Do everything on purpose with purpose
WINNERS ARE INCREDIBLY INTENTIONAL WITH THE WORK THAT THEY DO
This is an idea that a lot of people fight me on, yet it’s the one that has changed how I coach, and how I coach others to coach.
At a certain point, hard work stops equating to success. I know that sounds heretical in a culture that worships effort, but it’s true, and the best of the best know it.
Most people believe that the harder they work, the more results they’ll get, so they pile on more reps, more hours, more grinding, more effort, and they keep waiting for the breakthrough to show up...but then it never does.
Why?
Because the breakthrough is not on the other side of working harder. The breakthrough is on the other side of working with more intentional focus.
Cal Newport writes about a chess study in his book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”.
The researchers compared chess grandmasters with intermediate level players, and both groups had spent approximately 10,000 total hours playing chess. Which means they spent the same total time focusing on chess, they had the same amount of exposure to the game, and the same starting line of love for what they were doing.
But here’s where it gets fascinating...
The grandmasters had dedicated about 5,000 of those 10,000 hours to deliberate, serious, focused study (the hard, uncomfortable, intentional kind of work).
The intermediate players had only dedicated about 1,000 hours to that same kind of work, with the rest of their time spent just playing.
Five times more deliberate practice by the grandmaster equated to vastly different outcomes. Meaning, the grandmasters didn’t work more than the intermediate players, they worked more intentionally. They didn’t add hours, they added focus.
There is a real difference between getting reps and getting better, and they are not the same thing.
People who are competitively immature want more reps because they believe volume is the answer and they believe the person who works the most wins.
People who are competitively mature want more out of each rep because they believe quality compounds where quantity plateaus, and they know that focused, intentional, high-quality reps create the elite version of themselves that grinding never will.
Some of the best leaders, athletes, and operators I’ve worked with actually work less than their competitors…
They are simply more intentional. They do everything on purpose with purpose. Then when they show up to do the work, every rep they take produces more output than their competitors.
Meaning, intentional focus beats volume...Every time.