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Or for help.
Or for someone to mentor you.
And instead just start doing.
Because once you start doing, 99% of your questions will be answered.
And you'll realize that most of your questions don't really matter.
That most of the things you're worried about don't matter.
So don't waste your time looking for help, advice or mentors.
And instead just get started.
Because doing is the best help, advice and mentorship you'll ever get in life...
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The problem is that without momentum, credibility, a reputation, experience and some sort of mastery you won't be taken seriously by anyone and you'll probably end up nowhere.
Like it or not but that's the reality we live in.
You'll only get noticed and be taken seriously once you've done something that most people would never be able to do.
Something incredibly hard.
And all of the above things are incredibly hard to achieve.
That's why we tend to start the other way round.
We try to skip the hard part and go right to the change the world part.
We put ourselves, our ideas and our work out there before we've done the really hard stuff.
And then we get frustrated when no one seems to care.
When no one even seems to notice.
But if you haven't done or achieved something incredibly hard yet, something that most people will probably never be able to achieve, then no one will ever take you seriously.
Then no one will ever care.
So if you want to be taken seriously you've gotta do or achieve something incredibly hard first.
It's as simple as that.
But not easy...
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It's a lot easier to start a business than it is to keep running the business you started.
Just like it's a lot easier to start dating someone than it is to keep dating someone.
Just like it's a lot easier to start writing that book than it is to finish that book.
Or that blog post.
Or that song.
Or that painting...
Starting isn't the real challenge anymore.
The hard part is to keep putting in the work it takes to keep the show running.
To bring it to the next level.
Here's the thing...
Today you can easily just move on to the next idea, project, friend or partner whenever it starts to get difficult.
And it will always get difficult.
Sooner or later.
And that's what makes it so difficult to keep the show running.
To bring it to the next level.
Because it has never been easier to just give up and move on to the next show...
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What's the difference between being able to sell $15 ebooks compared to barely being able to sell 99 cent ebooks?
It's the same difference between being able to sell $1000 online courses compared to barely being able to sell $10 online courses.
Or being able to sell a coffee for $6 compared to being able to sell a coffee for just $1.
The difference is trust.
It all boils down to trust.
If people don't know you, don't trust you and don't believe that you'll be able to deliver what you promise, then you'll always struggle.
So the best investment you can possibly ever make is to invest in trust...
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With the help of the Internet we can now all reach billions of people.
That's why it sometimes feels like we're doing something wrong if we don't reach tens of thousands of people right away, if we don't get hundreds of likes and don't get dozens of comments with each and every piece of whatever we put out there.
But the truth is that even though we can now all reach billions of people with whatever we put out there, there are billions of other people trying to reach those other billions of people.
So what happens is that even though it's now easier and cheaper than ever before to reach pretty much every person on planet earth, it's gotten so much harder to reach your first 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 or more people.
It seems almost impossible.
Every step of the way.
The noise has just gotten way too loud.
That's why the only thing that will ever get you noticed is still the exact same thing that got you noticed 5, 10, 20, 30 or maybe even 40 years ago.
Persistence, patience and showing up longer and more often than anybody else is what gets you noticed...
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When you expect that new thing to be perfect you're never going to finish it.
And you're going to end up nowhere.
You're going to write dozens of drafts and publish exactly none of them.
You're going to shoot dozens of videos and publish exactly none of them.
You're going to record dozens of songs and publish exactly none of them.
Here's the thing...
When you expect to create something perfect the first few dozens of times around, you're going to set yourself up for failure.
Simply because you're not going to be perfect.
Nothing you create is going to be perfect right away.
Probably not even close to it.
It's going to take a hell lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears to be able to create something perfect.
Most people will never create something perfect in their whole entire lives.
And that's ok.
I've published more than 1100 blog posts.
Self published 10 books.
Recorded hundreds of videos.
And none of them was perfect.
Still, you've just read this right here...
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Like it or not but when you're a freelancer or (an entrepreneur) you're essentially the IT department, the design department, the marketing department, the sales department, the biz dev department and the CEO all at the same time.
Until you have enough clients to pay someone to do stuff for you.
But to get to the point where you can hire someone to do all of this for you, you'd essentially have to do all of the above.
Even if you want to raise outside money you'd essentially need paying customers already.
Unless you want to flush your friend's and family's money down the toilet or want to raise dumb money from people who invest in ideas with zero proof of concept and zero market validation.
On the other hand when you have a job, then your only job is to do one thing and one thing only.
The thing you're good at.
The thing you were hired to do.
Your job as an employee is to be as productive as possible doing your thing.
That's what you're essentially getting paid for.
And that's something a lot of people tend to forget...
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It doesn't matter whether you post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other platform.
People don't want to click on links anymore.
They want to read the stuff right where they are.
Without having to click on anything.
People are lazy.
People are sick and tired of switching from one app to the next.
People don't want to be sent to websites anymore they don't know and trust.
Mostly because they will be bombarded with ads, popups and requests to disable their popup blockers on almost every website out there.
People are sick and tired of it.
And that's why clicks are constantly going down.
And will keep going down.
Which of course is also reinforced by platform owners that don't want people to leave their platforms.
Because the more time people spend on a platform, the more valuable that platform will be for advertisers, publishers and ultimately investors and owners.
So what does that mean?
It means that each and every platform needs its own type of content.
Content that can be consumed on the platform itself.
Without having to go anywhere else.
So if you want your content to be seen and to be consumed, then you've gotta make sure that people can consume it on the platform itself.
Without having to go anywhere else.
Without having to click from one link to the next.
And without having to switch from one app to the next...
So what does that mean if you're consuming content?
It means that your attention is worth a lot of money.
A hell lot of money.
But the good news is that you can decide who's going to get your attention by allocating it to the things you really believe in.
So don't waste it...
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Is that you're not yet the person you want to be.
What makes it even trickier is that to become the person you want to be, all of your actions have to get you closer to the person you want to be.
And the second you start doing things that turn you into someone that someone else wants you to be, then you're at risk of losing your way.
And that's what makes it so hard.
Incredibly hard.
Almost impossible.
So how do you do succeed?
How do you ultimately become the person you want to be?
Well, essentially you'd have to find a way to do work that you're proud that gets you closer to where you want to be and at the same time you'd have to somehow satisfy your boss, your clients and pretty much everybody else.
You'd have to find a way to stay on track to becoming the person you want to be without having to starve.
Without losing your way.
And that's so hard that it's almost impossible.
So how exactly do you do that?
Well, that's the secret sauce.
That's the difference between success and failure.
And that's what only you can find out.
And no one else...
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Productivity is a concept that was developed back in the days during the industrial revolution.
A time where everybody was doing one thing and one thing only.
So people were trained to do their tasks faster and faster.
To increase productivity.
And then once peak productivity was reached, machines were introduced.
And we moved from the factory floor to offices.
At first most of our tasks resembled the tasks of the factory worker.
Doing the same things day in and day out.
And then these more or less simple tasks were outsourced to machines, software and algorithms.
What was left for us were more and more complex tasks.
And the more time passed, the more complex our tasks and work got.
Because the less complex tasks were now done by software, machines, robots and algorithms.
So we're now left with the work that can't really be optimized anymore.
At least not by us.
We're now left with the tasks that don't require productivity anymore.
The tasks that require something else entirely.
Tasks that require creativity.
Tasks that require finding new problems worth solving.
Tasks that require coming up with new solutions to new and old problems.
Because the rest will be optimized by algorithms and machines.
So today and even more so in the future our tasks and work will be more and more complex and all about finding new problems worth solving.
And then how to solve them.
And that has nothing to do with productivity.
And everything to do with creativity, wasting time, thinking, not being productive, pondering, experimenting, failing, adjusting and trying again...
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