Reach Your Dreams in Less Than 12 Months

Set Absurdly Ambitious Goals: They should be intrinsically motivating, difficult, and time-bound.

Reframe Subconscious Patterns: Get bold insights via auto-suggestion. Before going to sleep, visually and vocally state what you are trying to accomplish, and record your thoughts towards your goals.

Learn and Work in Counter-Intuitive Environments: Master two things and introduce hot ideas to each other. Combine ideas to create value and a competitive advantage. Work in a different context.

Learn from Counter-Intuitive Resources: If you read what everyone else is reading and think like everyone else thinks, you won’t be able to come up with anything unique.

Focus on the Process (not results): Those who succeed big are process-oriented as opposed to results-oriented. Don’t focus on other people’s results.

Ignore what almost everyone else is doing.

80/20 Analysis of Highest Leverage Activities: Find patterns, master those patterns, and innovate beyond them.

Over-Learn High Leverage Activities: Over-learn specific parts of the work using “lay-ups” (small sets of information).

Learn to Apply, Not to Procrastinate: Learn a concept in its simplest form, practice in a real-world scenario, and learn by failure. Get coaching and feedback, apply that feedback through repetition and practice, and repeat until proficient.

Focus on quantity in the beginning: “Plant a lot, harvest a few.” The more you produce, the more ideas you have, and some of these ideas will be innovative and original.

Track Only 3 Things: If you have more than 3 priorities, then you don’t have any. Performance must be measured because the rate of improvement accelerates.

Heighten Expectations for What You Can Accomplish: Increase your expectations, double your abilities, and place value on your goals and specific behaviors. Learn from the best, but don’t be bound by their standards.

Surround yourself with people who have higher expectations than you have.

Expect to Expand and Adapt: Have a mindset of having “nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Don’t get stuck with just one mentor.

The Mentor Sets the Expectations, But the Mentee Sets the Tone: Ask yourself, “Do I really want to be like this person?” If they are the right mentor, deepen the relationship.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due: You are the product of all the help you have received. Acknowledge your mentors and never speak poorly about them. Remember that ego is the enemy; be a student and remain humble.

Think Astronomically: Allow yourself to be awed.

Think Laterally: Solve problems using an indirect and creative approach, and skip unnecessary steps.

Think More Flexibly About Limits on Resources: Don’t over-categorize things immediately, as a singular perspective limits your supply of ideas.

Think More Flexibly About Limits on Time: Let go of your limiting beliefs about yourself and the fixed limits of time. There is no fixed limit on how much you can learn and grow, and no fixed amount of time it must take.