Stop Trying to Be "Good" (Why it's hurting your progress)

The problem that separates successful people from the rest.

There is a problem everyone has already faced before.

I first understood it existed when, in my early days, I had to work on my first major project.

I needed this to be flawless, so I spent hours editing it again and again and again.

However, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t make it good.

This was nagging me. I knew what “good” looked like. I had observed dozens of other people do it before.

But I still wasn’t able to copy what they were doing.

I wondered: “Why does this always happen? Why is there always a gap between what I can do, and what they can do?”

That’s the problem: the feeling you are never able to copy what the best are doing or reach their success. Despite efforts, it seems impossible. You always seem stuck in mediocrity. You always seem bad.

Success looks so close and yet so far away.

However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

And today, you’ll see the exact framework to close that gap.

You will learn:

• Why you aren’t actually bad

• What makes successful people different

• How to finally reach their level of quality.

Let’s get started:

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Why you aren’t actually bad

The first thing is to realise you aren’t actually incompetent (if you think you are). At least not in the way you might expect.

Why?

Because you aren’t “bad.” You are just in the early stages.

Why does this matter? Because in the beginning, no one is perfect. Literally no one. You can’t just expect to start learning something and be incredibly skilled at it from day 1.

Being “not very good” is just a normal part of someone’s journey, and has nothing to do with your actual skills. Don’t forget every expert went through this phase as well.

If you always assume you are bad, you’ll never feel like what you are doing is worth it and will want to quit, so get the idea out of your head right away.

Now, the beginner stage is something we all go through, but experts didn’t stay in it forever.

So how did they get out of it?

They learned repeatedly, through these optimized strategies:

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How to escape the early stages as fast as possible

Why you must prioritize volume over quality

The main method you’ll use to escape the early days is to stop trying to be “good.”

Why?

Because right now your “good” is way too ambitious. You are likely comparing your work with the best people out there and considering their work “good” or “great.” Trying to replicate that kind of quality from the start, or something even slightly worse, is way too hard.

You’ll likely end up working for hours on a small detail to make it perfect. Trying to make your project go from “ok” to “great.”

Sure it might help your project perform a bit better, but the time you have put into it, to help it go from 80% quality to 90% quality, won’t be worth it.

Instead, use that time to focus on volume. Work more, produce more, finish more. The more you can put out there, the more lessons you can learn.

And those lessons will quickly translate into progress.

Aiming for quality will just waste your time in the early stages, and will keep you stuck. Aim for volume instead.

(That doesn’t mean you should produce incredible quantities of garbage to learn more, just don’t waste your time being a perfectionist)

How to analyse what the best people do

The biggest breakthrough I had was when I started studying what the best were doing, instead of just looking at their success.

Think about it for a second, you have free access to exactly what the most successful people in the world are doing in the palm of your hands.

All their years of experience and lessons learned through thousands of failures a single glance away.

That is a gold mine you mustn’t skip.

The lessons you can learn from them can help you reach success much faster.

But don’t just take a quick look and call it a day. You won’t learn much from that. Analyze deeply what they do.

Take their work apart piece-by-piece to see how they fit together.

Ask yourself:

• What do they avoid doing?

• Why are their strategies so effective?

• What tactics did they use to reach the top?

• How do they act in different circumstances?

• How do they keep learning and improving each day?

Spend hours or days studying them if you have to, because it can help you skip years of mistakes.

How to stay consistent despite the gap

Now comes the biggest problem: consistency.

It is easy to start something and to be motivated in the beginning, but after a while, that motivation fades.

And you are just left staring at the overwhelming gap between you and success.

This obviously makes you want to quit, but there are ways to fix it.

The main problem is that this gap is so big, you can’t see it shrink. It’s like climbing Mount Everest.

If you are at the bottom, you are about 8850 meters from the top. If you climb 100 meters, you are about 8750 meters from the top. Since there’s almost no difference, you are likely to quit.

However, there is a huge difference between 0 meters and 100 meters.

So why don’t we focus on that?

Every day, week, month, whatever. Every moment you feel down, don’t look at the goal ahead. Don’t look at the mountain you still have to climb, instead, look at how much progress you have made.

Look at how much better you are now than you were before.

Looking back at your past performances should make you realise you are able to improve and make progress.

This will give you the exact boost you need to convince yourself to keep going, and get past those early stages to reach success.

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What you can takeaway from this

The missing piece isn’t talent, and it isn’t a secret hack.

It is just consistency along with some good learning strategies.

Stop treating your early frustration like a sign to quit. Treat it like a tax you have to pay to reach your goals.

Your only job is to show up, apply these systems, and keep staying consistent.

Remember: the beginner phase is temporary, as long as you don’t quit.

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You just learned one strategy.

But maximizing your progress requires an arsenal of them.

If you want the exact tools to master your efficiency and work faster, join the Move The Needle community.

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