Latest / From Chad / Pinpointing #1180

Transcript

Pinpointing #1180 · From Chad

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  Want to know the most important thing?
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  There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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  Chad #1180 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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  yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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  you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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  And this message is dedicated to Maddie Smith on her birthday.
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  Happy birthday Maddie, here's the upgrade.
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  You can live under the tyranny of the urgent, but upgraded the
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  king makes the most important thing king.
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  Here's the story. At PayPal, Peter Thiel gave
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  every employee exactly 1 responsibility.
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  Not a roll with three or four pillars.
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  One thing, and he made a rule to go with it.
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  If you walked into his office to talk about anything other than
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  your one assigned priority, he wouldn't have the conversation.
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  Even the annual review forms asked for one line, the single
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  most valuable thing you contributed.
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  Keith Raboy lived under that system and resented it at the
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  time. Years later, he explained why it
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  worked, and his explanation is the part worth keeping.
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  Picture yourself writing today's To Do List.
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  At the top is the problem that would actually change
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  everything. But you don't know how to solve
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  it. So you drift down to problem 2.
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  When you do know how to solve, and you solve it, you cross it
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  off. You feel productive.
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  Now multiply that by an entire company.
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  If everyone is quietly trading their hardest problem for their
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  third hardest, the whole organization stays busy and the
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  one problem that matter never gets touched.
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  Not because anyone was lazy, because everyone was busy.
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  There's a term for this productive avoidance.
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  Teal found a second benefit he didn't expect. 1 clear
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  responsibility per person meant nobody competed over the same
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  turf, and less competition meant less conflict.
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  His own metaphor was internal conflict.
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  As a company's autoimmune disease, the stated cause of a
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  death is always something external, a rival, a bad
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  quarter. But what actually kills it is
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  the fighting nobody outside ever saw.
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  PayPal was constantly on the brink of failing.
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  It had no margin for anyone to do work on the fourth most
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  important thing. And neither do you.
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  The better story to tell yourself is I know what my most
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  important thing is, and that's the most important thing I'm
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  working on. Not the one you've already
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  mastered. Not the one that's easiest to
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  cross off today. The most important thing is to
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  make the most important thing the most important thing.
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  That's the most important thing. Tell me a story of pinpointing
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  and focusing on the most important thing to from
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  chadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask
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  them, Does the urgent or important get most of your
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  attention? You can get a free copy of my
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  book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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  chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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  and hundreds of others are always available at
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  www.fromchad.com.