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- #67 Reflections on turning 33
Evening all,
On my birthday earlier this month, I reflected on my experiences over the past year. Last year, I wrote about the 20 lessons that shaped me (here) and I intended to repeat the exercise.
Instead, I came up with just one idea, which I regularly return to: if we were more ruthlessly focused on implementation and action, we’d use our time more efficiently and be more successful, giving us more time to focus on the things that bring us happiness.
As a reader of this newsletter, you likely spend a lot of time reading, listening to podcasts, and finding ways to expand your knowledge and skill set. But how much importance do you place on actioning what you learn daily?
On the day of my birthday, I was driving and listening to a podcast where Howard Marks, the highly successful investor and CEO of Oaktree Capital, was asked about his views on freely sharing his investment philosophy over the years in his famous memos to investors. Marks replied that he had no concerns because the process of writing them helped him to firm up his thinking, and the vast majority of people reading them would take no action.
Intentionality requires goals
A lack of action can stem from not being clear about our goals. If you don’t exactly know where you want to go, it's going to be difficult to take steps to get there.
It is fundamentally important that we have clearly defined goals in areas of our lives that we are seeking to improve. Being clear on the outcomes we want to achieve makes it easier to align our actions and behaviours with them. Without goals, it becomes difficult to implement new learnings. Additionally, taking action while learning reinforces the learning process.
Let’s say I am reading a non-fiction book on marketing because I want to get better at marketing my newsletter. ‘Get better at’ could become ‘Achieve X readership by date Y’, and the implementation approach could become ‘write down one thing you will implement as a result of each chapter, and action it within a week’
Taking a cue from athletes
The most successful athletes are frequently described as being razor-focused on performing at the highest level in their sport to the point of obsession. Anything unrelated to that goal is seen as an unimportant distraction and removed.
How does this relate to implementation within our daily lives? There are two things we can take away:
Limit the number of things we are working on and towards. When our to-do lists are long, ensuring we work on the areas that provide the highest return on our time and resources becomes increasingly challenging.
The actions we don't take are as important as the actions we take. We should be ruthless in eliminating tasks that don’t bring us closer towards our goals or even move us further away from them.
Stating the obvious
I’m well aware that I am stating the obvious in this post. But it amazes me how much time we (myself firmly included) spend talking about the things we want in life or lamenting the time we spend on things we don’t like but don’t take action to change things. Even the simplest actions could yield significant results if we just took them.
What actions will you take this week?
Best, Alex Joshi.
On my bedside table:
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