Why most people don’t succeed – How you can be the exception

<i>Maintenance is boring.</i><p>Just a few things I <i>don't</i> think are boring:<p><pre><code> - sinking my teeth into some fresh sweet melon - a late afternoon jog in the woods - hanging out with friends and family - an ice cold beer at the football game - an all-you-can-eat salad bar - curling up with SO (even if it is a chick flick) - a hot shower, freshly brushed teeth, and a warm bathrobe - a happy dance after a new program runs the first time </code></pre> If you think of the things you need to do to live well as "maintenance", they would seem boring, and you won't want to do them.<p>But if you think of them as "living", you'll embrace them and never give the concept of "maintenance" a second thought.

<i>Get honest about your current situation. Rate the following areas of your life on a scale of 1-10: Physical Health, grades, job performance, personal happiness, relationships, financial situation, etc.
 Then follow up with the question: What would it take to make this area a 10?</i><p>Steve Pavlina (another self-help guru which has gotten posted to HN a bunch) has a great post on why the 7's in your life are particularly pernicious:<p><i>What you’ll find when you leave the comfort of your 7 and go chasing after that 10 is that your 7 was never a 7. It was only a 3.<p>If you think you’re at a 7, you’re really at a 3 maximum. The 10 is way, way out there. You think you can see it, but your definition of a 10 is based on your experience of a 7, and you can’t even see a real 10 when you’re standing at 7. It’s beyond your ability to fathom.<p>If you were to go out and find someone who’s actually at a 10 in your area and asked them how you were doing on a scale of 1 to 10, they’d be able to label your 7 accurately as a 3. How would an Olympic gymnast rate your current diet and exercise habits? Are you really at 70% of their level? Ask a couple that seems to be googly in love with each other how they’d rate your relationship? Ask the most motivated, successful person you know how they’d rate your career? Is your 7 really a 7? Or is it a 3?</i><p><a href="http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-from-a-7-to-a-10/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-from-a-7...</a><p>(it's Derek Sivers approved! <a href="http://sivers.org/hellyeah" rel="nofollow">http://sivers.org/hellyeah</a> )

Not that the author is wrong -- everything he says meshes with lots of professional medical, health, and life advice. On the other hand, I'm constantly reminded of my grandfather, who ran his own business for something like 40 or 50 years, struggled a lot, raised a family, and never got caught gazing at his navel. He just <i>worked</i>.<p>So, I'm not 100% convinced that this sort of self-obsession is really all that helpful.<p>On the other hand, he did die pretty much on the job, and at several years younger than he ought to've ...

Super insightful, it's like the quote "you don't know what you've got till it's gone". Humans seem to have to feel pain/hit rock bottom before we can go back up, instead of visually processing what the future holds in store and proactively changing it. It's an interesting cognitive process.

See I view "maintenance" as the key to a business. Nothing stands still. Everything is changing all the time. Except for those parts that you nailed once and for all, and that the rest of the world agrees you nailed, which is none of it.<p>Maintenance is king. Maintenance is the most interesting part of business. Maintenance is the only way that you'll stay in business.<p>So, you can call maintenance boring, and I love you for it. Because while you're standing still with your "perfect" initial system, I am eating you lunch, drinking your wine, taking your customers, and spending your cash.

Lot of us are obsessed with success. It is probably a good idea to define what success is to yourself, and yourself only.<p>A good exercise is to take 5 minutes and write the things you want in life. I was surprised to find that my list was much smaller than I thought and to the exception of 1 or 2 items everything I could do/have within a short amount of time.

My girlfriend just had a problem with her car, which she noticed when it wouldn't start. The oil light had gone on a couple of hundred miles before, and it was an old car. She panicked about how her engine was screwed,and it would cost her multiple thousands of dollars to fix, and I lost it saying how you need to check the oil regularly.<p>It turned out to be a $25 repair. They replaced a washer.<p>Sometimes things that look like they require some great, superhuman effort, but end up just involving basic day to day effort.

In a talk last year at (I think) the business of software conference, PG said, among other things, that business schools are useless because successful business people don't waste their time teaching business in business schools, and instead either run their business or enjoy the fruits of their success (another song to the tune of "those who can't, teach").<p>His depiction of university professors accurately describes most bloggers.

"Adopt the habits of those you admire the most" - this presumes that those with exceptional qualities are also better at optimizing what they have, and that this optimization is somewhat universally applicable.<p>I'd say: try to understand the habits of those you admire the most, and try them yourself if it makes sense.

This whole process is too self-absorbed for me. There is this urge expressed to focus on things that cannot be measured. So the proffered solution is self-reflection. But just as it is easy for me to conflate reading technical stuff with working, it's also easy for me to find myself reflecting instead of doing.<p>The solution is measurement. If I want more of X, I need to understand the values of X at time Y such that delta X is always positive. That's where the author and I differ. Without a fuel gauge, I would not know whether or not my car needed attention. My life works like that too.

It's not enough to simply decide to keep up with "maintenance" and then do it, because if you are the type of person who lacks the discipline to stick to things, you will unconsciously resist any attempt at change. You need the ability to hack your habits.<p>I've been trying Giles Bowkett's system for building habits based on the "calendar about nothing" for a couple weeks. It seems promising (for example, two weeks is longer than i usually stick to things), but it's too early to tell. I think the key is to change only one thing at a time, until the habit is locked in.

I agree. Maintenance is crucial. Not always fun, but crucial. Really like the last line: "The difference between luck and skill is consistency." Well said.

Love this. Well written too.

how YOU can be the exception. Because you are. You snow-flake.

There's no trick to it, it's just a simple trick!