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 sawfrom 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?
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
There is a saying in the start-up world that the “product-market fit” cures many sins of management. What this means exactly is that when you’re starting a new business (and even later), you do make many mistakes.
Setting the wrong prices, hiring the wrong people, mismanagement etc. But if you have a product that customers crave, if they’re prepared to pay a solid price for it (and your profit margin is high enough), then you can survive making more mistakes.
On the other hand, if you don’t have a “product-market fit” or you are starting business with low margins and a small volume, even the smallest mistakes can throw you out of business.
Thus you want to have as much traction as possible, with a very high margin and a strong competitive advantage. That isn’t easily achieved, but it is a must if you want to succeed in the business world.
Promising startups usually acquire lots of capital (and attract a lot of smart people) to reach the “product-market fit”. Capital and/or knowledge are their buffer, their lifeblood, their stockpile on the way from an idea to the “product-market fit”.
The more money and knowledge that a start-up has, the faster it can move, since more tests and experiments can be done in a shorter time in the search mode. Interestingly, without proper knowledge, too much money can stifle innovation, creativity, the scientific approach and focus on the right things.
Basically, capital and knowledge (and other resources) help you find the product-market fit and then you get yourself into a position to create even more resources.
Perfect fit is the best preventive cure for your mistakes
It’s no different in your personal life. The better the personal fit and the position you have, the more mistakes you can afford to make.
Having a chance to make more mistakes also means opening more opportunities for you and finding new ways no one has found before (meaning being more efficient). Let’s see what I have in mind, starting with your health.
Practical examples
If you’ve been an athlete from a young age onwards, you’ve developed a strong, solid and muscular body. When you’re older, you can afford more laziness and a poorer diet (not that I recommend it) than people who have never done sports in their life. Muscles have their own memory and you can quickly get back into shape after a few years of pause.
It’s the same if you are really good and talented at a certain sport. You still have to train hard, but you can afford many more mistakes, for example training less, trying new techniques and so on. Someone that is not as talented will never catch up, if you really have naturally good skills.
Talent, meaning doing something that’s your personal fit, in combination with hard and smart work and the right kind of environment lead to miracles – the outliers.
If you find your fit in personal relationships, you can afford more mistakes. It takes time to compromise and catch the rhythm with a new person, but if there is the right fit, meaning both partners really want the relationship to work, then tolerance towards mistakes is much bigger.
If there is no real fit, every small mistake can endanger the relationship. There are always lines you aren’t allowed to cross, like physical violence, cheating, but you get the point.
Money is the most obvious one in this context. The more assets you have, the more you can experiment, learn and try new investments. The better personal investment strategy you find, the more money you will make.
If you find your revenue fits and investments fit, you can really become rich. Finding your fits simply means you’re passionate and interested in something, so putting in hard work is no problem.
It’s the same with your career. The better you are at your occupation, the more you can achieve. The higher on the social ladder you are, the more mistakes you can afford. Well, the right kind of mistakes, not all of them.
But again, you get the point: the better you are at something and the better position you have, the freer you are to try new things, experiment or just make normal human mistakes.
The worse your position is and the more you’re doing things that aren’t right for you, the sooner you will make a mistake that could be fatal and cause a collapse in one of your life areas.
In summary when you find your fit in life:
You have an unfair advantage because you do or have something that you are naturally good at or is meant to be. Rarely put people the effort in to find their true fit, that is also why they are so unhappy.
Since you are naturally good at something, you can afford more mistakes and errors, but not only that you can also experiment more which can lead to even greater success.
There is still a limit how many and how big mistakes you can make before you get yourself out of the game, but your error buffer is bigger. The two most common mistakes are not giving your best or not innovating enough when you are in an unfair position.
Find your fit and shine
Thus if you want to feel freer in life, if you want to be in a position to try more on your journey, experience new things and be able to afford more mistakes, find your personal fits.
You should introduce the search mode into your life and before executing anything, find the one thing that really suits you best.
Find the right person to build an intimate relationship with. Find a person for whom all the struggle is really worth it; and it will be worth it. Find a career that really suits you best, one that you are passionate about and where you can really deliver value added.
Work hard to be in a good position and then take bigger and bigger risks that will take you even a step further. But take risks you can still afford (usually risks with small downside and big upside), not risks that could potentially take you out of business.
It’s called a positive/negative spiral. The more you achieve, the more risks you can afford, the more risks you can afford, the more you can achieve and so on. And vice versa: failure leads to failure. And if you don’t have outer resources at the beginning (money, real-estate, statues etc.), you can start with investing inner resources (knowledge, skills, creativity etc.).
Resources -> Product-market fit -> More resources
To accelerate the whole process, you want to find your personal fits, where your progress will be the fastest and you can afford to take some risks immediately, no matter your starting position, because of your natural talent (inner asset).
Know what you want, find your personal fits and then execute and find yourself in a positive spiral.
I call the systematic testing and experimenting with new things in life in order to find better ways to perform and achieve higher quality of life the search mode.
Introducing the search mode into your life is a totally new concept. Rare are the people to whom the search mode (constantly experimenting with new things) comes naturally and for whom it is easy to do it.
The reason for that is because you have to go regularly out of your comfort zone, experiment with new things that bring uncertainty and accept little failure you can learn from along the way.
Trying new things in life is hard for most people.
The “free spirit” explorers who always want something new are probably the closest to the character needed in the search mode. Nevertheless this type of people usually lack the abilities to switch from the search to the execution mode.
Well, the good news is that being in the search mode (trying new things in life) is nothing but a skill and everybody can learn it.
First, a few words about the search mode
One of the best 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 much faster.
The search mode is a phase and a process that helps you to get to know yourself and your environment better, as well as build up an adequate life strategy based on tested facts, instead of only assumptions.
The main idea is that before committing yourself to anything you have to first do enough searching, experimenting and trying, to make sure you are committing to the right thing – your fit.
In the search phase, you just try many different things, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. In the search mode, you make and test different assumptions (beliefs, convictions, facts etc.) you have.
Search mode is about going out of the comfort zone and experimenting with completely new things with the goal to improve your life.
After you find your fit, you enter the execution mode. In the execution mode, you execute and optimize what you preserve from the search mode.
And now all the traps you must avoid when trying new things in life.
All the fears and traps when trying new things in life
There are five major fears and traps when trying new things in life:
Analysis paralysis
No presence of validated learning (learning as an excuse)
Dealing with uncertainty
Sticking to NEW things that don’t work
Unrealistic expectations and other irrational fears
1. Analysis paralysis – if you never do anything, all that analyzing time was wasted
The most obvious challenge of the search mode is the analysis paralysis. There are two types of analysis paralysis scenarios.
The first one is (1) never getting from the research phase (behind the desk) to conducting experiments in real life and
The first scenario is quite well-known everywhere in life. You read about it, you talk about it, you think about it, but you never start doing it.
Well, if you never do anything, all that time was wasted. It shouldn’t take you more than a few days to do research and then set and conduct the first experiments. After that you can continue researching and thus improving your further experiments.
A ton of theory can’t compare to a single gram of solid real-life experience.. You can read all about swimming but until you set foot in water, your knowledge is very limited. The solution is very simple.
After everything you read while doing the research, you should write down the bottom lines and make a few hypotheses out of it. These are the hypotheses that you are going to test and see whether they work for you personally.
The second analysis paralysis trap is not switching from the search mode to the execution mode. There are many reasons for why that can be in case, but whatever it is, make sure you move to the execution phase when you find your fit.
The secret is to move really fast in the search mode in order to find your perfect fit and get to the execution mode as quickly as possible. In today’s turbulent and complex world, extreme speed is the main ingredient of success.
That is why you need focus, that is why you need to learn and progress systematically and quickly, that is why you need a superior strategy. You have to find out what works for you as soon as possible.
The solution is simple. Your goal should be to get to the execution phase as quickly as possible. It usually takes a few months to get there. The goal of the search mode is to find your perfect fit and then do a perfect execution. You don’t want to stay a “startup” forever.
Executing perfectly means setting execution intervals, doing sprints, measuring your progress really closely and meeting your goals as quickly as possible.
Even in the execution mode you are still conducting experiments and trying new things to some extent, but what’s more important is that you do regular sprints and measure your progress in a more traditional way (KPIs). After the search mode you know what you want, so in the execution mode you make sure you get it.
The search mode = Find what you really want, what’s really your fit
The execution mode = Make sure you get what you want
Validated learning cycle
2. No validated learning – don’t use learning as an excuse
Besides analysis paralysis there is another big trap you can fall into in the search mode. The goal of the search mode is to learn about yourself and the world around you, to find your perfect fit and then build a superior life strategy, and after that to move into the execution mode as quickly as possible.
The goal of the search mode is to lean the ladder against the right wall, while getting to know which material the ladder is built of, how long it is, what the traps of climbing it are, how the top looks like etc.
To learn about all that, you have to fail a lot. Success is nothing but going from failure to failure until you succeed without losing motivation. But the key point is that you learn something every time you fail – it’s called validated learning. And you should take that as progress.
There are two possible outcomes to failing in the search mode.
Learning as an excuse
Well, I tried a new thing, it didn’t work out, but I have learned something. That sounds nice, but it clearly shows that you haven’t learned anything. It clearly shows that learning is just an excuse for you to feel better while failing. But that is the real failure.
An example of validated learning
My hypothesis was that introducing a no-interruptions day once a week to my calendar would dramatically increase my productivity (you can even set the measures for how much). I did my first no-interruptions day and my hypothesis was rejected. After a self-reflection, I had learned the following:
I don’t have enough concentration to work the whole day
It’s really hard to get rid of all interruptions, especially on the computer
I need a task that motivates me enough to work several hours straight
Based on what I’ve learned, I will conduct a new experiment. (1) I will try a half-day (4 hours) no-interruptions day to test and train my focusing abilities. (2) I will try three different big tasks for the next three no-interruption days – one document analysis, writing one article and one brainstorming session. I will see what will engage me the most.
(3) I will test two locations – my balcony and my local cafe, with my laptop that has no games installed and is without an internet connection.
The idea is to find your perfect location and your perfect setting so you can have one no-interruption day per week at some point. Imagine what such a day could do to your productivity once you find the right setting.
That’s 50 completely productive days per year. It may be the difference between you being average or really successful. Of course it’s worth it to test several different settings to find the best one and to train your focus while conducting experiments.
If you have learned something new, you haven’t failed in the search mode. That should be your motivation and perspective for overcoming failure.
If you haven’t learned anything new, you have failed big time and wasted resources on top of that. To learn something new, you have to keep setting and testing hypotheses all the time. That is called “validated learning”. Here are the steps how to do it:
Do research first if needed
Write down the first set of hypotheses
Conduct experiments
Validate or reject hypotheses
Reflect
Write down a new set of hypotheses
Make your execution plan
3. Dealing with uncertainty – to live an extraordinary life, you must do extraordinary things
It’s quite easy to understand why we love certainty and are scared to death of uncertainty. We like certainty because it makes us feel safe and secure. Even though change is the only real constant in life (besides taxes), we hate it.
This hate towards change has been written into our genes as a mechanism for survival in a dangerous world. Not that long ago, you could very easily have gotten killed and to be frank, you still can in some parts of the world.
An unknown and unstable environment brings threats to us and to our lives. That is why we don’t like uncertainty and why it’s so hard for us to try new things.
The really big problem is that testing is not your natural state, because of the lack of security, because of the unknown. Trying something new can be scary from time to time. But you know, you need guts in order to live an amazing life. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily.
Here are some tricks for how to deal with uncertainty:
The gain has to be bigger than the pain
Write down all the rewards that experimenting and finding a new lifestyle will bring to you. All the rewards. All of them. The rewards must be so big that they strongly outweigh your pain and the trouble of trying out new things.
If you don’t see the final reward clearly, you won’t be motivated enough to try anything new. You must have a strong why that is more powerful that uncertainty.
Build your safety nets and take calculated risks
A big plus of today’s world is that you can experiment without risking your life or lives of others, at least in most cases, and where such a danger exists, you should avoid it.
You should carefully define the downsides, build some safety nets and not do anything stupid. Testing, experimenting and trying new things should not sound like a risk at all.
If you do too big steps at a time, you go from the learning zone into the panic zone. The panic zone doesn’t bring anything good at all, as it means that you have lost control.
Entering the panic zone means awakening negative feelings and you will consequently develop hate towards trying new things. Therefore you should always take small steps and master one step at a time. But move quickly while doing that.
Just make the first step
Making the first step is the biggest pain in the ass. But you have to do it as soon as possible. The second step is much easier and the third one is even easier, if you do it the right way. But you always need the motivation to kick yourself in the ass and take the first step.
There is a trick to doing it. Timebox your first step. Open your calendar. Schedule an hour or two for the first step and when the time comes, just do it. Don’t think, don’t overanalyze, no matter how you feel, just do it. After the first few minutes you will start feeling proud of yourself.
Make it fun, consider it play
See yourself as an explorer and adventurist. See the whole search mode as a tool to not waste your life and live it to the full. Surround yourself with people who support you and want to try new things in life with you.
Have fun while doing it, even if you fail. Learn from your failures. Then there are no failures at all, just validated learning. Laugh. Smile. Have fun. Never settle into a routine.
4. Don’t waste your life by sticking to things that don’t work
Our psychological tendencies dictate that we finish what we begin. For example, it’s quite difficult for the human mind to stop watching a movie in the middle, even if the movie sucks.
I know that it’s kind of ironic. Initially it’s so hard to try and do new things, especially the ones that aren’t the most pleasant, and then we want to stick to something even if it doesn’t work.
That is a big trap that you can fall into in the search mode. For example, when I was searching for my perfect diet I also tried the raw food diet. Well, I even tried different types of raw food diets, from the fruitarian one to the fatty and green one.
It was extremely hard to start and stick to that kind of an extreme diet, but once I started, I regarded it as a magical solution for all my health problems.
It was more than obvious that the raw food diet didn’t work for me, but I had stuck to it for too long - for more than a year to be exact. And before that, I was a vegan for two years and a vegetarian for five.
It was only after a severe burnout, fatigue, dry skin, cavity, sugar intolerance, vitamin deficiency and other health issues that I came to the conclusion that this diet really doesn’t work for me.
It’s very strange, but by going to that kind of an extreme diet, your beliefs about health and diet also become quite extreme. In the raw food community, all negative effects of the diet are connected to the fact that the body is cleansing.
Their standpoint is that you just have to do it a little while longer and all negative effects will go away. It’s the price you pay for not being on the raw food diet straight after breast feeding.
Since I’m very persistent and disciplined, that was quite a big downside in this situation. I waited for the body to cleanse, but that was not really the case. The diet didn’t work for me and I was starting to damage my own health.
Back then I didn’t see changing the diet as an experiment, but rather as an ultimate solution that I had to stick to no matter what. That was pretty stupid, but it can easily happen to everybody.
Thus you have to make sure that you set the boundaries and limitations to your experiments very specifically. Here are some other ideas how to make sure that you don’t become stubborn about the wrong thing and keep your final goal in mind while staying flexible when experimenting:
Do regular reflections and always question everything
Do regular reflections after experiments and after sprints. Every reflection event should be an opportunity to question everything you are doing. Do you see the progress in your life, how is the environment reacting, how does it influence your short-term and long-term goals, is that something for you or not etc.
Define the hypothesis and the experiment very exactly
The more explicitly that you define what you want to test, the limits and the duration of the experiment, and the expected results, the more you will learn and the quality of the experiment will be that much higher.
When defining the hypothesis and the experiment you can also incorporate enough safety nets that stop you when you are going to an extreme that isn’t giving the right results.
Make sure that you aren’t causing any damage to yourself or to your environment
Whatever experiment you are doing, make sure that you’re not doing anything really dangerous. Make sure that you aren’t causing any damage to yourself, to other people or to the environment. Consult with a specialist, do enough research and take small steps. Don’t be stupid.
We have invented standards and averages (diet, working day etc.), because they represent the safest thing for most people. It doesn’t give the best results for every individual but it’s safe and good enough for all people. Deviating from the average means that you are looking for something that is better for you as an individual.
Thus you have to take some risks. But they must be calculated risks (small downside, big upside) done in the right kind of way, not being really dangerous.
At some point it’s more art than science
There is a very thin line between giving up just before you start to see some results and sticking to something that doesn’t work. At this point we are talking more about art than science.
You have to listen to your inner voice, do an enormous amount of self-reflection and know yourself to the point where you recognize when you are being lazy, when you are procrastinating, when you are not investing enough into it and when it really does make sense to stop.
Don’t experiment to compensate for your negative feelings
Make sure that you’re doing all experiments and new things with positive emotions of excitement, love, respect for yourself and others. Your negative emotions like anger could lead you to do extreme things just to prove something to yourself and others.
In that case you can do a lot of damage to yourself and others. It’s extremely important that you are tender to yourself in all kinds of ways. Nothing good comes out of rough accession. Yes, you have to be tough, yes, you have to be fair, but acting out of extreme negative emotions means nothing but hurting yourself.
5. Don’t have unrealistic expectations and manage your irrational fears properly
There is one more trap you can fall into in the search mode and it’s by far the most difficult one. People love short-term results.
But all real results are long-term and they come after years and years of hard work. You usually overestimate what you can achieve in a few months and underestimate what you can achieve in a few years.
While being in the search mode, you can find out how hard it really is to achieve big goals. It takes years to get yourself in really good shape. Going to the gym a few times is not even remotely close to getting into extraordinary shape.
People in magazines devote their lives to their bodies. In much the same way, it can also take decades to build up personal wealth. You have to make many hard decisions in order to progress in life. It’s not easy and it never becomes easier, you only get better at it.
Well there’s good news and there’s bad news for all this. The bad news is that I have zero tricks at this point. You either want it badly enough or not. If you want it badly enough, you will always find a way; if not, you will always find an excuse.
The hardest thing to do is to motivate an unmotivated person. And a blessing is giving the direction and tools to a motivated person. You will have to decide for yourself if you want it badly enough.
Here is an ancient story that shows this point really well:
A young man visited Socrates and asked him for the secret to success. Socrates told the young man to meet him near the river the next morning. They met. Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and ducked him into the water.
The boy struggled to get out but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the young man did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air.
Socrates asked, ‘What did you want the most when you were there, under the water?” The boy replied, “Air.” Socrates said, “That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it.”
And here come the good news. It really takes brutal efforts to get to the top. It really takes brutal efforts to have a perfect athletic body, to become super rich, to win a Nobel Prize etc. But it doesn’t take that much effort to live a life happy and true to yourself.
It doesn’t take that much to live healthy, to have enough financial intelligence to properly manage your money, to find your dream career etc. That’s something that anyone can do. And you can do it too. You just have to kick yourself in the ass a little bit harder.
At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want out of life. Just don’t settle for average and for the society’s expectations for you. You want to live your own life with your own goals. So start experimenting without any irrational fear.
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 searchmode 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:
Search mode: Learning and figuring out how to work smartly
Execution mode: Working hard and achieving goals in bi-weekly sprints
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.
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.
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:
Looking for your best fits so you can start building your dream life
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.
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.
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.
