Success is different from person to person, everyone has its own idea of success. That’s why our paths towards success are different as well. In this article, I will take two extreme approaches to success. I believe that these two extremes give an idea of the problems that can arise on our route towards our own success. Everyone should take from each approach what works for them to create their own way.
Approach A
Approach A is for people who know what they want or are not afraid to fail. They tend to only focus on one or a few goals. They think reaching these few goals will make them successful. Often they get occupied by the loads of work that they need or want to do. They often know ‘what’ to do and why they do it, but forget about the how to do it in the best way. This is often related to the type of goal they have or the environment they are in. In the world of entrepreneurship, it’s often said you need to work 80 hours a week to be successful. If you then want to start a blog (hey, that’s me!) you get easily occupied by the idea that you have to work 80 hours. You think of what you could do those 80 hours a week and start working. Often skipping the most important step in how to do all these things in the best way possible.
Forgetting how to do it means that they easily forget to eat healthily, sleep enough and work on intimate relationships with people around them. This often happens unconsciously. They are stressed whenever they don’t finish the tasks that they think they need to do to reach their goal. They don’t see HOW eating healthy can help them to reach the goal. They just see WHAT they need to do. By forgetting how they tend to forget to take care of themselves. This causes them to be tired a lot and waste a lot of time. The brain is just not wired to focus when there is no energy. The more tired they get, the harder it becomes to start taking care of themselves.
I sound very negative about this, but they often reach their goal. They have a higher risk of getting depressions, anxiety, burnouts, but they will keep pushing because they know what they want. I have to say that this is a very strong power to have and I admire the people who are capable of doing this. They reach their goals often because once they get a depression or anxiety they learn from the experience. Then they improve and keep going.
Some of my friends lean more towards this approach then approach B. A lot of my friends are medical students and they are busy with studying about 10 hours a day. They only study about 6 hours of these 10 hours. Most time is wasted by sitting in the Starbucks with me, but they also go on lunch breaks for an hour or they don’t eat at all. Both not very effective. But none the less, I wouldn’t last a day. And they will reach their goal.
What makes medical students a good example is the fact that their path is super clear laid out for them. They need to know a certain amount of material and they need a certain amount of experience to reach their goal, being a doctor. At times I can see them struggling with taking care of themselves. They are fixed on getting to their goal as soon as possible. And that’s a typical thing that fits approach A.
My friends are merely a small example of how far someone with approach A can go. My friends often relax in the evening and enjoy by watching tv series (taking care of themselves.) When I read about entrepreneurial success, some people barely stand still to enjoy. They sleep and work and that’s the only thing they do. They might have 1 or 2 friends, who are most likely also entrepreneurs and work in the same way. They are often disconnected from the world. The difference is with them and the medical students that once an entrepreneur hits a burn-out or depression, his business most likely will fail. He might work through it, but this often ends up in even worse health problems. While students can miss a year (although this can also cause problems), recover and start again where they left off.
Approach B
These people tend to say that they don’t know what they want because they are afraid of failure. They tend to cover this up by using the argument that they ‘just wanna enjoy’. What of course is totally not an argument against going for success. But this works for them because they aren’t honest towards themselves about what working on their goal would look like.
Now I hear you thinking ‘Olaf, you just said they don’t know what they want, how can they then not be honest about it towards themselves about how it would look like?’ Very nice question, glad you’re following. It’s nice to see that you made it this far. The answer is simple, they lie to themselves that they don’t know what they want. Yes, it’s that simple.
They have a vague idea of what they want. The problem is that they think it’s impossible to reach it. This is like throwing oil on the fire of failure, because if you’re already afraid to fail and then you don’t believe you can reach something. Well, let’s say that makes starting very difficult.
This is why they often switch between the things they do or they get a job they don’t particularly like. In this job, they take on a minimum effort – maximum result attitude. This makes them often complete their tasks ‘fine’ but not to their full potential. They just don’t have the drive to do better.
Next to their job (even if they switch a lot) they tend to have a busy life. They keep themselves busy all the time, either with watching tv shows, friends, going out or they try different sports, diets and all types of different things that keep them busy. If you would ask them why they do it they often say they enjoy it (and that’s true, I’m not trying to say they lie about everything okay.)
They often know a lot about themselves because they took the time to invest in themselves. They tried out a lot of things, worked on the things next to their job. The longer and the more they use this approach, the more small goals they have. They can have 50 goals they actually would want to reach, but they are afraid to choose one or two to focus on. Because again, if they would fail those two, they would have given up on the other 48 for nothing. I’m not saying this is true, but this is often the way they think.
A lot of students will fit in this description, including me a year ago. I just followed my study program (in this case representing the job that someone wouldn’t really like.) I just got 6’s mostly and sometimes a 7. Next, to that, I did a lot of things. I really enjoyed my time, but I didn’t really get anywhere career-wise. I didn’t have focus, so I tried a ton of things. But never really putting the effort in to make it work.
Comparison
People who use approach A might say that people who use approach B are just lazy and waste time. They find them very inefficient and don’t understand how they can be happy with that. People who use approach B would respond that the ‘A people’ just don’t know how to enjoy. B thinks of a that they are to goal orientated and that they will realize that they are once they hit their goals. Both partly being right and partly being wrong.
You could say that approach A is a future success orientated approach and approach B is a present success orientated approach. I don’t think one is better than the other. I just believe that the ‘best’ way to approach success (if that even exists) is somewhere in the middle (because you want success now and in the future.) On the one hand being able to work hard is very important. Being able to just go blind for the one thing you want is an amazing skill, but it’s also important to take care of yourself and enjoy.
I think what we need to understand is that you can enjoy while working on the route towards future success. As long as we do this, we have present success. The only way to do this though is by taking care of ourselves. Having close relationships with friends, eating healthy and doing exercise. This is just a view aspects that are important, but it’s a start to taking care of ourselves. Giving ourselves the time to stand still and enjoy what we have already reached or learned is also an important factor. Once we do these things, we can keep on working. Then we can maybe only work 40 hours a week, but these 40 hours will be so much more productive. The energy that we get from taking care of ourselves improves the quality of our focus and work in general. This will make us able to accomplish so much more in those 40 hours than a lot of other people. Most people ‘work’ 40 hours a week, but have a lot of wasted hours. This is because it’s either the job that I described in approach B. They aren’t very motivated to do it or they don’t take care of themselves, what causes them to be distracted quickly.
I believe that it’s not about the total working hours you put into your work. For instance, I worked about 10 hours on this piece of writing, reading and thinking. But next to it I do sports every day to keep myself mentally and physically fit. I make sure I eat enough and the right things to again, be fit. I make sure I see my friends enough. I make sure I improve my relationships and I check on my friends regularly to see if they are doing alright. All these things make me able to focus more on my work, enjoy my work more and write a better peace. I believe these things contribute to being the best version of myself and that will reflect in my work. So how do I define success?
Defining success
In general, people think of money and growth when it comes to success. But it’s different to everyone. Bill Gates measures success by Impact in the society. Warren Buffet measures it by how many people love him. Mark Cuban measures it by waking up in the morning with a smile on his face. But I think Maybe Angelou said it best when she said: Success is about liking yourself, what you do and how you do it. Personally, I think that well-being and wisdom are important factors in each of them. This leaves us with 6 themes:
Money
Growth
Giving/impact (in society, but also people around you)
Liking yourself, what you do and how you do it
Wisdom
Well-being
I think each of this factor into our success. I can’t give you the answer to what success is for you. However, finding things out about ourselves always start with asking questions. Here are the questions I have answered for myself. Down below I will explain my answers.
How much money do I need now, but also in the future? How much time do I have then to create that, what do I need to create that and how do I make it sustainable.
What do I want to learn? (growth)
How do I want to give back to the world?
How can I create work or where can I work so I can give back to the world while I create the amount of money that I need now and can grow towards earning that in the future and still like myself, what I do and how I do it?
How do I want to gain more wisdom?
How do I take care of myself the best way possible with what I have right now?
My own answers
Right now I need about 800 euros every month (yes, I’m young and cheap). This isn’t that hard to earn, so I should be able to create this. In the long-term, I need about 80.000 euros a year (that’s the end goal.) After this, I really don’t need more. It’s even proven that after 60.000 dollars a year, the level of happiness isn't influenced by money anymore. I’m just going to sit a both it a little bit. I have a shit ton of time for that. I think about 20 years. I’m 21, so I have a lot of time. I could even take 30 years if I want to. The amount I need isn’t suddenly going to be 80.000 euros. I need this amount when I’m around 40, maybe 50. For when I have kids and a wife. At the age of 25 I just need around 2000 maximum I think. So again, I have a lot of time (it’s very important to realize how much time you have.)
Time is important, if you’re already older then I and you have kids to take care of. You can still answer the questions. Maybe you need 4000 euros a month now (or dollars.) Then you make sure you earn that every month. Then you need to make sure to start working less while earning the same amount. This will give you the time to do other things that you like to do if you don’t like your current job.
To able to like myself, what I do, how I do it and to make sure I can earn this money in a sustainable way, I need to use my talents. I like thinking, I want to learn writing (growth), I like reading (wisdom) and I can put this all into my blog. In this way, I can give back to the world by helping people to improve their lives and also to learn new cool things.
I can achieve this if I take care of myself. Sporting about half an hour every day. Eating the right amount of kcal and getting the right vitamins. Regularly seeing my friends and at times not give a shit about any of it and just enjoy for a day. To get back to work fresh the next day. It’s about the balance between all of these questions, answers and sometimes not focusing on it too much. Because if we focus on it too much, we don’t enjoy it anymore.
Now try and answer these question for yourself. In this way, I hope you can make your life a little more successful every day! That was my idea for the day. I hope you enjoyed reading the article. Let me know your opinion in the comments or contact me for questions. Leave a like or share the article. If you’re interested, check out my other articles or read my story to see what my goal is with writing. Both at www.obooij.com
I want to refer to Azquotos.com for using their pictures of quotes.