by pretending to be like Ronaldo( even though I play nothing like Ronaldo)
Action Tip-If you want to become good at something, act as if you already are. Doing this alone will not make you excellent at that thing, but by acting as if, you will change your behavior towards that thing. You will then take steps to become like it, and you will eventually become good at it.
#Idea 5 — Parkinson’s Law
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If you give yourself a week to complete any task, you will achieve it a week only ( even if it is a mediocre 2-hour task).
I am sure you have observed this in your daily life. As the deadline gets closer, the task you assumed to be taking a week to complete gets done in just one day. When you have more time in hand, you start making things more complex; you act for perfection and hence cannot complete things.
By assigning the right amount of time to a task, we gain back more time, and the task will reduce its complexity to its natural state.
Parkinson’s law is not magic to get things done real quick but simply an observation that we often delay tasks and adjust them according to the time available. And by giving ourselves a deadline, we can complete a task more efficiently; this works for our long-term goals too.
If you want to write a novel, rather than assigning 3–4 years for that so-called extraordinary novel, give yourself six months — 1 year, and you will be likely to complete it in that time. By giving yourself more time, you are just delaying your work and goals.
Action Tip- Assign whatever you do or whatever your goals are with a deadline. Give yourself half the time you assume it would take to complete them; This will help you get things done quickly and will get rid of wanting everything to be perfect, which prevents you from completing stuff.
Takeaways:-
- The reason we fail to achieve our goals is that we give up too soon. Give your plans a minimum of 6 months before quitting.
- The more we force ourselves to be creative, the worst ideas we get. Want to solve creative problems? Just relax and let your mind wander a bit. It gets easier next time you solve it.
- Start doing small things perfectly because how you do anything is how you do everything.
- If you want to have a quality, act as if you already have it. Yes, Want to be happier? Act as if you already are; doing this will force your behavior to change, and you will soon feel happier just by acting like you are.
- The more time you give yourself to get things done, the more complex you make it. Work with deadlines in anything you do; otherwise, you will delay it, and it will take forever to get things done.
