A proven process to improve anything you desire—in business and in life
In this article, you’ll discover my proven framework that I’ve used to grow over 110 businesses, improve people’s focus, develop better habits, increase willpower, and become financially independent.
Why this framework is different
Most frameworks follow a single, rigid process: you simply put your head down, follow the steps, and see what happens. They are like an instruction manual: to be followed to the letter.
This framework, however, takes a fluid, intuitive approach. It is like a toolbox: you choose the right tool to get the job done.
In addition, this framework recognizes the profound difference between what you should do, and actually doing it.
This guide ensures both.
How? By drawing on multiple disciplines—including kanban, psychology, conversion optimization, statistics, biology, neurology, biochemistry, and more—this approach ensures you work on the right things, in the right order, and follow through to see results.
We start with high-level general principles, then get increasingly specific and detailed. While I encourage you to start from the beginning, I’ve included links below to help you skip ahead.
Are you ready? Then let’s dive in
Scroll down to keep reading, or click a link below to skip ahead
Additional examples
Three examples we’ll use throughout this guide: how to be healthy, wealthy, and wise
I figure these three are good, universal goals we all have:
- Be healthy
- Be wealthy
- Be wise
For each step in this guide, we’ll go ahead and use these examples. Notice how goddamned generic they are right now? Wait till you see how they turn out at the end (it’s gonna be a blast, I promise).
1. Define your real goal—and how you’ll get there
Like Stephen Covey explained in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end clearly in mind.”
Your goal is your endpoint; it’s also your “reason why.” It’s the reason you’re reading now this. And, most importantly, it is YOUR reason, not anyone else’s, and it is up to YOU to decide whether it’s worth fighting for. If your reason is simply “because it makes me smile” well, good for you. That’s as a good a reason as any—and probably better than most.
Start with the real goal (or goals). “Get healthy” is a very different goal than “look great naked”. Be aware that there may be tradeoffs: for example, if you obsess over looking great naked, you may sacrifice overall health by injecting steroids, eating Flintstone-levels of protein, and overdoing it in the gym. Are you really willing to make that trade? Better decide that now, buckaroo, or you’re gonna be one bummed-out beefcake.
1.1 Frame your goal as a SMART goal
We talk a bit more about SMART goals—and how they can really make a difference in your life—in another article; for today, let’s just define the damn thing and move on.
SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Actionable
- Realistic
- Timely
Here is an example of a SMART goal:
By March 15, I’ll have hiked the Everest Basecamp trek in Nepal—dressed as Captain America.
… and here’s an example of a non-SMART (i.e. dumbass) goal:
I’m gonna make big money, yo!
Well. You can probably see the difference between these two goals. One is clearly defined, which makes it clearly achievable. The other is poorly defined, which sucks.
OK, now it’s time to…
1.2 Find the real metric that matters
Once you’ve defined your real goal, find the real metric that matters. Beware “vanity metrics” which look good, but smell funky. A real metric may be head-slappingly obvious, or it may have seemingly little to do with your goal. In either case, dig deep to find the metric that really matters.
Many people skip this step, to their dismay. They end up wasting hours (or decades!) optimizing for the wrong thing.
Take it from me, a guy who spends most of his waking hours optimizing things: find the metric that matters.
1.3 Decide if the goal is worthwhile
Ask yourself: does this matter? Looking back a year from now, will I care that I did this? Is there something more important, or fulfilling, that I should be working on? What would happen if I didn’t do this?
If it does matter, do you need, or even want, to be the one doing it? If not, can you remove yourself, either by paying someone to do it, or automating the process going forward? (Delegate or automate.)
Starting down the road to progress is easy; questioning whether the road is even worth going down is hard. We often find ourselves chugging along on a particular project, only to realize there is ultimately no point. We should, therefore, question our goals—and our motives behind them—early and often.
Ask yourself how long you’ll be doing this process. If you plan on doing this for years to come, will you still be happy doing it?
1.4 Establish a baseline
Establish a baseline and work from there. Roll up your sleeves, and get to work.
Baselines are sexy. They provide you a clear indication of where you’re at—so you can focus on where you’re going, and how to get there. Underrated by many, heralded by few, baselines are your starting point to success.
Here are a few examples:
- Average minute per mile
- Conversion rate of prospects to customers
- Number of pushups per day
Remember the real metric that matters? Use that as your baseline. If you do, you’ll improve the right thing; if you don’t—you ain’t improving shit.
2. Determine whether you’re trying to improve a process, a skill, or a habit
At this point, you’ve made great progress on the road to your goal. You know your goal, defined it as a SMART goal, and discovered the real metric that get you there.
But you’ve reached a fork in the road. And you must decide which turn to take.
Your have three options:
- A process;
- A skill; or
- A habit.
A process is a series of actions to achieve your goal**.**
A skill is usually required to complete one or more of those steps in a process.
A habit is a routine that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously.
All you need to know: Make it a habit to improve your skills; then, use your skills to improve the process and achieve your goal.
3. How to improve processes
Examples: buying a home, buying a business, writing a book, starting a business, the customer journey, flying to a new place.
Since a process includes multiple steps—which you may or may not be personally involved in—you must step back and observe the big picture, noting the type of process. Then, identify the bottleneck. Armed with the type of process and bottleneck, you’re ready to make huge improvements.
3.1 Find out the steps involved—and map them out
INCLUDE SCREENSHOTS OF PROCESSES
Examples to use:
Investment process and how to retire early. (include getting paid, paying bills and investing).
Something with productivity? See course for ideas. Health? (Healthy, wealthy, and wise?)
3.2 Find the bottleneck (also known as the constraint)
Find the bottleneck. The following is based on the Theory of Constraints, which was created by Eliyah Goldratt and explained in the book The Goal.
- Identify system constraints. Find the bottleneck that slows down the process.
- Exploit the constraints. Make sure that you get the most out of the constrained resources. An hour lost to the bottleneck is an hour lost for the whole system.
- Subordinate everything to the constraints. Rearrange other processes so that they work at the same pace as the constraint.
- Break the constraints. Find ways to increase the capacity of the constraint.
- Go back to Step 1. After the constraint is broken, go back to Step 1 to identify another constraint to work on.
Is there a way to invert the bottlneck, and turn the bottleneck into abundance? For example, if you want to exercise but currently have time constraints, can you get an active job that keeps you moving throughout the day? Another example: if you’re trying to reduce your expenses and travel more, you can do both—and save a pile of money—through house sitting.
Key point: As a general rule, fewer people, taking fewer steps, improves a process. Eliminate and automate as much as you can.
Some processes, however, cannot be automated (e.g. eating better, practicing your free throws, writing, making strategic decisions, etc.) To improve, you need to develop a skill.
4 How to improve skills
Skills. To improve a process, you need skills. The more relevant skills you have, the better. Examples: buying a home (process) requires analytics skills to research properties, negotiating skills to get the best price, and organizational skills to get all the paperwork done.
It should be pretty obvious that the more well-developed skills you possess—or have access to—the better you’ll be at, well, everything. Knowledge compounds. Invest early and often.
The first thing you need to do is identify whether you want to improve a hard skill or a soft skill.
4.1 Hard skills
Hard skills are tactical, and fundamental. Hard skills require repetition (like shooting a basketball). For hard skills, do loads of practiced repetitions—consistency is key.
Since consistency is key, make sure your consistent efforts are of the highest quality. Here’s the step-by-step process to improve a skill:
-
Find someone proficient in this skill. This should be easy.
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Watch them perform the skill. Closely.
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Act like the expert. Put yourself in their shoes. Pretend you are them; feel what the it feels like to do this action. Note the rthyhm, the cadence. See yourself shooting a basketball like Stephen Curry, swimming like Michael Phelps, or dancing like Michael Jackson. Play cover songs, copy great literature, deliver great speeches, etc.
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Perform the action slowly. Like, obnoxiously slow. This helps you focus on, and ultimately master, the fundamentals.
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Stretch beyond your comfort zone. If it’s too easy, or too hard, you aren’t learning. Try to succeed 3–4 times out of 5. (Fewer is too hard; more is too easy.)
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Reflect. After each try, reflect on how you performed. Become totally absorbed. See what you did right, and what you did wrong. And when you do it perfectly—which may not be often at first—stop and internalize what it felt like, frame-by-frame. Rewind it and replay it in your mind, over and over, until you feel in deep in your bones.
-
Repeat.
Books on subject: Talent Code Sports gene. The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance.
How to improve yourself (e.g. flow state)
4.2 Soft skills
Soft skills are strategic, and useful only once you’ve got the fundamentals right. If hard skills are tools, soft skills are knowing how to use them.
Soft skills require improvisation. For soft skills, do loads of different scenarios, and get feedback early and often.
Spend 2/3 time doing; 1/3 reading/learning
Speed up soft skills to increase feedback loops. (This is why comedians test jokes on multiple audiences. Telling a joke is a soft skill, and telling on stage increases feedback, which speeds improvement.)
5. How to improve habits
To improve a skill, you must make it a habit to practice.
Habits are different than processes or skills. Unlike processes or skills, habits are purely psychological. You may want to improve a process, you may need to improve a skill, but unless you understand how to develop the habit to work on it, you ain’t getting anything done. Period.
So how you do create—or maintain—good habits? And how do you eliminate bad habits? Read on to find out.
5.1 Create good habits by starting small
When I wanted to start working out, I decided to do pushups, pullups, and squats. These three exercises have been shown to cover a wide variety of muscle groups and contribute to overall fitness is a suprisingly short period of time.
Of course, that assumes you actually do the workouts. Which I didn’t at first.
But then I came across a system that worked. It addressed my pschological fear of massive change.
People don’t like change. Especially changes that involve things we don’t like, such as lifting my lazy ass over a pullup bar over and over again.
So rather than try and do 30 pullups a day, I only did one pullup the first day. Just one. And then two pullups on the second day… and three on the third… and so on… until, by day 60, I was doing 60 pullups.
How did this happen?
Well, the first few weeks were embarrisingly easy. My wife laughed as I did one pushup, dusted off my palms, and said “Well, that’s my workout for the day.”
Did those first few weeks make me stronger? Did they give me massive, ripped arms? Nope. Not even close.
But it did something better. It laid the foundation/groundwork for a long-lasting habit. Since it was so easy to get started, I couldn’t slack off. It literally took one second to do at first—and a few months later, I was much, much stronger for it!
Here’s another example: meditation. Mediation is one of those things that, if it was bottled up and sold as medicine, people would pay big money to use.
The benefits are amazing. Studies have shows meditation improves XYZXYZYZYXYXZYZYZZYYZ
But here’s the thing: only X% of people stick with mediation. It’s not that it’s hard. (You just sit there!) It’s not that it’s ineffective. (It’s been proven 50 different ways to improve a host of health markers.) It’s just that it’s a tough thing to dive into.
So, like the pullups, I started small.
On day one, I meditated for one minute. Then two minutes on day two, three minutes on day three, all the way up to twenty minutes. (I actually went up to 40 minutes but it felt like diminishing returns.)
Now, I regularly mediate for 20 minutes each day. And if I fall off the wagon for awhile, I start the process over with 1 minute on day one. Try it yourself; you’ll be surprised how easy it is to build habits when you make them super small at first.
In other words, when it comes to good habits, start small—and win big.
5.2 Remove bad habits by starting big
Start big and hack your way through it. A bad habit is like the jungle; you need to hack your way through it.
- **General high-level examples: health, wealth, wisdom. **
- Specific examples: Basketball, writing, business, financial independence
Define purpose Research has repeatedly found that when behavior is tracked and evaluated, it improves drastically.
Hard work does not equal results. I used to work in a resturant with a guy named Larry. Larry looked like a middle-aged hobbit, with a similar work ethic. Larry had a trick he used to get out extra work: he would storm past the managers, going straight to the ticket counter, where he’d furiously punch in orders, whirl around and demand “When’s the food ready on table nine?” and then storm away.
From the look of things, Larry was putting in hard work. Except here’s the thing: Larry was bullshitting. He wasn’t busy at all; in fact, he often only had one table. Larry knew that management often doled out extra grunt work to idle waiters, so he pretended to be busy to avoid doing work. If that’s not a sign of our times, I don’t know what is.
RESOURCES AND STUFF I MAY OR MAY NOT USE
**The devil is in the duplicates. **Not details. Duplicates. When you create duplicates—of documents, processes, or whatever—you multiply confusion in a process. Confusion that will take further effort to fix.S
Converge multiple goals in one activity or process. For example, “make 25 free throws, with a heart rate under 140.”
Snazzy words that may work in an acronym
- Understand
- Connect
- Empathize
- Absorb
- Apply/Emulate
- Observe
- Repeat
- Measure
- Get feedback
- Become
- Improve
Try this approach out in the wild, let me know about it, and I’ll link to it here
Let me know how this framework works for you. As they come in, I’ll include links to results people see with this framework. (Obviously, I’ll link only to in-depth explanations, rather than “Me try. Me more better.”