One Idea to Rule Them All

Now, what do you do when you're in high school and someone asks you to run for student council? You say, "Sure." But then you don't run; you anti-run. Everything is done to deemphasize it because you don't want the embarrassment of trying and losing. So I said to myself, "Self, whether you lose because you didn't run for the Board of Governors or whether you lose because you ran hard, it's the same outcome. So let's really run hard. Let's get aggressive and try to get elected. And if you don't get elected, you don't get elected. Big deal.

That's the one idea I'm taking away from the book I'm currently reading by Brendan Moynihan. It seems simple enough, but the verbalization of it felt like it shifted my perspective while I was reading. It also reminded me of one of my other favorite quotes.

"Everyone wants to win the game. Just win the play. Win the play and the game will take care of itself.” 

The above quote is from one of my favorite writers and strength experts, Jim Wendler. I've read five or six of his books, several of them multiple times, and that line is always the one that sticks with me.

Then there is the email I woke up to this morning from James Altucher, which contains the following,

B) A life is measured by what you did TODAY, even this moment.

This is the opposite of "A" but the same. You get success in decades by having success now.

That doesn't mean money now. It means, "are you doing your best today?"

C) Focus is not important, but Push is (reinvention).

Very few people have just one career. And for every career, it's never straight up.

When you have focus, it's like saying "I'm just going to learn about only one thing forever." But "the push" is the ability to get up every day, open up the shades, and push through all the things that make you want to go back to sleep.

Even if it means changing careers ten times. Or changing your life completely. Just pushing forward to create a little more life inside yourself.

Compound life is much more powerful than compound interest.

Finally, Cal Newport quotes a student in his book How to Be a High School Superstar who states, "It didn't hit me until near the end of the project that this was a big deal. I was thinking about it step by step, saying, 'I just need to get through these next three hours.'"

Take Home Points

1. Enter a "game"
2. Push to win plays
3. Don't worry about the finish

This is also the strategy I'm relying on with my A.E. Project. I've entered the self-education game with the goal of disrupting people's ideas about education, what it means, how we receive it. Now, I'm simply "waking up every morning, opening the shades, and pushing through all the things that make me want to go back to sleep."