EPT
But when it comes down to the execution of it, this is a game of intensity, stamina and effectiveness.
Value of Intensity
REGARDLESS how more skilled someone is, or more talented, intensity can make up the ground for it.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Gattaca, I actually named my son after the actor Ethan Hawke for this movie and 2 others (before sunset, before sunrise). In the movie, Ethan is the older brother who was born 'naturally' in a time where genetic birth modification was possible; he is born with a heart defect and relatively short for that time period; whereas his younger brother was born with the optimal genetic combination of both their parents.
I won't get into the plot, but Ethan's younger brother does everything better than Ethan and they always played this game of chicken where they would see who could swim out the farthest to the sea. Ethan's younger brother always won, except one day, one day Ethan won that race and actually carried his brother back and then disappear after than and followed his own dreams.
At the end of the film, after many years later, they reunite and Ethan's brother asks, 'how did you beat me that day?' And Ethan says, 'I never saved anything for the swim back...' Intensity...
Intensity makes up for lack of talent
When I was in high school, I was small, and I went out for 7's rugby union as a freshman in the fall; but there was an issue that, there wasn't a junior team, only a senior team, so I had to train with the seniors and while I would never play 7's, I was guaranteed a spot on the 15's in the Spring. I got destroyed, the physical difference between a 17/18 year and a 13/14 year old is considerable and they didn't hold back. But I learned quickly and was a star, the thing I had most though from that first year, was intensity, I was the smallest the weakest, but I never accepted that I couldn't play with the the big boys, I knew I wasn't going to score, but I could contribute and as long as people didn't know I was weak, I wasn't a liability on the pitch/field.
By the time I was a senior, I was eating kids for breakfast, by the time was varsity in university, I had a reputation for playing as if I was 2 people. And all this time, I thought I was really talented, but in fact, I wasn't. By the time I was 24 or so, I realized that after a game, I took much more time to recover and I had many more injuries than some other star players on the team. By the time I was 26, I knew I wasn't talented enough to be at an international level for more than a couple of years, simply because my body couldn't handle the punishment. By 27 my career was over. But during my time, it was my intensity which allowed me to play at the highest level, to play with ex-internationals and for them to respect me as one of their own. By that time, I knew I wasn't the most talented, I didn't have that innate ability to get the best performance and come out unhurt. No, I might have looked like a tough sonavabitch after a game, but damn I did not want to get into any bar fights, I could barely move my neck at times. But I had that intensity of walking on that field and saying, 'I'm here, and I don't care if I live or die on this pitch, this is war.'
So, intensity is short is the ability to put a true 100% effort every time you work, which is actually quite a feat. Imagine every time you lifted weights you did it until complete failure, or you run a race to place or you are running from the North Koreans who are going to shoot you, trust me, you'll actually be running at 100%. So we want to be 100% in what we do, but, we really don't put in 100% into nearly everything we do, but when we do, it covers a lot of competitive space.
Stamina via Routine
When you compete, part of discipline is this Intensity, but intensity is impossible to maintain over long periods of time by 'force of will'. Sure we can hype ourselves up, listen to some heavy metal or gangster rap or pretend we are rocky or something like that, but in the end, you just burn out. Intensity needs to be on a foundation of Stamina.
Stamina, its the ability to maintain the same level of performance over a long period of time. In professional dog fighting, they have 2 terms: mouth and game. If a dog got 'mouth' then he can finish a fight, he got the bite power, he smart, when get locks on, the only reason why he unlocks his jaw is to get a deeper bite; and there is 'game' if a dog got game, he can keep attacking and attacking endlessly to get that opportunity to use his 'mouth'.
Now in the case of stamina for competition, it is ONLY gain through ROUTINE. I don't care how smart you are, how much you can focus, if you don't have a daily competitive routine in your life, then you will burn out or you will not be consistent. I'm not talking about time management here, I'm talking about making the every day things you do in a routine regular way so that it allows you to be in a stable frame of mind and health so that when you turn on that intensity, its not a leap from zero to sixty, but you're always at that 30 mark, just ready to kick it into high gear, but its an easy 30, you're just cruising at that speed, no wasted gas or effort.
A Routine to Clear and Balance Yourself
At many of the top fortune 500 companies, the CEO and the top executives work out or run 5 miles in the morning, every morning before 7:30. The eat breakfast at the same time, they get into the office and have a very minor routine of things they do first, email, paper, coffee.
Now this all sounds so boring, but what it does is that it eliminates any minor distractions and things that do come up unexpectedly can be dealt with, with their full attention. It as though, you're always prepared to simply leave everything as it is and go right into the issue.
When you're not routine, all the little things in life add up, you can't work now cause your hungry, you feel bloated cause you didn't work out for 3 days, you're tired cause you when to bed at 3 am, just because. And when there is an issue that requires your intensity, all these little things either nag you at the back of your mind or else will effect your overall performance, because you're not at your best.
No Routine, Welcome to Burnout Country
The reality is for most people who are competitive and don't have routine is that they are walking time bombs. The only way to be truly competitive is to have some type of stable routine in your life, and those people who are competitive without it, they usually simply take on more and more tasks, until the tasks force them to be routine in a kind of perverse way.
It's perverse because instead of you making a routine, you've let the number of project deadlines and email requests dictate your schedule, thus, you do get in a routine, but its not productive and the intensity you put into dealing with all these projects is not focused and in the end a sure way to burn out. You check email 15 times a day to respond to, you have a really important deadline each week, because you have 6 different projects going on, etc.
Needless to say, work shouldn't be like that all the time, a major deadline once a month, or major deadlines in a single intense project every week for just 2 months, but not a deadline every week for the entire year, that is just nuts, and I'm not talking about some task, I mean a deadline that if it is not executed properly, you fuck up your firm's bottom line or can fuck up your career.
We Need Routine as Organic Beings
So, routine, life is just easier with it and it builds stamina because at the end of the day, there is only so much the body can handle and if we are always living as if we are problem solving even the minor things in our life (which are as important for us to function as physical mental humans, like eating right, exercise, maintaining good relationships with others, even entertaining ourselves); then how long do you expect to be able to perform at your best when all the little things are just building up.
So what to do, how to start.
1. One time, just go to bed at 9:30 pm, just one time.
2. You'll wake up at 5 or 6 am, you may say, I'm not a morning person, bullshit, everyone is a morning person, its just that they haven't woken up that early since they were 6 years old.
3. Stretch and do a set of exercises that you can do over the next week for 15 mins; 10 push ups, 10 sit ups X 5 (or whatever you can handle)
4. See what time it is: take a shower
5. Get a coffee or tea or whatever, sit down, get out a note book, and write out all things you need to do today and put the time it takes and when you are going to do it.
6. leave you house and do your day, keep note of when you leave.
Now repeat for a week. Try to get up at the same time, do the same thing, and leave the house at the same time.
Eventually that note book's tasks will become more accurate, eventually your routine will extend throughout the day, and you'll tweak your exercises etc.
Do it for 3 weeks, it will be a habit for life and I tend to do that when its time for me to start working like a mofo, when I'm relaxing at home or on vacation or whatever, I don't have routine and I get fat, lazy and disorganized, when I take one good nights early sleep and start it, I'm a freaking competitive monster in about 2 weeks.
Discipline's result is Effectiveness
The last point here is effectiveness, ok so you've got your intensity, you get on your task and you just do it and you have a great routine so when it's time to work, you have no distractions and you always have a good idea of what to do; now effectiveness is ensuring that you've optimize your intensity/stamina for your tasks.
1. You touch something, you finish it. don't fucking open the email and say I'll do it afterwards, no you open that email, you reply to it. And if you say, well what if it requires more time and thought? then I say, think faster you idiot, wtf kind of excuse is that, if they send you something in a email text, then how long will it really take.
2. Only do 5 major tasks a day. You may have 10 or 15 things to do, but if you try, you can't do them all properly, break down the task into 5 key things you must fucking do. And trust me, even 5 is a lot.
3. Don't waste time complaining, take a blank sheet of paper, write out the time you have left in the day in 30 min increments then put in your tasks and then try to stick to it and then when you do it, cross it off. Try to be generous in your estimates, then try to beat the time you've put allotted down, its the same thing as setting your clock 5 mins faster, you know it's 5 mins faster, but hell, it still helps you to be on time, cause it reminds you that you are normally a late mofo.
4. If you don't know what you are doing, then say, I DON'T KNOW and figure it out. If it is a creative task and you are stumped, go do something else and before you go to bed, write out the problem on a blank sheet of paper, when you wake up you'll have the solution. If you just don't have all the data, stop everything and find as much source documentation you can, then print it all out, and read it all first. If someone isn't working hard enough, don't be nice, say, 'I need you to do this and this, and I need by this time' be clear, people are not as competitive or attentive, if they want to be like that, its fine, but you can't expect everyone to be a superstar, just be clear with your expectations and deadlines.
Consistent High Level Performance ftw
So, this is all discipline, why, because it requires you maintain some level of consistent performance. You need to be intense in what you do, but if you just do it on force of will, you won't know when you've step over that line of being professional intense or just a burned out psychotic workaholic (I obviously I have been the latter most of my professional life) and you are engaged in a highly competitive environment, NO ONE IS THAT GOOD, that they can do this without some kind of routine to provide mental and physical stability for the stamina to keep on doing it at the same level. And lastly, if you got lots of game, but no mouth, then how the hell are you gonna get those results? that 'mouth' is that effectiveness, you have a task, break it down and take real steps forward, or else you will be just caught up in your own workload of doing dick all.
Everything I write here, it is hard to begin, but once you do it, it become easier until it's just natural. The flip side is to become to routine, but I don't think that really applies here to those who are naturally more intelligent and who would play 3 hours of SC anyways. Thing is, you will have years where you are routine, then something crazy happens then you need to get back into the routine, its life, it will happen, but you need to get back on that horse of discipline eventually and the sooner you do it, the better because Discipline is only things saving your ass from burn out.
Life is Nuts, but Sometimes you can Leave the Nuts Behind
My last point is this; sometimes in life, we have people who fuck up our routine because they are crazy or miserable or just want us to fail so they will do anything they can to fuck us up, either your mom just is nuts or your friends like to go out at night and do random dumb things. Sometimes in life, you have to make a decision to cut yourself off from these kinds of distractions and get your routine down and then slowly let them back in. You shouldn't hang out with miserable unfortunate people as friends unless you are their aid worker and if you want to move up, then you do it.
The movie 8 miles with Eminem has him trying to score it big and when he finally does, his boys say, lets go out and celebrate, and you know what he says, 'sorry boys, I gotta go back and work at the factory and keep my shift'.
Boys, don't hang out with the losers and when you got your routine, its an engine that will take you step by step closer to wherever you wanna go.
Cheers.
