"Gulp" Your Way Through Life...
"If you have to get away from your job for a vacation, don't go back." -- Bud Williams
I was reading Picasso: A Biography by Patrick O'Brian.
One fact blew me away:
"Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs."
His paintings and sculptures alone numbered well over 3,000.
The man basically produced at least 1 piece of art every day. My life's accomplishments pale in comparison.
But one principle I learned years ago was that you have to "gulp" or "chug" life.
Some people drink a soda or beer slowly over 10 minutes and other people gulp it down in 10 seconds.
When it comes to life you definitely want to be a "gulper."
Suck The Marrow Out...
You must go faster to get what you want out of life.
You want to be able to say like Henry David Thoreau in Walden, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life..."
Become prolific.
Being prolific is the pattern of greatness.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed over 1,000 works of music. At his peak he was paid to produce one new song a day.
Rolling Stone Magazine says about Prince, "In the Eighties, at a time when other megastars such as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna, were delivering an album every three years or so, Prince remained prolific to an almost inhuman degree."
Here is just a partial list of what Prince released publicly (he did a lot of other private work under other names):
Studio albums: 25
Live albums: 2
Compilation albums: 5
EPs: 12
Singles: 91
Video albums: 17
Music videos: 136
Soundtracks: 5
Internet albums: 11
Internet singles: 14
So what happened, why are you and I so much less productive than Picasso, Bach, and Prince?
Were they prolific because they were geniuses or were they geniuses because they were prolific?
Is it causation or correlation?
My guess is that there is a little bit of all of those at work.
There are two problems you and I have to overcome if we want to become prolific with our life's work:
1. The Flaws of Modern Education:
I think we stop being prolific because modern education kills our creativity by forcing us to take classes on subjects we hate.
Humans are not all the same. Why do we all need the same curriculum?
Sir Ken Robinson, in a very popular TED talk, says that schools kill creativity by penalizing mistakes.
"What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original...
And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.
And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes.
And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.
And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities."
Forget your past education. Go out and fail. Like Joel Salatin used to tell me, "Do something, even if it's the wrong thing."
2. How We Get Paid For Work:
Education doesn't account for the whole problem.
I believe the way we are paid for work is the biggest culprit of all.
In the Mentor Academy online seminar I taught about the dead end life that comes from a "Salary Mindset."
The demise of the American dream stems, in part, from companies paying employees a salary.
Two hundred years ago this country was founded on entrepreneur settlers who were results oriented not time oriented.
They ran their own farms and home businesses.
The more they worked, the richer they got.
Salaries kill all that.
Whatever you do in life, get off of a salary.
Sure a salary will give you temporary peace of mind. But at what price?
You will sacrifice a life well lived.
Temporary freedom is not worth the loss.
Benjamin Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Humans are naturally lazy. We are adapted from a hunter gatherer environment where we had to conserve energy whenever we weren't hunting for food.
The couch potato syndrome is "hard-coded" into our DNA.
It is only the fires of life that compel people from laziness to greatness.
A salary eliminates much needed pressure.
You need that pressure.
Allan Nation once told me about a young guy who had borrowed 1,000,000 to start a farm. The dad was asked if he was worried about all the debt.
The dad replied, "Well I know my son will get out of bed every morning early now."
I'm not suggesting everyone go into debt. But a little financial uncertainty never hurt anyone.
Like Plato said, "Necessity is the mother of invention."
Now that we identified the two problems, here are three practical steps to becoming more prolific:
1. Stop Pacing Yourself:
Stop pacing your productivity. Don't take little "sips" of your work.
Chug, guzzle, vacuum up your work.
If you normally read a book a month, start reading a book a week. If you already read a book a week, read a book every three days. If you are at the every three day pace see if you can get to the 'holy grail' - a book a day.
If you make five sales calls a day now, figure out how to make fifty. Big leaps like that are possible, trust me.
Obviously like John Wooden says, you need realistic goals.
But the question is what is realistic?
For Pablo Picasso producing thousands and thousands and even tens of thousands of pieces of art was realistic.
Picasso said something profound, "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
Picasso was saying that as we get older we make mistakes. Those mistakes lead to fear.
Once fear sets into our brain we take a little less of a chance. We set a little bit lower goals. We pace our work a little more.
Be wise. Past failure doesn't have to predict future failure.
Like the SEC government website gives as advice:
"...Past performance is not as important as you may think, especially the short-term performance of relatively new or small funds. As with any investment, a fund's past performance is no guarantee of its future..."
Suppress the fear. Have courage
2. Reset Your Baromoter For What You Consider A Good Day's Work:
Think about it this way, Pablo Picasso produced 3000 major works of art and over 50,000 total works of art. That means over an 80 year career he produced 2 pieces of art a day on average.
Set up a Picasso goal for your life.
Whatever you were planning to do in six months, do it in one month.
I love what Elon Musk says about this. He says, "Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that…you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve."
Now I'm not talking about becoming a workaholic. I actually taught a principle called the "integrated life."
If you live an integrated life you never have to worry about being a workaholic.
What else are you going to do with your life but do something great?
Like Picasso said, “Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”
So if you know you need to change your life, start your own business, make a new hire, cut a business expense, or go to the gym and work out - start "chugging through your list.
3. Push The Limits of Human Productivity:
Take the things that you planned out for six months and do it in six days.
I learned the limits of human ability when I lived on a farm with Joel Salatin and later with the Amish in my early twenties.
One story really sticks out to me.
I was living with Sam Chupp in Virginia on an Amish farm. Sometimes the Amish would do construction jobs for local non-Amish neighbors.
One neighbor came to Sam and asked if he would mind taking over the construction project to build her new house.
She said she hired a company to build her house - a log cabin kit. She hired some local contractors and in six months all they accomplished was the basement of the house. She figured that was too long a time to do so little.
Sam Chuck said, "Sure we will give it a try." (The Amish are always so humble.)
I was on the work crew that did the construction.
We woke up at four in the morning. Ate breakfast at 4:30. and by 5:00 am we were on the road (somebody would pick us up because the Amish don't use cars).
Work began at 5:30 am before the sun was even up. I am sure we broke some kind of OSHA work regulation.
At noon we took a 20 minute lunch and then went back to work again till 5pm when we headed back home to the farm to do chores.
We put in 12 solid hours of work - and when the Amish work it's focused - no distractions.
We went back to that house for three days.
On the third day we finished that house.
The Amish finished in three days what a regular work crew couldn't finish in six months.
There was nothing superhuman about that Amish work crew versus the previous slow crew. It was all in the mind.
We limit ourselves by copying people who aren't worth copying.
Copy only people who are 1,000 times ahead of you.
If you now make 100,000 a year, copy people who make 100,000,000 minimum.
If you can now run a tenth of a mile without feeling tired, find people who can run 100 miles!
If you're interested in finding out more, A good book on that is called Born To Run.
If you have a hard time making new friends, copy someone who has no problem making 1000 new friends - someone like Oprah.
If you only feel truly happy and fulfilled 1 day out of the week on average, copy someone who feels fulfilled all the time. Start by studying this kid, Tim Harris from Albuquerque, New Mexico:
That's why I'm such a big believer in reading biographies of the greatest people have ever lived.
This will help you reset the barometer of what you consider a good day's work.
Remember if you are under setting goals you’re guaranteed to not accomplish much. There has never been a time in history when someone set out to accomplish two things and accidentally accomplished fifty.
But if you set out to accomplish fifty things maybe you'll get five done. That is more than you would with the less ambitious goal.
It's like what Omar Bradley said, "Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship."
Remember, if you find yourself behind in your health, wealth, love, or happiness start gulping through life.
Follow the sage advice of Charlie Munger:
"Another thing you have to do, of course, is to have a lot of assiduity. I like that word because it means: sit down on your ass until you do it. Two partners that I chose for one little phase in my life had the following rule when they created a construction team.
They sat down and said, two-man partnership, divide everything equally, here’s the rule: 'if ever we’re behind in commitments to other people, we will both work 14 hours a day until we’re caught up.'
Needless to say, that firm didn’t fail. The people died very rich. It’s such a simple idea."
Stay Strong My Friend,
Tai
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