Why you keep leaving things undone: The three under the radar superpowers of billionaires that let them stick things out and build empires
If you give yourself enough time, I’m sure you can come up with at least twenty-plus things you’d love to do in your life.
For some, they get stuck at that initial ideation step. For others, they can’t stop adding to the list.
If you’re in the latter group like I am, we get to move on to a new problem. Prioritizing our list into a top five.
How do you take a list of random yet exciting life experiences and order them?
It’s difficult I know. But this is where the gut makes the best decisions. Let it lead you to choose those goals that we can’t imagine our lives without doing.
So now, after some hopefully not too painful selecting, you have a nice little list. Your personal five, ‘must-do before I die’ desires.
So now how do we get to work on these five desires?
Trick question. We don’t.
As much as we like to think we can go after many things at once, Confucius’ quote still holds true:
The man who chases two rabbits catches none
It has to be one thing at a time to maximize our chances of success.
Let’s not delude ourselves and be that person that talks more than they do. That person we all know who overpromises and under-delivers. And leaves a bunch of half-built buildings behind them.
Plus, going after more desires doesn’t actually guarantee any more fulfillment. It’s also not a sign of competency or superiority.
In fact, choosing more things over the most important thing more often than not, it weighs us down. It gives us more to manage, more overwhelm, and more unhappiness.
Let’s not spread ourselves thin. Let’s make this easy and make better choices. And that begins by narrowing our focus.
From this list of five, we’re looking for that one, top no-brainer desire that will change the course of our lives. We then need to turn it into a goal. A dream with a deadline, backed by a plan of action.
There are many names for this top goal of ours. ‘Our Wildly Important Goal (WIG)’, as shared in the book ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’.
Or our ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)’ mentioned first by Jim Collins in ‘Built To Last’.
Or as I like to think of it, our ‘ONE Thing’, as coined by Gary Kelly in the book of the same name.
This will act as our north star, the goal that orientates all our actions. Having this one central guiding goal simplifies things. It makes our decisions easy.
Anytime we’re faced with a choice, we can run a simple test:
‘Is this action I’m about to take in line with me reaching my goal?’
It also increases our chances of success now because we have no other distractions. All our energy and focus now get funneled into this one goal. Perfect.
But to have an effective north star goal, we have to all into it. Fully committed.
Emotionally and logically all in.
No looking over the shoulder at other goals like that distracted boyfriend meme we all love.
It may seem difficult right now and we may even feel silly or even deluded to think we can achieve it today, that’s fine. But deciding to go after our most exciting goal can be something we won’t regret.
And if we’re having trouble deciding on what it is we should go after, don’t worry. We can lean on Jeff Bezos’ ‘regret minimization framework’.
This was something he used when making his big life decision in his 30s. To leave his comfortable six-figure salary job on Wall Street. Start a new e-commerce platform on the emerging internet. As a first-time founder. All the way on the other side of the country. Turns out he and his early investors did ok in the end.
Here’s how he explained it in ‘Invent and Wander’:
“I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.”
Regret Minimization Framework
Here’s how he thought through the decision and how we can too:
(1) Project ourselves into the future having taken this course of action.
(2) Look back and reflect on having taken this course.
(3) Ask “Will I regret not doing this?”
(4) If yes, act now with urgency. If no, go back to (1)
Getting clear on our ONE thing puts us in a small yet special group. A group that has had good fortune smile on them throughout history.
Because those who have shown clarity around their one big goal, have shown singular focus too. Why? Because they know NOT achieving it would haunt them.
And they’ve then found it easier to keep their commitment to the goal and toiled away to become good enough to achieve it.
And this is difficult.
Superpower 1 — Quality of Clarity
Get clear on your one thing by looking back at what you’d regret the most. The clearer the vision, the easier to emotionally feel it. It’s future realization and it’s future absence. Use your regret to strengthen your commitment.
Finding clarity but also contentment in pursuing one path is one of the hardest things anyone can do.
And when we look back, people’s inability to go after one path has been the reason for many demises in history.
And it’s not because we don’t know what our big ‘ONE thing’ is to go for. It’s because we’re greedy and try to do more.
When we say ‘fuck yes’ to one opportunity, we’re saying the opposite to another. And to think we’re not, is where the problem lies.
Superpower 2 — Tradeoff Acceptance
Life is all about tradeoffs. We can’t avoid them. We can only make them and accept them. So, make your decisions understanding what you’re saying yes to as much as knowing what you’re saying no to. Then make peace with these closed options.
“You can do anything. You can’t do everything.” — David Allen
There will 100% be phases in life that call for different focuses
Learning to drive can take four months. Graduating from college can take four years.
At the time when we’ve undergone those goals, they’ve quite likely been the north star in our life. The thing that we’ve been thinking about for most of the time until we’ve ticked them off.
But what about Jeff?
It took Bezos’ Amazon’s vision two decades to happen. He actually stepped down as the CEO after 27 years.
Different goals will have different timelines. This shows us that.
But it’s not a singularity of focus alone that will see the job through. Certain goals will need a long enough duration of focus too.
Superpower 3 — Duration of Focus
The bigger the goal, the longer focus needed. Life has its seasons and its demands, and we don’t get a say in that. But we do get to decide what to focus on. Go after one meaningful thing at a time, until complete. Even if it has a long fruition date.
So to recap. The three superpowers that can help us complete our goals:
- Quality of Clarity
- Tradeoff Acceptance
- Duration of Focus.
If we can develop these skill sets over the coming months and years and decades ahead, we can develop to live a more fulfilled life.
But hey, it’s not going to be easy.
It won’t ever stop being tempting to try new things. But even saying ‘no’ and to recommit is a skill.
And the more you do it, the stronger the skill builds. The stronger your probability of sticking out on your path.
