Why you can't focus on being successful

Keep Filling the Balloon

Picture a balloon. Each time you blow into it represents a “rep”(repetition). Over time, the balloon, which is symbolic of your output, gets so full of air that it reaches its limit and pops. 

That pop represents success, and it even shares many of its qualities: it is loud, it catches everyone’s attention, and most importantly, it is a lagging indicator of previous work.

You had been blowing air into the balloon long before it did anything. You couldn’t time when it would pop with any certainty; all you knew was that the more air you blew into it, the more likely it was to pop. 

When you work at anything, you need to keep this dynamic in mind. Being overly focused with the end-goal is precisely what will keep you from reaching it. In fact, there is no end. Once you pop a balloon, you will immediately be handed another. Success begets success until you can’t play the game anymore. 

This dynamic has immediate and long-term implications. 

Short Term

In Eugen Herrigel’s “Zen in the Art of Archery”, he recounts when his Master explained to him that “The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.” 

In other words, master the things that get you to the target, and you will hit it more often than if you were to obsess over just the target. This of course is not a “cheat code” to shortcut performance. The approach of keeping a soft focus is highly dependent on the years of work you must go through to make some processes second nature. 

Long Term

When describing his pre-pitch mindset, MLB pitcher Clayton Kershaw once said that it is best to throw the ball as hard as you can to wherever the glove is.

This simple advice seemingly perpetuates the common belief that the best athletes simply “have it or they don’t”.

“Of course he can do things that way, he’s Clayton Kershaw after all, right?”

Well, yes, but not for the reasons you think.

He can approach games in such a casual and instinctive manner because of his rigorous practice routine. Between starts and in the offseason he is drilling his mechanics and workouts with a game-like intensity from his catch play to his visualization routine (he calls them “shadow bullpens”). 

When others so often practice as a means to check boxes, Clayton performs the most mundane drills with a desperate intensity. He is highly deliberate and technical with his practice, so much so that he has developed a mind-body connection that has exceeded the physical cues most players even at the Major League level rely on. If anything fails during the game, it will not be because of any flaw in his practice. 

He has accomplished what any craftsman or performer seeks: to transform his physical craft into a spiritual act. His simple-mindedness in the game is a lagging indicator of his decades of focused, technical, and deliberate practice. 

From Seed to Fruit

Jordan Belfort once gave the example of a tree bearing fruit to describe lagging indicators. The fruit on a tree does not appear on its own. It is a lagging indicator of the twig it hangs from, of the branch that twig is attached to, of the trunk that the branch flows from, all the way down to the roots, and ultimately the seed it all grew out of. 

The foundation of success is often hidden to most, like the seed or the roots; nonetheless, the foundation is paramount. Remember this fact both when you are building your body of work and you become envious of another person’s success. 

As a side note, it is important to be aware of the difference between causality and coincidence. Winning the lottery is NOT the result of your years of prayer or your “manifestations”, just like winning at roulette is not the result of any special technique or superstition. 

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb — a mathematical statistician  — is fond of saying, we must not become “fools of randomness” by attaching cause and effect where there is only coincidence. You must instead dedicate and attach yourself to the actions that are less susceptible to randomness — to be at the whim of randomness is to give yourself over to disappointment.