The LEGO® Productivity Secret You Didn't Know Existed
Do you remember building with LEGO® when you were a kid? Do you remember any lessons? I bet you read this headline and said: "No one gave ME no LEGO® productivity secret!"
Here's why . . .
There's this strange notion that taking on big challenges is how people achieve big things.
Of course, this is ridiculous.
People who are shooting to be the next Google, Facebook, or Apple are thinking big--but they're not thinking of the practical approach to getting there.
Stop thinking it's "will power."
Stop thinking it's your ability to execute.
Stop thinking you don't have the right shoes, camera, laptop, pen, climbing rope, bicycle, car engine, or professional network.
Almost no one started with all that.
No one builds a huge, 1000 piece LEGO® castle by looking at the box and making it happen with just some good ol' fashioned elbow grease.
They use instructions that break the build down into small, achievable chunks.
It's not about huge willpower. It's about writing your own LEGO® instructions and breaking things down into actionable and achievable pieces.
It's less about you committing to some huge goal and it's more about making a small commitment to a reasonable goal.
Exercise is another really good example.
"The hard part about going to the gym is putting your shorts on."
- Chris' Dad
Thanks, dad.
It's less about facing some huge challenge and it's more about tricking yourself into smaller challenges.
It's these smaller challenges, when pieced together, that make the whole LEGO® build.
Okay, so how do we pull out this LEGO® productivity secret from all this?
Understand: Achieving what you want is not about going after the whole big picture, it's about building repeatable systems, made up of small achievable tasks, that make you happy when you complete them.
Successful people are not magical.
Successful people are a combination of protocol and opportunity.
2 Minute Action:
What is a goal you have?
Let's just say it's running a marathon.
How do you go from couch to 26.2?
- Register for the race.
- Lookup a training plan.
- Find someone who will run with you even when it's cold and raining outside.
These are all things you can do today, pretty quickly.
You don't have to run 26.2 miles right now. In fact, that's a terrible idea. You'll hurt yourself and never want to try again.
No matter what your goal is, I challenge you to find something you can do to move forward in 2 minutes or less.
When you string together all of these small actions, you arrive at your protocol or system for getting things done.
That's the LEGO® productivity secret.
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You Might Be Delusional, Here’s How
Have you ever heard “if you can believe than you can achieve?”How about “if you can dream it you can do it?”In these cases, belief is actually just a combination of trust and visibility.
Let me explain:
Trust is the reputation you have with yourself for executing things.If you have executed, followed through, and challenged yourself in the past you will trust yourself to do so in the future.Visibility is what you can see about the work to be done ahead.Even if you can’t see the ending, have you done something similar or even just not seen the ending before?How clearly can you define your dream?Example: “disrupt the real estate industry” isn’t clear enough.If you don’t know where you want to go, there’s no way to know when you’ve arrivedBasically . . .
It helps if you know what to do and how to do it.
But even more important is the relationship you have with your own execution and whether or not you trust yourself to follow through or figure out the unknown.
Unbounded belief is delusion.
Delusion is when you believe and believe, with abandon, no matter what the world around them is telling them.So, believing in yourself means having the data log of many, smaller decisions and actions that prove that you are capable of bigger ones.Delusion is when you have no behavioral evidence but believing anyway.See the difference?
2 Minute Action
Do you trust your ability to execute?If so, great! Can you name some projects that would prove this?Having the data in hand will drive up your confidence, today.If you don’t trust yourself, take this time to break your most essential project down into a few chunks you can accomplish this week and ask a good friend of yours to hold you accountable. You’ll need to know a bit about what the final product looks like if you’re going to break it down, too.Example:I have a friend who wrote a check for $1000 and said: “cash this check if I don’t stick to my plan.”People who excel set up their environments to give them the best chance of success.
There's No Secret To Waking Up Motivated--But This Gets Me Close
"Motivation doesn't last. Neither does a shower." - Zig Ziglar
2 quick ways to kill motivation?
Obligation and guilt.Do it because you care.Do it because you want to.That's way more powerful.And it turns out, it's way more sustainable.The only trick is that you'll need to remind yourself that you care.iOS reminders. Letters to yourself. A time capsule. Post-its on the bathroom mirror.There are a million ways--but you have to make it happen.You don't have to know all the answers right now.You don't have to have some giant epiphany.You just have to start reflecting on your values and interests.What do you like and what do you think is important?What do you find yourself NOT being able to stop doing?Start there and good things will happen.
2 Minute Action
It will take you 1 minute to write down 3 things you care about.It will take you less than 1 minute to ask Siri/Alexa/etc. to remind you about these in 3 months or to text a friend to check in on your progress in 6 weeks.The secret is that big things are actually made up of lots of small, actionable things.Everyone has 2 minutes. You can do this.