My peers sometimes tell me that I’m obsessed with the things I’m doing, like if that’s something bad. Actually, I think obsession is required if you really want to achieve your goals.
It’s important to remember that no one cares as much about your goals as you do yourself.
If you do what everybody else is doing, you will be mediocre like everybody else. If you want to be outstanding in something, you have to put in more work than others. That’s when obsession comes into place.
You are the only one in the world who actually wants you to be wildly successful.
No one else cares that much.
— Gijs Heerkens (@gijsheerkens) June 20, 2022
- When I want to achieve success with my own business, I improve something every single day for 10 years. At the moment I’m in a 231 days streak of bug fixing, adding content and general improvements. No weekends or holidays, every day at least one thing has to be improved. Now I’m making a good income out of it.
- When I want to have a better body composition, I never miss a workout. I never skipped a single exercise. I study nutrition until I understand the basics and I eat clean every meal. I resist the social pressure to drink alcohol or eat crap. And I don’t mind to spend money on a good personal trainer. Now I’m starting to see results.
- When I want to learn Spanish, I show up every single class. I never missed one class. I do my homework, ask questions and hire a personal Spanish teacher. Now I’m quite fluent.
- When I’m doing a challenge to write 50 blogs in one year, I show up every single week to write one. This is the 31st article, exactly running on schedule, so it seems I’m going to meet it.
This all pays off because of compound interest, a poorly known but critical concept for success, considered “The eight wonder of the world” by Einstein himself. You need habits for that, for habits you need discipline and for discipline you need obsession.
At least, that’s how see it, which might be due to my highly conscientious personality. To make it all manageable, I try to have two, max three obsessions at a time.
On the other hand, moderation is the path to mediocrity and failure. People use moderation as an excuse to be mediocre and to not be disciplined, often due to cognitive dissonance and the empathy gap. No one in the top 5% of any given field ever came there without some degree of obsession, though.
So that’s why I’m obsessed with my goals until I get where I want to be. After that, it’s perfectly okay to loosen up a bit, but the play always comes after the work.