Pareto your winning and losing

More and more I think my real job of being an indie solopreneur isn’t running a business but running myself. My inner mental game, my productivity, creativity, motivation and energy.

And just finding way to maintain the game within myself is the mission.

Like they say, the real product isn’t the product but the factory that makes the product. In this case, the factory is me.

And one of the most important parts of managing me, myself and I is my learning rate and progress rate. James Clear explains it well in his latest newsletter:

"Balancing success and failure is a tricky thing. I’d say 8 or 9 times out of 10, you should be succeeding. Build momentum. Accumulate advantages. Feast on the feeling of success and let it feed your desire to do more. But 1 or 2 times out of 10, you should be failing. Push yourself and reach beyond your current grasp. Force yourself to try uncomfortable things. Occasionally you will surprise yourself and the rest of the time you will learn.

Win enough to keep progressing. Lose enough to keep learning."

That last line is so dope. And a perfect summary of what my real job is.

Set up enough small wins to keep feeling like I’m progressing, no matter how incremental. But don’t get too comfortable winning all the time. Push things outside of my comfort zone a bit so that 10-20% of the time I’m losing in order to learn and grow.

That perspective on losing is pretty crazy in a way, isn’t it? Seek out loss intentionally, in order to learn.

That way, losing is no longer a stain in your success story track record. It literally is a stepping stone amongst many to success.

Failure is just research. Loss is learning.

Seeing this way, there’s no way you can’t win.