How to permanently change any behavior and evolve into the best version of yourself

Working with your team can be hard. Different skills, preferences, ideas, and personalities can make progress difficult and slow-going. 

But once you begin carrying yourself as an elite professional, you can begin interacting with your team better to achieve 10x the usual results — with only 1/10th the effort.

A lot of people waste enormous amounts of energy navigating office politics, multitasking, people-pleasing, and getting on team members’ “good sides” throughout a project. 

But once you begin focusing entirely on the work and ignoring all distractions, you can begin consistently entering flow states where you can accomplish enormous amounts of work exponentially faster. Best of all, this is a skill you can develop and even get faster over time. 

This what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said:

“If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe.”

If you want to succeed with your team, you need to shift your frame of mind first.

Cut Out Everything That Doesn’t Make the Boat Go Faster

Moving forward with a project is kind of like rowing on a boat. It takes coordination for everything to row forward in unison.

The problem is, teams get bogged down with superfluous, unhelpful junk; office politics, resentment, and disagreement. This is like placing enormous weights on the boat; even when everyone is rowing in unison, it takes much more effort.

Instead, cut out everything that doesn’t make the boat go faster. Anything that is standing in the way of progress must go. Once all the dead weight is released, you can move forward 10x faster — often with 1/10th the usual effort that was being wasted!

If you don’t change your beliefs first, more action won’t help. Trying harder and harder to move forward is like trying to row a boat when no one’s paying attention, or trying to row with a spoon instead of a paddle. You’ll just exhaust yourself, getting nowhere.

Your frame of mind before you start an endeavor is vastly more important than the endeavor itself. This is the difference between an amateur and a professional; the beginner begins his or her task without much thought, but the elite professional first gets him or herself in the right frame of mind, then acts.

It’s easy to look at the faults of others, but what about you? What old beliefs have been holding you back? What mental ruts are you sick of walking in?

What new beliefs do you need to start believing?

Many people have formed numerous well-worn ruts of negative thoughts in their mind that lead to negative, self-defeating conclusions. 

Once you identify and fix these areas, you’ll be able to work faster with others; and show others that you’re an asset to work with in the future. 

Cut out everything that doesn’t make you go faster.