Repeatable ProcessesI read some version of this quote the other day that really stuck with me: “you do not have to be 10x better than everyone else to be…
I read some version of this quote the other day that really stuck with me: “you do not have to be 10x better than everyone else to be wildly more successful. You just have to be a little bit better and execute on that advantage over a long period of time.”
I’d like to qualify that life is not necessarily about “beating” other people. Not everything is really a direct competition.
But the point of the quote, and the thing that I took away from it, is that executing on one or two things over a long period of time, whether you have a clear and distinct competitive advantage or not, is one of the best ways to differentiate and “win” — long term.
It reminds me that most of life is a long term game played via short run races.
I often forget this and get stuck in one of two “modes, as either I am too focused on figuring out my long term plan or I am making too many sacrifices in optimizing for short term needs.
The key for me has been to find repeatable processes that I know, if I care enough about them, I can execute on for a very long period of time.
Writing is one easy example for me of a repeatable process that I do each and every day.
Others are things like reading x type of thing or talking to x type of person or coding/designing certain products.
If you do anything long enough, you will eventually build a moat / competitive advantage that will be really hard for any competition to start up and break through.
Slight advantages, over a super long period of time, yield massively large results.
So how do you find processes that you can repeat over time?
I find that, throughout my life, I have started and stopped a number of “things” that I thought I would be able to continue over a long period of time.
Eating super healthy. Going to the gym. Drawing every day.
Simple habit building is both a science and an art — one that requires a delicate balance of goal setting, expectation management.
Just think though…if you could figure out what it is you want to be really good at 10 years from now…what could you do today to start building that competitive advantage?
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on November 6, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.