The Trait You Need For Personal Development

Your life is being stolen, and everyone tries to deter you from the solution.

To make progress developing yourself you need to be selfish with your time. If you let people, apps, and consumption steal your time you'll never be able to make progress.

Despite this most people don't value their time.

Why you need to be selfish with your time

Let's start by defining terms. Selfish is defined as being “Concerned chiefly or excessively with oneself”.

Selfishness is not a bad trait, even though many people will try to convince you of the opposite. Everybody is selfish, it is human nature.

Being concerned chiefly with oneself is what an animal needs to be productive and survive. A deer in the wild can't reproduce, can't eat, it cannot even run away from a predator if it's not selfish because that would deprive a kind bear’s meal.

Selfishness is a prerequisite for long-term survival in nature. (Unless you're eusocial)

In human society, selfishness is also a prerequisite to living a good life.

If you don't want to be selfish: don't buy a house and deprive somebody else of it, don't buy any food (someone needs it more). Go be homeless, virtuous, and starving.

You need to be selfish to get resources, be it money, land, food, etc... You need to be selfish to be successful.

This selfishness is not about disregarding others, but about prioritizing yourself. When you prioritize yourself, you're in a better position to be generous. By selfishly acquiring resources, you put yourself in a position to help others more significantly.

You can't pour from an empty cup.

Time is your most finite resource, and you’ll never have more than you once did.

Your time is precious: value it and spend it wisely.

Be selfish.

How to be selfish

To best selfishly allocate your time there are 4 practices to follow:

1. Creating a hierarchy of values

2. Prioritizing a goal

3. Establishing the inputs

4. Performance

Use a pen & paper or notes app to go through these steps.

Part 1: Creating a Hierarchy of Values

You need to have a hierarchy of values for your life. You need to be able to prioritize certain aspects of life above others, this is what values are.

An example of a value hierarchy:

1. Health

2. Relationships

3. Education

4. Financial

What you value and how you want to live your life decides what you put onto this list. Personally, health is my top priority. If I had compromised health I would trade any material object to be healthy again. If a monk did this health and religion would be the top values, and wealth wouldn't even be on there. For you, the priorities could be in a different order or different entirely.

Part 2: Prioritizing goals

Based on the values which you established in Part 1 you need to create goals.

A good way to do this is using the Theory of Constraints.

View your life as a system, and your objective is to improve its quality. Currently, there are 1 or 2 main constraints on your life.

An aspect of the values which you laid out in Part 1 is bottlenecking the quality of your life. To find the bottleneck (constraint) think about: If you achieved success in one of the values (Ex: health, wealth, education...) which would be the most drastic change in life quality.

If you solve a bottleneck above your current lowest nothing will happen. The flow is already blocked before it reaches the constraint you solved.

For most people the constraint is health. They should focus most of their energy on improving that aspect of their life. Once they have those boxes checked and consistently employ good practices they can move on.

If you are lacking in this department but resistant to the idea of prioritizing it then here are some reasons why you should: With compromised health everything else in life is also compromised. Your daily human experience will feel better and easier if you’re strong and healthy, as well as your mental health and cognitive ability operating at its full potential.

Check the boxes of good sleep, consistent physical activity in the gym (or sport), and good nutrition. These 3 pillars of health get 90% of the benefits. Get into these habits routinely for the majority of the results: 8h or more of sleep nightly, consistent physical activity (3x weekly or more) either in the gym or a sport, and good nutrition which is eating whole foods (meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts) and avoiding processed foods + excessive carbs.

If you already have those boxes checked the constraint might be financial, or something else you value in your life.

Write out one domain which you are going to focus the majority of your energy into. This is the season of x (health, wealth, etc...). You are going to focus on this goal even to the point of neglecting other areas of your life. Success doesn't come from 'balance'. Being unbalanced doesn't need to be forever, only until you've got this area down pat. You can be unbalanced in the Micro (for a season of your life), but balanced in the Macro (over your lifetime).

Prioritize one goal for a 'season' of your life.

Part 3: Establishing the inputs

The goal you have is the output you want. Work backwards to discover the inputs.

If you want to make your first dollar online through E-Commerce the output is a payment coming through. The inputs you need are setting up a product, supplier, website, and payment processor. Once those are established, marketing is the primary input because people need to know about your stuff to buy it.

If you want to get a nice physique the inputs are simple: 1) Train consistently (~3x weekly or more) 2) Eat a lot of calories and protein 3) Sleep well

Establish what inputs create the output you desire and figure out the primary drivers of success for your goal. Use the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) to prioritize the inputs you list. 80% of the results come from 20% of the inputs.

You can also use Charlie Munger's concept of inverted thinking: Ask What would I do to be the worst x (athlete, entrepreneur, husband, etc...)? Create a list of answers to that question of what you would do to never achieve the goal. When you finish the list flip each answer to the positive. That way you'll have a list of principles/guidelines to follow while pursuing the goal. The cool thing about this framework is you'll get entirely different (and often better) answers than if you answered: What should I do to achieve this goal? The human mind is much better at finding threats and risks, perceiving the negative.

Your goal needs to be measurable. When your goal is vague it becomes unclear when you've achieved it. You're able to push the goalpost backwards or forwards based on laziness or insecurity.

The goal also needs to be effort based. There are tons of studies showing that effort based goals and rewards are much more effective. If your goal/reward is outcome based you may cut corners or solve for external image rather than pure effectiveness in achieving your goal.

Your goal should be to do the inputs effectively and consistently over a certain time frame. That way completing it is completely in your control.

You should be ready to commit to your goal for the long term as well. A huge difference between the rich and poor (and the successful and unsuccessful in any domain) is the time horizons they think in.

Poor people think: How do I get rich quick? What's the easiest way to make more money this month?

Rich people think in decades.

The same applies to fitness.

People who aren't fit want the magic pill that burns bodyfat at night, or the 30-minute ab routine to get a 6 pack instantly.

Fit people are committed to a lifetime of working out. It is their lifestyle.

Don't ask: How can I get rich quick? Or What's the fastest way to get a six pack?

Ask: How could I get rich slow? & How can I sustainably implement fitness into my lifestyle?

Be sure your goal is: 1. Measurable 2. Effort Based (input based) 3. Long-Term

Part 4: Performance

Now that you know what you want and how to get there the only step left to achieving the goal is performing.

Find the main levers for success (Pareto principle) and fit them into your daily routine.

Implementing something as a daily practice is a powerful tool. It may not seem significant to commit even a small amount of time to something each day, but the effects compound resulting in substantial change long-term.

If someone did 20 minutes of lifting weights daily after 2 years they'd have a physique better than 95% of the population. Don't underestimate the effects of a daily practice.

Most games in life that are worth playing are infinite games (Fitness, business, marriage). In an infinite game the only goal is to keep playing. Therefore, if you don't quit you're winning. You never 'win' fitness, the only way to win is to keep playing. There is no singular moment of winning in business or marriage the only way to lose is to quit.

The name of the game is consistency. People think consistency is willpower and discipline, but in reality it's adaptability. When you're short on time you still go to the gym but only do a few exercises, that's consistency. Doing the action regardless of the circumstance which warrants skipping it in other people's eyes.

The people who win in any game enjoy playing. Don't ever forget this fact. The winners find more ways to reward themselves. If you want to do something long term you need to find a way to enjoy it, or don't play in the first place. A business rival will run you over if he enjoys it and you don't, he will work harder, for longer hours, and longer-term than you. You'll never be able to stick to a fitness routine if you can't find any way to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy playing the game you will lose every single time to someone who does.