Breathe, Focus, Attack

by Ian Schechter

  Focus: Your First Hansei Session

  This isn’t exactly hansei in the business sense, but I recommend scheduling a regular check-in with yourself. If you’re trying out a brief meditation session each day as I’ve recommended, you might try doing this right after. Remember, attaching habits to a context helps solidify them. There’s not much to it. There doesn’t have to be a complex ruleset. Just reflect about what you’re doing, where you want to be, and how you’re going to get there. Whatever works for you is how you should proceed. Many people find that it helps them to give these hansei sessions some structure. You can use any set of questions that helps you, but here’s a set from me:

  Since the last session, what am I most proud of myself for? What has been my biggest success?

  What are the biggest challenges in front of me today and for this week?

  What steps am I going to take to overcome them?

  Since my last session, how effective have my strategies been? What can I do to improve them?

  How do I feel about my general behavior? Am I reacting to situations in the way I want to? If not, what can I do to correct this?

  Don’t worry if this feels awkward at first or if your mind wanders. What’s important is to spend the minutes doing it to the best of your ability. Just like with meditation, after a few sessions, you’ll start to settle into a routine, and you’ll start to look forward to this little period of self-development more and more each day. You’ll start to notice that your mind feels more settled and more focused, and you’ll go into the rest of your day with an edge .

  Attack: Try Bullet Journaling

  You may have heard the term “bullet journal” in passing, or you may have even been served ads for literal bullet journals, as in specialty notebooks designed for bullet journaling. Frankly, it’s too soon to tell if it’s a flash-in-the-pan kind of fad, but for the time being a lot of people swear by the practice as a productivity hack.

  Any journaling at all is worth trying; this is just one method. Writing things down forces you brain to organize your thoughts in a more structured and coherent way than they might live inside your head, which in turn strengthens your thought processes. For many of us, however, keeping a long-form journal wherein you write down long, rambling recollections of the day’s events and your idle thoughts is perhaps too much of a pain. Bullet journaling works for people because the system allows you to write as much or as little as you need to, and it incorporates the functionality of daily planners, to-do lists, etc.

  So, how do you get started? I’ll walk you through each of the main functions. Grab a black notebook and a pen.

  1. The Index

  The Index goes at the beginning of the journal, and it’s just what it sounds like: a list of the contents of the journal. Leave some blank pages at the beginning to fill it out as you go, should you pick up this habit for the long-term. You can list anything in the index you think you might need to go back to, and you just add more entries and the corresponding page ranges as you journal each day. So, for example, you might have something like this:

  January — pages 1-31

  Monthly appointments — 1

  New business plan notes — 3

  Notes from leadership conference — 14

  Workout logs — 2, 8, 18, 2 5

  …and so on. Whenever you add something that will be useful to refer back to later, you just drop a new line in the index to form a Table of Contents. Keep it casual and natural.

  2. The Future Log

  The Future Log just mimics the functionality of a monthly planner. Mark out spaces for each month (three months, six months, or the year), and as important dates or appointments pop up, you can jot them down in these pages. Each week, you can flip back to these pages and make sure you’re not forgetting anything important.

  3. Monthlies, Weeklies, and Dailies

  The rest of the bullet journal system is built upon monthly, weekly, and daily sections. You might use all of these or only one—it’s entirely about what works for you—but the idea is to just compartmentalize the space in the notebook accordingly and to give it some structure. Your monthly page may look like a traditional calendar, or it might not. It might include important reoccuring dates, or monthly goals, or strategies you’re hoping to try out that month. Your weekly pages serve the same purpose, but at the weekly level.

  Dailies are where you’ll spend most of your journaling time, and here too the options are endless. The whole philosophy of bullet journaling is about customization. You might have reoccuring sections for goals, for successes that day, for how many pages you wrote or miles you ran, for what you ate, or for how much TV you watched—anything you want to track. You might have a section where you record the highlights of the day’s events in a bulleted-list form. Perhaps you do a section where you leave space to write down a lesson you can take away from the day or something you want to improve upon the following day. Experiment a little and design a page based on what’s important to you .

  If you take this to the Internet, you’ll find tons of example designs, tutorial videos, and articles. I recommend you do that—seeing other people’s bullet journal designs will really help it all click into place.

  Regardless, try this for a week. If you’re seeing a pattern emerging, you’re a smart one. Short, easy daily routines that help enhance productivity and focus go a long, long way towards setting you up for success. You could spend ten minutes a day on a meditation session, five on self-reflection, and five jotting down the day’s bullet journal contents, and you’d only be spending 20 minutes a day giving these techniques a try.

  * * *

  11 . A set of business techniques for process improvement developed by Motorola engineer Bill Smith in 1980. Nowadays, many people subscribe to a combination of Lean and Six Sigma practices called—not very imaginatively—“Lean Six Sigma.”

  12 . Saunders, George. CONGRATULATIONS, BY THE WAY: Some Thoughts on Kindness . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

  Conclusion :

  Go Forth and Conquer

  I told you that attacking big goals is in part about becoming the kind of person who achieves those goals—that there’s no prying apart the outcome you want and the person that you are. (This is in part because we largely are what we do.)

  When you become that kind of person, the truth is that you’re going to be less concerned with the actual practical outcome of your actions. If you’re reading this book as a part of a run-up to starting some big new business endeavor, and that endeavor fails, ideally you’ll be less concerned than you would have been before you put these ideas into practice, because you’ll know that you’re a better, stronger, more actualized person than when you started, and that’s the truly meaningful thing here.

  When you form success-building habits and skills, you have to follow through. It’s like going on a crash diet, losing some weight, and then thinking you can start eating whatever again—you put the weight back on in a second. What works is finding more productive and healthier ways to live that start making you happier, not practices that you’re just trying to get through on your way to some other destination.

  You’re reading this because you want something. And I’ve got bad news for you: you’re never going to stop wanting things. No matter what you achieve, there will always be a next step. Tradition holds that after taking over most of the known the world, Alexander the Great wept for there were was nothing left to conquer. 14 This same sentiment has been felt generation after generation by monumentally successful people. When you think back to the happiest times in your life so far, what do you think of? People and experiences, most likely. Maybe you had less money back then. Maybe your health was better, or maybe it was worse. Maybe you were single or maybe you weren’t. Chances are that whatever your life circumstances were, they didn’t actually have a huge impact on how happy you were, if you think back honestly. It’s not having reached the destination that really does that—it’s living a good, productive, healthy l
ife along the way. It’s being the person you were born to be, the best version of yourself. Everything in this book is designed to help you take steps towards that. Strive to be the best version of yourself, and the success will follow.

  What’s most important is that you take action. It’s so, so easy to do what you’ve always done. And it’s even easier to read a book (like this one!), then put it on the shelf and move on with your day. Even if you’re fired up and optimistic now, in no time your mind will be on other things. A new challenge at work will grab your attention, or maybe someone you’re interested in will dominate your thoughts. When you translate your reading into action—and hopefully you’ve been doing that all along—that’s when you’ll start seeing real, concrete changes.

  A Brief Review

  Even though I’ve tried to keep this book short and easily digestible to make it as accessible as possible, we’ve covered a lot of territory. Let’s take a moment to run back through the broad strokes, so you can retain the bigger picture .

  1. It’s Never Too Late:

  What you’ve done so far doesn’t define what you’re going to do next. You decide what you want the rest of your life to be like. What separates people who succeed from those who don’t is that the former decide to do something about it , even if they might fail. When you do things the same way you’ve always done them, you’ll get the same results you always have. If you’re serious about changing your life, now is the time.

  2. Learn to Say No:

  Spend your time, energy, and money with some intentionality. Be cognizant of where your resources are going, and understand that you can only do so many things in a given day. Learn to pass gracefully on new obligations that aren’t going to get you closer to the goals you really care about achieving. Don’t worry, you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Don’t sacrifice your hopes and dreams because you’re afraid of coming across as impolite.

  3. Friends:

  Friends can be rocket fuel. They can help you be better, do more, and have more fun along the way. Go out of your way to make the five types of friends successful people have (mentors, partners, etc.) On the flip side, learn to recognize when relationships are toxic, and either repair them or rid yourself of them accordingly. Life’s too short to be held back by them.

  4. What to Say Yes To:

  Find the sweet spot where you’re doing something that:

  You love

  You’re good at

  The world needs

  That can make mone y

  Knock it out of the park by making a habit of forming new (good) habits and kicking the bad ones to the curb. Become the kind of person who can make changes in their life. Not everyone figures out how to do that, and they waste extraordinary amounts of energy making half-hearted attempts and going about it the wrong way.

  5. Identifying Your Non-Negotiables

  Figure out what you really can’t live without, then start simplifying the rest. Identify what you truly desire, not just what you _think_ you want. Focusing in on achieving those non-negotiables and leaving the rest alone will get you there faster.

  6. Minimum Viable Products (MVP):

  Test the market with the simplest version of your idea you can actually implement, then iterate based on the feedback and results you get. You’ll save money and time on the front end, and you’ll end up with a product that the market has demonstrated a need for. Apply the same mode of thinking to other areas of your life. If you want to stick to a new workout routine, keep it simple first and add layers as you go. For creatives, push out a complete draft of your work, then edit if necessary—don’t self-edit for years to the exclusion of getting anything done.

  7. Radical Candor:

  Care Personally, Criticize Directly. Don’t bullshit people, and care for them sincerely. Be constantly giving and soliciting meaningful feedback, and make sure you’re giving positive feedback as often (if not more) than negative. Positive feedback communicates what you value, and you’ll get more of it back .

  8. Relentless Self-Reflection:

  Give yourself feedback, too. Take some time out to record your goals and review your progress towards them. Be honest with yourself when you’re not performing as well as you’d like, and feel glad when you are. Devoting some time to more introverted pursuits will help you know your truest self more fully, and that’s a powerful tool for getting where you want to go.

  A One-Week Challenge

  I sincerely hope that by the time you’ve reached this point in the book, you’re already trying out some changes to your routine that I’ve suggested in previous chapters. But if you haven’t, or if you’ve only dipped your toe in, I’d challenge you to give it a sincere effort for just one week. For one week, go through and actually do the “Attack” exercises—one a day. In addition, try hansei sessions, journaling, meditation, or preferably all three for a few minutes each day. You have nothing to lose. If after a solid week you’re convinced you’re getting nothing out of it, fair enough—I’m glad you’ve still enjoyed the book enough to read it all, and I hope you come up with your own daily practices that help you stay focused. If you can’t seem to make it a solid week, try again on another week. An inability to commit to something so small for a week without failing is its own impediment that will hinder you in other pursuits, so this is a good excuse to get over that.

  Where to Go From Here

  As the title says, go forth and conquer. I’ve tried to give you tools: practical techniques to use to focus yourself, as well as ways of thinking about life’s complex challenges. You’re ready to carry that forward and apply it to your own life. You may have already started. I hope you have. Just remember to take action and start implementing winning habits. Don’t be a part of the 95% that are afraid to take the first step. Bit by bit, you’ll see remarkable changes. When you do, I hope you’ll share them .

  Find like-minded individuals on the Internet or in person and try to hold each other accountable. Connect on social media and trade progress reports, talk through roadblocks, etc. If you form a community around Breathe, Focus, Attack , you’ll make valuable connections with people who think about success in the same terms you do, which just may become your new secret weapon.

  • • •

  Most of all, I hope you keep in mind that change is possible. This whole book is about facilitating change. No matter where you’re at now—even if you’re going through the worst period of your life—you can put one foot in front of the other and get yourself to where you want to be. It might take a while, and it might be difficult, but it’s possible. Your life is what you make of it, and when a challenge appears before you, you only need to do three things: take a breath, focus on the problem, and then attack.

  * * *

  14 . While some ancient sources do record versions of this story, it has actually been proliferated in pop culture most strongly through a reference in Die Hard . Alexander almost certainly did not actually do this. Still, it’s a good story.

  About the Author

  Ian Schechter is a serial entrepreneur. He also works with major brands on their marketing and Amazon strategies. He has his MBA from Binghamton University and is a prolific world traveler. You can follow him on Instagram: @ianadventures. He currently resides in New York City .