Sifting Through NoiseI’d argue that most of the time when I fail at something it is not because i was not good enough to be successful or that my idea or…
I’d argue that most of the time when I fail at something it is not because i was not good enough to be successful or that my idea or thinking was wrong. Most of the time it comes down to one thing: execution.
In a lot of ways, you can think of life linearly. There is you on one side and whatever you want to get on the other. Of course this is a metaphor, you should want multiple things out of life, but play with the simplicity for a moment. To get to what you want, there are lots of obstacles. Some, of course bigger than others. To me, the biggest obstacles are not the hurdles in the beginning or the last parts of the climb. No. I actually most enjoy those parts. I most enjoy thinking of ideas and I most enjoy completing/publishing them (in fact I do it every single day). The hard part is the middle. The middle is where the execution happens. The middle is never shown in the movies because it is most of the boring stuff. Think of it as sending emails, typing words, doing pushups…whatever.
But another group that lives in the middle is the group of distractions. Noise. Things that pull you away from your path to success.
And in modern society, there are loads of them. All available to you at the touch of a screen.
Now getting “distracted” is actually not a bad thing. I’ve come to realize that you can learn when you are distracted and find out more about yourself.
But getting distracted will not help you get to your goal. And a lot of times people fail and put the blame on things other than pure distraction.
For example startups often blame their competitors for why they failed. But in reality, most startups get too distracted from executing their core mission that they fail. They pivot incessantly, so much that they stray far from the north star. They never see it, blame it on external factors like money or resources — whatever.
But the point is that distractions do just that, they distract you from your goal.
And that is not to say your goal must be fixed , it is allowed to change. But stop complaining if you lose and blaming other people.
If you want to write a blog post every single day. If you want to get an internship. If you want to lose weight. Whatever the fuck you want to do…
Don’t let anything (besides ethics) get in the way of you reaching that goal. There is nothing that will come between you and that goal besides grind and hustle.
I promise you, that is how you will get there. No life hacks will help you out, even if a buzzfeed article tells you they do.
Woah. You read the whole thing! Thank you so much. I’d really appreciate if you shared this with a friend!
Let’s continue this conversation
twitter — @jrdngonen
email — jordangonen@wustl.edu
By jordangonen on June 27, 2016.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.