Ever wondered how to become successful? Ever wondered how you can rig the odds in your favour?
Well, at least I used to wonder. I used to wonder what I should do to become successful. And here’s a process that will help you succeed too. Although the meaning of success varies from person to person, the process remains the same.
Follow these steps, and you shall set yourself up for success:
- Ideate
- Execute
- Collect feedback
- Iterate
Is it an easy path? Of course not. But if it were easy, everyone would do it. So before we start seeing in detail each step, I’d like to point out that being disciplined is the essential requirement to get the job done. Sticking with the process is far more critical than just defining the process. Come what may, stick to the process.
“Everything begins with an idea”- Earl Nightingale.
Ideas are things you build. Ideas are things you create. The important point here is that ideas are not things that just fall out of the sky. Ideas are not things you gather from the environment. Ideas are not things you steal. Ideas are things you craft.
The process of ideation is a process of discovery. You must suspend all conventional ways of evaluating your idea. When your brain starts generating ideas, it’s doing what it was designed to do. It’s evolving solutions to your problems — building ideas. You now have two choices. You can stop and discard all thoughts that don’t seem helpful, or you can keep building ideas.
Ideas are valuable in their own right. They are a currency that we can use to trade for other things. If you succeed in getting your idea accepted by someone else, you have acquired a valuable claim on someone else’s time, attention, and money.
Document your ideas. It’s humanly impossible to try and recall every detail you’ve thought about. So if you’re playing a long term game (which I hope you are), you must document your ideas and all your iterations. This is because iterations often cost you time and money. And it’s better if you don’t experiment with the same things again and again. Journaling helps you keep track of all your iterations and also think clearly.
The hardest part after ideation is getting started on the execution. In other words, the most challenging part is getting to an acceptable idea. Most of us, I suspect, have ideas all the time. Of course, we don’t always act on them, but ideas are a constant stream of consciousness. They are what keeps our minds active and what feeds our creativity. They are more mental noise than ideas, and most of us have learned to filter them out.
Contrary to popular belief, ideas aren’t necessarily the most important thing. Ideation is just the first step.
“Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.”– Alfred North Whitehead.
Once you have an idea, you have to share it with others; you have to explain your idea, discuss it, and persuade other people to agree with you. Ideas can help you build influence. The more people you can convince to agree with your vision, the easier it becomes to persuade others. And once you have persuaded a few people, you have to convince them to convince others. The people you’re able to convince can become your team that’ll help execute your idea or even help spread the word.
The most significant rule in any creative endeavour is execution. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your idea is or how wonderful you imagine it to be; it won’t exist if you don’t execute it.
Successful execution depends in part on having a vision. You need to imagine something before you see it. But vision is not enough. You need to get moving. If you wait for perfect ideas before you start, you’ll never get started.
The first step is to avoid paralysis by analysis. Don’t spend too much time trying to analyse everything. Begin by picking out one idea that seems most likely to be helpful. Focus your energies on that, then fix any apparent problems you find. Then work steadily toward completion.
The key is to execute and to execute fast. It is the reverse of delaying gratification. Act on the ideas before the inspiration to do so perishes. Start building prototypes or testing your assumptions. Don’t wait until you have everything figured out. Don’t wait until you have all the right resources. Act.
By acting fast, you get feedback from the world. You get feedback on your idea. And you get feedback about whether the idea is even a good idea. In the end, whether your idea is good or bad doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you act on it. Let the market decide whether your idea is good or bad.
The process doesn’t end with the first execution.
The feedback you get on what you’ve executed is essential. Feedback is information you get from someone else. Feedback is anything that tells you something about your performance or behaviour that you didn’t already know. It may seem obvious, but to use feedback effectively, you have to stop and listen. When people give feedback, they sometimes say things they don’t mean. They have their own needs, their own goals, their agendas. They may even use feedback as a way to vent their anger.
So, first of all, don’t defend. Don’t argue back. Don’t counter. Just listen.
Then, try to discover the “message” in the feedback. If the question is “Why did that not work?” then perhaps the real question is “What did I do?”.
Maybe another way to think about it is that if your goal is to move up in the world, then feedback isn’t the answer. It’s part of the answer. The question is whether you have the tools to use feedback effectively. Obviously, there is no one size fits all solution to it; you have to find the system that works for you.
Start with finding people who are willing to give you mindful feedback. Also, learning to ask the right questions can become very handy. Only when you ask the right questions, will their input be of use to you. Once you have identified the message, use it to improve.
I have made it sound so easy and obvious.
Successful people try 1000 thousand things, and a few of those things work. It’s impossible to get everything right the first time. Understanding that and accepting it is the only way to succeed — practice radical transparency.
Now, what’s Radical transparency?
When an idea doesn’t work, be honest with your team and, most importantly, to yourself. Find why the idea isn’t working. It’s far better to accept the idea isn’t working than simply sweeping it under the rug. And remember that NOBODY gets it all right the first time. It takes 1000 iterations (not literally, but you get the point) to find out what will actually work.
It’s not that you shouldn’t try new ideas. Experiments are how you learn what works. But you have to be careful. If something doesn’t work, don’t keep tinkering with it. You don’t know why it doesn’t work, and you don’t want to keep guessing. Instead, move on. Find a concept that does work, and stick with it.
When you do that, you’ll still make mistakes. But you’ll eventually figure out what works.
Then you’ll be right. And you’ll be incredibly successful.
So, how to become successful? Or how to rig the odds in your favour?
You should become a lifelong learner. It’s as simple as that. I know it’s easier said than done, so being disciplined and sticking with the process is essential. You compound your knowledge by iterating and also from others’ iterations. That’s how you set yourself up for success in the long term.
You need to develop a knowledge base that you can refer to when things go out of hand. Your knowledge base will come in handy during tough times. And a knowledge base also helps you reflect and see what’s been working well for you. So you need a platform that can track your learning and help you gain control over it. And that’s precisely what we’re trying to help you with at Zuperly. We are building a unified learning hub.
Zuperly solves the problem of having different apps for taking notes, saving bookmarks, having reminders and a lot more. It’s the one platform for all your learning needs. We have the right tools to track your learning process during these iterations.
Varun, Content Writer
