success

Success Musings

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We are five weeks into the new financial year.  The year is still young and plans are afoot to make this year count. Here are some field notes from numerous interactions with people on the ground. It appears simple, but it is where I find people trip.  I call this one Success Musings for I have made a success formula of sorts from Murakami‘s words. It is rather simple. But it works!

Success = Talent X Focus X Endurance. 

Most of us falter and miss reaching the heights excellence in our chosen domains not for want of talent. The hurdle that trips us is ‘focus’. Or the lack of it. The modern day world tempts us with so many options. We pick up the phone more often than we realise. Often, for no legitimate reason at all.   We have so many inviting options and distractions that can take us farther away from what we have to focus on and do. You can read Nicholas Carr‘s The Shallows and Cal Newport‘s Deep Work.

Less is more! The lesser we have on our plates, the more we are able to pay attention to what’s on them. Keeping everything that distracts from the core subject, out of the frame, adds so much more to what’s in the frame.  That lesson from photography 101, is much treasured.

The second aspect of endurance requires us to stay with it for long periods of time. That involves toiling away when no one is looking with nothing possibly to show for all the toil.  That is a lot of boring work with the mind screaming for easier options that beckon. Those who run long distances are familiar with these statements that pop up in the mind: “Why? Why am I doing this? I would rather be relaxing on a Sunday morning than sweating it out like this”! Well, success lies beyond such thoughts and after we wade through these. Endurance often is a mind game. 

Here is Murakami. Excerpts from Chapter Four. From “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir“.

In every interview, I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run. The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us, this isn’t the model we follow.

If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that, you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. Even a novelist who has a lot of talent and a mind full of great new ideas probably can’t write a thing if, for instance, he’s suffering a lot of pain from a cavity. The pain blocks concentration. That what I mean when I say that without focus you cant accomplish anything.

…

After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed for a writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, two years.

…

Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.

In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.

…

Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different

.…

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running and a metaphor for life and for me, for writing as well.

Murakami has been a personal favourite. I have poured over these lines and couldn’t resist sharing them here. Running as a metaphor for life has held strong for me. Before we go forward, may I turn around and ask you, what’s your metaphor for life? That’s one place where your own success formula can emerge!

So, where do we start?

The two circles  

For starters, writing down goals helps. Broad long term goals are good to write down. They serve as a reference point to what you want to do. A year is a good timeline to have. Arriving at what these could be tricky. It is best done in conversation with someone we trust. A good friend who refrains from advice but helps evolve a choice set, options and leave the deciding to us is great to have. An executive coach helps with just that.

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”

Robert A. Heinlein


Once the “what” is sorted, going about getting it is where focus and determination help. Every time we stretch a muscle, it hurts. But it is in the stretch, pain and challenge that learning and growth happens. It is about faltering, picking oneself up and continuing to work on. 

There are people who falter on the ‘What’. That is, people who miss out on evolving choices about what they should be working on. They find themselves bored at work and devoid of purpose. 

And there are people who falter at the ‘How’. These are people who have evolved a few things for themselves. But then, it is in focus and endurance that the faultlines show.  That requires a different working altogether. 

So where do you start? 

Getting the ‘what’ out of the way is always a good start. “What all do I want to really do?”, is a tough question to answer! A good conversation that will help clarify options and choices sets it up nicely.

Pro tip: Please make a point to write it down. It helps!  Just having it written down somewhere is a start that can give you momentum action. That is a good start to evolving your own success formula!

Image Credit : Pixabay

The habits of champions

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Michael Phelps helps me arrive at three monikers to treasure

All that separate him and me is about 50 meters.  The 23 Golds, 3 silvers and 2 Bronze medals and achievements that befit the tag of the ‘greatest Olympian ever’, are beside the point.  His achievements give a new meaning to what ‘Olympian heights’ or ‘champion’ could mean. Reading about or listening to habits of champions always leave me with ideas and energy. This one is no different.

When an Olympian with the stature of Michael Phelps is in front of you talking about his past, present and future, you shut up and listen. He speaks on his hydrophobia as a kid. He speaks of his coach. His mom. His team. How he trained, how he ate and much more.  Disbelief and gasps escape my lips as I soak in his story. Even as I do so, I become clearer of what it takes to scale the heights he has. Like a swimmer whose head bobs out for a brief moment before the body slices through the water with grace,  things crystalise in the mind.

These ideas stay on. Long after the event, put together to celebrate 20 years of the founding of True North, is done. Michael Phelps is perhaps back home minding the Instagram account of his son Boomer! (With 726K followers that must be one tough job! 🙂 )

It’s a Sunday.  My mind keeps darting back to his statements. Elements of his life and his story that refuse to fade.  To unearth what’s within me, as has been a practice, I grab a pen and paper and write. It seems easy as they tumble out. I write them with care. Some of them are here (Please click on any of the tiles below to scroll through the quote gallery).


An hour passes by like a starter’s gun in a big race.  All his statements and ideas. A quick blast and its all over! Ideas that seemed to have competed for a share of the mind are all out there to see. They lend themselves to a ‘sit and ponder’ after the words are well digested.  How would I remember this, I ask myself? How would I share it with others? And wonder if I can put it into three themes? Monikers if you will.

Just three.

With a tentativeness of a sore muscle after a big race, I begin. I know what I am saying will not be new to many.  At least it isn’t to me. I realise that the gap between knowing and doing kills at many levels. The mind lulls us to think we have cracked it because we ‘know it’.  Sometimes, refusing to let us dig further. That has been my battle. I wonder if it is yours too. Anyway, here are my three monikers that hold a bunch of ideas in them.

1. Hard work beyond talent. 

It’s been stated several times before: Talent is an entry criterion.  Talent is far more common than success. Success comes from hard work. Putting in the hard yards makes a difference at every level. Every single qualifier, forget a medal winner, at the Olympics, has the talent and the hard work. There is no argument that at all.

But success at Phelps’s scale requires a maniacal devotion to the task at hand. And that makes all the difference! There isn’t much more!

The maniacal devotion requires hard work, when the arc lights, the podium and fame arent in the frame.  Labouring in obscurity and enduring relentless pain. Several years ago, I came across a piece titled “The Common Denominators of Success” by A.N.Gray. It tugged at me differently.  

 “..the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do”

“…The things that failures don’t like to do are the very things that you and I and other human beings, including successful men, naturally don’t like to do. In other words, we’ve got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of men, and is therefore unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices. ” 

A.N.Gray spoke in the context of insurance sales. But those passages leapt in, even while Phelps was speaking. All of us love champions and aspire to imbibe their thinking into our lives. But we forget to remember that Phelps (and champions like him) dont like several parts of their routines, yet do them with great discipline. It is not about likes and dislikes.  Doing every inch of what it takes is what will bring success is key.  Deserving success is as important as getting success. 

Michaealangelo famously said, “If you knew how much hard work went into it, you wont call it genius”. Thats that. 

2. Focus beyond boredom.

The world that we live in is ripe with distractions. Every sensory organ is invitingly propositioned with a promise for gratification. ‘Deep work’ is much needed.  But Deep work is demanding. And many times plain boring. Imagine showing up in the pool every day for six years straight.  Ever single day of six years in the peak of youth. That sets up an exploration of another level of boredom and drive. 

There is another aspect to the boredom. The relentless toil in complete complete obscurity, away from the arclights, the podiums and people. Chipping away at yourself one second here and another there. Adding strength to a calf muscle or a forearm! Stuff that will go completely unacknowledged but will all contribute to the goal! To do this for days on end, will need relentless motivation. For it can get plain boring. 

Champions bring a level of focus that lies beyond the first shore of boredom. It means, they show up even when they don’t feel like showing up and produce champion stuff. “Embrace boredom” says Cal Newport.  The high perches of success comes after many hours of languishing company of boredom. 

That would apply to everyone of us. People out to excel in the corporate world. Aspiring writer. A fashion designer. Lawyers. Coaches. Every one of us! If we want success at the scale of Phelps, there is no escaping the regimen that brought it. 

So, how about embracing some boredom,  and sticking to what you promised yourself? 

3. Team beyond Individual.

The narrative of the individual champion who changed the way of the world, is lovely story. From Michael Phelps to a Steve Jobs. From Sachin Tendulkar to Elon Musk. But that story of the individual is an incomplete story. 

For every individual champion that we see and celebrate there is a team behind the scene, that has given a hand. Well, more than a mere hand.  That is obvious.  Michael Phelps had his coach an entire troupe. A troupe that included his mom, sister, wife and now, his kids. He spoke of his special relationship with his coach Bob Beamon who deserves a part of every single of the 28 Olympic medals and more! 

Sudeep Banerjee said it very well on twitter.

An Olympic athlete can afford such a team and must do so too. On more personal terms, we have our own Olympic equivalents every day. And the responsibility of building our own support team rests with each one of us too. Of course, whilst speaking of teams I am not speaking of the teams that we end up with at our workplaces.

For instance, have you considered co-opting mentors onto your journey? Whatever the journey. Or maybe a coach? Perhaps members of the family? A classmate? A colleague from another team? Someone who will be able to look at things dispassionately and tell you as they see it. Someone who is interested in you and brings a strength that makes a difference to you. Infact, the part about hard work is rather incomplete without a smart agenda to work hard on. That is something a rich coalition of a co-opted team can bring.   

That sums it up for me.  With talent, hard work and discipline a good distance gets covered. But success at the height at which champions like Phelps have succeeded can’t happen without a team.   Speaking of teams,  here is a take on the same event by my good friend and colleague at Founding Fuel, Charles Assisi.  His take is very inspiring.

In a world that reveres champions and celebrates their success, not enough is said about what it took for them to get there. That applies to each one of us in our respective fields. Unless we are prepared to give it what it takes, our aspirations stay as well intentioned wishes. Before we realise someday that each day chipped away at what we might have become! 

The opportunity is omnipresent. The choices are ours to make.