Today I want to discuss a reframe that can make you unstoppable.
It lets you consistently improve and achieve extremely hard things, like learning a new skill or starting a business.
This reframe has been responsible for the biggest change in my motivation and consistency in the past few years.
But to understand it, we have to start with the problem.
The Problem:
When you’re trying to accomplish anything hard, the only way to make progress is to practice consistently.
And everyone understands that in principle, but it’s much easier said than done.
Take making YouTube videos: The only way to learn is to publish them.
This means spending weeks writing, setting up equipment, filming, editing, creating thumbnails, and uploading.
You do all that work, hit publish… and get 0 views.
Or maybe you’re trying to get good at sales.
You spend days finding leads, building sales materials, and pitching clients.
Only to get rejected time and time again.
Here's the problem: humans underestimate how long things will take due to the Planning Fallacy.
We expect the best-case scenario and are surprised when things take longer and are harder than expected.
We’ll do a few sales calls or make a couple of videos, not get the results we want, and give up.
Which, when you think about it, is a bit crazy.
A kid who wants to be a professional football player wouldn’t play 3 games and expect to be in the Premier League.
(Or the NFL… you get the idea.)
And yet, when you’re in the thick of it, it’s incredibly hard not to feel crushed when you don't see results quickly.
So, how do we overcome this?
How do we keep practicing and improving despite feeling like a failure?
The Solution:
The answer is to reframe what you’re trying to do.
If you’re making sales calls, your primary objective at the start isn’t to make money.
It’s to get good at sales.
If you’re making YouTube videos, your primary objective isn’t to get a million views.
It’s to get good at making videos.
You need to master the skill first to get consistent results.
When you shift your focus to improving the skill rather than on the immediate results, it becomes easier to handle when you don’t get the outcome you want.
Bad results aren’t failures; they are feedback.
A lead rejects your offer? No worries, you know what to change next time.
No one clicks on your video? No problem, improve the thumbnail next time.
You create a video that gets 500k views? Great, you did something right in this one.
Regardless of the result, the answer is to understand the feedback, improve, and try again.
By moving the focus from results to feedback, there’s less pressure on the outcomes of your action and more focus on the long term result.
Now you might be thinking: “This is a nice excuse for sucking, but why do I even need feedback?”
Why You Need Feedback
One of my favorite books on learning is Scott Young’s “How to Get Better At Anything.”
In it, he explains there are three components to improving at a skill:
- See: Watch someone who's good doing the skill.
- Do: Practice it yourself.
- Feedback: Learn what you did right and wrong.
That means that publishing bad videos, butchering sales calls, and writing average newsletters (sorry) are all part of the process to becoming great.
When you understand that you need feedback to acquire the skills, you’re less likely to beat yourself up for not getting the result you wanted right away.
Summary
- You need feedback to improve.
- The best way to get feedback is to put yourself out there in the real world.
- Good and bad feedback is useful because over time it will make you great.
- When you’re great at something, you'll get more consistent results.
- If you can consistently improve, unfazed by setbacks, you’ll be unstoppable.
The only way to truly fail is to stop trying.
I hope you found this useful.
I’ll be doing some free Q&A calls with community members over the next couple of weeks (starting tomorrow).
If you’re interested and want a reminder when they’re on, just click here.
Thanks,
Tim