This is the full twenty third chapter of my book, and the fourth on money and business, from my book Awesomeness: An Amateur Potpourri of a How-To-Guide.
See part 22: Advanced Negotiating Techniques, here.
When I first began learning to play the guitar, the whole exercise was little more than a chore. Switching from one chord to the next was a tedious task that took so much time I couldn’t play anything that could possibly be confused with an actual song. It took close to a year before the guitar became something that I actually enjoyed to play.
Eventually, though, that all changed. I had finally mastered enough chords that I could play a variety of simple songs. Then I could play those songs easily. Then I could play them slightly more easily. Then, well, nothing. I plateaued into a pleasant mediocrity. All of a sudden, I had accomplished what I wanted and learned to play the guitar—sort of—and enjoyed playing it. But I wasn’t getting any better.
I didn’t start improving again until I started taking lessons that forced me to actually work at the fundamentals of the guitar in a way that wasn’t particularly enjoyable at first, but was ultimately highly rewarding. This is one of dozens of examples of the power of purposeful action over the more natural way we approach things
Gary Keller outlines the difference between what he calls the “entrepreneurial approach” with the “purposeful approach.” Here’s how he describes the former,
“Entrepreneurial is our natural approach. It’s seeing something we want to do or that needs to be done and racing off to do it with enthusiasm, energy, and our natural abilities. No matter the task, all natural ability has a ceiling of achievement, a level of productivity and success that eventually tops out.” [1]
On the other hand, the purposeful approach may not be as easy or natural, but it leads to spectacularly better results,
“Highly productive people don’t accept the limitations of their natural approach as the final word on their success. When they hit a ceiling of achievement, they look for new models and systems, better ways to do things to push them through.” [2]
This impeccably describes my experience with the guitar. No one naturally knows how to play the guitar, so at first I started out purposefully. I slowly and painfully learned one chord at a time. I painstakingly turned dissonant noise into tolerable music.
Then it became natural and easy. It became enjoyable as a matter of fact. And ironically, as soon as it became more than just a chore, I stopped improving. I starting using the entrepreneurial approach and just repeated what I had already learned over and over again. It wasn’t until I started to use the purposeful approach again that I finally started improving again. As Keller notes:
“Too many people reach a level where their performance is ‘good enough’ and then stop working on getting better. People on the path to mastery avoid this by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice.” [3]
We all have things we are naturally inclined towards and others we are not. I, for example, was naturally inclined toward the guitar because I love music. I am not naturally inclined toward computer programming. The mere concept of it bores me. So the key to finding a job or business that can become a career and a vocation is to find something we are naturally inclined toward. But that is only the first step because it produces the incentive to fall into our natural state. However, in our natural state, we cannot reach mastery, only mediocrity.
Robert Greene makes the case that in order to achieve mastery, one must become an apprentice of the masters in that field and “…the goal of [this] apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather a transformation of your mind and character.” [4] Personal transformations do not happen naturally.
I can all but guarantee that several parts of your life or career have fallen into a natural autopilot. In our real estate business as a whole, we had been slow with turning over units after tenants left because our maintenance staff already had their hands full, and our remodeling projects have taken the priority of our rehab staff. But this doesn’t make any sense; rehabs take longer than turnovers so we’re leaving money on the table.
At the same time, we can’t just fix the problem by snapping our fingers because there is a risk in losing focus by bouncing employees from rehab projects to turnovers and then back again over and over. The whole situation is less than ideal, yet it was a natural process that came about because the rehab projects are more “sexy” and don’t come up as erratically. So we decided to make turnover a priority and bring someone on staff specifically for turnover who would supplement maintenance or rehab as needed, not the other way around.
And as far as my personal life goes, well, I want to skip “leg day” just as much as the next guy.
[1] Gary Keller, The One Thing, Bard Publishing, Copyright 2013, Pg. 179
[2] Ibid., Pg. 180
[3] Gary Keller, The One Thing, Bard Publishing, Copyright 2013, Pg. 181-182
[4] Robert Greene, Mastery, Penguin Books, Copyright 2012, Pg. 55
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