Ep. #207: Motivation Monday: The Easiest Way to Do Great Work (Isn’t What You Think)

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike from muscle for life and welcome to another episode of my podcast. This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed motivation Monday. Yes, I know. So creative of me. What can I say? I’m just a genius. Seriously though, the idea here is simple. Every Monday morning, I am going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.

Because it’s one thing to know what you want to But it’s something else all together to actually make [00:01:00] yourself do it. And I hope that this series gives you a jolt of energy and encouragement to go ahead and do all of those things that you want to do. If you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.

Okay, let’s start this week with a quote. This one comes from the one and only Aristotle, and he said, quote, I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies for the hardest victory is over self. Have you ever woken up and thought about what you wanted to do for the day? And then sat down to actually do it and then talked yourself out of it.

Of course you have, we all have who hasn’t. Why is that though? Was it because you thought it was the wrong thing to do? Probably not. I’m willing to bet that in many cases, when. You do this because I know in many cases when I’ve done this, it was because you thought you weren’t [00:02:00] good enough yet. You think you can’t possibly write that book until you’ve had more experience or more practice.

You can’t create that new product or service until you have more prospective customers to sell it to. You can’t bake the brownies until you watch at least five more YouTube videos on how to do it. And. You still have questions, so maybe you should just eat some ice cream instead. And my point is, I get it, we’ve all been there before, we’ve all found reasons not to get started on something, whether little or big, and we’ve all felt like it’s just never the right time to do anything other than maybe nothing.

We’ve all felt like something else has to happen or exist first. And I want to talk about it because It is a deadly trap, my friends. It is one that I work hard to avoid and sometimes still fall into, but feel like I’ve had enough success that I can share some insights that have worked for me in hopes of helping you [00:03:00] avoid the trap yourself.

So let’s start at the top here. We all know that the fastest way to go from point A to point B is a straight line, right? And we all know that a line is a continuous unbroken extension from a point in a certain direction. So why then do many people expect to experience a superhuman leap From novice to expert.

Why do they expect to quickly and easily go from bad work to great work? Why is the idea, the prospect of sucking at something so daunting to so many people? Why do some people, who have never written a single page of fiction in their lives, pick it up, and then immediately set out to write the absolute best book in the history of literature, and then feel absolutely crushed when things don’t work out as planned.

Why do some people pick up a [00:04:00] paintbrush for the first time and then demand the next? Mona Lisa from their hands. Now, I’m all for high flown goals, and I do think that, they’re necessary and they can be motivating. But what happened to that straight line that goes from novice to expert, from point A to point B, from where you are now to where you want to be?

Why do people get so frustrated that they can’t just magically teleport from point A to point B? And why do they instead tend to just stew on their shortcomings and Maybe then decide why it’s actually not worth trying to get to point B And maybe it’s better to just get used to life at point A instead Or maybe it’s better to just put it off to some point in the future get to it at a later time when Circumstances are better suited and then of course days go by and months go by and years go by And that’s the end of that.

It doesn’t have to be like this, though. There’s a different [00:05:00] way of looking at the struggles of striving that make them, let’s just say more palatable. And it starts with a quote from a man named Gilbert Chesterton. And he said, if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing it. Now, Chesterton was called a man of colossal genius by Time, and he wrote around 80 books in his lifetime, along with several hundred poems and short stories and over 4, 000 essays.

But if we rewind to the beginning of his journey, he actually sucked at writing. He dropped out of his college literature class. He went through a nasty spell of depression and self doubt after dabbling in Ouija boards and the occult. And eventually though, he put his Ouija board away and he decided to get a job at a newspaper and he kept writing and slowly but surely he got better and he got better and he got better and he really learned [00:06:00] something.

He learned. That there really are no shortcuts. Yes, some people can go from point A to point B quicker than others, but everybody has to start at A, and between A and B. Between novice and expert, there’s a whole lot of sucking for everybody, no matter how smart they are or how talented they are in the beginning, they’re going to suck a lot and they have to walk that road alone.

Now that might not sound all that motivating, but it is the reality and there is a silver lining and it is that with every step that you take from point A to point B, no matter how small, as long as it’s a forward step. You suck a little bit less. You become just a little bit more expert. Think of yourself as like a tiger that’s earning its stripes.

And earning is the key word there. Who cares if your first marketing piece isn’t all that great? Who cares if your first blog looks like a pile of [00:07:00] shit? I don’t care if your first painting is worse than your child’s. At least it’s worth it. You can tell garbage from gold. At least, what is bad and what is good and don’t discount that.

That’s the first thing that you want to develop is a good intuition of what is good and what is bad in whatever endeavor you are embarking on, whether it’s a creative one or a business one, like an entrepreneurial one, or even a physical one. Even when you suck, at least, you suck. Many people suck and have no idea that they suck.

And so they will never achieve expertise because they don’t even know what expertise looks like. They can’t compare where they are to where they could be. So when you are doing something badly, you can always look to it and find at least one thing that you did right. And you can acknowledge that you did it right.

And then you can look at how you can learn from what you did wrong. And you can try again. Remember, nobody’s [00:08:00] counting your mistakes. You don’t get a report card in life. All that matters in the end is getting from point A to point B, regardless of what it takes to get there, regardless of how circuitous and serpentine your path might be, as long as you arrive.

That’s all that matters. And all this, I think highlights one of the biggest secrets of all great achievers really in all fields is they were willing to do a lot of crappy work, a lot and a lot of crappy work so they could eventually learn to do good work. And ultimately, Great work. It’s almost like doing crappy work was just an item on the checklist for the day.

And again, especially in the beginning of any activity. And by beginning, really what I mean is probably the first 500 hours, you’ve probably heard of the 10, 000 hour rule, which was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and his book outliers. And basically says that it takes about 10, 000 hours to become top [00:09:00] tier at any activity.

So to reach the level of skill that you see, let’s say at a, at a. Professional echelon in, in, again, in any activity takes about 10, 000 hours. And later research has adjusted this downward more realistic estimate is probably three to 5, 000 hours for most people, although it may take, upward of 10, 000 hours for some people and other people may get there in as little as one to 2000 hours.

But again, a good middle of the road estimate for most people to go from nothing to outstanding Truly outstanding and extraordinary in any activity is probably around three to 5, 000 hours and not three to 5, 000 hours of just doing something, but three to 5, 000 hours of what is generally now referred to as deliberate practice, which could be a Subject for another podcast, but if you want to learn more about the science of expertise, check out the book peak by Anders Ericsson and he breaks it all down.[00:10:00] 

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Anyway, getting back on track here, my point is that the beginning of an activity lasts a lot longer than many people think.

It lasts for hundreds of hours. So that kind of puts in perspective how much crappy work you are going to have to do to get over the crappy work. But again, it’s good that you know it’s crappy. Because that means that you have your eyes set [00:11:00] on something that is at least good. If not great. And therefore, when you do some crappy work, you can say to yourself, great, I did some more crappy work today.

And that means I’m just a little bit closer to doing good work and eventually to doing great work. And that’s why I think that when you decide to. Work toward a goal. The first thing you want to do is you want to suck, fail, and learn. That’s the process that gets you through that beginning phase. You suck, you fail, you learn.

You suck a little bit less, you fail a little bit less, you learn. And you rinse and repeat that over and over until you reach the intermediate phase. Where now you’re sucking a lot less or failing a lot less. And you are continuing to learn that process. I think is at the core of personal evolution. You go up, you go down, you figure out why you’re going down.

You loop back around, you go back up and then you go down, figure out what’s going on. You loop back up and hopefully over time, if you do it right, the [00:12:00] trajectory is generally upward, but there are a lot of downs. And there are a lot of looping back around and having to go back up just the way it is. And so I want to end this episode with a final little piece of practical kind of staple this to your forehead type of advice.

It is the manifesto of the cult of done and no, it’s not a real cult. It’s just a trendy internet thing, but I like the message. So here it is. The cult of done manifesto. There are three states of being not knowing action and completion. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.

There is no editing stage. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you’re doing. So just accept that you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t, and do it. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. The point of being done is not to finish, but to get other things done.

Once you’re done, you can throw it away. Laugh at perfection. It’s [00:13:00] boring and it keeps you from being done. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. Destruction is a variant of done. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.

Done is the engine of more. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility. And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the [00:14:00] podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it.

Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. Soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my high quality sports multivitamin triumph.

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