The Billion Times Rule and How to Use It

Suppose you want to launch a startup, or some other world-changing innovation. You want to disrupt the blah blah market or fundamentally transform how people blah blah. Do it well, and maybe you can make a billion dollars. That’s the core of the argument, right?

Whatever you’re trying to do, you’re probably hoping to create dramatically more impact than you do today by launching something that didn’t exist before. And that added impact ought to create added dollars in your bank account. What if I told you that logic is backwards?

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The Behavior Change Hack I Use Every Day

Habits suck.

At least the bad ones do– the ones that take up space and crowd out the good ones. When we’re talking about creating better habits, we’re also talking about getting rid of the ones that allow us to resist the habits we really want, without even thinking about it.

Habits are routines that trigger cognitive autopilot, which feels effortless. So the trillion dollar question is:

How do we make the habits we want to have feel effortless,
while the habits we want to break already feel effortless?

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No One Does Anything for YOUR Reasons

I’d love to be more influential. I’ve read a lot about it, but I can’t seem to figure it out. I’m not the kind of person who oozes charisma. I don’t think I look the part, nor am I much of a smooth talker or extroverted life-of-the-party type. If I’m honest, I’m pretty dorky.

So why do I get asked to lead new projects? Why have people turned to me to orchestrate change? To run trainings? To grow sales? Why do I end up in positions of authority despite being the least-knowledgable (and never the smartest) person in the room?

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Learning is Destructive

Often, we think of learning as a purely additive experience. For example, if I read an article about parrot fish living on the Great Barrier Reef, when I previously didn’t know a thing about sea life off the coast of Australia, I gain something. It adds to my collection of facts, like a new piece of furniture in a room.

The same might go for some new fruit in the grocery store, a new app on my phone, or a handy new way to say “thank you” to a friend in Turkish. Life’s lessons, however, are rarely so simple. They aren’t like adding furniture to a room; they’re like moving walls and replacing doorways. To rebuild the room, something’s gotta feel the business end of a sledgehammer.

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Swimming in It (Part 3): Build Your Life Raft

When there is too much to do, or think, or finish (and there often is), the world won’t stop to wait for you. It won’t let you rest. It won’t let you focus. Only you can do that.

Many of the most successful people in the world maintain demanding schedules, juggle responsibilities and discover their peak performance by expertly managing their mornings. How I manage my mornings makes all the difference.

Build Your Life Raft with Routine

A morning routine accomplishes three key things:

  1. It frees you from decision-making, which preserves willpower.
  2. It gives you time to think, plan and act, before the day makes you react.
  3. It builds mindful awareness of what’s within your control and what isn’t.

Here’s my typical routine:

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Swimming in It (Part 2): Mind Like Water

The previous post was about silencing your critic with action; to flow freely in the context of the moment, rather than the imagined future context that your inner critic is protecting you from.

This post reveals a powerful reason why getting everything out of your head (letting your ideas, thoughts, feelings, preoccupations… flow onto paper) is more than just an inner critic judo move. It cultivates a ready mind.

I’ve never heard anyone put this better than David Allen, creator of Getting Things Done:

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Swimming in It (Part 1): Let It Flow

I listened to three podcasts while at the gym. I came back and discussed them with my wife. Weighted down with juicy fruit ripe for the picking, my head was swimming.

It’s going to be easy to write in the morning, I thought. That’s what I thought.

In the space between a creative spark and a public proof of work are layers of evaluation and editing. There’s vague, imagined possibility, and then there’s concrete, specific actuality. To say that translating thinking into doing can be a challenge is a gross understatement.

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But It’s Only Just Mostly Dead!

Listen, if you’re trying to get a startup off the ground, learn a new skill, change a habit, or otherwise make rapid, large scale changes in your work or personal life, you need to let things go.

You can’t accumulate demands on your time and attention and expect anything to go better than it went before. Like when you make a task list that’s too long? You never get it done. So what happens the next day? It’s longer. But Future You is magic, right? Future You can do more shit in less time. Not like lazy Yesterday You. What a loser.

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The Spaces Between

What do you do when you’re not working? When you aren’t at your most “productive?”

What do you do in the spaces between the appointments on your calendar or the tasks on your list?

Dr. Jim Loehr, world-renowned performance psychologist and author of 16 books, including, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, has discovered that the highest performers manage the spaces between the work.

While coaching some of the best tennis players in the world, Dr. Loehr immersed himself in movement and behavior on the court. What made the best better than the rest? After over 100 hours of study, he couldn’t see it.

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Do you want to make the change or keep the belief? (Part 1)

Let’s say you want to be a runner. You want the health benefits that come with it: losing weight, looking good at the beach, lowering your blood pressure, having more energy, thinking more clearly, etc.

But you don’t start. Or you do start every now and then, but never follow through on a consistent basis. Why not? You say you want to be a runner! Do you? Then why don’t you run?!

The last time I took a run seriously was a half marathon in 2013. (Nearly five years ago.) Prior to that, I had quit running around 2006, while in the best running shape of my life. I told myself I didn’t feel like it anymore.

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