So the question is: what kind of content should I produce? What do I know that other people don't know?
What do I know that I can teach to other people?
I spend most of my time trying to understand the choices I have made, and examining systems that will make better choices the next time. Part of that is habit creation, and part of it is analysis. Perhaps the real problem is that I haven't spent decent time in actual analysis of behaviors and choices.
So what is the sufficient amount of time? Right now, I go by the seat of my pants on making choices. Bad experience compounded a lot o times to create answers that are generally correct. But then generally correct is not always correct.
And there goes the perfectionist mentality in me, trying to find the perfect solution. Whereas the trained brain portion says pick any solution. So where is the distinction? Probably in the question: does this decision matter in the next two years? If its the difference between the chicken and the fish, then the decision won't matter twenty minutes from now.
But aren't many of our decisions like that? Many of them are very small and insignificant in their own right. I've always been a skinny guy, and it doesn't matter what I eat. So I don't have the problem that others have with weight.
On the other hand, I have a problem with weight. I'd much rather add another 30 pounds of muscle. Would I be happy if I did that? I don't know. That depends on whether I'm looking forward to where I want to be, or looking backwards to where I was.
I heard a pretty good description of the subject form Dan Sullivan. He described it like thus: at the beginning of the period, you are a position A. At the end, you are at position B. Where you want to be is position C.
Whether you are happy or not is what you do when standing on position B. Do you look at C, and see how far you have to go? Or do you look back at A and examine how far you have come? The happy person stands at B and looks back towards A. The unhappy person looks at C.
It's all a question of expectation vs reality. Did you always compare yourself to the expectation? If so, you are comparing yourself to something you can never be. Despite all your hard work, you will never meet that reality. That image of what you want to be is something you are highly unlikely to ever reach. Partly because the ideal is far away.
So how do you end up cultivating that on a regular basis? And what makes us think that it's a good idea to avoid reality with such measures? A lot of both probably comes from what we have been inadvertently taught wrong. Gratitude is rarely taught in class, and it isn't something you see glorified on TV. Telling people the way it is seems to be the main method of the day, though that has a tendency to aim and nothing and hit it every time.
Perhaps the problem is not in either approach. It's in not producing. Realistically, the difference between success and failure is not gratitude or any other routine. It is about producing versus consuming. The more you produce, the more you grow. You could think of production in the agricultural sense. Production is planting seed that may or may not grow. The more seed you plant, the more likely you are to get a giant crop.
But most people plant no seed, and wonder why they don't get a crop. Out of the 24 hours in a day, they spend 0 of them producing. Of the things they do produce, they are producing for someone else. But producing some product, no matter how bad, for ourselves? Never. Can't possibly do that.
Success is not about what you want, it's about what you do. And if you want to break out of what everyone else is doing, then you must create content. It doesn't have to be original. Let's face it: Motzart's first symphonies weren't original. The beginnings never are. But they are just those: beginnings. You have to start and go somewhere or you will never end up anywhere.
