There is a tendency to think of success as being composed of a few huge wins or strokes of luck. However, it’s equally possible to achieve success via a series of very small wins compounded over a very long period of time.
One of the secrets to winning at the game – whatever your game of choice is – is turning your daily habits into small wins that are so easy you can’t possibly lose. Over a long period of time, these wins will compound below the surface, and you’ll eventually achieve grand, “instant” success. At which point everyone around you will be scratching their heads, wondering how you got so lucky.
Here’s how to win the game every day, by doing things you can’t lose:
Boil Things Down. Remove All Barriers.
When it comes to goal setting and habit building, most people start too large:
- “I want to write 5 books this year.”
- “I want to put on 30 pounds of muscle.”
- “I want to become a millionaire.”
Not only are these goals likely too big, they’re also too vague. They are intoxicatingly grandiose. They give you a brief high without requiring you to actually construct an action plan in order to achieve them.
It’s great to think about what you want, but you must then formulate and simplify a path to get there. How? Break your path forward into the smallest possible steps and habits, things that you can perform every single day without fail.
Find the simplest single action that will get you to your goal, and create the easiest daily version of it possible. This action or habit should be so ridiculously easy that you’d feel like an idiot for not doing it every single day. This is how you remove all barriers and fool yourself into winning the game.
For example:
- No one wants to write 2000 words a day (except for Stephen King). So instead, commit to writing 300. On some days, you’ll find that you keep going and write 1000-2000.
- No one wants to meditate 30 minutes a day. Instead, commit to sitting on a meditation cushion after you shower, and taking just 10 deep breaths. That’s it. Again, if you want to go further, you can. But you don’t have to.
Embrace the Virtue of Laziness
Here’s a secret I’ll share just with you: I’m fundamentally a very lazy person. I really can only be bothered to work a few hours a day. I’d rather work out, read, play guitar, play Pokemon, cook something, etc.
And yet, I’m simultaneously more productive and prolific than many people who work longer and harder than me. How can we reconcile this?
It’s simple: if you concentrate your efforts on the things that actually move the needle, and take some action towards them every day, you will soon see that 20% of tasks help you “win the game” and 80% of tasks do not. Then it’s simply a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff and doubling down on the tasks that move you forward.
And let’s be clear: 80% of the things people do during their workday do not help move the needle. I’d bet that 80% of your time that you believe is spent “working hard” is probably being wasted.
As someone who makes most of my income from writing, all I really need to do each day is write. If that’s all I get done, I win the game. Emails, meetings, administrative stuff – sure, these things have their role in the game. But they’re not what generates most of the winnings.
As long as I write something and ship it (publish it, send it to a client, repurpose it, etc) I can spend the rest of the day goofing off, doing whatever I want. I’ve already won.
So find out what actually moves the needle for you, and make doing that thing the focal point of your day. You can then afford to adopt a lazy attitude toward everything else.
Your Only Job: Let Your Small Wins Compound
Now that you’ve found a small task that can deliver massive results, and made it so simple that it’s easy to do every single day, all you have to do is: consistently do that thing.
For your small activity to compound into massive results, you must do it consistently. This is the simplest step, and yet also the hardest. Abandoned projects don’t compound. So stick with it.
Don’t overcomplicate this. Don’t stray from the path. As Nike says: Just do it. Do it every day. Or do it 5 days a week. Do it first thing in the morning, or do it before bed.
The only rule – your only job – is that you must do it.
Create some kind of tracking or reward system if it helps you. Jerry Seinfeld used to use a calendar, on which he’d draw a big red X for each day that he finished his writing:
“After a few days, you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
Jerry Seinfeld
It’s all about momentum.
If you find yourself skipping or procrastinating, go back to the early pieces of advice above. Make the thing even simpler and easier.
Beat 99% of Other Players – Just By Showing Up & Finishing
Doing the thing is hard at first, but once you do it consistently, your success is all but guaranteed. It’s simply the law of averages. Most people don’t show up consistently, and most people don’t finish consistently. They never even begin, or they throw the project out halfway through.
This is good news for you. By simply taking action and finishing, you are already ahead of the rest. If you can go on to do this consistently, for years, you will be in a league of your own. People will wonder how you are so prolific, so productive. They will ask how you get so many ideas, how you find the time, what your secret is. At which point the choice is up to you: you can either share this piece with them, or keep the secret to yourself.
But even this secret knowledge is useless if you don’t take action. So go do your thing. Win the game with ease every day.