Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2017. “Last summer” refers to the timeline of James Clear’s post, not to 2017.
There is a skill so valuable that it will make you stand out in any area of your life, no matter what kind of competition you face. What is that skill, and how can you develop it? First, to understand it better, let’s look at a story told by James Clear.
Clear says that last summer he was talking with the writer Todd Henry, author of Die Empty, who has become a successful author because he does valuable work on a conscious, deliberate basis.
Clear is a writer too and wants to improve, so he asked Todd Henry:
“Todd, what do you think about writing only when you feel motivated? I feel I do my best work when I get a spark of creativity or inspiration, but that only happens now and then. When I feel like it, I write quite a lot, but if I write all the time, even when I’m not motivated, I’m not producing my best work.”
“That’s fine,” Todd replied. “I only write when I’m motivated too. And I start feeling motivated every day at 8 in the morning.”
The difference between professionals and amateurs
The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to get better at: photography, writing, sculpting your body, business… If you only do the work when you’re motivated, you’ll never be consistent enough to become a professional.
The skill that separates professionals from amateurs
The ability to give your best every day, to stick to the schedule, to do what you have to do consistently, especially when you don’t feel like it, is so valuable that it is literally all you need to be the best at what you do.
If you want to lose weight or sculpt your body, when you follow your diet and do your exercise every single day, you get into shape faster than someone who only does it when they feel like it.
The writer who puts in their writing hours every day ends up publishing more books than the one who only writes when the muse of inspiration and creativity shows up. More books published means more profit and a greater chance of turning one of them into a hit. It also means a greater chance of learning from mistakes and of improving consistently.
This advice is as simple as it is powerful and useful. So why is it so hard to apply?
In one of the points of a recent piece on life’s hard truths, we talked about pain.
Pain is the best teacher
The question isn’t what you want to achieve in life, but how much pain you’re willing to endure to achieve it. Without effort and sacrifice, you’ll rarely achieve anything worthwhile. Pain is the best teacher, but few people want to attend its classes.
This is where we meet the pain of being a professional. Approaching your goals, whatever they are, with the attitude of a professional is anything but easy. In fact, becoming a professional takes a lot of sacrifice, a lot of dedication and a lot of pain.
Most of the time we have goals we’d like to reach and dreams we’d like to fulfil, but we only work on them now and then: when we feel motivated or inspired, or when we realise for the umpteenth time that we’re drifting off the path that leads to success. It really is easier to work towards our goals only now and then than to do it every day, but doing it only now and then rarely gets you there.
See also: This new year, don’t do what you love; love what you do
I guarantee that if you set yourself a schedule for any task and do what you have to do every day, there will be days when you don’t feel like carrying on. If you start your business idea, there will be days when you think about quitting, days when you won’t feel like giving it much time.
If you join a gym, there will be days when you don’t feel like going, or workouts you’d rather skip that day. But if, despite those energy slumps, you manage to keep going and keep applying discipline, that extra effort and pain is what will turn you into a professional.
While professionals and successful people stick to a schedule, to habits, routines and disciplines, everyone else (the amateurs) lets life get in the way.
In James Clear’s words
“Professionals know what matters to them and work consciously towards that goal with a purpose in mind, while amateurs are often pulled off the path of discipline by ‘the urgencies of life’.”
Some people might now think we’re encouraging workaholism with these messages, but nothing could be further from the truth. Professionals and successful people work harder than everyone else, and that’s why they end up achieving mastery.
But being a professional means having the discipline to commit to what really matters to you, instead of just saying what matters to you.
It’s about starting to put in the effort when you actually feel like stopping, not because you want to work more, but because your goal is important enough that you won’t work on it only when it’s convenient. Becoming a successful person means making your priorities a reality.
Three steps to becoming a professional at what you do
1. Decide what you want to be good at, or the best at
Purpose is everything. If you know what you want, getting it is much easier. It may sound simple, but even talented, intelligent and creative people often don’t know what they want, what they’re working on or why they’re doing it.
2. Set schedules and routines
Once you know what you want, set routines and schedules to achieve it. From that moment on, that is your religion.
Tony Robbins wanted to become one of the best motivational speakers of all time. To do that, while other speakers gave 12 or 20 talks a year, Robbins started giving talks 3 and 4 times a day. That’s why today he is considered one of the best, or probably the best, in the field.
It’s very likely that on some of those days he would have preferred to stay at home, but if he had, Robbins probably wouldn’t be who he is today.
3. Stick to the schedule for just one week
Don’t think about how hard it will be to keep up those routines all year. Just do it for one week. For the next 7 days, don’t let distractions get in your way. They say it takes 28 days to build a habit, but the truth is we may see noticeable results in those first 7 days, and after those results our motivation will grow for another 7 days, or for 5 years.
Every great breakthrough begins with a few small steps.
See also: 8 things that will help you succeed as soon as you apply them
Featured image: Suzy Hazelwood, CC0 1.0, via Flickr.
