The Secret To Producing More Results Than The Competition

If you are an entrepreneur or have a desire to write, you know that we all would like to be able to write more consistently.

Most people who attempt to write struggle every single day to figure out what to write about, and get anything on the page.

Most people are ecstatic if they write one article per week, but end up writing "maybe" once a month.

The excitement is high at first!

But each day it gets harder and harder.

Words don't come to mind.

You feel like you've already written everything of importance.

You worry about if anyone will even read what you put down.

However, I haven't had these challenges in a while.

This year alone I've written over 100,000 words and over 190 articles.

I have something new to say every day and actually have a backlog of things to talk about.

Though not every day is "easy", it doesn't take me long to get to writing.

I'm also not a "natural" writer by any stretch of the imagination.

I used to struggle in the same ways I mentioned above.

So how did this all change for me?

Here are the keys that made a difference.

What Grammarly Taught Me

I use Grammarly to help me with my writing, it tracks every single word I write, tells me how productive I am as a writer, and shows me all of the data weekly.

Weekly it tells me that I'm in the top 10% of users when it comes to productivity (which is skewed data because most people who use Grammarly write a lot).

My vocabulary and unique use of words are in the top 5%.

My top three tones are "Confident", "Direct", and "Assertive".

But do you want to know what the most interesting data point?

Last week I made 1,100 grammatical errors and had 1,400 suggestions to make my writing better.

1,100 errors over 7 articles.

That is pretty normal for me.

This is what you need to understand.

Most people are terrified to make ONE mistake.

However, in order to write ONE article, I have to go through over 100 mistakes!

If you are afraid to make mistakes, you'll never get anything down.

The path to success is riddled with failure, often more than others realize (sometimes more than I realize!).

If you want more success, you have to accept and move through those mistakes as quickly as possible.

Most people try to never make any mistakes, and they'll accomplish nothing.

Some people try to only make a mistake once per day, and they'll accomplish "maybe" one thing a year.

Fewer people will try to get through multiple mistakes per day, and they'll feel happy to get one thing done per week.

The truly successful aren't afraid to make hundreds of mistakes per day, because they know that is the only way to get to success quickly.

What You Put In

The other place where most people struggle is in the amount of content they feel they can create.

They feel like they run out of things to say quickly.

They put a lot of effort into one or two articles about something they are passionate about, and then...

Nothing.

No more words come to mind.

They don't have anything else to say.

When people don't read their 2 articles that have everything they want to say, they get discouraged and give up.

However, if your problem "feels" like you can't output anymore, it's not the actual problem.

What you are actually struggling with is Input.

You aren't getting enough inside your mind to become creative in what you say.

There are an infinite amount of ways to talk about the same thing.

However, to understand this, you need more examples of what "can" go out.

People struggle with this in two ways normally.

One way is that they listen to the same exact voices over, and over, and over, and...

You get the point.

There are many great people to listen to, but when you listen to "only" one person (or two or three) then your perspective is really limited.

When you add more perspectives, and especially a variety of "types" of perspectives, this will change.

This leads to the second place people struggle - variety.

There are some people who input a LOT of information, but there ends up being extremely limited variety in that information.

For instance, in "Leadership" you'll see many people who read a LOT of "Leadership" material and talk about "Leadership".

However, you find out very quickly that most people who write about "Leadership" end up all saying basically the same thing.

You might read a lot of "books" and "articles" on the subject, but there isn't really much variety.

I saw this play out when I was on the Forbes Coaches Council - there were hundreds of coaches, all asked a multitude of questions, and 99% of their answers were exactly the same.

There was no variety, they all said the same thing, like a robot.

If you want to have more to say, you often need to look "outside" of what you want to understand.

That is a large part of the reason I stopped focusing on "Leadership Development", it's an industry with an 80% failure rate (The rest is only "limited" success) that is filled with a bunch of people that say the same things that don't work.

It's why I started focusing on what I call "Legendary Leadership Cultivation".

For me to understand "Legendary Leadership Cultivation" better, I turned to Science, Physiology, Psychology, Nutrition, Spirituality, Writing, Philosophy, Neurocardiology, and Marketing just to give a few examples that I look at weekly.

Expanding my variety always allows me to come up with fresh new ideas and ways to talk about "Legendary Leadership Cultivation".

The Flow Cycle

This is the last piece that has really helped me drive my productivity forward.

Understanding the Flow Cycle, and working "with" it instead of "against" it.

There are 4 phases to Flow - Struggle, Release, Flow, and Recovery.

You have to go through all 4 phases consistently to get into Flow States, where we feel our best and do our best work.

Struggle tends to be people's hardest to face.

Most people don't "want" to struggle, they are afraid of making mistakes.

But there is an easy way to overcome this one, and it has to do with the "Challenge-Skill Ratio".

Essentially, if something is too difficult for our current skill level, we get frustrated and give up, and if something is too easy we get bored.

The key is finding the sweet spot, just a little bit of struggle, and then you get better and raise the bar over time.

For me, it meant that I started with writing only 250 words per article (which was a struggle at first!).

Now, I can consistently write 750 words without a problem (this article will be over 1200 and it was extremely simple).

Don't go too hard at the beginning, start where you are, and in time you'll be beyond where most people dream to be.

Once you have this down, the other part where most people struggle is Recovery.

Recovery is essential because it allows you to restore your energy (Mg-ATP) stores.

Flow requires a LOT of energy, so you have to consistently restore your Mg-ATP in your body if you want to consistently get into Flow States.

If you don't have the right amount of Mg-ATP in your body, one of two things will happen when it comes to Flow specifically (though it causes a bunch of other problems outside the scope of what I'm writing).

Either you will be forced to drastically reduce your challenge level (which for most demotivates them), or you won't be able to maintain the Flow State for long (which also demotivates most).

In both scenarios, you "feel" like you're losing.

Most people don't like to lose, and they would rather quit than continue to lose.

To have success, you have to get beyond that feeling, understand where your challenge level is on any given day (which will move and require you to adjust every day), and have plenty of stores of energy (Mg-ATP) to take you to the highest levels of potential.

Final Takeaway

The road to success isn't really hard.

I was able to write it into basically 3 steps here.

Get Comfy With Mistakes

Expand Variety Of Inputs

Get Good With Flow States

If you do these three things, you'll be well on your way to success.