Blaz Kos

the execution mode

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  • Apathy before finding your fit

    Finding your best personal fit in different areas of life is probably the most important thing to do if you want to prosper and be happy. When you find something that you know is right for you, you get motivated, you’re willing to accept all challenges, your outlook becomes positive, and so on. You know you’ve put the ladder against the right wall and you’re ready to start climbing.

    I’ve seen people working in companies where they fit in and where they don’t. The difference in their level of happiness, productivity, motivation etc. is like day and night. I’ve seen people struggle with a sport just because it was supposed to help them lose weight the fastest, and people who were doing sports they are talented for and really like. The first ones gave up very soon, the second ones made real lifestyle changes. I’ve seen people who settled for the first partner they dated as well as people who made up their minds about what kind of a partner they want and then started searching until they found someone close to that. The probability of long-term happiness is much higher for the latter. That’s why finding your personal fit is so important.

    Same goes for all other areas of your life. The prerequisite for being successful in life, no matter in which area, is finding your own fit. Values (what you find important) are those that determine whether you fit with something or not. When you find the right fit, passion awakens in you. You find yourself in something. You know that you can be successful in this. You see potential. It makes you happy.

    Few people are so lucky in life that they just find the right fit by chance, without going through a long and hard process. Even rarer are people who understand that they’re persisting at something that isn’t their fit, and that’s one of the main reasons why they’re miserable and unhappy. Unfortunately, the fake feeling of security and clinging to certainty usually prevail over going on an adventure to find a better fit. People lock themselves in a safe to feel safe. But who was ever happy and successful while locked in a safe?

    Process versus event

    The fact that people usually prefer to stay miserable in a company, a relationship etc. than to find a better fit for themselves shows that the process of finding a new better fit is not that easy. It takes a lot of courage, a really good strategy, knowing yourself, being prepared to learn from failure and much more. It forces you to stand up again and again after life knocks you down.

    Finding the perfect fit is the first important milestone towards a final event, an outcome you want. But a process always comes before every event that you want to achieve in life. Just remember the saying that the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Most events that people achieve (getting rich, marrying the right person, working for an awesome company…) are usually the result of a carefully orchestrated process. It’s easier to see an event as luck for other people, but in most cases it’s not.

    Getting rich is an event. Working hard on developing your business idea, finding the product/market fit, building a dream team, raising funds and then solidly executing for years is a process that leads to that final event; if you do it smartly enough.

    The process is painful and takes time. Most people aren’t willing to invest into the process, because it just takes too much will, stamina and hard work. But if you settle for the average, if you take what life hands you on a platter, you usually get an average life; and average is not good. Average isn’t even close to good and even less close to great.

    Process versus fit

    As we’ve figured out, the process of coming to an event, the final outcome you desire, isn’t that easy. If you want to get rich, there’s so much to learn, you have to be really good with money, you won’t get rich only by having a job (except for rare occupations), and so on. If you want to get really fit, you have to invest an enormous amount of your time and energy into diet and exercise. Before every great outcome, there is a long and vigorous process.

    The process of getting to your desired event (final outcome) has two phases (and more sub-phases but more about that in another post):

    • The first phase is before you find your fit (search mode)
    • The second phase is after you find your fit (execution mode)

    The search mode is the hardest. After finding your fit, things get a little easier. You still have a long way to go, but you feel a little bit safer. Managing execution and growth isn’t easy, but things get much less painful emotionally and psychologically. It’s simply because you know that you’re fighting for the right thing. You’re motivated to fight. You see the first results and every early win motivates you to do more.

    It’s much easier to go through all the daily challenges and tasks if you love the company you work for or own. It’s much easier to fight for a relationship if you know that you really fit well together with the person. It’s much easier to keep on working on your weight loss schedule, if you see changes on your body and feel much better, while doing sports and eating things you love at the same time.

    The process before you find your fit is the really painful part of it. We can call it the apathy before finding your fit. You try new things, they don’t work. You think you’ve found something good, and in the next step, you realize you haven’t. This starting phase really is best described with the quote that success is going from failure to failure without giving up.

    The process before you find your fit really sucks. It sucks even more because at the beginning, you’re a newbie and your character and skills aren’t that good. You’re a beginner and you have to face the toughest challenges. For example, you’ve just gathered the courage to start dating, but your dating skills suck, so you get rejected again and again. But it’s the necessary part. It’s the life test of whether you really want something and whether you’re prepared to fight for it. It’s the part of the process where you learn and develop the most.

    Before you find your fit, a part of the process enables you to learn a lot about yourself and the world; if you do it systematically and scientifically. “At least I’ve learned something new” can often be an excuse for failure, but validated learning is pure gold. If you get to know yourself better, if you better understand what you really want in life, the limitations the world has for you etc., they will all enable you to perform better in the long term. First, you have to understand.

    Time perspective

    The worse that your starting position is, the more time it’ll take to find your fit. The worse your starting position is, the longer the apathy will probably last. Just to clarify, the worse position simply means that you don’t yet know yourself and what you really want, but even more so a lack of resources (inner and outer), an absence of leverages (market trends, social capital etc.) and being in an environment that doesn’t support your goals (going against the flow).

    Nevertheless, let’s look at some averages that most people need to get through the process and achieve the final event in different areas of life:

    • In the start-up world, it usually takes one to three years to find the product/market fit (search mode) and then around five to seven years to build a stable company (execution mode). In total, up to ten years.
    • In business life, it usually takes changing three to five companies (search mode) to find the right one and then around three to six years (execution mode) to achieve the career plateau. When reaching the plateau, it’s time to do some changes, of course. Before even really starting out in business, it usually takes trying three to five different positions to find one thing you’re really good at.
    • In personal life, it usually takes dating seven to ten people to find one to really commit to. After a few months of dating, you know each other well enough to know how well you fit together (the search mode ends). If you decide to stay together, decades of different execution phases wait for you (decorating home, having kids, raising kids, retiring…). You may find out that you don’t fit together anymore, especially between different execution phases, and you’ll have to go back into the search mode. Not fitting together simply means that there is no more real love or that you don’t function well together in everyday life.
    • It usually takes testing three to four different diets to figure out what works best for your body. For every diet, you need between three and six months to see how you feel and how your body is responding. It usually takes trying from five to seven different sports to find the one that fits you best. In the execution phase, you need the discipline to stick to the optimal diet and the best-fitted sport. You can see the first results in around four to six months (losing weight, feeling better etc.), but to become really fit, for example fit enough to be on a magazine cover, it takes around two to five years of exercising five times per week and counting calories daily. It’s not easy.
    • On average, we need around one to two years to learn how the monetary system works and to really understand different saving and investment opportunities, assuming we read about it for a few hours per week. We have to be prepared to lose around $10,000 on different products before figuring out our investment strategy and investment opportunities that best fit our character.
    • It takes around two to three years to develop a new skill. If you want to learn how to program, how to lead people, speak a new language or any other skill, it will take you a few years of focus to develop an average level. But if you really want to master something and be amongst the best in the world, it’ll take you around 10,000 hours (eight to ten years).

    As you can see, it usually takes years of searching and then years of execution to achieve the desired outcome. It’s not easy, but once you do it, you open a whole new possibility for living a really quality life and achieving your maximum potential.

    Surviving apathy

    Surviving apathy is no easy job, especially if your starting point sucks. There aren’t many people who can do it and don’t give up too fast. That’s why we have so few people who can pose for a magazine cover, so few people who own successful businesses, so few rich people and so few people who are happily married. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

    Some people are lucky and born in families with many resources (inner, outer), some people are lucky and find their fit very naturally, for example by winning the lottery, but for most of us, life wants us to fight. The fair part of today’s world is that if you want it badly enough, you have the chance to fight and really achieve it. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. That’s also how you develop your character, that’s how you grow, that’s how you really deserve what you have.

    Since it’s not that easy to do it, you have to be smart about it. You need an environment that’ll help you achieve your goals and keep you disciplined. So let’s look at some techniques to help you survive the apathy before finding your fit, without giving up.

    Don’t be naïve

    First of all, you shouldn’t be naïve. You have to be aware that it’ll probably take a few years of searching and a few years of execution to achieve your big final outcome. There are no shortcuts. Don’t be soft and naïve. Manage your expectations. Master the rules of life.

    Long-term view

    You have to see all the rewards that will come in the long term. You have to see all the inner resources you’ll acquire (skills, psychological capital etc.) as well as the outer resources (renown, wealth…), and you will deserve both based on your own work. It’s what’s worth living for. The harder road will become easy.

    Validated learning

    In the search mode, you have to reflect and write down what you’ve learned about yourself and your environment. You have to see your progress when systematically and scientifically learning about yourself and the world. You haven’t failed, you’ve just found one way that doesn’t work for you.

    Supporting environment

    Have visual aids for your desired outcome (pictures, wallpapers…). Have people around you who understand and support you. Build your personal mastermind group. Cut off all people who drag you down. Talk with other people who are going through the same process and support each other. Read biographies.

    See it as an adventure

    You do only live once. You want to experience as many things as possible. You don’t want to do anything really stupid, but you also don’t want to live a boring life. By searching for new things, you should feel a little bit like an explorer on an adventure. And never forget: with time, the harder road becomes easy and the easier road becomes hard.

  • Different speeds in life

    A very useful concept in life to understand is that you don’t have to do everything with the same speed. Sometimes going fast means being the least productive at all. Knowing how to slow down enables you to enjoy life more, build a better life strategy and, in the long run, allows you to be even more productive. The concept of using different speeds in life is important in personal as well as business life.

    Different speeds in your personal life

    There are things in life that you should do extremely slowly and there are things you should do extremely fast. The measurement for that is pretty simple. The more enjoyable an activity or a person is, the more your senses are engaged, the slower your pace should be. In situations like that, we’re unproductive if we rush, because we’re simply missing life. Stopping in the moment, engaging all the senses and enjoying life to the full is the most productive thing we can do sometimes.

    You can throw a tasty meal into yourself, just to make sure you’ve eaten something, or you can slow down, be grateful for the food, taste every bite and enjoy your meal to the full. You can just spend some time with your kid/spouse because it’s expected of you, or you can slow down and really pay full attention to a person with your body, mind, emotions and soul. You can just climb the mountain to conquer it or you can stop at the top and really enjoy the view.

    There are also things in life that you should do extremely fast. There are things in life you should automate. There are things in life you shouldn’t give any attention to at all. You should still do everything professionally and as it should be done, but you should make sure that it takes a minimal amount of your time, money and effort. Things like cleaning, bureaucracy, worrying, procrastinating etc.

    We also shouldn’t forget about things that you should sometimes do fast and sometimes slowly, depending on the situation. For example, having sex or doing sports. Doing it at different paces brings a whole different life experience. Maybe you should introduce a day into your life when you perform things that you usually do fast slowly and vice versa, just to be creative and to experience life in a new way.

    It’s not easy to slow down, especially if you were just doing something with maximum speed. Usually, you have to first consciously decide that you’ll slow down. It helps if you have, for example, a thing that you do as a signal to your body and mind to slow down, like taking five deep breaths. The second thing you usually have to do is unplug yourself from all communication devices and distractions. And thirdly, you have to trust yourself that everything will be okay, even if you slow down. You are not missing anything if you slow down when necessary – you start missing things if you don’t.

    Different speeds in your professional life

    Using different speeds is also very important in the business world. First of all, the concept of time management doesn’t only deal with managing your time, but also your energy. Thus it’s very important to adjust your speed to the energy level you have on a specific day.

    Sometimes you have a day when you’re extremely productive, other days it simply doesn’t work. Forcing yourself to work at your maximum speed when your energy levels are low only means hurting and doing damage to yourself. In the long run, your productivity decreases if you push yourself too hard. You have to sharpen the saw from time to time.

    It’s definitely true that it’s almost impossible to be successful and respected if you aren’t hard-working, fast, productive and you don’t deliver results. Execution skills, efficiency and speed are an important part of success in today’s fast moving and constantly changing world. But it’s also true that it’s not the hardest-working people who are at the top. A lot of research has shown that success doesn’t come only from being competent and hard-working.

    You also need to work smart. If you want superior results in life, you need a superior strategy. But to build a superior strategy, you need to slow down, you need to take time, you need to think, you need to self-reflect on your actions. In situations like this, slowing down means going the fastest possible. What good is it if you are rushing in the wrong direction?

    An important part of a superior strategy and success are also innovation and creativity. If you want to be successful, you have to be different and better. Creativity rarely happens when you’re rushing or you’re tense and in an anxious state. Creativity happens when you’re in the flow. Again, slowing down when you need to be creative may be the best move that brings you to the optimal speed.

    Going slow in the search mode

    When you’re in the search mode, you should definitely slow down. The search mode is about trying new things and reflecting on whether something works for you or not. To reflect well on something, you need to be in touch with yourself, you need to listen to your inner voice and to your emotions. You have to understand what a true part of you is and what inherited or social bullshit is. To do that, you have to go as slowly as possible. In the search mode, you play and you usually play relaxed and slow.

    But when you find your fit and start executing, you must accelerate. Speed is very important for winning, if you use it at the right time. Nevertheless, when it’s time to go fast, you should also constantly have a feedback mechanism that tells you if you’re going into the right direction. When the feedback tells you that you aren’t going in the right direction, you need to slow down and go back to the search mode to do reflection, build a new strategy and adapt. You should be prepared to speed up and slow down as many times as necessary in life.

    Driving through a day with different speeds

    The most important part of everything we’ve talked about is becoming aware that going through a day is like driving, in professional as well as private life. There are moments when you have to drive fast because you are on a highway, there are moments when you have to wait in a traffic jam, there are moments when you have to refill the gas tank and there are moments when you have to stop, just to take in the amazing view or have a chat with an awesome person.

    Don’t do everything in life fast or slowly. Don’t do everything in life with the same speed. Accelerate when necessary, or slow down. It will enable you to be much more productive, happy and successful. Different situations, different activities, different speed. Life is not a marathon or a sprint. Life is a combination of all kinds of running as well as taking a rest. For every activity you do, ask yourself: what is the optimal speed I should be going with?

  • Setting strong foundations

    The higher the skyscraper you want to build, the stronger foundations you need. Without strong foundations, the skyscraper will collapse sooner or later. It’s the same with achieving your goals in life. The more ambitious goals you have, no matter in which area of life, the stronger foundations you’ll have to build.

    The secret to setting strong foundations lies in Bruce Lee’s quote:

    “I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times.”

    Building strong foundations is a process. It takes patience and time, and you must do all the boring work over and over again. The skyscraper that everyone admires is the final result. Without the process, there is no final result.

    We all want the final result without the process. We all want our skyscraper without putting the effort into building it floor by floor and even more than that: we want it without setting strong foundations. Because it’s hard to set strong foundations. Extremely hard. But without strong foundations, without putting in the effort to build firmly floor by floor, there is no skyscraper to admire. At least not in the long-term.

    The stories in the media may fool you. There are exceptions in the world. Hollywood actors, teenagers selling their start-up for millions, winners of talent shows etc. But Hollywood is also a city of broken dreams. Silicon Valley is also a place of broken business dreams.

    There are thousands of failed start-ups for every one that had been sold, you can see millions of talented people on every talent discovery show but there are only a few who become famous. People love to read and watch overnight stories, because they give hope that it can be done without hard work. But hope is not a strategy, setting strong foundations is. It’s a strategy that brings overnight success, but only after years of hard work.

    Setting strong foundations

    Setting strong foundations in different areas of life

    It’s time to look at some practical examples.

    If you want to have a fit and healthy body, you must build strong foundations first. No pain, no gain could be the worst advice ever, if you don’t have strong foundations. You can seriously hurt yourself. Believe me, I’ve experienced it.

    Practical examples

    Health

    Going to the gym and pushing yourself to the maximum, doing hyper-intensive training, cross-fit or any other extreme form of exercise will break your body sooner or later, if you lack strong foundations. Your skyscraper will collapse and you’ll go many steps backwards.

    Strong foundations regarding your body are strong core, flexibility, good condition, warming up and cooling down, doing enough stretching, preparing your body for effort, increasing the amount of weight you lift bit by bit, good posture etc.

    Yoga and Pilates and planking and swimming and doing some sports in nature, like hiking, can help you build strong foundations. If you’ve been doing sports from a young age, maybe your strong foundations are already there; if not, you’ll have to start with the basics.

    Wealth

    The same goes for money. It doesn’t matter how much you earn, the thing that matters most is how much you save. If you can’t save money when you earn a little, you’ll never save money when you earn a lot. There’s a saying that if you can’t save money, the seeds of becoming wealthy are simply not in you.

    That may be true, but it’s also true that you can always improve, grow and change your behaviour. So if you don’t have it yet, you can seed the seeds in greatness in you with self-improvement.

    Look at the statistics for lottery winners. Most of them go back to being broke in a few years. Because they don’t have strong foundations. They start spending like crazy and have no money management skills. The large amount of money brings them happiness only for a short period of time. After they go broke, they’re usually less happy than before winning the lottery. Strong foundations are the ones that work in the long term.

    To lay down strong foundations regarding money, you have to start small. Pay yourself first. When you get your paycheck, put a small percentage of it to your savings account. Sell stuff you don’t need, start curbing you impulse buying decisions etc. Read about different types of investments.

    Become financially educated. Challenge your beliefs and money blueprint. There are many things you can and should do. Step-by-step, feeling proud of yourself for having a strategy and sticking to it.

    Career

    Let’s continue. If you want to have a promising career, you need to build strong foundation. Strong foundations are hashtag (#) shaped skills. You need to develop soft skills, like good communication skills, team work, networking skills and all other soft skills that are very important today.

    You also need general knowledge about a specific industry you’ve chosen to create in and add value to. These are your strong foundations. Based on that, you need to become an expert and develop a specific skill for which there is a great demand on the market and a short supply of. If you have two different kinds of expert skills that you can combine, your career potential is probably even better.

    Realtionships

    In order to have good key relationships in your life, you need strong foundations. That means having good communication skills, a great capacity for love, empathy and so on. If you want to receive, you have to know how to give.

    If you want to be empowered by other people, you must empower other people. If you want to be loved, you need to love yourself first.

    Why setting strong foundations is hard

    Setting strong foundations also means tackling all the problems that prevent you from building your beautiful skyscraper that everyone will admire. If you want to lay down strong foundations, you have to dig first. You have to dig deep and while doing it, clean all the shit out (but don’t confuse this metaphor with the saying that you have to stop digging if you are in troubles).

    I’m talking about all cognitive distortions, fears, mental bugs and other inherited and imparted psychological crap we all have to face. Much as you have to build a strong foundation on the physical level to be healthy, so you have to build strong foundations on your mental, emotional and spiritual level to be successful in all other areas of life.

    Setting strong foundations can also be fun, not only boring and straining. For example, you can improve your intellectual capacity by learning how to play an instrument, trying to draw, playing Scrabble, reading books, solving Sudoku or crossword puzzles, maybe you can learn how to program and so on. There are many ways for how you can train to lay down strong foundations; and you may enjoy some of these ways.

    For finding exercises that you enjoy in life and that will help you to lay down strong foundations, you can use the search mode concept. You can try, you can experiment, you can reflect and listen to yourself, to see what suits you best.

    Your skyscraper is never really finished

    It doesn’t matter if you’re setting strong foundations, building your skyscraper floor by floor or fine polishing on the roof, you should know when you are in the search mode and when you are in the execution mode.

    Even after setting the strong foundation, there are always new challenges in life, new setbacks, new obstacles, new ways of doing things etc., that require of you to go back into the search mode and learn. You have to continuously improve yourself. Your work is never really finished until your last breath.

    Homework

    Everything starts with a strong foundation. Use the search mode concept to help you identify all the activities that will help you lay down strong foundations. Execute it and build them to be as strong as possible. Strong like concrete.

    Go back to the search mode and experiment and learn about what would be the best way for you to build the skyscraper as high as possible. Execute it, with agile sprints and by being in the flow. When you face a setback, go back into the search mode and by experimenting, discover new ways of building your skyscraper even higher. That is a superior strategy in life.

    And remember, if you start to feel like your skyscraper is shaking, climb down, look at your foundations and strengthen them if necessary. Don’t let your life collapse because you’re greedy or want too much too soon. Don’t be afraid to progress slowly, be afraid to stop.

    Now start digging and building concrete strong foundations in the area of life you’ve disregarded the most.

  • Focus

    In today’s complex world, there are two very important concepts that bring real progress in life. The first one is called focus and the second one is called pushing yourself through doubt, insecurities and other C.R.A.P. – criticism, rejections, assholes, pressure; but only if you do it at the right time in the right kind of way.

    You can find many misconceptions and different views in books and blog posts, arguing over whether focus and pushing yourself are important in life. Thus let’s look at a few different life situations and analyze them to clarify what makes sense and what doesn’t when it comes to pushing and focusing yourself.

    In this blog post we will answer the question if you should focus yourself in life or not, or to be more precise when to do it?

    Focus yourself

    Focusing on focus

    Let’s start with focus is and what focus isn’t. Focus definitely doesn’t mean stifling your curiosity and experiencing different things in life. It’s also definitely wrong to focus on wrong things in life; it will only make you miserable. It’s also doesn’t make sense to focus at the wrong stage or time in life.

    That is why the AgileLeanLine philosophy knows the search mode and the execution mode. In the search mode, focusing is a big mistake. In the execution mode, not focusing is an even bigger mistake. Knowing that, we can say that it depends on each specific situation whether you should focus or not.

    In the search mode, focusing is a big mistake. In the execution mode, not focusing is an even bigger mistake.

    When you are in the search mode, you’re looking for new ideas, you’re looking for yet unknown connections (that means creativity), and you are looking for things that fit your desired personal lifestyle. To do that, you shouldn’t be focused.

    You should be curious to the full. You have to see the world as a playground where you can experience an unlimited amount of things. You should see the world as a blank canvas where you can create new things, experiment and have fun.

    If you want to be creative, look for new connections, try different things, see the forest and all opportunities in life, you can’t be focused. You have to be open-minded, you have to see all the things that could be possible but are not yet done.

    In the search mode, you are like a child playing, creating, trying, experimenting, learning and finding the right thing. Without any other focus except the goal of finding your fit.

    You should only focus when you find your true fit

    The situation completely changes when you find your personal fit, when you find the right thing. At that moment, you should focus hard.

    Focus

    Think about an artist who gets a new idea and becomes obsessed with it. Think about an engineer who closes himself into a room, orders pizza for several days and just works on his new masterpiece. Think how all your energy concentrates into building a relationship when you find the right person who is your perfect fit.

    The power of focus is enormous. The reasons why are simple. The first one is that you have a limited amount of energy. Let’s say you have 100 units of energy.

    If you focus your attention on one thing, you can put 100 units into it. If you are doing two things at once, it’s not 50/50, because you use let’s say 20 units for mental shifting, switching tasks, educating yourself, updating context, managing connections with people etc. and consequently you become less productive. You invest only 40 units into one thing. If you are doing three things at a time you invest maybe 20 units into one thing.

    20 compared to 100 is nothing. 20 is achieving something in 2 months, 100 in 10 months.

    The second thing is that when you focus, the spiral effect happens. Your focus gets you to first small successes much sooner. It motivates you more. Consequently you want to focus even more. That leads to even more success.

    The knowledge you acquire in the area you’ve focused on accumulates and thus you see many new creative options and so on. With focus, you enter a positive spiral that accelerates your success. 100 units of your energy slowly start to multiply until your progress is really fast.

    The secret to success in today’s world is speed at which you figure out what works and what doesn’t – for you.

    Focus cuts through complexity

    It’s pretty obvious that all industries and all different areas we know in life are becoming more and more complex. You need to be better and better to really master and succeed at something. By focusing, investing more energy into one thing and reaching the spiral effect, you can achieve more and manage complexity better. It’s as simple as that.

    Lessons about focus you can take from the startup world

    • Compare training one time per week to five times per week
    • Compare learning how to program for 10 hours to 50 hours per week
    • Compare reading 5 books per year to 25 books per year
    • Compare saving 10 % to 50 % of your salary over the next 10 years with the belonging yields
    • Compare taking your kid to something they like one or five times per month

    The good news is that when you find the right thing, there is no question whether you should concentrate on it or not. You become obsessed with it, you want to master it, and you want to be better and better at it. Focus should come as naturally as possible.

    When you find your fit, focus comes naturally.

    It should, but it doesn’t always. Beginnings are always hard. It’s not that easy to find something so good that you want to focus on it. Thus the first step is usually the hardest.

    Switching from searching to executing is not an easy task. You need to get yourself into a completely different state of mind. And working hard on something, facing all the obstacles, definitely brings to mind the thought that there must be more interesting and easier things to do.

    The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. But just because it looks greener, it doesn’t mean that it actually is. In reality the grass is the greenest where you fertilize it the most.

    In life you have to focus and push yourself through C.R.A.P. – Criticism, Rejections, Assholes, Pressure. And learning curves.

    Regular reflections can help you decide when to focus

    As mentioned it’s hard to switch from the search mode to the execution mode and vice-versa. That’s why you need regular reflections. That is why you need flows and sprints and self-discipline.

    With regular reflections, you can reset your focus. You can consciously decide when to focus and when not. And when you decide to focus, with sprints and flows, you can carry out and deliver results you’ve decided to focus on.

    Practical examples

    When talking about the search and execution mode, we have to know that the concept is the same in nature. Let’s look at an example. Human nature knows the animal instinct that drives you to find the right mate. It’s a force that pushes you to meet new people, talk with them, flirt etc. I don’t mean to sound too primitive, since it’s not only about brutal animal force – it’s also your curiosity for meeting new people and experiencing new things. But in this phase of your love life, you are in the search mode.

    However when you find the right person, love comes into play. Your instinct, thoughts, energy, everything focuses on one person you’ve started to love. That one person becomes your whole world. You get into the execution mode, you want to deliver your best to this one person you love.

    Finding the right person does bring focus, but it’s not only sunshine and roses. With every relationship crisis, focus is usually challenged and in those hard situations, you have to decide to either go back into the search mode and find a new person, or to try harder in a relationship and refocus yourself. If you decide to try harder, then discipline, reflection, better communication etc. must come into play. No relationship is perfect, but if there is will, you will also find a way to fix it. If there’s no strong will and passion, it’s probably better to go back to the search mode.

    Your skills should be shaped in much the same way. You should be curios, explore different industries and develop different skills where you know you can add value and be good. After finding the right thing, you should focus you attention on it. When deep-diving and becoming better and better at a certain thing, you have to go back and work on broadening your horizons, to not only look at the trees but also the forest. When you think it’s time to totally change your career, you should follow the same process.

    Entering the search mode first until you find your fit, then focusing yourself by executing and when you achieve a certain level of depth, finding a balance between curiosity and focus is the key to success.

    The local maximum

    In mathematics we know the concept of local and global maximum. It’s an important concept also for when to focus and when not. The biggest problem with focus is achieving the local maximum when there is a greater maximum somewhere else.

    It’s about climbing the wrong hill. You can focus on climbing a hill that seems optimal at a certain time. But what if there’s another hill that’s much higher, meaning what if you could achieve much more if you were to focus your attention on something else.

    Local maximum
    Achieving local maximum. But is there a higher hill to climb?

    One of the purposes of the search mode is getting to know the terrain better and drawing yourself a territory before you start climbing the hill. You should be in the search mode the first time you try to do something in life and again when you start to approach the local maximum.

    Just before the local maximum, you have to go back into the search mode to find a higher hill to climb.

    That’s not always easy, because sometimes you have to climb down before going up again. But this is how we grow, this is how we evolve. You have to always push yourself to new and new mountains in life. Not in a greedy but a balanced kind of way.

    Homework

    To sum up how focus optimally works:

    • When you are searching for your personal fit, you shouldn’t focus, but instead be driven by curiosity and creativity. Your goal should be to find the right thing to be passionate about.
    • When you find your personal fit, you should definitely brutally focus. Without focus, you don’t have the sharpness needed to really achieve the mastery level.
    • When achieving a certain level of mastery, you should take a step back and look at the forest again. Maybe it’s time to broaden your horizons and focus on a new thing. Regular reflections will help you determine whether it’s time to focus even more or loosen the execution mode. That is how you become aware of your local maximum and higher hills to climb.

    And…

    • After leaving one local maximum behind and focusing yourself on a new thing in life, you should creatively look for new and yet unknown connections between both fields you master (for example, if you are a personal trainer first and computer programmer second, maybe a health app is your new maximum).
    • Last but not least is a general recommendation that if you want to focus better in every situation in life, the first step you should take is remove distractions from your life.

    With the search mode, you outline your terrain. With focus, you start executing and climbing the chosen hill. The next step is pushing yourself up the hill and when you’re at the top, pushing yourself down and finding a new and even bigger challenge to conquer.

    Know when to focus yourself and know when to push yourself.

  • T-shaped skills in every area of your life

    While the concept of T-shaped skills is not so new, it is now more important than ever. The world is becoming more and more complex and T-shaped skills are a razor that can cut through all the complexity.

    Your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) as the world becomes more complex, nevertheless having T-shapes skills is one of the biggest competitive advantage you can have in the creative society when contributing value for the markets or when achieving your goals.

    Let’s see why. Well, to really understand the whole story, we have to go from dashes (-) and I’s to T’s, PI’s and even hashtags (#).

    Dash-shaped skills and low value added

    Dash (-) shaped skills simply means having some general knowledge about everything. You are a generalist, no real specialist at anything. This kind of people are usually called jacks-of-all-trades and considered as masters of none. If you are a generalist, your T doesn’t have any support to lean on and with that, several problems occur.

    The first problem is that it’s hard to gain respect from people, especially other specialists, if you don’t excel at something. The second problem is that the world is becoming so complex and saturated with information that as a result, being a generalist means pretty much nothing.

    Your general knowledge must be in a specific context to have any power at all. That context usually comes from having a connected specialized skill.

    Having dash-shaped skills usually also means providing low value added. With all the knowledge accessible to you with one click, it’s easy to become a generalist at anything. If you are a generalist, the value added you provide is only a little bit higher than providing manual work that anyone can do.

    Let’s look at some facts and practical examples:

    • People will respect you when you are really good at something. Furthermore, the halo effect will happen and they will think that you are even better in other areas of life. It’s hard to achieve that if you don’t have your own forte, but just general knowledge about something.
    • If you want to provide value to a team, you do have to be a generalist capable of working efficiently in a team, but people will recognize your value if you contribute a specific kind of skill.

    If you are an extremely good copywriter and additionally have general knowledge about internet marketing, then the combination of both is really powerful. But if you only have some general knowledge about the internet, then marketing is not nearly as valuable. General knowledge is context and foundation.

    Usually when you go to a generalist doctor, you can know more about a specific problem you have than he does, just by searching for information and cases on the internet.

    Twenty years ago, there may have been room in this world for generalists, from doctors, lawyers to managers, marketers and others. But the value of generalists was made obsolete by the internet, search engines and the curiosity of people who don’t want to be only specialists but want to know and master more from their industry.

    And there’s enough people like that. High competition, low value added.

    I-shaped skills

    The basic fact is that if you want to get paid well for your work, you have to be good at something that is high in demand, but has a rare supply. In other words: you need I-shaped skills: you need to be good at something that not many people on the market are good at.

    The good news is that there are more and more disciplines you can be good at. While internet marketing was a specialization 10 years ago, now you can be a specialist for paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing and so on. It’s not much different in other industries.

    The bad news is that it’s becoming harder and harder to be a specialist. We annually produce more information and knowledge than we have in the whole history of humankind. Thus becoming a specialist means very hard work and constant improvement.

    Another big problem is also that faculties are producing more generalists than specialists, so becoming a specialist is a task you have to undertake on your own.

    But there is an even more important secret to having I-shaped skills. Creative capitalism or the knowledge economy respects talented people more than anything else. Not only talented people, but those talented people who work hard to develop and capitalize their talent.

    The higher the demand, the rarer a skill and the better you master the skill, the more value you provide to the market. Markets are prepared to reward you completely disproportionately to the average for that kind of skill, to your advantage, of course.

    Four groups of I-shaped skills

    There are four groups of I-shaped skills that are highly respected on the market in general.

    The first group are business skills, like management, marketing, finance, sales, e-commerce etc. But you really have to be extremely good at it. Some disciplines, like marketing, are so broad that you need to find your niche inside the industry.

    The second group are engineering skills, from IT to biotech and all other promising industries. Scientists are extremely valuable in the knowledge economy. This group also includes specialists like doctors, lawyers, investors, etc. who are really good at their jobs and specialize for things high in demand.

    The third group are creative people – people who know how to be different and better, people who have awesome ideas and know how to bring them to life; entrepreneurs for example.

    The fourth group is show business and all successful musicians, sportsmen, artists, actors, entertainers and so on can be included in this group.

    In all four groups, you have the top 1 – 4 % who are paid extremely well (a.k.a. rich people), 16 – 20% of people who are above average (a.k.a. upper middle class) and others who earn average respect and salaries from other people and markets.

    There is no doubt that you want to become extremely good at something. At something that is rare, hard to learn; at something that is currently high in demand and will be high in demand in the future. But there is even more value added that you can put on your I-shaped skills. You want to see the forest, not only the trees.

    T shaped internet marketer
    Example of T-shaped internet marketer.

    T-shaped skills with E power

    People who are extremely good at something and become aware of how valuable they are usually become hard to work with. You know, everyone from assholes and divas to people who want to have special benefits all the time.

    Working with people like that is hard and if you aren’t a true star or Jennifer Lopez, your value added can start fading, since teams are becoming more important than individuals.

    When it comes to complex problems in the business world that are more difficult to solve, interdisciplinary teams provide the most value. And there is no I in TEAM. Thus you need to develop a broad set of skills that are a dash over your I.

    A combination of those two, being a specialist for one thing and a generalist for a few others, especially people skills, gives a really powerful combination.

    For example, the idea of agile teams in software development is to be cross-functional and self-organizing, meaning all members need to have some specific competences, but all members also need general competences that allow them to deliver everything by themselves and work together efficiently. In agile teams, there is no room for general project managers.

    I is something you are talented at. I is something you are passionate about. I is something you love to focus on and work hard for. I is something for which you have good ideas easily. I is something at which you want to constantly improve and push the limits. I is something at which you constantly persist and keep creating new products to serve people.

    A dash over the I is your curiosity. A dash over the I is context knowledge that empowers your I. A dash over the I is leverage, since you need to work with other people, understand paradigms, the rules of life and industry, and future trends. A dash over the I is your foundation that allows you to dive as deep as possible.

    General skills that are good to have no matter what you are doing as a specialist:

    • A broad knowledge about something (law, economy, software development, linguistics…)
    • A broader context for your specialized skill set (SEO expert – e.g. internet marketing)
    • A basic knowledge of how humans and the society work (biology, psychology, sociology…)
    • Understanding the industry you work in, its trends and paradigms
    • Basic knowledge of how the business world works

    Soft skills you have to be good at, unless you are an ultra-geek or a genius:

    • Teamwork
    • Communication skills and networking, with good enough English skills
    • Time management
    • Information technology
    • Tolerance and open-mindedness

    Soft skills that provide additional value (you can even become a specialist):

    • Leadership and organization
    • Negotiations
    • Presentations and giving lectures
    • Creativity and innovation
    • The basics of marketing and sales

    There is another competence I have to emphasize, no matter how good of an I, T or dash you are. That is execution (E). Ideas have almost zero value. We all have ideas. There are too many ideas everywhere. Execution is much more important than ideas.

    It doesn’t matter that you’ve read a hundred books about swimming if you haven’t done a single stroke in the water. It doesn’t matter that you have a very rare knowledge and a thousand ideas if at the same time you’re a lazy procrastinator, unable to deliver. I and T without E are almost useless.

    Different areas of life and T-shaped skills powered by E

    Until now, we’ve more or less talked only about business and skill combinations that can get you paid the most on the market. But you can use the same concept in all other areas of life.

    Having strong foundations and diving deep into something that interests you is a winning combination in all areas of life. With strong discipline and execution, of course. Let’s look at a few examples.

    Practical examples

    If you want to be healthy, doing only one sport you love isn’t enough. You also need to know the basics of a good diet, you need to work on your core muscles, flexibility, condition etc. All that is a strong foundation that enables you to be really good at a specific sport. The T-shaped skills approach.

    If you want to have good relationships, you need to find people with common interests and the same values. But you also need to be good at communication, know how to manage difficult situations, have ideas for what to do together and so on. Good people skills are a foundation for good relationships. But in order for relationships to work in the long term, you also need more profound connections, based on common values and interests.

    It’s the same with money. You need to have a broad knowledge of how financial markets work, about different investing options etc. But if you really want to make a good return, you have to become extremely good at one type of investments. You have to be better than 90 % of other investors in the same asset class.

    We can even apply the same concept to spirituality. Before you believe in something 100 %, be it a religion or any other spiritual idea, you want to understand why having such a belief is important. You want to understand different religions, spiritual concepts etc. It’s the foundation for finding something that will really empower you to the full. It’s the foundation that will give your life a greater meaning.

    Same goes for all other areas of life. You want to do things that you know are fun for you and you are good at, but that shouldn’t stop you from constantly trying new and new things. As mentioned your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) in all areas of life.

    PI-shaped skillset can take you even a step further

    Becoming a really well-shaped and strong T in life is basically a lifelong process. It’s not easy and it demands constant improvements, hard work and finding a balance between acquiring general and specific knowledge. You have to keep expanding and narrowing your T-shaped skills.

    But more and more people are aware of the T-shaped skills advantage, so there is another level where you can take your skills even a step further and provide much more value added. If you are a true achievement-oriented freak.

    The concept is the so-called PI-shaped skillset. The idea is that you are a generalist on one side, but a specialist at two or even more things on the other.

    A magical power comes from transferring ideas and knowledge from one specialist area to the other and vice versa or from combining two fields into one product. For example, you are fitness specialist and a programmer, and so you make a fitness app.

    As mentioned before, becoming extremely good at more than one thing in life is pretty damn hard. Therefore people who are capable of PI shaped skills are usually people who have developed certain competences at a young age.

    For example, playing a specific sport or a musical instrument, practicing a certain type of art or hobby, the latter combined with a completely different field of study, can give magical results and PI-shaped skills by default.

    It’s good to be aware of the competences you’ve developed over your lifetime and whether there are any good ways to combine them.

    All others of us, who hadn’t developed certain specialized skills in our youth, have to make a decision whether being a T is good enough or we want to sacrifice more time and other areas of life to become PIs.

    It’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. Nevertheless, make sure and work hard to be more than only a dash or an I. You know you have a greater potential and it’s your duty to work hard to bring that potential to life.

    Homework

    To sum things up together with pointing out action items:

    • Find something that you’re passionate about and is/will be high in demand, focus yourself, dive deep and constantly improve. Sooner, you start to go deeper, be better. Don’t feel bad that you won’t be able to master many things, the world has just become too complex.
    • When you are an expert, never lose your general curiosity. Constantly read about your industry and other subjects. Try new things. Understand how the business world and financial markets work. Understand how we humans work. Understand trends and paradigms. Combine different areas. Have fun.
    • Take your game to a whole new level by systematically combining your different specialties. Win.

    Reaching the ultimate level – Hastag

    You want even more than pi? Well, there is one more level, the ultimate competence level. Become a hashtag #-skilled person.

    • (Dash one) A generalist in a few industries.
    • (Dash two) Develop soft skills.
    • (I one) Be a specialist at one thing.
    • (I two). Be a specialist at a completely different thing.
    • Combine all four. Win big.

  • The Search Mode

    One of the ways to learn about yourself and the world is the so-called “search mode”. The better you know yourself and your environment, the better you can execute, and consequently achieve your true goals that much faster.

    In order to get to know yourself and your environment, as well as build up an adequate life strategy, you have to first do enough searching, experimenting and trying, since all that leads to understanding and insights. Based on that, you can start executing and making sound decisions.

    As you can see in many action movies, when the super team steps into action, the first order they always get from their command officer is “Gather intel”.

    In the search mode, you make assumptions and test different options. In the execution mode, you constantly perform and optimize what you preserve from the search mode.

    There are two main reasons why you want to introduce the search mode into your life:

    Wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups and execution based on wrong assumptions means nothing but failure, sorrow and obstacles. Reality (the objective reality) is significantly different from your assumptions and your own interpretation of reality (the subjective reality). You want to come as close to the objective reality as possible.

    The difference between what you think is valuable to you and what really is valuable to you in your life creates waste. One of your tasks when living an AgileLeanLife is to eliminate all waste by finding out what really brings value for you. You don’t want to live life based on wrong assumptions of what you like or expectations of other people.

    You learn three important things in the search mode:

    You learn about yourself

    You learn about yourself as a person, what you want in life, your true desires, fears, who you are and where your talents lie, your current capabilities and so on.

    You want to get a very clear picture of who you are and what you want.

    You learn about your environment, the world and the society

    We all live our own lives as well as the common destiny of the world and the smaller environments we live in (country, company…).

    In the search mode you experiment in order to learn the basics of how the world works, how people behave (from the aspect of biology to the aspect of psychology), and so on. You learn how to build an environment that supports you and how you can create as much value as possible for other people.

    You learn how to build an environment that supports you and how you can create as much value as possible for other people.

    You learn about the markets

    Markets always win. You don’t want to play against the market. Therefore you want to understand the trends and movements on the market, be it the labor market, the dating market, financial markets etc. Markets are like turbo accelerators on your car. They can help you advance really fast.

    But first you have to learn how to drive a car, which means learning enough about the previous two points.

    The better you understand all three, the greater the potential you unlock in your life. Therefore in an AgileLeanLife, you have to divide all activities of all areas of life into two groups:

    Here are some additional reasons for why you need the search phase before doing any real execution:

    • To do adequate research and form first assumptions about yourself and life
    • To conduct small experiments and figure out what your best personal fits are
    • To not put pressure on yourself to achieve and do something that’s not really you
    • To have fun and try as many things as possible
    • To set a realistic execution strategy that you can follow and really implement

    Once we become adults we assume that the time for searching, exploring and learning is over. But that is a completely wrong approach. You should never stop experimenting and learning about yourself and the world.

    No goals, just learning

    In the search mode, you shouldn’t have any expectations, you shouldn’t make any commitments and you shouldn’t do any hard work. Expectations lead to and before you understand something, your expectations are definitely completely wrong.

    Commitments lead to heavy energy investments, and you shouldn’t be investing before you know what you are truly investing in and whether the investment really fits your character. Hard work should always also be smart work, but you can’t work smartly if you don’t have the right map and coordinates.

    In the search phase, you just try, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. The most important thing in this phase is to have no fixed ideas and no expectations at all.

    Your job is only to test the assumptions you have written down, correct them, and try different things in order to find out what suits you best This phase is only for learning about yourself and the world. No goals. No measurement of progress. Just learning and playing.

    After you find your fit in the search phase, you start executing. You set a big vision, strong foundations, have laser focus, commit fully, start working hard and achieving your goals. You optimize, improve and measure your progress. But first, you have to find the right thing. You must put the ladder against the right wall before you start climbing.

    It doesn’t make sense to set deadlines for being skinny and fit until you understand your body, metabolism, your favorite sports, what kind of a diet suits you best etc. It doesn’t make sense to make deadlines for being rich if you don’t have enough financial knowledge, don’t know how to increase your earning potential and which financial investments suit you best etc.

    It doesn’t make sense to make plans for getting married after a second date, when you don’t even know the person next to you and how you two function together.

    Before making any real execution plan you should learn, talk with people, try different things, test, experiment and write down your insights. After that you will be able to execute perfectly.

    You have to do it scientifically

    The search mode is all nice and fun with the right approach (it can be scary but more about that later). There is one big catch, however. You have to do it scientifically and systematically.

    No goals, no pressure, just discovery, but you have to make sure that you are really learning about yourself and the world. Learning can become an easy excuse for failure. And you don’t want to fail.

    If you have learned something new, you haven’t failed in the search mode. If you haven’t learned anything new, you’ve failed big time and wasted resources on top of that. But how do you know whether you’ve learned something new or not?

    Very easily, namely by setting and testing hypotheses. We call that validated learning. Let’s look at an example.

    You want to get in better shape. The formula for getting in shape is pretty easy. You have to eat less, the food has to be of higher quality, and you have to exercise more. No greater secret. But there are many ways for doing that. Based on knowing yourself, you start making some assumptions and then testing them.

    Experiment

    Practical examples

    Example of assumptions about exercising

    H1: I prefer individual sports over team sports. I will try two individual and two team sports. (Validated)

    H2: The individual sports that suit me best are fitness, running and boxing. I will also try crossfit, golf, judo and hiking.

    (Validated – with one exception: I like hiking more than boxing)

    H3: Since I’m in bad shape, it’s enough if I start exercising two times per week. I will try to do it three times for the first time and see how it feels.

    (Rejected – I can work out three times per week without a problem. Will try four times after one month)

    H4: I will make better progress with a personal trainer and I have the money to afford it.

    (Validated – Personal trainers show me how to do exercises right and boost my motivation. After two months, I will see how well I work alone, following a new program prepared by a personal trainer)

    H5: My motivation is better if I have a pairing buddy to work out with.

    (Rejected – Scheduling, talking, drinks after the workout, it’s not really helping me)

    H6: I now have enough knowledge to set serious goals about my fitness progress. I will make a 3-month program and measure how I am doing.

    (Rejected – I need more time to adjust my body to exercising. I will enjoy it without any serious goals. Will try again after three months).

    It’s more or less the same with dieting assumptions (or any other for that matter). You have to see your body’s reaction to cutting down calories, decreasing the consumption of sugar, finding the veggies that you like the most etc. For some people, eating at night is a catastrophe, for others it’s no big deal. After a few months of experimenting, you will find the right diet for you, the right activities and after that you can do some fine-tuning and additional adjustments.

    The main point is to write down what you have learned (especially when doing reflections). That way you won’t feel like you’re running in place but you will see your progress. You will also focus on things that work.

    Finding the right fit will enable you to really change your lifestyle and become healthy in the long term, not just go on a diet and gain back all the weight afterwards, according to the yo-yo effect.

    After searching and trying and finding the right fit, changing your lifestyle is fun and easy. That is what the search phase is all about; getting excited about the changes that you will make in your life and finding the right things that will not lead to a loss of motivation after only a few weeks.

    But you have to do it gradually and scientifically to some extent.

    The Search Mode

    Your life is like a puzzle you have to build

    By knowing what you want, how the world works and what markets need, you can put together all the pieces of life that suit you best, and build the right strategy. You can compose your masterpiece life puzzle, your dream life.

    Your job in the search mode is to find the perfect diet for yourself, the best career to serve the world and provide real value for it, the relationships that empower you the most, the best computer operating system for you (or whatever), the things that you enjoy the most in life, and so on.

    What suits you best may be a waste for someone else. And vice versa. You have to search for what fits you best.

    There are four more goals you have to achieve in the search phase besides validated learning:

    Acquiring the best knowledge possible

    The rule of an AgileLeanLife is to go straight to the best knowledge there is and then adjust it to your life. For every life area, there are only a few key points you have to know and master, and then practice them regularly.

    To go straight to the top, you have to learn and mirror the people at the top. You can easily get lost in crappy content in today’s post-information age.

    Setting strong foundations

    The bigger the skyscraper you want to build, the stronger you need to make the foundations. Implementing the best knowledge into your life requires extraordinarily strong foundations.

    You set a strong foundation by making small linear changes and then accumulating them into rapid big changes or quantum leaps. The key principle of the AgileLeanLife is to really master a few things that are the building blocks of strong foundations.

    You can build your skyscraper floor by floor on that. Strong foundations mean nothing else but mastering yourself and your environemnt.

    You won’t get more fit if you can’t skip dessert and exercise a few times per week. You won’t get rich if you don’t learn to increase your earning potential and spend less than you earn. You won’t find your dream career if you are obsessed with a current secure job.

    Setting strong foundations means mastering yourself and you can do that in the search mode by testing and experimenting and consequently building up your will and stamina (being in the search mode means handling uncertainty).

    Preparing a plan for execution and daily application

    When you find your fit in the search mode, you have to start making a shift into the execution mode. For the execution, you need discipline to perform daily tasks that lead you to your goal. Search mode should help you get insight into how fast you can progress and what realistic expectations are.

    In AgileLeanLife practices, you execute in intervals (sprints) and after every sprint you make a reflection and adjust the plan. Your first execution plan when going from the search into the execution mode will be the worst and you have to be aware of that.

    Thus you need to make constant adjustments to your plan during regularly scheduled reflections. Learn more how to organize yourself with to-do lists.

    Interacting with other people

    In the search phase, you should interact with people who have achieved the same things you want to achieve as well as with people who have views totally different from your own. Talk with them, try to understand them.

    Try to walk a mile in their shoes. Imagine your life and your decisions if you were to live with those kind of values. Broaden your horizons and test things that don’t come naturally to you. That approach will help you manage your own expectations and expectations of others in life.

    The search phase is the phase of constant tests and experiments. The really big problem is that testing is not your natural state, because it lacks security, because it contains the unknown. Trying something new can be scary from time to time.

    But you know you need guts to live an amazing life. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily. In the search phase, you have to constantly keep trying out something new, fail over and over again, and do things that you haven’t mastered yet. As already said, that is scary.

    But it can also be fun. If you are consciously in the search mode and you carefully define your downsides and upsides, shape an adequate strategy and focus on validated learning rather than on the outcome, then the search phase becomes the fun life experience all in itself.

    A big plus of today’s world is that you can experiment without risking your life or lives of others (in most cases; and where such kind of danger exists, you should avoid it). There is no lion behind the corner that’s going to eat you if you try new ways. You have the tools, knowledge and examples. Thus it’s time for you to start scientifically and systematically testing and learning about yourself and the world.

    Every test should be seen as a life experience, part of your life vision. After performing the test, you should know more about yourself, the world and the society. In some cases even about the markets. If something new works for you, great. If it doesn’t, you should discard it and look for clues on which experiment to do next. That’s called pivot.

    There are two main goals for testing and experimenting in the search phase:

    1. Looking for your best fits so you can start building your dream life
    2. Trying, experimenting and testing more and more new things, so you can not only improve but also experience as much as possible. Testing and experiencing new things is the best way to not live a dull and routine life.

    The sum of all desired experiences is the vision of your life. You should have a list of potential ideas and constantly brainstorm for new ideas and possibilities. You can choose priority experiments for every interval.

    In order to test as many things as possible the concept of Minimum Viable Experience can help.

    Reflection in the search mode

    After every experiment you do in the search phase, you have to make a reflection. That is the most valuable part of the process. Before marking a hypothesis as validated or rejected, you should ask yourself about what you have learned, what you will test next, how you will change your plans, and so on. A search mode without deep and systematic reflection has very little value.

    You learn about yourself by reflecting on your actions. Reflection is an insight into knowing yourself and life better. Never forget that reflection is actually an insight into how to do things in a better way. Therefore if you want to be more successful, effective and efficient, you have to find better ways to do things for you personally, by experimenting and reflecting.

    You should also remember that insights only come to a relaxed and rested mind that’s prepared to think about the experience that had happened.

    Never stop searching for new ways

    You never know whether you’ve reached your local maximum in life and where other, even bigger maximums are. That is why you should constantly be in the search mode, even when you had already switched to the execution mode and vice versa. It’s just the emphasis that’s different.

    Local maximum
    Achieving local maximum. But is there a higher hill to climb?

    In the search mode, you make assumptions and test different options. In the execution mode, you constantly perform and optimize what you preserve from the search mode. But even when executing, you should test new things from time to time. And in the search mode, you are already doing execution in a way.

    For the end, another important thing. Because all living beings, including you, don’t like change by nature, you should not implement too many experiments and changes at once. From the macro perspective, the whole search mode must be limited to the point at which you can still measure what’s happening with your life, what works for you and what doesn’t.

    Our willpower is a weak muscle, thus all experiments and changes should be made in a systematic and controllable way. And you should have as much fun as possible on the way.