It's About More than Results
Redefining success in the pursuit of the good life
Each month, we tackle a different theme on how to live what the ancients called the “good life”—a life in the pursuit of becoming the best version of oneself.
For the month of January, we’ve been focusing on the theme of FATE through our Monday Meditations (MM), Wednesday Wisdoms (WW), and Friday Sweet Bites (SB).
Here are the topics covered so far if you wish to catch up:
This Week at a Glance:
Our theme for the month of January is FATE and so far we’ve looked at fate and our role within it from the perspective of learning to let go of the past, self-discipline, and discovering fortune.
This week, we’re looking at how we can reframe our minds from a results-driven mindset to an effort-driven mindset and in the process, better align our fate through knowledge and personal growth.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 How to combat results-oriented thinking;
🍬 Shift your focus from a results-oriented approach to life and work towards an effort-centric approach;
🍫 Embrace an effort-centric approach and take greater control of your life.
Let’s dive in.
We live in a world that requires results every day.
Our culture permeates with this desire to focus on results rather than the effort it took to achieve those results. We’re fascinated by “overnight” successes whose stories inspire hope for us. We put people who achieve success atop these grand pedestals, elevating them to something beyond the everyday individual.
They’ve achieved success, they have the results to prove it.
When we hold up such a results-oriented approach to life, we ignore the persistent efforts that others put in and we allow these success stories to completely overshadow the work people perform in order to obtain such successes.
But our culture desires results. It tells us every day that it is the results that matter, that while effort is good, if the results aren’t there, you shouldn’t have even tried. Or worse, you should’ve tried harder (regardless of how hard you have been trying).
This is because results are shiny objects, they are toys for us to look at and point to. They’re signals of what can be achieved and are therefore set up as targets that must be achieved.
But having a results-centered life diminishes a key component of living—our actual ability to choose the life we want to have.
By having a results-focused culture, we short-change the true potential of so many people, people who require time to flourish. Because we push a culture of results, because we have these accelerated “success” timescales (such as 30 under 30 lists, etc.), these short-changed individuals find themselves constantly playing catch up, and in the process, never truly get a deep understanding of the task or job they’re trying to perfect. They’re never able to provide their truest value and flourish because we tell them that results, over understanding, is what matters.
So people cut corners. They do what they need to in order to get the results, even if it means short-changing themselves in the process.
Here’s the thing: effort counts just as much if not more than results.
The more time and effort devoted to a subject or task, the deeper knowledge is formed around that subject. The deeper the knowledge, the greater the expertise, and the greater the expertise, the faster the individual can move, change direction, and push the boundaries of that field.
“Late bloomers,” writes Rich Karlgaard in his book Late Bloomers, “are those who find their supreme destiny on their own schedule, in their own way.”1
This week, we look into five techniques to utilize, at any stage of life, to reject the notion that results are what’s most important.
Our fates are determined by more than the results we achieve. In order to properly see this, we need to maximize the effort we put into a task while simultaneously working to reframe the mind and move it from a results-driven mindset to an effort-driven mindset.
Drill Down Your ‘Why’
“Knowing what drives us and others is an essential step toward enhancing the inherent joy-and minimizing the confusion- in our lives.”
If you do not have a deep understanding of ‘why’ you’re doing something, then it is a natural repercussion that you will just do the work necessary to try and get the results required.
Too often we mistake quick fixes for great effort and the two are not synonymous.
An effort-centric mindset will force you to put in the time and effort to actually examine the nuts and bolts, look for root causes or underlying issues, and try to better understand the impact you’re trying to have so as to solution correctly.
Without properly understanding the why for what you’re doing, the harder it becomes to make appropriate decisions that influence your fate and give you proper direction.
Build in Your Habit Flywheel
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement,”3 writes James Clear in Atomic Habits.
It is through strong foundational habits that we can find the most success towards results without having to dedicate ourselves completely to the end result.
Clear speaks about the ideal goal of improving just one percent each day.
Why?
Because 1 percent improvement each day compounds over time, the things once difficult become easy.
“Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits--not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”4
Small improvements, applied consistently over time, are the lynchpins of an effort-driven mind. Effort is what drives the results. Effort is the day-to-day grind that gets us there. But effort needs to be calculated in order to best hit results.
Organized effort is the path that leads to tangible growth.
Find Your Flow State
Finding a state of flow is one of the most rewarding experiences one can have during a task. If we’re constantly in a results-driven mindset, we’re too focused on outcome to get into a flow state.
A flow state takes us into a trance where we enter the now--time stands still, our focus is zeroed in on the task at hand, and we’re rigorously engaged in what we’re doing.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, father of the flow movement and author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, writes:
“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.”5
Flow cannot be achieved in a results-driven mindset because we’re constantly just looking to get the result. Shifting to an effort-mindset allows us to dive deeper into a task or problem, get to the heart of it, learn what is really going on, and properly solve it.
If we follow the routes that allow for flow to engage, they often form the invisible paths that lead us toward what we’re fated to do.
Learn to Let Go
Life is filled with fortune, chance, and luck and as such, we do not have full control over many of the events we encounter in life. So is true when it comes to the effort we put in and the reward or results that come from our efforts.
We control the process to try and achieve the results, but we cannot fully control the outcome.
“In order to adapt and survive,” writes Brian R. Little in Me, Myself, and Us, “we need to selectively filter out information that has no motivational or strategic importance for us.”6
If we place our time and attention solely on getting a result that we can’t control, such as success, we zap ourselves of the energy to actually put in the effort and do the work. We take ourselves out of our flow state as we always have one foot looking to the future and we’re not fully engaged in the efforts to get there.
You control the outcome but the fate of the effort is ultimately decided by much broader powers that far exceed our own.
Review Your Time Horizon
Too often, our desire to get a result is because we’ve set a short deadline to accomplish something. These decisions force a short-term goal for getting a result.
But with an effort-driven mindset, we’re less concerned with immediately getting the results so much as putting in the work and effort to better understand what is needed for the situation.
By extending our time horizon, we turn our focus to deeper understanding of the issue and more thoughtful action to understanding and solving it.
3-Bullet Summary:
We live in a results-centered culture. In order to combat the obsessive focus on results, we must shift our mindset to an effort-centric approach;
An effort-centric approach requires time and devotion to a cause to best understand it and allow for true knowledge and growth;
Understand your toolbox to combat results-centric thinking:
Know your ‘why’ for doing something
Spend time upfront to create good foundational habits
Find your flow state
Learn to let go of things outside of your control
Extend your time horizon for what results are
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
James Clear, Atomic Habits
ibid.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Brian R. Little, Me, Myself, and Us
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