I think it’s true that every single one of us, as human beings, have two natural grooves:
- Master of the Universe – we can tackle anything and take on the world;
- Slave
Humans achieve the most amazing feats, like sending spacecraft to Jupiter, yet most people live most of their lives like cattle in a stall. They drift downstream. Going nowhere.
And, for most of society, it’s now possible for them to spend literally every waking minute being entertained and amused and have absolutely no idea where they are heading.
Master of the Universe has never been faster or easier to achieve.
And, slavery has never been so seductive or luxurious.
The truth is, there are many members of the EC who are dreaming of living a fabulous life, but they’re doing nothing about it.
There are many that are stuck in a business that they don’t love and aren’t passionate about. Their heart would sing if they did something else. But they don’t. Same old, same old is their song.
And so, each day, they climb into their rut. They do pretty much the same things, in pretty much the same way, day in, day out.
Hoping, dreaming, and wishing that somehow, some day, things will be different.
But they won’t.
The price you pay for lying down in your rut, for living your life vicariously through social media, is slavery and most people embrace it. They’re comfortable with it. Richard Koch says it best in his book “The 80/20 Manager”:
“In discarding the trivial and focusing on the essential, you have to reject the habits of a lifetime. Many people who opt for a ‘time revolution’ suffer serious withdrawal symptoms. They miss the trivial distractions and don’t know what to do with the sudden abundance of spare time”.
Koch was talking about what happens in businesses when the owner focuses only on the big things that make the big difference.
Gary Keller wrote an entire book about it called, “The One Thing”. This month’s Big Lesson on Page 12 is all about this exact same topic – extreme productivity.
It is liberating.
It does make you Master of the Universe.
It’s what needs to happen in order for you to build your amazing business, from which you can live your amazing life.
But something is stopping you doing it. You’re comfortable being a slave.
Your children aren’t like that.
One of the most delightful things in life is standing around the corner and listening to your 3, 4 or 5-year-old child play.
Even when they play by themselves, they babble and jabber and talk to their dolls and toys. Sure, kids get bored sometimes, but they’re not afflicted with that busyness slavery addiction that we adults succumb to.
Everything you do each day falls into one of three categories. You can see them in the drawing on this page. They are the Three Circles of Innovation.
99.9% of people remain inside the smallest circle ALL the time.
A computer could do most of the stuff inside the smallest circle. Whatever it is can usually be reduced to a set of instructions.
All of us naturally slide into the smallest circle.
Don’t know what to do? Check your email. Don’t know what to do? Log onto Facebook and see what’s going on. Don’t know what to do? Pull your phone out of your pocket and scroll through Twitter, see if you’ve got a new text.
Based on that, most people don’t know what to do about 46 times a day.
And it’s killing their business and, more importantly, their dreams of an amazing life.
Urgent conversation: We’ve gotta talk about these circles.
Come back next month and we will…
And that’s the final word.
