Short message today from Beijing Airport, en route to the China/Mongolia border.
Study people that have been successful in the way you want to. Figure out what they did.
Modernize their ideas to the present day. This isn't hard, there's tons of underoptimized stuff everywhere.
Draw up something like a plan.
Okay, now - you've got to stick religiously to that plan, even when things suck. If you've drawn up your plan halfway intelligently, it probably includes a lot of serving others, a lot of working hard, and a lot of striving to improve.
Some days this sucks, especially when you have a huge workload and tons of commitments and don't have any idea how you can do them all in time.
Also, very frustrating when you put in 100's of hours and the tangible results move only a little bit.
Keep going. Macro patience - keep moving forwards.
Serve more, work more, strive more.
Eventually it'll catch up with you, and all the external tangible stuff will line up.
There's a long lead time on it, though. I remember Judd Weiss explaining to me how it works in real estate - the higher up the chain you're working, the more money you make - a lot more - but it also takes a lot longer.
The people that work on the huge developments that make multi-millions - these take years and years. If you're working just by the hour, you get your money fast, but you don't get all that much money. Brokers take a little longer to get paid, but still make a fraction. The people that draw up the plans and coordinate huge developments - they work for years without seeing their payday, but then they make millions.
I think everything is usually like that. Build, serve, work, strive. As long as is necessary. Keep going when things are moving slowly. And you get there.
I think that's the value of planning. Draw up your plans intelligently, based on observation and evidence as much as possible. Then, you stick with the plan more than your day to day emotions. Lots of things affect emotions - working and striving and doing a lot isn't always fun. Actually, it sucks sometimes.
And then you break through, and things are going right, and it's glorious. Takes a while. The bigger things you're working on, very likely the longer it takes.
So be it.
Coffee's awesome here in the airport lounge. Really, really good. Off to Mongolia.