Happy Monday team! I hope you are all doing well. I know it’s been a few weeks but im sure you know me by now. If I don’t post something then chances are it immensely busy and haven’t had time to reflect as much as I would like. Rather than just sending you mediocre content, my desire is to send you important and relevant messages every week. I have ahead of a long stretch of predictable work so things should get better from here.
Read of to find out a little bit about why I’ve been so busy and how you can help me out. Let’s press on.
We expect too much too quickly and it leads to a trail of mediocrity
Today is going to be all about stamina!
It’s a very elusive quality in the social media age we find ourselves in. Now, this is not going to be some general thoughts on stamina but instead, the kind of stamina that leads to success or high achievement in whatever industry you have chosen.
My fear is that in this, job changing, podcast starting and external validation seeking generation, many of us lack the necessary stamina needed to actually see notable things happen. We are far too impatient as a generation and it’s affecting our accomplishments. We expect too much too quickly and it leads to a trail of mediocrity and half baked and completed ideas and projects.
Instead, success takes stamina, and successful individuals at the top of their game can only maintain their momentum for as long as they maintain a good pace.
Manage your expectation
One of the major reasons folks lack stamina today is because of the unrealistic expectations they have about success from social media. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of messages from people congratulating me on the success of The Common Sense Network, one of the organisations I look after. They then tell me they want to do something similar. I’m always curious when they say that because wonder if they just want to experience the same success or whether they actually care about the mission and building a business. If they are interested in building a good and solid business then that will take them 6 years like it’s taking us. The post they saw online is a snapshot of many late nights and early mornings. Social media creates that unhealthy distortion that we all need to be aware of.
Nothing good and lasting happens fast. If we are going to build meaningful things, here is a short summation; it takes time. I spoke about this in this short video below
Patience and Idleness
Of course, the kind of patience that eventually leads to success is not the same as waiting. Simply waiting does nothing.
This is one idea that bothers me about popular notions of 10,000 hours or some other arbitrary time investment needed for success. The fact is that just investing time doesn’t do anything on its own. Even the research on deliberate practice, which inspired the 10,000 Hour Rule, doesn’t suggest that skill is simply a product of time investment. Quite the opposite, it asserts that most of our practice doesn’t count and the time we spend naively trying to improve is often wasted.
No, the kind of patience required for eventual success is an active, self-doubting kind of patience. It’s the kind that puts in enormous amounts of work, looks at that work and questions whether that was the right work to have put in, makes an adjustment and tries again.
Of course, it’s exactly this self-doubt and uncertainty which makes patience very hard. If you knew that success would come in exactly ten years if you just keep doing what you’re doing, then patience would be easy. Stamina is hard because, as with all infinite games, you don’t know how long you’ll be running for or even if you’re running in the right direction.
This is why it’s in such short supply and why you really need it if you are interested in building remarkable things!
So what am I really saying?
It’s tempting to reduce stamina down to a mantra. “Never give up,” or something like that.
Unfortunately, it’s precise because giving up sometimes makes sense that stamina is hard. Dead-ends are everywhere and many efforts go nowhere. If you could guarantee that success would come eventually, then you’d only need to wait. But just waiting won’t get you there.
Therefore, I don’t think there are any universal slogans you can adopt that will simultaneously give you patience and release you from the emotional tension of struggling toward an uncertain goal.
The best thing that has worked for me, has been to ask myself whether I genuinely have better opportunities than this one. Usually, the answer is no, so even if my current pursuits eventually fail, it still makes sense to continue down this path. However, even this advice only works if you correctly value your competing opportunities. If you chronically believe the grass is greener on the other side, you’ll keep hopping fences.
Another strategy I’ve found helpful is to focus on the process of pursuit itself, rather than the goal. If you can make that tolerable, even exciting, then whether you eventually reach the mountain top you’re aiming at is less important. The people who run the farthest usually like running.
Most of all, I think it helps to recognize that life is an infinite game. If you get the opportunity to keep playing, you’ve already won.
Have an amazing week
M.T. Omoniyi
1) I was featured in the July issue Tatler because of the work we are doing at The Common Sense Network!
You can read the article here
Very true. The people we look up to had to go through the painful times where they were not sure if they would succeed. They had to continue doing what they did but smartly instead for searching all the time without action.