7 Ways To Transcend Your Discipline And Accelerate Your Experience At Work
“The compression of time is not a matter of compounding activities, but the compounding of meaning.” Benjamin P. Hardy
The level of discipline required to control and watch how you react to your thoughts is immense and the most vital skill for performing in a peak state.
Learning to control emotion, surrender and letting go of emotional reactions becomes the skill to master.
This isn’t about spirituality or metaphysics, it’s about the actual physics of thought, which have proven create real physiological and psychological reactions (stress and more thoughts if you don’t have the ability to sit with and let go of them).
Ownership of this discipline creates the optimal state, the serene physiological and psychological presence required for deliberate acquisition of knowledge, experience and practice.
Thoughts Create Physiological and Psychological Reactions
Reactions affect physiology which affects energy.
Energy is what we need to optimize to best control the quality of our state.
That’s why our diets and supplementation are so important which to me is a huge indicator about a job candidates commitment to peak performance.
This may not be the state of work now but it will be and it’s fair game in my book even today.
Josh Waitzkin is a world chess master, world tai chi push hands champion, and now coaches the world’s leading hedge fund managers with ultra high sakes decision making.
He teaches ‘physiological introspective sensitivity’ which is cultivating inner awareness and physiological intelligence, and the key to connecting with intuition — which for us creates the deepest learning experiences.
Here’s my favorite passage from his book, The Art of Learning about presence in the context of competition (apologies for the small type).
The future of human work will be good for you if you’re a knowledge athlete — which is a culture that’s optimized for state of mind instead of raw skills and ‘gaining experience’ in the way we often think of them today.
We’re going to measure this soon at Traena.
State of Mind Vs. Experience — The Nuance
The quality of your state of mind will trounce experience in the future.
Intuition for high stakes decision making wins, yes.
And experience helps build that intuition over time.
But often, that ‘experience’ we cultivated is what created the state of mind that makes the person a leader and top performer (President, VP, Partner, etc.) who can take ownership and responsibility.
Ultimately, it’s that confidence, knowledge and intuition that’s valuable, and what inspires customers and employees.
Less so because they’ve built a sales team twice or been a lawyer for thirty years. See the nuance?
You may say “but the vp has deep industry connections and the lawyer is a master of his field from so much repetition.”
The actual experience comes from affecting people, and being affected by them, and intelligently understanding them.
The leader inspires them with the way they do their work, the way they deliver the communication and the way they write their emails
This emotional intelligence is the true experience rather than the tactical know how of building a sales org or being a lawyer which you can google and learn (manage pipeline, when to hire, CRM, Systems, management etc.).
Yes, you will pick a field like sales or law or design but the experience comes from inside, which you can accelerate.
Here are seven ways to becoming that knowledge athlete to change the way you gain experience in a field at a much faster rate.
1. Optimize living for state of mind.
Pay attention to your diet and sleep like an elite athlete does.
Understand that every thought you have that creates a reaction is deeply meaningful.
It’s always on the line and hold yourself accountable for your state, always.
2. Learn How to Act — It’s A Great Way to Understand Emotion
Acting is becoming what you want to become and we all act in roles whenever we talk to anyone based on who they are.
Building this awareness is a critical skill to cultivate.
Often, you ‘act’ like someone else when you talk to your mom vs. your boss vs. your sibling or subordinate.
I’m not saying we treat them differently though our perceived roles subconsciously play a dance with theirs.
The one’s who don’t resist this are the top performers. Good actors win so learn to act.
3. Cultivate a Meditation Practice
Meditation cultivates your inner senses to build this muscle. Start with 5 minutes a day and take it from there.
I meditate for 90 minutes to two hours a day and it produces my best state and creates my best work and insight.
The deeper your meditation gets, the more fruitful it will become and the more intuitive you’ll be which leads to bigger and more profound insights.
4. Exhalt Yourself Into the Hardest Situations Possible.
The best acting get’s brought out of you by putting yourself in situations that forces you to act like the person you’re trying to become.
Instead of studying fundraising, pitch an investor your real idea.
Make a deck and make it matter.
Get feedback, rinse and repeat. The days of long schooling and job hunting and value of credentials and “getting picked” are long gone.
Don’t believe me, look at the jobs and the market for those jobs.
The fact is, jobs for college grads don’t exist in a way they used to.
Jobs exist for people who can prove themselves in the market. Knowledge is free and cheap now. Get it quick and move on to test the market.
The rest is just building yourself into who you want to become which is free and up to you.
This is why the quality of state wins, especially in the coming world of mature AI and big data where fast adaptability and knowledge acquisition will be transcended.
5. Perform All The Time As Though You’re On Stage
You may say “I don’t want to ‘perform’ all the time” or “but I already feel like I need to be on in front of my colleagues”.
It’s not about that. It’s about being not just your best, but your absolute best, and not being your absolute best is a waste and is becoming the new standard.
Be on for the whole world and be on always.
Performing to be good when it matters, is based on how you practice when it doesn’t matter.
You have the choice to act your best or put yourself in a situation that forces you to act your best or you can try to push and hope and dream until it fizzles out which is always.
Willpower always runs out, environment effectively forces you not to run out.
So always perform. Always be on. All the time.
6. Give Yourself Zero Retreat To Execute #5
There’s no way to bring out the deepest best self when there’s a chance to retreat.
This is why for example, it’s harder for kids who grew up wealthy to stay motivated with a business that isn’t mission driven.
This is also why during war time in the old days the generals would literally burn their boats telling their troops that they win or they perish, but they won’t retreat.
Mission drives so find your mission and be religious about it.
7. Constantly Create and Re-Create Context For Yourself
Context is the mental environment that creates the situation around you. Therefore it’s ultra powerful.
The context of a deadline brings out the best in us through effective force.
The context of not having retreat is a powerful driver to force one to act with rigor and motivation, which creates the enthusiastic performance to succeed.
This is the new top performance, the new discipline and managing the reaction to your thoughts is the most important part of training yourself to do this.
It is hard, it’s a new level of discipline.
But practice and not only will you gain deep experience much faster, you’ll transcend your world like I did mine.
