The older I have gotten, the more I have come to the realization that human effectiveness is nothing more than boiling our ambitious goals down to discrete tasks. Even the most complicated, most difficult of assignments can be reduced to a workload that can be efficiently done by most humans. If my day consists of activity after activity that requires intense brain power and higher forms of thinking, then I will not be that effective. What I have learned is that I should use my analytical, deductive thinking to understand an objective and associated problem and then work through how I would reduce that down into manageable parts. Then, I can create a scheme that allows me to be effective when I am not awesome. I learned to face reality years ago. There are days when I am awesome, firing on all cylinders, on fire, in the zone, or whatever reference you want to make. Then there is a majority of the time, when I am just not. I chuckle to myself when I read or listen to the next young person who decided to quit their day job try to inform us on how they stay “in the flow” all the time with some quick and easy-to-follow steps. Oh, I know this vibe well. I have been there many times before. I know that feeling. I am on top of the world, and I can slay anything in my path. When I am in that mode, then, I feel like nothing can get in my way; it is so simple; everything is laid before me! Just follow this formula, and voila!
If this were only true. If only I could buy a drug, follow a formula, or download someone’s planner and follow the connect-a-dots program. I loved life in my early 20s when I thought this was true. Wow, ignorance was bliss. Here is a cold, hard dose of reality. If you set your perfect life up with your ideal system so that you can perform at the highest possible achievement level every day, then you will wake up one day and find all of this crashing down around you. Only Elon can be this way and I am confident he is not either. I can guarantee he has spent more than one lonely night staring into the abyss of the paradigm he created for himself. The reality is that you will never create a path to success that is reliant upon your superhuman capabilities and your proven method to drive a Bezerker-like ability to accomplish amazing feats. The only true way to lasting success, where you heap accumulation on top of what you have grown is to break the difficult down to executable discreet tasks that any human of average intelligence can perform. The faster you do this, the faster this can be repeated and replicated.
If I had one wish, it would be to go back in time and shake that young punk out of his fascination with perfectionism and walk him through how repeatable will always beat incredible. I always thought I could overcome any obstacle and climb any mountain. I sought after tremendous feats of heroism, trying to take on things that only I could do, or so I arrogantly thought. Waking up out of that stupidity years later, I realized that I had not accomplished all that much. If I had just started when I was younger, I could have moved that mountain with a teaspoon – one small scoop at a time. Instead, I thought I could conquer the mountain with tremendous feats of heroism and valor. Do not get me wrong, I love the power of the individual. I think we humans are capable of such beautiful and brilliant deeds. However, if you want to be effective day in and day out, over the long haul, then take your brilliance and spend it concocting a way to simplify the complex into repeatable and reusable processes.
A book series that I love, is The Storm Light Archive by Brandon Sanderson. In this book series he has a character named Taravangian. This character has a curse, and he wakes up every day with various levels of intelligence. Somedays, he will wake up and be super brilliant, and other days, he is so dumb that he can barely remember his name or how to do basic math. This character captures the reality of the situation when it comes to creating this paradigm that demands our constant, “superstar” performance. Taravangian decides to use his “smart days” to create methods, rules, and guidelines for his dumber self to follow on subsequent days. As it turns out, the dumb days are far more common than the brilliant ones. This is how I like to view my life. There are days when I feel effective, in the flow. When I am like this, I focus on working “On” the processes in my life. All the other times, I simply work “in” them. Essentially, most of my days, I just follow the process. I do not question or doubt; I just follow the processes that I have put in place that I know, if followed, will ultimately lead to the success that I seek.
And that, my friends, is the key to true effectiveness. It’s not about striving for brilliance every day or expecting ourselves to perform at a superhero level all the time. That will only lead to burnout and disappointment. Instead, it’s about recognizing our human limitations and building systems that allow us to thrive even when we are at our most ordinary. The truth is, we all have more “off” days than we’d care to admit, but that’s okay. When we create processes that work on autopilot, we can turn those ordinary days into productive ones.
There’s freedom in this realization. You don’t have to be exceptional all the time. You just have to be smart about how you design your life, using your best moments to build structures that guide you through your worst. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my success isn’t about constantly being in the zone or having some secret to perpetual motivation. It’s about consistency, discipline, and the ability to create a sustainable rhythm that carries me forward.
So, when you have those brilliant flashes of inspiration, use them wisely. Set yourself up for the days when you’re not at your peak. The goal isn’t to be a superstar every single day—it’s to be someone who can show up, follow a well-laid plan, and keep moving toward the mountain, one small, deliberate step at a time. That’s how real success is built. It’s not flashy, but it’s steady. And in the end, that’s what gets you to the top.
