13 | Sunday Brunch ☕

Happy Sunday! Welcome back to our thirteenth Sunday Brunch newsletter - a concise curation of my favorite tidbits from the week.

Without further delay, grab your coffee, mimosa, water, juice, bloody mary, chocolate milk, protein shake, or whatever else the Brunchers are drinking these days and enjoy this week's issue.

Cheers Everyone.

Do the Real Thing↗ - procrastination extends beyond a general avoidance of activities. Procrastination also includes doing the wrong things when you know you should be doing something else. The right things. The Real Thing.  

If you have a goal - some desired outcome - that will one day lead to the success you are chasing... Make sure your short- and mid-term actions are directly contributing to that goal.  

Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of our time, once said:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool"

Smarter, Not Harder: How to Succeed in your Work↗ - fortunately or unfortunately, the world tends to reward focus. Focus leads to progress, and progress leads to results.

Consider the following representation of your day in 15-minute blocks...    

with sleep and leisure excluded, you have this many blocks for working...

That's 8 hours total - enough time, but not a lot of time.

You're busy, you have 10 different projects you're actively working on. Some projects are more important than others, and you're a go-getter, you're on top of things, so you prioritize effectively. You end up with the following structure...

You've ensured each project is attended to. 10 blocks (2.5 hours) goes to your most important project and you will allocate 9 cumulative blocks of time to your 5 least important projects (2.25 hours - that's a lot of switching).  

Not bad, but there are clearly three tasks that appear to be more important than the rest. What if you cut out the "fluff" and focus on your top three tasks?

Your blocks may look something like this.

Now, project #1 = 16 blocks (4 hours), project #2 = 8 blocks (2 hours), #3 = 8 blocks (2 hours). Plenty of time to ramp up, focus, and sustain productive work.

If I was a betting man, I'd wager your narrowed focus will result in a substantial increase in your output and a significant improvement in your outcomes.

(In another newsletter, we can talk about the power of synergies - i.e. how we can make 1 + 1 = 3 in our work. Narrowing our focus is one way this is possible)

It's always worthwhile to remember the words of Naval,

"Success is the inevitable byproduct of learning (not education)."

-Naval Ravikant

I'm not self-aggrandizing - suggesting I'm educating you - but I do know from experience that reading words on paper is not enough. Practice, adjustment, and refinement are key.

So don't take my, Naval's, Shane's or Scott's word for it - try for yourself!

See what works.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with a friend, colleague, or the next person you see when you lift your head from your screen.

if you hated it.. (1) I'm sorry, (2) maybe consider sharing with your mortal enemy.

That's it for this week, everyone.

Thank you, as always, for your time. If you made it this far in the article, I appreciate you tremendously and am thrilled to have you in our community.

My inbox is always open - I'd love to hear from you 📩hey@whit.blog

Enjoy your Sunday & have a week!