Accomplish
5-7 minute read
Success is a weird thing. Most people can define it in a quantifiable way. In terms of monetary worth, material possessions, or even followers on Social Media. Some take on a more philosophical approach and describe success as their perceived level of happiness. Of course, it’s impossible to measure happiness quantifiably. Still, of all the ways to measure success, I’m positive that there is one common denominator - getting shit done.
Before we continue any further, let me clarify one important thing: getting shit done does not mean making a lot of money, having 500k+ insta followers, pleasing your parents (or anyone else), having a great career, or getting a promotion. It could be any and all of those things, but it can also be as simple as achieving whatever goal you set for yourself. The whole point of this post is to help you do whatever it is that you want to do, if you want to reach the Grand Master rank in Overwatch, you’re going to need to employ the same principles as someone who is gunning for their next promotion.
Getting shit done is no easy task. Most of the time, the hardest thing to do is actually start. There’s a reason why procrastination is such a prevalent topic. You first have to fight off the Force of Nature called Resistance (which you can read about here). Getting started is half of the battle. The only other thing you need to worry about after starting is consistency. The results will come. It’s not important, for now, to think about how much you’ve done, or the quality of your work. What’s important is that you sat down and you actually did something. That you sit down and do it again tomorrow, and the next day. You can go back and correct your mistakes afterwards; but only if you had actually done something. You can’t correct something that does not exist. This quote is cliché but, Wayne Gretzky was right when he said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Getting shit done is so fucking hard. Like, I can’t stress this enough. The only people who are worth a damn are those who can sit there and get shit done. We all know one person (spoiler: it’s you) that has great ideas but just can’t seem to get them off the ground. Grandiose plans that they’re waiting for the right moment to start, they’re just not sure where to begin, or they’re going to start after the New Year, or some other bullshit reason. In reality, these plans never leave the brain. Why? Because it’s scary. More importantly, it’s hard. It takes effort, it takes dedication and will almost certainly involve failure, embarrassment, or both. I have a feeling that most people go their whole life without really getting much done at all. You’ve probably heard before that nothing worth having comes easily, and it’s true. It’s easy to not get anything done, it literally takes 0 effort, but where’s the fun in that?
Allow me to explain my perspective on two things I’ve actually gotten done in my life. Firstly, I became fit. My entire childhood life until I was about 17 years old, I was chubby. Being over 200 pounds throughout a decent portion of my childhood was not easy for me. I was made fun of, and I was extremely insecure. I would wear a t-shirt in the pool and every single one of my pictures in my High School year book is of me sticking my neck out weirdly so that I could hide my double-chin. It didn’t work, obviously. My weight was a big shot to my self-image, confidence, and overall wellbeing. I wanted to make a change.
In high school, I began going to the gym. For about 5 months I had a trainer, a schedule, and even a gym bag (yeah, a real gym bag!). Eventually though, I quit. I had actually lost a bit of weight mind you, but I just quit. Playing Counter-Strike was just more fun for me, and working out was very ugh in comparison, so hard and annoying. At around 19 I tried again, and for whatever reason it stuck. I wasn’t strong when I started, I wasn’t buff, or slim, or ripped, or anything. I was just a chubby kid going to the gym. But I kept going. As I went to the gym I started reading about getting stronger, and as it turns out, nutrition is a huge factor. I started learning about nutrition and what a good diet looks like and applied it to my life as well. I tried diets like the Keto diet for example, but throughout everything I’ve learned about fitness and nutrition, there’s only one (and I mean only one) thing that actually matters: consistency. Now, nearly a decade of consistent gym-going, I’m confident with my body, I can lift two and a half times my own body weight, and I feel like I’m doing my body justice with what I put inside of it (if you’re curious, mostly vegetables).
Okay, so I went to the gym and got fit, big deal. Well, actually, kind of. What that taught me was 3 things:
Consistency is key.
Getting good at something takes really, really long.
Once you’re good, you have to keep trying to get better or you’ll become worse.
To this day, I still maintain a regular gym routine, I’m careful about what I put inside my body, and I’m constantly trying to learn about things that will improve my health and longevity. After all, my body is the only connection to the physical world I’ve got, and I want to make sure it’s firing on all cylinders.
So now onto the other thing I’ve gotten done in my life: I taught myself how to speak, read, and a write another language, with an entirely different alphabet, without the use of classrooms. Here’s what it actually looks like to get something like that done. Oh, before I get to that I want to provide a small disclaimer: I’m not fluent yet, I can carry out a conversation, and read and write simple text. But if you thought this was going to be “how you can become a master at anything in just 3 months” type of post, you might want to find those books next to the penis enlargement pills.
Anyways, I decided to learn Japanese in November of 2017 because I thought it would be cool to live there for a year. In order to live you need to work, and in order to work you need to speak the language. So I started out trying to learn the Japanese alphabet called Hiragana, only to find that there were two other alphabets, and each was exponentially more complicated than the last. I quickly gave up. Now, if you noticed from my gym story, giving up does not mean the end. In fact, giving up is sometimes critical in getting shit done; it’s the willpower to get back on that horse and keep riding that can sometimes unlock hidden perseverance. Ideally, you don’t give up, but we’re all human. Giving up shakes in its little booties in the face of perseverance.
About a month later, I had an opportunity to work in Japan and decided I needed to start studying again, this time with more vigour and determination. I didn’t get the job, but that’s ok. I gave myself a goal at the time, not an unrealistic goal such as to gain fluency within a year. That’s a surefire way to burn out, and in this case, certainly fail the goal. My goal was to practice every single day without exception. To me, practicing did not need to take a huge chunk of time; although sometimes it did. Practicing could be writing out Hiragana and Katakana characters, learning new vocabulary and grammar, or even things like watching anime without the subtitles — just so that I can train my ear. The point is, that every single day, I did something that has to do with the Japanese language. I found that most of the time, what was going to start out as a 5 minute quick study sesh became easily 30 minutes of grinding. The trick here was that I actually started, and that right there is half the battle. The other half of the battle is to keep going, even when times are tough, even when you don’t feel like it.
If you force yourself to start, more often than not, you will put more work in than you thought. On days where you truly only take 5 minutes to practice or work, it won’t be a big deal because you’ve just increased your fortitude to actually start. The days that you go over the 5 minutes will soon begin to far outweigh the “lazy” days. Keep in mind, “lazy” days still include some form of practice or work. That’s a huge advantage. The effort of quieting the “I don’t feel like it” voice and doing something, even a little, is more than what most are willing to give. One thing I noticed about getting shit done is that it compounds into other areas of your life, and vice versa. Allow me to explain further:
Earlier, I spoke about diet, and my current diet is one that consists of fasting intermittently throughout the day. This diet has been a tremendous factor in my ability to maintain my physique, but much more than that, it has built my willpower to allow me to actually get shit done. When you feel hungry, it’s about all you can do to not find something to eat, even if it’s bad for you. With fasting, I told myself that no matter how hungry I feel, I will not consume calories until a given time (typically 18 hours since the last time I had eaten). Now, some of you might find this extreme, but keep in mind that the average human can go 30 days without food so long as there is water. 18 hours in comparison is very little.
I had now found that I had gained control over my cravings, and food in general. It was liberating to be able to go into work on any given day, and easily decline home baked treats or other snacks. You wouldn’t believe how much more time I had now that my ‘lunch hour‘ was an actual hour. I capitalized on this time by going to a quiet place, putting my headphones in and studying Japanese. That’s one un-interrupted hour that I’ve just gained every single day all while benefiting my mind and body. Let’s not discount the savings from spending money on lunch, either. Intermittent fasting is not for everyone, and certainly not the point of this post; but the ability to say no to food when you’re hungry makes it easier to say no to things like being a lazy asshole. Willpower, like anything else that we do, requires training and constant reinforcement.
Wrapping up, getting shit done is not about the big accomplishments you see people post about on Facebook or Instagram. Getting shit done is a culmination of all of the little things you do throughout each day that allow you to get that big payout at the end. The Overwatch pro puts in countless hours of practice, reads about meta shifts in the game with each balance update, and watches other pro players to better understand positioning, tracking, and strategy. The girl with the incredible body enjoying ice cream on the beach in an Instagram post, who seems to have it made; actually woke up at 5 am, got her morning workout in, and made healthy choices consistently to achieve that body. Not only that, but putting yourself out there is much harder than you think. The CEO of a fortune 500 company has struggled, went bankrupt over failed ventures, been fired or walked out on, and all of these events built the character that allowed them to get the things they want done. Chris Pratt is one of my favourite stories. The guy was living in a trailer, basically homeless, before he got his break in Parks and Rec; that’s what it takes to get shit done. Don’t look at someone getting paid to play video games and go, “must be nice” you cannot assume that it was easy for someone to get to where they are, no matter what they’re doing. If you expect success — whatever your definition of it may be — to come easy, you will undoubtedly fail. You cannot underestimate the effort it will certainly take.
I’ll leave you with one last example just to drive the point home. You might be thinking to yourself, “I don't care about status, money, or any of the other things that the “American Dream” dictates as success. All I need is a happy family. And a dog, probably.” Someone with a loving family and happy marriage that may not have an incredible career or chiseled abs has had their own sacrifices. They sacrificed their friends in order to spend time with their spouse and children. They sacrificed their hobbies and interests so that they could find fulfilment in another way, they gave a part of themselves and took on a part of their significant other. If you think that’s easy, then all you need to do is take a look at the staggering 50% divorce rate and understand that it is not at all easy to get shit done, no matter what it is. Getting shit done is not about anyone’s definition of success. Getting shit done is about taking action on the things that are important to you, whatever they may be.
I’d like to leave you with this as a challenge: start something today. Pick something up that you left off. Don’t wait for New Years to start your diet. Get ahead of the game and yourself by starting now. It can be as simple as starting a new book, or making your bed. Get that ball rolling no matter how big or small. The small challenges you overcome today will make your willpower stronger and the daunting tasks that seemed out of reach will be that much easier to tackle tomorrow. Make those small compound decisions that will add up throughout your life and enrich your soul, and make you proud of the person you’ve become, so that you can look back on all that you’ve done and feel a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction. Your future you will thank you.