3 Little-Known Reasons Why Achieving True Success Really Is That Hard
Remember those lists with success mantra you often spot in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur? You know, something like The 7 Habits You Need to Be Successful.
These success tips are usually very easy to grasp — and to write about!.
Like the one about taking a cold shower in the morning. Wow! You are probably already doing this without knowing that you are on a solid way of turning into another Warren Buffett.
Get down to Earth. The route to becoming an accomplished person will be long and most likely indirect.
They Got It All Wrong
I clearly remember the day when my mother and I went to town to visit her sister, a big fan of gardening. We did it every summer for many years and my favorite, and the only occupation there was reading.
I devoured Gulliver’s Travels, all parts of The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote and tons of women’s fiction novels from my aunt’s bookcase.
That day I sit in the chair with a new book and my aunt told me impatiently:
“You spend so much time on reading. You will lose your mind over your books.”
According to her, reading was a waste of time. A fad compared to a serious business like gardening.
I was 13, and her words got me upset.
Twelve years later I co-founded a digital agency after I quit my work at one local IT company. I terminated my contract exactly because I wanted to go on my own and I was ready to take a risk.
It’s been three years since my partner and I set up the agency. No matter the hardships, many people in my environment believe that my current outcome is predisposed by genes or whatever stars were shining when I was born.
Books went out of sight in a string of events.
We Are Missing The Point
Quick success is unnatural.
It is a dream of many to become a billionaire before 30, but generally, things don’t work this way.
Take Leonardo da Vinci. This great man mastered many disciplines including art, architecture, science, music, mathematics, anatomy.
He contributed to the appearance of many inventions like helicopter, parachute, the flying machine, and the anatomy of human body.
Most of us lack ambitions of da Vinci. We spend all our lives getting the hand of one or two domains of knowledge, and we want to make it rather quick.
What are we doing wrong?
#1: We Put All Eggs in One Basket
It is much harder to win the competition being the man of one skill.
There is always someone who knows more, is better equipped or has time advantage.
The combination of different disciplines is what makes the difference. That’s the junction from where the specialty of a company or an individual arises.
My agency partner Eugene spent some time studying lean management principles invented by Toyota. After that, our team embraced Agile — a pro-lean approach extremely popular in software development.
Even though engineering and marketing seem unrelated, we crossed boundaries between two disciplines and found a better way to serve startups facing a great deal of uncertainty.
One more example.
Just recently I spotted a digital agency focusing on cannabis marketing. I’ve met many marketers with experience tuned for healthcare, technology, manufacturing, consumer goods, but never for dope.
Think of it — search engine optimization for marijuana.
Guys found quite a niche to focus on. I’ve never thought of such specialization before.
#2: We Neglect Time Constraints
You don’t become proficient in physics or Roman history overnight.
Malcolm Gladwell offered the world the 10,000-hour rule:
You need to have practiced, to have apprenticed, for 10,000 hours before you get good.
10K hours are 250 forty-hour working weeks assuming you are not engaged in gossips and intrigues most of the time.
It means you have to dedicate almost five years to becoming a master in just one field!
Multiply that by two or three to explore other fields of knowledge and distinguish yourself from the men of one skill.
This data backs up the idea that we can’t make a true contribution to the world with little effort applied.
It is simply not possible to become da Vinci with not giving a damn.
#3: We Underestimate the Power of Hobbies
I’m a big neuroscience buff. The curiosity about how healthy and disordered brain works led me to complete related courses on Coursera, attend healthcare conferences and launch a website for Parkinson’s disease patients in Russian.
The notion that I can use my general interest in a human body for corporate purposes hit me after I read the book of Ichak Adizes “Corporate lifestyles: How and why corporations grow and die and what to do about it.”
I was excited to realize that company’s life cycle has so much in common with the one of a living organism.
With this new perspective, occasional bumps that every entrepreneur experiences from time to time came to be perceived less painful.
If the system gets a disease, there should be a cure.
By the way, did you know that billionaire Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo makes honey and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys mystery novels?
We can’t know for sure, but it might be hobbies that made these people as great as they are.
If you are on your way to success or just taking it, remember to choose several disciplines to master, appreciate what different hobbies are enriching you with and take your time.
Big success comes from constant learning. The deeper you dig, the more diamonds you grab.
Stick to it.
My team and I deal with marketing every day. We’ve discovered a number of secrets and we can’t help sharing them. Visit Kraftblick blog and say ‘hi’!
