2-3-4 Friday: You don’t need a strategy
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
I sat looking at the husband and wife, wondering if I was seeing wrongly. They looked like the couple out of Up. As I quizzed them about the business, I increasingly got the sense that their strategy was
simple.
Sell more.
To more customers.
It encapsulated everything they did.
There was no grand strategy, no fancy powerpoint slides, no management speak.
Just a simple two words.
Sell more.
Over the past few weeks looking at the different listed companies and their annual general meetings, I’ve come to see that some of the most profitable companies are big on
execution, small on strategy.
They don’t overthink it.
It applies to many of our own actions.
How many of us are tempted to draw a pros-cons list, a table of analyses, before making a decision?
Action beats strategy, especially when it’s simple action, repeated daily.
Overcomplicating is a very common process.
Let’s take the question of exercise. How do you exercise so that you lose weight? If
you do a quick Google search, you will see diet, different types of exercise, and a long list of trainers you should pay to get trim.
But if you cut it down to two things, it simply is:
- Eat less
- Exercise more
So pick one lane, and follow it everyday.
1 talk
Don’t aim to be better.
Aim to be worse.
1 tip
We know this advice. Why don’t we
do it?
James Clear talks about Atomic Habits, and how if you improve by 1% every day, you would have improved by multiples by the end of the year.
But this, I think, is bad advice because it sets the bar at 1% everyday. Think about it.
How many times have you woken up, wanting to exercise, wanting to do the right thing, only to think,
ah what’s the point? I’m not feeling too good today.
I will pass till I’m feeling
good enough to make it my best shot.
Instead of aiming to become 1% better, why not drop that expectation?
In fact, aim to be worse.
Over the years of investing, I’ve had some lucky breaks. Initially, these triple-baggers pressurized me. I thought,
what if I can’t repeat that again?
What helped me was realizing,
okay, maybe I can’t repeat that again.
So
why not aim to be worse?
It lifted the pressure off me, and led me to just enjoy the art of investing again.
Next time you want to do something, don’t aim for better.
Ask yourself,
What if I didn’t have to be better than yesterday?
What if it’s okay if I did worse?
It drops the pressure of performance, and increases the likelihood of you, just doing
something.
John
Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love