Category: Philosophy

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Philosophy

Role Models

If your role models can do it, you “can” do it too. 👍

It’s a different question – if you “want to” do what they have done. 🤷‍♂️

“Can” is a question of your skills, and more importantly, the choice of your mindset. 😇

“Want to” is a question of your will, and more importantly, the choice of your lifestyle. 😎

Even if you’re not skilled right now, if you set your mind to it, the chances are very high you’ll achieve similar stature and rewards. 💪

The key question is – are you willing to adopt a similar lifestyle with a lot of hard work, sacrifices, and hardships? 🤔

Most people over-index their lack of skills (to do the work), but under-index their lack of will (to go through hardships). 🤨

Categories
Philosophy Productivity

Why It’s Bad Advice To Prioritize “Important” Tasks Over “Urgent” Ones

The advice on prioritizing “important” tasks over “urgent” ones is pretty well known to everyone. 

I think it’s bad advice. Or at least, it’s an incomplete one. 🤨

I don’t think it’s bad to prioritize “urgent” tasks. 🤷‍♂️

The important detail is – you should prioritize “your” urgent tasks, and not “someone else’s”. 👈

No one realizes that most often, the “urgent” tasks you respond to are someone else’s urgent needs, not yours. 🤦‍♂️

I struggle with this all the time.

Most of the day, I react to others’ urgent needs and do not make enough progress on my important tasks.

The tasks that are important to me should ideally be urgent as well. 🧐

If that’s the case, I don’t think it’s terrible to work on “my” urgent tasks.

It’s the trap of reacting to “someone else’s” urgent tasks is that I need to get better at. 😇

Categories
Philosophy

Showing Up

Showing up is not easy, but it’s not hard either. So just showing up is not an achievement.

Giving up is easy (it’s painful, but it’s still easy). You have hundreds of reasons to convince yourself to do it.

The real achievement is when you show up again after you’ve given up.

Show up. Again and Again. Every single time.

Categories
Philosophy

Authentic Empathy

The conventional wisdom is – “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

How about – “Treat others the way THEY want to be treated.”?

I make this mistake all the time. I think I’m trying to be empathetic with the other person by trying to give them nice and fair treatment – as per my perspective.

But that other person isn’t me.

So the whole empathy thing either doesn’t work or it looks fake.

Isn’t it probably better to genuinely understand what the other person cares about?

Isn’t it probably more authentic empathy if we treat them the way THEY want to be treated?

Categories
Philosophy Productivity

Become a Creator

The one resolution everyone should have for 2021:

“Become a creator”.

Create anything from scratch:

  • start companies
  • build prototypes
  • shoot videos
  • write blogs
  • author books
  • create art
  • play music
  • play sports
  • build communities
  • start movements

It could be anything.

Don’t be just a consumer.

Be a creator.

Wish you a very Happy, Healthy, Prosperous, and Creative 2021!! 🎉 🎆

Categories
Entrepreneurship Philosophy

Work Hard, Not Just Smart

They say, work “smart” not “hard”.

The reality is – smart work is the fruit of a lot of hard work.

Hard work is how you become knowledgeable about lots of areas and an expert in a few areas to make better decisions for smart work.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Philosophy

If You Haven’t Won Yet

Believe that you will always win in the end.

If you haven’t won yet, it’s hasn’t ended yet.

Keep fighting!

Categories
Philosophy Productivity

You Don’t Need More Time to Get Things Done

There was a task I was dragging for the last 2 years. Finally, I got it done this weekend.

So it’s not that I needed more time.

What I needed the most was – the right energy to decide to work on it.

And once I started working on it – I just needed to focus and commit until I finish it.

I hope we don’t keep telling ourselves and others the same old excuse – “I don’t have time”.

The right energy, focus, and commitment is more important than time to get things done.

Categories
Philosophy Sales

Just Do It, Together

Nike’s new Ad “You can’t stop us” deserves all the praise and attention as it’s an incredible achievement in video editing.

But I think they missed one thing.

They could have updated their tag line to – “Just do it, together”.

“Doing it together” is how we achieve greatness in our life.

Even if you’re playing an individual sport, you achieve greatness with a team of coaches, physicians, etc.

They may not be with you in the field, but you can’t perform and excel without their help.

Today’s modern sales is very similar.

Individual Sales reps don’t close deals on their own – especially in B2B SaaS or Enterprise solutions.

It takes a village.

Modern selling is “collaborative selling”.

It’s about how efficiently your team can collaborate with all key stakeholders to close a deal and serve a customer.

You will have to adopt tools that enable frictionless collaboration.

It will be your competitive advantage.

Just sell it, together.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Philosophy Productivity Startup

How to Get Unstuck and Motivated?

Are you feeling stuck and not motivated enough to finish your project? Not seeing enough progress or finish line in sight?

Here’s a simple operating principle that keeps me motivated even in the most uncertain projects.

Divide your project into smaller milestones.

Yes, it’s clichéd, but it’s still surprising how often people get stuck because they focus too much on the end goal.

They get overwhelmed, stressed, and lost. And that kills their motivation.

And that’s why – you need to set smaller milestones.

Ideally, a milestone should be accomplished in a few days or max 1-2 weeks.

No milestone should be longer than 2-3 weeks. If it feels it would take longer than a few weeks, then break it again.

Smaller milestones help you get something done.

It helps you accomplish smaller victories and build momentum.

And momentum fuels your motivation and keeps you going.