backbreaker
Master Don Juan
Backbreaker's Second Law
Action is everything. Goals are for hockey players and motivational sales people. Planning's for pussies.
I'm going to let you guys in on a secret. A secret that I've never told anyone outside my little brother and obviously my wife. You ready? Here it is lol...
I planned our entire wedding myself.
I don't mean I picked out my tux. I don't mean I picked out the hotel we're staying in. I mean, from booking the place where we got married, to seating arrangements, I planned the entire thing. It's not a manly thing to admit but it's true.
Of course, I didn't start out trying to plan our wedding. First my wife asked my opinion on the color scheme. Of course me being me thought i could improve on it. Then that lead to coming up with the flower arrangements, well **** now i've done that now i have to pick out the color scheme of everyone's tux's. By now i'm like **** it lol i got this. That and i know that to my wife, this is stressful as hell. to me, on a scale of 1 to 10 this is a negative 5 lol becuase there is no situation that can be so bad, that we still don't get married. There is no bad end game. I wouldn't give a **** if the kool-aid man bust through the door in the middle of the ceremony (which after 3 shots of vodka right before we took the stage, ironically enough was what i was thinking about right before we gave our vows while chuckling to myself)
That's what I do. I plan ****. I'm a planning dude. I plan what i'm going to wear for the rest of the week on sundays. I plan what TV shows i'm going to watch next weekend. I plan what rides i'm going to get on before i go tot eh amusement park. I plan budgets 2 years out in advance.
At one point, I was planning my day down to 2 minute intervals.
I grew up in Amway. Dexter Yager, Les Brown "It's not over until I win!". It was beat in my head day after day that if you fail to plan you plan to fail. Success is 90% preparation and 10% dedication. So for years I was a prepping mother****er. For my first business we put together a 300 page prospectus (that we literally never opened once). I set goals. I'm a goal setter. I want to know what my goals are for today. this week. this month. this quarter. this year. next year. 5 years from now. 2050.
One day, around the time I had a seizure a few years ago , business was growing, Joe was getting bigger and taking up more time, i was stressed out and I was spending days doing nothing but planning and one little thing would throw off my whole plan and so i'd have to do it all over gain, which honestly, I liked, becuase
As long as you're planning, you can't fail, becuase you're not trying.
2. Man Plans, God Laughs
Then I wouldn't hit my goals and I'd be all too happy to sit down and replan becuase i found comfort in the not putting myself out there. A guy who plan all day long is the equivalent of a guy who sits on sosuave and makes 10 page loan posts on pickup theory rather than go to the bookstore and hit on the first girl that gets his **** hard.
Planning is the cowards way of not trying while giving the veneer of trying/.
Think about it. Do you think Warren Buffet planned to become exactly what he is today? I know for a fact Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg or Mark Cuban didn't. Real successful people are open minded and go with the flow, they go where live leads them. To be successful, real successful you have to wake up everyday and not miss opportunities. Making detailed plans closes your eyes to the world around you and makes you inflexible.
I mean, the people who tell you to plan, what exactly have they accomplished besides finding more ways to get more money out of your pocket? What the **** does Anthony Robbins know about horse racing or web programming lol?
But what really changed my life is realizing that even when i set goals, and they don't fail, they don't ever come to 100% fruition ever. I've never in my life set a budget that i stuck to 100%. What if you set a budget for next week and one of your clients can't pay for 2 more weeks? you've not planning you're trying to predict the future, and that's not possible. Nothing is ever going to happen how I 100% it to happen because I can't control everyone around me, everything around me, so why the **** am i wasting my time even trying to?
3. More important than setting goals
I also realized that from a pragmatic standpoint, I probably wasted 3 weeks a year, doing nothing but planning. 3 weeks for me about 200 hours of work. What can I do with an extra 200 hours of action? Ironically enough, by not planning, you spend more time actually getting closer to what you want because you literally have more time to chase your dreams.
If you don't have 100% faith in yourself and your abilities, you're in the wrong post this isn't for you. If you do, understand this extremely simple concept;
My best, is always going to be good enough to get the job done
At the end of the day, that's all that matters. My best is good enough to do anything I put my mind to. If I get up and do my best, give 100% effort daily, it's good enough. It will happen when it is supposed to happen. Whatever "it" is.
Also if you give you best and you know you've given your best even if you don't achieve what you wanted, you've learned something, you took something away from what you're trying to accomplish that will help you next time around.
to make this as simple as possible, I have an excel sheet. I write down everything that I can think of that I need to do that day. Take the dog for a walk. Cook. Iron clothes for my son. Put together the 5 proposals in my inbox. Catch the 6th and 8th at Santa Anita. and I refuse to go to sleep until everything on that list is done. Anything that comes to my mind I never put it off a day unless there is no feasible way I can do it today (for instance recently i switched cell phone carriers, I had to call ATT but couldn't because it was too late so I had to put it off a day), if it comes to my mind I put it on the list and I never go to sleep with something lingering. sometimes I go to sleep at 9pm. Sometimes , like this morning, I go to bed at 9am lol.
I'm smart, but I'm not a genius. I just work harder than everyone else, becuase I want it worse than everyone else. It's not over until I win. period.
5. At the end of the day, you are only going to go as far as you take yourself
All the planning, goal setting, motivational tapes int eh world are no substitution for taking action. It doesn't even matter if it's the wrong action. Do something. Get in the habit of doing, not planning to do. To get the most out of tomorrow, you first have to get he most out of today.
I don't keep a budget. I put a certain percentage of money that comes in in savings, a percentage in my wife's bank account and a percentage in our bill account.. I don't set goals, yet everything I can think of I hit or i've done already.
There's only a finite amount of time and you have to make every minute count towards getting where you want to go. Instead of planning your diet go outside and run wind sprints. Instead of planning on books you're gonna read pick up the nearest thing you can find and read it. Instead of planning how much money you want to make, go to work and be determined to do the best job you possibly can and stay as long as you have to get everything done.
