. . . THEN KEEP ASKING A SMALL QUESTION
The big question is necessary, but not sufficient. That’s where the small question comes in. Real achievement doesn’t happen overnight. As anyone who’s trained fora marathon, learned anew language, or run a successful division can attest, you spend a lot more time grinding through tough tasks than you do basking in applause.
Here’s something you can do to keep yourself motivated. At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday.
Did you do more Did you do it well Or to get specific, did you learn your ten vocabulary words, make your eight sales calls, eat your five servings of fruits and vegetables, write your four pages You don’t have to be flawless each day. Instead, look for small measures of improvement such as how long you practiced your saxophone or whether you held off on checking email until you finished that report you needed to write. Reminding yourself that you don’t need to be a master by day 3 is the best way of ensuring you will be one by day So before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself the small question Was I better today than yesterday?
TAKE A SAGMEISTER
The designer Stefan Sagmeister has found a brilliant way to ensure he’s living a Type I life. Think about the standard pattern in developed countries, he says. People usually spend the first twenty-five or so years of their lives learning, the next forty or so years working, and the final twenty-five in retirement.
That boilerplate timeline got Sagmeister wondering Why not snip five years from retirement and sprinkle them into your working years?
So every seven years, Sagmeister closes his graphic design shop, tells his clients he won’t be back fora year, and goes off on a day sabbatical.
He uses the time to travel, to live places he’s never been, and to experiment with new projects. It sounds risky, I know. But he says the ideas he generates during the year off ” often provide his income for the next seven years. Taking a Sagmeister,” as I now call it, requires a fair bit of planning and saving, of course. But doesn’t forgoing that big-screen TV seem a small price to pay for an unforgettable—and un-get-backable—year of personal exploration The truth is, this idea is more realistic than many of us realize. Which is why I hope to take a Sagmeister in a couple of years and why you should consider it,
too.
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