“Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” Jim Rohn
EFFECTIVENESS VS. EFFICIENCY
Before moving on with the blog series, we have to go over some of the key mindset shifts you have to make. Let’s talk about effectiveness vs. efficiency. Before learning about what effectiveness is and what efficiency is and stumbling upon the quote I shared with you, I never thought about primarily taking care of myself to get the best results. I thought that if I just worked harder and harder, I’ll get better and better results, but in the long-term, that’s not the case. What effectiveness represents is taking care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. That is you.
If you know about the story of the goose that lays the golden eggs, I don’t remember it in detail, but the moral of the story was that there was this man that wanted faster results from the goose that laid him golden eggs, so he killed her to get the eggs that were inside of her. And although getting an additional egg faster, he was done for it because there was no more goose to produce consistent results.
Always keep in mind being effective vs. being efficient. Efficiency is what the man did killing the goose, and effectiveness represents taking care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. Having that in mind, we are continuing on with our tool of the day.
The “what could have I done better yesterday” tool. Analyze your previous day and with having the effectiveness vs. efficiency mindset shift in mind, write down what you could have done better yesterday.
What could have I done better yesterday?
SACRIFICE VS REGRET
Before attending one seminar in particular where I got this from, regret would slip under my doorstep even though I was still pursuing my goals, and it’s the worst feeling in the world. It always came when I had to stop doing something for a longer time or drop it forever, so I had time for something else. The same applies to the roles we set previously. I would be in exam time, and I would regret not making Youtube videos, for example, and I would beat myself up.
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But what is then the difference when it comes to “sacrifice”?
Here’s where the mindset shift comes in. What sacrifice means is dropping something for a higher purpose, a higher good. It implies dropping something as well. Just making that switch helped me overcome regret and always look at it as sacrificing the role, or hobby, activity, for a higher good, and the higher good being a new habit you’re implementing instead of the previous one.
PROACTIVE VS REACTIVE
In technical terms, we are talking about having an internal vs. external locus of control. This basically means that people who have an internal locus of control base their success in any field of their life on the amount of work they’ve put in and don’t blame outside circumstances.
In contrast, people who attribute their current state to outside circumstances have an external locus of control. Basically, it’s the difference between an “It’s up to me” mentality vs. “it’s up to the president, the country I’m from, my situation, my education,” you name it, the list goes on.
You have to make a massive mindset shift if you haven’t already and adopt the proactive, that is, having an internal locus of control, vs. the reactive mindset, having an external locus of control.
This is where working out made a huge impact on me. When it comes to making progress in the gym, you can whine to whomever about how muscle building is slow and unfair, you can protest for hours, but the main thing that’s going to determine your progress is the amount of effort you put in in the gym and outside of the gym.
It has never been easier to impact the World, learn new skills, acquire knowledge, so don’t complain. Let other people complain. There’s always an opportunity in your or other people’s complaints.
For example, many people in my country, Serbia, complain about poverty, basically, exhibit an external locus of control.
Where I, on the other hand, looked at living in a country like that as an opportunity for making the same amount of money on the internet as I would in the US, for example, but here I can do way more things with the same amount of money as I would in the US.
Also, when I started working out, I had only one dumbbell, and I could have complained about that. Instead, I used it as a business opportunity and thought to myself that there must be many other people with the same problem, so I learned and made Youtube home workouts with only one dumbbell that had massive success.
Plan your day the best you can with the same principles we’ve discussed in the first blog post in this series, and I’ll see you in the next one!
