WASH - RINSE - REPEAT

Thank you to Dino Carella for the inspiration to share this.

In 2006, my amazing mentor and boss, (Jim Sirbasku) inter-officed to me, as he often did, (remember those days?) an article from Fortune; I found it online, and have included the link, below for you to read. He highlighted the entire article, and actually wrote: "To Robin Mottern, FYI, Jim Sirbasku", right above the title of the article, 'What it takes to be great'. Wow, that was in 2006 and this article still stands true. 

"You are not born a CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an ENORMOUS amount of hard work over MANY years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful." "Understand that talent doesn't just mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity well." "The evidence we have surveyed...does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts."

I learned the hard way...by NOT listening to Jim. I, by nature, am interested and fascinated by most everything, especially business. So I, like a bird, would fly around from this idea, to the next, hardly giving any one subject enough time to absorb. Finally, I focused my attention on psychometrics. Not for brief understanding, but everything psychometrics. I practiced, practiced, practiced, until I become fluent. I am still practicing.

You see, practicing doesn't end when you become fluent. It is at that point that the practicing only really begins.

So, as always, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, takes an enormous amount of time dedicated to demanding and painful work. Instant gratification is what we seem to want, however, it's not attainable and doesn't exist.

The beauty of fluency is that then, you are able to apply, test, iterate, or "wash, rinse, repeat".

Here's the link to the 2006 article I mentioned.

https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391794/index.htm

What's the Kink In Your Logic?

Robin Mottern - [email protected]