How to quickly blow past the top 1-3% of your industry

How to quickly blow past the top 1-3% of your industryHow to quickly blow past the top 1-3% of your industryThe mora successful a person becomes, the more distractions there are. The harder it is to remain focused on their core objectives.We are now living in what Harvard Business Review calls, The Gig Economy, where youre essentially working for yourself as a specialist or collaborator with multiple companies or multiple projects.In the gig economy, you want to be what Kevin Harrington calls, A key person of influence, which means youre well-known in the field and get access to all the best gigs.The challenge with getting access to all the best gigs is that opportunities can be distractions.When you start to become successful, tons of opportunities pop-up and it can be very difficult not to chase pretty pennies or other peoples definitions of success. Whether that be making more money, having more influence, etc.Success begets success. When you develop a certain position and skill-l evel, you can get results a lot fehlte nicht vieler and easier than you initially could. Youve also undergone several quantum leaps in your psychology - allowing you less fear and apprehension about failing and trying new things.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreBecause youve succeeded regularly in the past, you expect to continue to succeed. Which can create an over-confidence where you pursue things you have little skill or ability in. You also lack a firm enough WHY to truly create mastery, but are often seeking faster and faster wins. Sustaining the dopamine highs of winning can confuse people.Need for achievementAccording to psychological research, most people who are highly-driven have whats called a high need for achievement. If these people value something, they go after it with relentlessness.If you value money, fame, influence, or looking good, youll probably get it. I f you value family or faith, youll probably thrive at those things. Whatever you value, youll do whatever you can to achieve in that area.The challenge is, when you become more successful you can easily come to value vaguer and vaguer notions of success, and forget the core reasons that got you excited in the first place.On top of that, developing mastery at something, or getting to a position where results become easy can be mind-numbing.Human beings adapt very quickly to their situation. Often, when a person becomes successful, they get lazy because the results can come easily. Theyve got the money, confidence, connections, skills, and resources to replicate the results that used to take faith, ingenuity, and resourcefulness.When choices start to falterThe challenge with becoming successful is that you can become apathetic and bored with where youre at. Which can dull the razors edge needed to be hungry, humble, and striving.You can begin justifying staying up later. Throwing away your solid routines. Not setting yourself next day up for success. Planning less. Going thorough the motions more. Seeking more forms of entertainment.Personality and identity are both shaped by decisions. As is confidence.Consequently, if a person whose been successful in the past begins making less quality decisions consistently, their confidence will subtly drop, even if subconsciously. They may not even see it happening, because the changes will be so minor day-to-day. Also, they probably wont discern their inevitable plummet because theyll be succeeding in visual areas. Yet internally theyre falling apart.Author Molly Bloom calls this the obsession to seek increasingly unsustainable dopamine hits.This is why you can quickly blow past the bestWherever you currently are - you can blow past the best of the best in your industry. The 1%.Why?Because theyre dealing with everything Ive just detailed above.People change over time.People get bored.They lose track of what they want and why.They need new frontiers and challenges.They get distracted by shiny objects.They get distracted by all the noise and other forms of perceived success and they stop polishing their craft. In basketball terms, they stop practicing their lay-ups and free-throws.You may not notice a drop in their performance over the first year or two, but eventually it catches up. And it catches up VERY fast when it does.Ive witnessed this in some of the people I once admired. Those people who sit atop my field when it comes to influence and mastery. Ive watched some of my favorite authors and thinkers completely lose focus on what they were about and to start playing it safe in the content they produced.I could tell they started getting lost and numbed and confused by everything going on around them.They stopped pushing themselves.They stopped making increasingly better and better decisions.At some point, they became satisfied enough with their results that they allowed goal-defeating behavior to creep-in. And it began to creep-in consistently enough to erode their confidence.Heres how to crush it in the gig economyAccording to the research cited in the Harvard Business Review article referenced above, heres how to thrive in the gig economykeeping a schedulefollowing a to-do listbeginning the day with the most challenging and creative workoptimizing for sleepmeditationnutritionexerciseI can attest to this. The best way to succeed in an economy where youre rewarded by the quality of your results and thinking - not by the amount of time you work - is by optimizing your time and energy.You need to do your best work when you work best. This means you must make hard decisions. You have to miss certain things that the masses wont be willing to miss - like staying up late on your favorite mind-numbing distraction.Youll need to optimize your evenings for sleep and recovery. Youll need to wake up recovered, get clarity, and produce your best work before the day takes over.If you continually push yourself to expand and grow, youll get better and better opportunities. All the best gigs will come your way.You should absolutely take those. Theyll continue to push you further in your growth and creativity.You should collaborate with your mentors and heroes. But you also need to continue producing at the same volume and quality of your own work.This is the tricky part.When you start growing your platform, influence, and business - you still need to maintain the mindset of that scrappy creative while grappling the success youre achieving.While everyone else in the top 1-3% are getting fatter and lazier, youre getting leaner and remaining just as humble and disciplined as you were when you first started.Youre still connecting and collaborating. Youre still expanding your network and business skills.But you will never forget about why youre really doing this. You absolutely do have a need for achievement. And you know which direction you want to point it toward. Yo ure not going to allow yourself to get lost in other peoples perceptions of success, no matter how lucrative, sexy, or easy.Youre going to stay your course and achieve your mission. And this is whats going to separate you from the rest. This is how youre going to blow past the legends. At some point, they lose their hunger and drive. At some point, they started pursuing first place in the finish lines.They stop pushing their creative boundaries.They stop learning as much and became comfortable with the level of expertise they had.They become more scattered in their thinking and priorities - which is almost impossible not to do. Because the more successful you become, the more complex your work and life becomes.Yet, you can remain clear as things become complex by remaining true to what achievements matter most to you. And by continually pushing your creative boundaries. By continually producing on your own while youre growing a business or collaborating with others.Youve got this.Y ou can blow-past the elite. Just dont lose yourself on the way up. Keep doing what youre doing. Maintain that same level of discipline and productivity. Keep producing. Keep creating. Stick with your process. Its killing it.Listen to your body.Listen to your soul.This article first appeared on Medium.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people