CUTS TO SUCCESS
Cuts to Success
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not!
Welcome to Cuts to Success. Throughout the book I’ve provided small challenges at the end of each chapter to help you put the theory into practice and apply your learnings to get the actual benefits out of the theory and apply it to your life.
The goal is to make the process of Cuts to Success as simple as possible for you. I’ve organised these chapter by chapter so that you can work through them as you’re reading or as you have the time. Remember, there’s no better time to start than now, the conditions will never be perfect so rip in and give the Cuts to Success a crack.
Part 2 – Life Navigation
Cuts To Success:
1. Write the answer to the billion dollar question down. Pause and do this before reading or listening any further, it will help you get the most out of this book. If you’re driving and can’t pull over, make sure you do this as soon as you park. If you’re really struggling with this, you can use My Billion Dollar Life described below for ideas and inspiration to get the creative juices flowing.
2. If you aren’t aligned, write down 5-10 things right now which
explain why you aren’t living the cheaper version of your best life.
What are the blockers or interferences? How have you created
those blockers or let them creep in?
Cuts To Success:
I mentioned at the beginning I will be giving you some very simple, but impactful activities throughout this reading journey. These activities will help you build the right habits, create accountability for yourself, and help you pivot to being even better. The activities are designed to be quick and potentially challenging, depending on where you are in your personal maturity journey. The only person that you will cheat if you don’t do them is yourself. I won’t think less of you if you don’t do them. I’m not your parents. Just do this first one and see how it feels once you’ve completed it.
In a notebook or on a notes app on your phone or laptop (more
on organisation tools in the success system section) write down
the following:
Your purpose in life – try and get it down to a sentence or
short paragraph to start. Even putting dot points down will
work. You are welcome to use mine as a model, then you
can play around with it from there.
Write down your first SENT to get you there – focus this
on the end state, what you will have achieved once it is
complete
If you’ve managed to get this far, write down some
acceptance criteria for your SENTs. This will make it easier
to achieve those targets and will also help you work out
the sequence of necessary activities, so you can get
started more easily.
A worked example could look like this:
■ Purpose: “Have fun, be happy (successful) and improve
people’s and organisation’s lives and environments for a
better world”
■ SENT: “Write a book to help people called Success by 1000
Cuts”
Acceptance Criteria:
■ Must be finished by mid 2024 (this used to say end 2022,
then it said mid 2023, then end 2023 – progress is better
than killing yourself for an artificial date)
■ Covers goals, mindset, people, success system
■ Available in hardcopy, e-book, and audiobook
■ Marketing and graphics nailed
■ Self published and available for consumption
Cuts To Success:
1. Under the notes where you’ve written out your purpose and SENT(s), add a new line with a title called, “Plans B and C”. Plan A is already your current SENTs and Purpose. Take five minutes to think through what you would do if your current plan A failed and was no longer a viable option.
2. Think through what your plan B and C would look like. Write them down, put as much high level detail as you can around them within that 5 minutes. If it is flowing and detail is coming easily, keep going. If not, that’s good enough.
3. As you’re writing them down, take stock of your emotions.
Write them down underneath the plans. This will help you
go after your plan A even harder, knowing you have the
confidence and fail safes of your plans B and C.
4. If the emotions are negative, still write them down. Let
yourself think through the scenarios over the coming
fortnight and try this exercise again until you’ve come up with
something positive.
5. Review these yearly and make any updates as required.
Part 3 – Mindset
Cuts To Success:
What are the actionable things we can do to train our brain to
help us be the best version of ourselves?
1. Review your purpose; think about who, where, and what you want to be. Update it if required.
2. Review your SENTs regularly to keep them fresh in your memory
3. Think about how you’ll feel when you achieve them, attach that emotion to them. Write the emotions down next to your SENT(s).
4. Think through what you need to do to achieve the SENTs and break them down into the actions required.
5. Start the highest priority NOW! This is the hardest part.
6. Continue doing the actions you need to progress toward your SENTs.
7. REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT – continually strengthen those “things that fire together, wire together” neural pathways. Continually think about these things and what needs to happen next.
8. Think about what you need to do next and how you might solve it. Visualise and attach the positive emotions you’ll feel when completing your SENTs or solving challenges. Let your subconscious do the rest.
9. Reflect on your SENTs while you’re making progress. Validate they are correct, adjust them if you need.
I cannot over-stress how important it is to start and keep doing the small actions you’ve identified for your SENTs. These are the parts that trigger the “use it or lose it” and “things that fire together, wire together” components of our brain. We can literally shape our brain by doing these cuts to success to bring us closer to, you guessed it, success.
Cuts To Success:
1. Reflect on the situations you’ve encountered. Name and count the situations where you reacted or responded with positive thoughts and actions. If the number is high, congratulations! If the number is zero or low, follow the next steps.
2. Over the next two weeks, attempt to use the three step inspection and response process for every possible situation. You want to identify, control, and decouple emotional reactions, and practise inspecting, choosing, and responding. This will be hard. You will still react emotionally, but try it as much as you possibly can. If there is too much traffic, if you get a positive email, if the gym workout is harder than normal, whatever comes across your “personal desk”, ensure you word
them as a positive, regardless of how shit the scenario may seem.
3. Try responding with the positive choice option for every scenario. If that is too much of a stretch, respond with the positive option at least one time a day for the 14 day period.
4. Every time you describe or replay a scenario to a friend, family
or colleague, attempt to retell it with a positive lens. Sell it back to them. Attempt not to go straight to the negative.
5. Find a friend or a colleague that you can try it with and organise a catch up in two weeks to debrief and review how you went. Discuss what was hard and why, what you found useful, and what you will do next.
6. Continue doing this for the rest of the year. Practise finding the positive options, finding the glass half-full vs empty options and, where possible, practise responding with those. As we learned earlier, “things that fire together, wire together”. Get that positivity firing.
Cuts To Success:
1. Create targets and plans with all the information you have available. This could be something as trivial as getting ice cream from the local ice creamery, to SENTs such as writing a book.
2. Reflect that plans are just plans – it is guaranteed that things won’t go to plan, changes will be required, and you won’t be able to anticipate these changes until you start executing the plan.
3. Reflect that a lot of the time, unexpected changes present better opportunities and more elegant solutions or outcomes, and bad luck – more often than good luck – results in a better outcome in the long run.
4. Inspect any expectations and assumptions you are building up about how the plan will go. Take a mental note of these or even write them down.
5. Make a mental note or write down how the plan might go off the rails, and what the worst and best case scenarios could be. This will help build the comfortable calm knowing that if the worst case manifests, everything will still be all gravy.
6. Start executing the plan with the above mental notes in mind. Keep a determined and focused, but nevertheless open and flexible, mindset.
7. When you hit your first obstacle, look back at the assumptions and expectations you had and realise this could be an opportunity to pivot to a better outcome, find out something interesting, meet new people, learn something new or have fun. Don’t respond with an unmanaged negative emotional reaction. You’ll just waste your own energy, impact your reputation and look like an absolute banana!
8. Repeat this process perpetually. You’ll find this amazing calm slowly settle over you. Once you realise that pretty much nothing has to go your way and you’ll be fine, a ubiquitous comfort ensues. You’ll find people will like being around you more and you’ll be more compatible with everyone and everything.
Cuts To Success:
1. Pick two of the tips to increase luck and try them over a two-week period. Ultimately, if you can do them right now or today, once you’ve read this, they’ll be easiest to implement.
2. If they work, try the others out.
3. Do all the things that can increase the likelihood of getting good luck and think about how you can capitalise on these moments.
4. Realise that bad luck has statistically generated better
results and success in the long run, so embrace it when it
hits. Consider yourself lucky, even!
Cuts To Success:
1. Review your SENTs and assess whether passion and perseverance are present so grit can really occur. If not, are they too easy or too hard? Feel free to make adjustments accordingly.
2. If you’re having trouble consistently working on your SENTs, is there some basic habits that you can form to create discipline? I changed my morning routine to: no phones or gym until I’d spent at least 15 minutes in front of the computer writing this book. Yes, even on weekends or when I was hungover. The difference was staggering. What rules or habits can you build to create the progress you want?
3. Do it every day or with the frequency you’ve decided for yourself. Do it even on the days you really don’t fucken want to. Do it for at least five minutes so you don’t break the habit. Even if after that five minutes you’re really not feeling it, that’s okay. Stop and try again the next day. If you’ve taken the effort to put your gym gear on, chances are after five minutes you might just keep going.
4. Remind yourself that there is no easy way out. Life is hard, being successful is hard. Visualise the outcome you want, embrace the pain, learn to love it. No one else is going to do it for you.
5. Do the reps, reps, reps. Trust me, it will get easier, even if it takes weeks or months. Just remember that unsuccessful people give up when it gets hard. You’re better than that.
6. When you’re least expecting it, flow state will creep up your neck and into your brain, and you’ll feel a strange state of euphoria. Welcome it. It’s only going to come with dedicated grit, discipline, and reps, reps, reps. It feels fucken awesome.
Cuts To Success:
1. Regularly practise something mildly painful – daily, if possible, or at least 4-5 times per week. For example, yoga, gym, cardio, or cold showers. This will build your comfortable discomfort levels, daily. It will keep you resilient and your body and your mind fit and healthy.
2. Write down what you fear – identify a scenario and visualise it, playing out the things you can put in place to ensure you respond well and get the outcome you want. Write them down.
3. Identify if there is anything you need to put in place or practise to build the resilience required to deliver that outcome. Write them down as well.
4. Choose something from the list that will be low risk and lower impact. Do it first!
5. Try the next, more scary things you’ll need to do until you are ready to face your fear. The above steps will provide good practice for doing something out of your comfort zone. It will help you build new skills and build more resilience, allowing you to try harder and do more scary things.
6. Inspect scenarios as they are happening and identify how you can remove emotion and be resilient in challenging situations. For example, work negotiations or selling your house. This will achieve the best outcomes without you looking like an arsehole or a quivering mess. You won’t damage your reputation by losing control in front of potentially important or useful people in the future.
7. Inspect scenarios as they are happening and identify where you should express real emotion, such as proud mum or dad moments, or friends or partners achieving their targets. Most importantly, express your feelings when you achieve one of your own SENTs. This will help you build and maintain meaningful relationships. You do not want to distance yourself from people for appearing like an emotionless robot.
8. Reflect on painful situations when your resilience levels weren’t high enough, and add them to your fear list. Use a retrospective inspection and response process to identify where you could use more resilience. Get to work building up your resilience, so when the situation plays out again in the future, you’ll be ready.
Cuts To Success:
Take ten minutes to create some space and think about one recent scenario in your life where you’ve failed, and one recent scenario where you’ve succeeded. We all fail and we all succeed, so there will definitely be something there. It can be minor or more significant. Don’t stress too much about finding “the perfect scenarios”, this is more about the practice of using the window and the mirror concept.
1. In your note-taking app (which we’ll cover in the success system section), or on a piece of paper or notebook – create a title called “Mirror” and write down a scenario that has failed or not gone well. Describe the situation, the actions that happened, and the end result of those actions.
2. Spend five minutes looking into the proverbial mirror and reflect on yourself and the things you could have done differently to achieve a positive outcome.
3. Write those things down. Read them aloud to yourself or, even better, get a friend or partner to read them aloud to you so you can hear them from someone else.
4. Write down a new heading called “Hope Blinker(s)”
5. In this section you need to identify your hope blinkers. Look for the instances where you employ hope as a strategy; the times in your life where you think everything will work out fine without you putting in any effort or creating a plan. Write them down as you identify them so you solidify your awareness of them.
6. Select the ones you’d like to fix. You may not want to fix
some – that’s okay. Awareness may be all you need.
7. For the ones you want to fix, write down a couple of dot points on ways to fix them. For example, I might address my time management hope blinker by leaving 5-10 minutes earlier or scheduling things with the expectation they will take an extra 5-10 minutes. It could be this simple, or it could take months or a lifetime to address.
8. Once you are aware of your hope blinkers, start to observe and catalogue the hope blinkers held by the people around you. This will help you understand them better and allow you to build better friendships and working relationships. I’ll let you decide if you want to inform them about their hope blinkers and help them remove or fix them. Tread very carefully.
9. Now write down a heading called “Window” and write down a scenario that has resulted in a win. Same deal – describe the situation and the actions that transpire as well as the result.
10. Spend five minutes looking out the window and ignore the mirror that may tempt you to say, “It was all me, I’m awesome”. See what outside influences and external factors helped get the win.
11. Write those things down. Evaluate how they contributed to the success so they can be used effectively in the future, over and over again.
12. Read them aloud or get someone else to read them to you.
13. Next time you get a win or a fail, use the window and the mirror to inspect and evaluate how you got there.
14. Continue this for the rest of your life!
Cuts To Success:
1. Create your own table in excel or whatever app you want. Identify the activities you want to bring into a healthy tension.
2. Set the visuals up – you actually need to do this for it to work!
3. Set calendar reminders or daily alarms to ensure you check your visuals are in line with the frequency you wrote down. Do this for at least a week.
4. Reflect on the visuals and the tensions themselves after a week. Update and adjust if required, create new visuals and thresholds, or remove any redundant ones and repeat.
5. As you mature and get your thresholds nailed, think about
them while you are doing them so it becomes part of your
mindset.
Regardless of the thresholds or notifications you set, some will be wrong, and some will be useful. By starting, you’ll get the information you need to make adjustments and get the most efficient system. This requires hard work and discipline. It will become much easier over time. Stick with it.
Throughout the rest of the book, I’ll use the phrase “healthy
tension” where there is a possible tension between competing
options that needs to be managed for overall happiness and
success.
Cuts To Success:
1. Find somewhere quiet where you can have your thoughts to yourself.
2. Cast your mind to your highest priority SENT or something you know you have to do within the next 24 hours.
3. Create a disassociated visualisation of the scenario, paying extra attention to the positive outcome you desire. Identify any potential risks and opportunities that will need to be managed and capitalised on.
4. Repeat your disassociated visualisation, this time imagining how you will manage the risks or eliminate them altogether.
5. Repeat your disassociated visualisation and concentrate on capitalising on the opportunities.
6. Now that you’ve created the best disassociated visualisation and what you are going to do is clear, create an associated visualisation for it. Really immerse yourself in the scene, attempt to visualise every possible thing you can; what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like, and the emotions you will feel. Focus on visualising the positive outcome you want from the scenario. Imagine how good it feels to achieve the positive outcome.
7. Up until the event occurs, find a quiet space and replay the disassociated and associated visualisations as many times as possible. See if you can add more detail each time.
8. See the great results yourself, be surprised this shit actually works and keep doing it more and more!
9. If you find you start creating negative scenarios, stop yourself
and use the three step process from the inspection and response section to identify positives for all of the negatives, no matter how hard they may seem. If you still can’t find a positive out of something, reach out to a partner or close friend and paint the scenario for them and see if they can help find the opportunities and silver linings.
10. Do this for anything and everything possible in life, down to
how you might pack your bag for a trip or how you will attack
the grocery shop. You’ll be astonished with how much time it
can save and how many great outcomes you can achieve!
Cuts To Success:
1. Re-read the hints above so you are prepared for the next time someone asks for your time or effort.
2. If this is daunting, start with a request that comes over a remote medium, such as email or instant messaging. This will give you time to craft a response in your own time, and will remove some of the immediate time pressure you may feel.
3. Craft a polite decline. Re-read it. If you’re still uncomfortable, leave it in draft, do something else for half an hour, come back and see if you want to make any edits.
4. Send it and see how much of a non-event it was.
5. Once you’ve built up the practice, you will be better equipped for real-time responses. Remember your schedule and your overall SENTs, think about who and what is really important. Say “no” to things that aren’t going to help or are a lower priority! It’s OK to be a little selfish now and then to make the progress you want to see in your life. If people can’t respect that, perhaps they’re not the right people to be in your life.
6.Think of the impact of saying “yes” and how it will impact your
meaningful SENT work!
7. Repeat until you’re a “no” weapon.
Cuts To Success:
1. Review your calendar for the next seven days. Identify the 20% of everything you need to do to get 80% of the outcome. You should be able to distill this into two or three dot points. Write them down using outcome-focused language. For example, phrase it as “all exercise for Ironman training completed” vs “train for Ironman”. The subtle difference will help you articulate the end goal. If you don’t have a calendar, do this mentally. Read on for tips on calendars and time management in the Success System section.
2. Now you know your 20% for the next seven days, apply the 80/20 rule before you begin a task. If it sits in the 80% that doesn’t add any value, avoid doing it. Try this for the full seven days. Obviously, if your boss asks you to do something that is important to them and it’ll get you fired if you don’t do it, then do it. Get straight back to the 20% once it’s done.
3. For everything you do towards the 20% and the seven day outcomes, apply an objective and critical lens to how you are doing it. Is it in the most efficient sequence? Are there any redundant steps that you can remove and still get the same or an even better outcome? If so, continually lean that shit out until you have the most efficient and effective process for everything you do. You can get hyper-focused about this stuff. Remember, if you save a couple of seconds or minutes every day, that adds up to heaps more fun time over your life. Be a psycho, but make sure you can still relax if someone doesn’t do it your way, so long as you are getting as much out of the things you are able to do your way. This can continue your entire life.
4. Pay close attention to how others do things – they may have better or more creative ways you can adopt for even more time and efficiency savings.
5. For every activity which requires you to follow an external process, apply the same psychopathic lean improvement lens. Create the tension and relieve the tension where possible. Apply the “no expectations, no worries” mindset here; a lot of people in these processes are just rule followers, so your suggestions may fall upon deaf ears. Doesn’t hurt to try, if you can remove months off a bureaucratic process from a few simple questions, then have a crack.
6. When you’re getting close to finishing something or achieving your outcomes for the seven days, ask the question: “is this good enough? Am I letting the perfect get in the way of good?” If you’ve already got a great outcome, then finish it and start the next thing. If not, keep going.
7. At the end of the seven days, reflect on what you’ve just done. How much of the 80% crap that you didn’t do resulted in a negative impact? How much of the meaningful outcomes did you actually achieve?
8. Repeat perpetually for your life #continuousimprovement.
Cuts To Success:
1. Identify something trivial that you hate doing, but it pisses you off when it’s not done. Making your bed is a great example. Whatever it is, it should be something you can do within five minutes.
2. Do it first thing after you get out of bed. Set your alarm five minutes earlier if you think you don’t have enough time. Start this as soon as you have read this. On the same day, or the morning after. Not on the weekend, not next week. NOW!
3. Do this consistently for the next seven days. No fucken rest days, just fucken do it. Start it straight away, rather than giving airplay to the internal dialogue: “I don’t want to do it”.
4. After seven days, reflect on how much effort it took vs the reward of seeing a neatly made bed each time you walk past it. Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?
5. Now you’ve built a small habit and a bit of momentum, every other trivial thing that pops up in the day you can tackle head on.
6. Reflect on how much more you’ve achieved just from doing one little thing, first thing!
7. Now we’re really cooking with gas. Focus your “Start Now” abilities on your highest priority SENT and the next activities required to progress it. Do whatever that activity is for at least 5-10 minutes every day for the next work week. You can even do it on the weekend if you like.
8. After the first week, reflect on the progress you’ve made. How does it feel to have done something towards what you actually want to do? Feels fucken liberating, doesn’t it?
9. Repeat step 6, but up the time spent daily to half an hour, heck, keep spending more time on it if it feels good. If you don’t have any more time than half an hour, that’s fine. Progress is progress. Little by little becomes a lot!
10. If you missed a day or two and it all became too hard, that’s okay. Building a new habit takes effort, hard work, perseverance, and time. Start again today or tomorrow. Not when there is a perfect time. There isn’t one. Just start now and create visible progress. That’s the thing that will keep you coming back. Enjoy the challenge. Embrace the pain. Successful people endure more pain than others and they also enjoy the success and accomplishment that comes with it. You can too.
Part 4 – People
Cuts To Success:
1. Book half an hour in your calendar for this Sunday afternoon or evening. Call it, “Self Retrospective”. You can do this any night or morning, it just has to be a consistent time. The aim is to do it for the next four weeks. Sunday night generally works for most as it tends to be less busy. Choose what works for you and stick to it.
2. Book the other three weeks in advance, sticking to the same day and time.
3. When the time rolls around, find a nice, quiet place where you will have no distractions. If you have family or housemates, take yourself out for a quiet beer, meal, or a coffee – something that is a little treat. It will be a great way to start dating yourself.
4. Put your phone on “do not disturb”. Place it screen down unless you are using it to record your retrospective. Don’t touch it until you’re finished.
5. Do the retrospective. Ask yourself the following questions about the last week and write down at least three answers in response to each:
What went well? The answers to these questions are insights into the things that you like doing. Take note and think about the potential root of happiness that’s buried within these so you can do more of it – or find more things related to it.
What could be better? The answers to these questions may give insights into your hope blinkers – your weaknesses, what you dislike, or where you may need to try harder and cultivate discipline.
How will I change, or what will I do in the next period [seven days], to improve? You should have at least one answer for each of the “what could be better” points above. This is the most important step. This is what drives
your continuous improvement.
6. Do the retrospective exercise each week for the next three weeks.
7. At the end of the month, zoom out and reflect. First, give yourself a high five if you’ve made it through the four weeks. That’s no mean feat! Now ask yourself the following questions, and write down the answers next to your retrospective notes:
i. Are you more comfortable with yourself?
ii. Do you know yourself more than you did at the beginning of the four weeks?
8. Build this retrospective practice into your mindset. Just like other people, you will continuously change over the course of your life. You will need to spend continuous maintenance making your relationship with yourself work.
Cuts To Success:
1. Reflect on the things you are good at. Regardless of who you are, there is something. You don’t have to be the best, that’s fine. There’s always going to be someone better.
2. Write down what you’re good at in your notes under the heading, Things I’m good at and what I can be confident about.
3. Ask close and trusted contacts, “Hi friend, I’m trying to work on my confidence without being arrogant. Would you say I’m good at anything I should be confident about?” This will help you identify things that you may be unaware of, and
will validate and remove any arrogance that may have unconsciously crept in during steps 1 and 2. Write these down as well.
4. Whenever you are in a situation where your expertise can help or is required, offer your help with confidence and remove all arrogance. If people start trusting you and coming to you for guidance, then you’ve successfully shown confidence. If people continuously reject your offers, if you find you are always the dominant speaker and you cut people off, you are probably showing arrogance. Remember you want to walk the talk, not just talk it.
5. Repeat the above as you learn new skills and abilities.
6. Remember this mindset element is to help you be confident and comfortable with yourself first and foremost. This will make you much more easy and enjoyable to hang out and work with. You don’t need to be good at everything to be comfortable and confident. It’s nice to work with others who are experts you can learn from and befriend.
Cuts To Success:
1. To build empathy, practise putting yourself in others’ shoes. You can do this whenever you want; when you drive past a homeless person on the side of the road, when you have an argument with a friend or your partner, or when you see someone fail at work. Whoever you choose, try imagining what they’ve just gone through, how it would feel, then think about what is going through their heads. This will help you understand what their next decisions will be and how those decisions will feel.
2. Next time you are making a decision or communicating with someone, turn on your empathy and see if that makes you adjust what you’re going to say, or the outcome you are pursuing.
3. Do the same thing for perspective. Practise looking at others and try to understand the lenses they would be looking at the world through. Think about how that would influence a
decision-making or communication process.
4. Next time you are working with someone, think about their lenses and how they will regard certain actions or decisions.
5. Couple empathy with perspective to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome that will leave both parties feeling comfortable and happy. If you know there can’t be a positive outcome, attempt to achieve something that will feel least shit for both parties.
6. Identify three key people you are currently closest to, or who are most pivotal to you achieving your current targets.
7. Run through the above process without them first and see if you can articulate what you think makes them happy or unhappy. You can write this down, however, a word of caution here: ensure you do it somewhere they won’t be able to see. If they see this without context it may put them offside or cause suspicion.
8. Ask them what makes them happy and validate what you’ve written down. Pick the right moment to do this. You want this to be as organic as possible to keep them onside and strengthen the relationship. People may find this question
intrusive unless it’s asked in the right setting.
9. Once you’ve validated your findings, use this information to work with them in ways that align with what makes them happy. Marvel at the difference it makes and the ease it brings!
10. Expand the use of this process to anyone and everyone you work with in the future.
11. Before asking others for their time, consider everything else they have on. Remember, you are not the most important person in the universe, regardless of your status or your bank account. Stay humble.
12. Ask what time or timeframe could work best for them so they feel like they have co-created the final outcome.
13. Put it in an online calendar as soon as you’ve made the agreement and add them as an attendee, so you get reminder notifications, and no one forgets.
1. To build empathy, practise putting yourself in others’ shoes. You can do this whenever you want; when you drive past a homeless person on the side of the road, when you have an argument with a friend or your partner, or when you see someone fail at work. Whoever you choose, try imagining what they’ve just gone through, how it would feel, then think about what is going through their heads. This will help you understand what their next decisions will be and how those decisions will feel.
2. Next time you are making a decision or communicating with someone, turn on your empathy and see if that makes you adjust what you’re going to say, or the outcome you are pursuing.
3. Do the same thing for perspective. Practise looking at others and try to understand the lenses they would be looking at the world through. Think about how that would influence a
decision-making or communication process.
4. Next time you are working with someone, think about their lenses and how they will regard certain actions or decisions.
5. Couple empathy with perspective to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome that will leave both parties feeling comfortable and happy. If you know there can’t be a positive outcome, attempt to achieve something that will feel least shit for both parties.
6. Identify three key people you are currently closest to, or who are most pivotal to you achieving your current targets.
7. Run through the above process without them first and see if you can articulate what you think makes them happy or unhappy. You can write this down, however, a word of caution here: ensure you do it somewhere they won’t be able to see. If they see this without context it may put them offside or cause suspicion.
8. Ask them what makes them happy and validate what you’ve written down. Pick the right moment to do this. You want this to be as organic as possible to keep them onside and strengthen the relationship. People may find this question
intrusive unless it’s asked in the right setting.
9. Once you’ve validated your findings, use this information to work with them in ways that align with what makes them happy. Marvel at the difference it makes and the ease it brings!
10. Expand the use of this process to anyone and everyone you work with in the future.
11. Before asking others for their time, consider everything else they have on. Remember, you are not the most important person in the universe, regardless of your status or your bank account. Stay humble.
12. Ask what time or timeframe could work best for them so they feel like they have co-created the final outcome.
13. Put it in an online calendar as soon as you’ve made the agreement and add them as an attendee, so you get reminder notifications, and no one forgets.
Cuts To Success:
1. Book yourself into a psychometric profiling course/assessment. I used the Herman Brain Diagnostic Instrument, which I found invaluable when the concept of EQ was new to me. Feel free to shop around and see what else there is.
2. Alternatively, most of the different models and approaches have a wealth of knowledge on their websites. You can jump on these and do your own assessment as a start. This will be a good start, but it will be subjective. You may be blinded by some of your hope blinkers. You could ask others around you to see which category of personality-type you belong to and create a more objective profile of yourself.
3. Investigate at least two profiling models and learn the different categories and their associated attributes to form a mental library. You can even copy them into your notes or write them down if you need. This will inform your ability to assess others and build profiles of them and the way they work.
4. Identify 2-5 close acquaintances or relationships around you and attempt to create a profile of them. Start by writing their name down as the heading. Then write down which thinking
styles and attributes best describe them using the visual and audio cue questions above. Add in a “What happens when they are under stress” section as well.
5. Use the continual validation framework to validate if your assumptions are correct; refine and update your notes as more information presents itself.
6. Using this information, tailor your interactions and communications with them according to your profile, and see if there is a difference in response. You may be surprised how big an impact this may have.
7. Either expand this exercise to more people, or try doing this in real time with every single person you encounter. Build an increasingly precise profile of people you frequently interact with or use it with people you may only ever see once in your lifetime, and hone your visual and audio profiling skills.
8. If you struggle remembering everyone, you can create a library of them in your notes. Be careful who can see this; without context it may be taken the wrong way.
Cuts To Success:
1. Find 10-30 minutes in a quiet place, open your notebook or notes app, and describe your culture. Look within and write down your values, behaviours, habits, customs, social norms, preferences, and anything else that’s relevant. This will feel uncomfortable – that’s fine.
2. Once you’ve written these down, review your purpose from the “Purpose and Targets” chapter. Do they align? If yes, congratulations. If not, it might be time to challenge your adherence to your culture. There might be some elements from
your culture of origin that you choose not to follow so that you can build the best version of yourself. That is okay. Work on these over time and validate if they feel like an improvement.
3. Once you’re happy with your first draft, show it to your closest friends and colleagues and ask them if they think it properly summarises your culture and values, or if you’ve missed anything. Write down their suggestions. If there is anything
unexpected, ask for clarification. Reflect on these; chances are there may be a misalignment between your perception of yourself vs what actually happens in reality.
4. Before meeting new people or groups, consider that people have different cultures to yours. Try to integrate with others; be the better person and be interested in their culture.
5. When meeting new people or groups for the first time, use your sensory radars to build a cultural profile of them. This will help you understand their values, behaviours, habits, customs, social norms, and anything else that influences how they operate. Write these down after you’ve spent time with them. This kind of reflection will become natural with practice.
6. Review their cultural profile and identify if there are any immediate adjustments you can make to fit in with their culture. Try them!
7. Next time you meet with them, identify if there are any additional changes you can make to help the cause even further. You will learn more with each meeting, so update your profile accordingly!
8. If they show interest in your culture, happily and willingly share your culture with them, but remember, if you try to force your culture onto them without first understanding their culture, bad results are bound to follow!
Cuts To Success:
1. Review your five closest fiends and revisit your SENTs and overall purpose. Do they align? If they do, that’s great. You’re already surrounding yourself with the right people that can help you get where you want to go, and are right for you in the long run. If they aren’t, review your other friends and see if some are the right fit to be elevated to the next level of the Friendship Pyramid.
2. Take those top five friends and compare them with the categories above. Are there any mindset shifts or approaches you can apply to make hanging out with them even better? Try them out and see how you go.
3. Take those top five friends and place them in the friendship pyramid. Do they all sit in the top? If not, why not? Are there others you can think of that should or could be elevated? And are there any in the top of the pyramid that should be moved down? Remember, this is not easy and the decision is up to you to make. If some people are holding you back and taking up precious time, maybe it’s the right time to trial spending less time with them and see what happens.
4. Take your top five friends from the Friendship Pyramid and write down (or mentally assess) what types of relationships you have with each one of them. Do you think they would agree if you or someone else asked them the same about you?
5. Take each of your top friends and ask the question: what other relationships could exist to strengthen your overall relationship? If you can’t think of any, that’s great, perhaps they’re perfect
already. If you can, write down the different options you can think of.
6. Take one of the options for each friend and try it out over the next month.
7. At the end of the month, review how this has gone. Has it helped? Are there more or less relationships you want to add or remove to the overall relationship. Are they still the right friends?
8. Once you’ve nailed this for the top five friends, apply this concept continuously to all of your friends, colleagues, and connections. Apply the relative effort based on where they sit in the Friendship Pyramid or where you’d like them to sit.
9. If you have trouble making new friends and maintaining those friendships, try saying “yes” to the next five things that people ask you to attend.
10. If you have nothing relatable to share with new people, review the list of hobbies in the “You, Yourself, And I” chapter to see if there is anything you could start.
11. Keep your mental radar and eyes peeled for the next random act of kindness you can do for someone. When you see it, don’t hesitate. Just do it!
Cuts To Success:
From your very next interaction with a person, be it written or
verbal, I want you to try the following:
1. Lead with the ears and the eyes. Hear the challenge or the sale and assess their body language.
2. “Playback” and “bottom line” it to show you’ve heard them. Create clarity around the outcome you are trying to achieve.
3. Use nonviolent communication, radical candour, and open questioning to get to mutually agreed actions for a mutually beneficial outcome.
4. Touch base regularly with the people you want to have strong relationships with. Share tidbits of information, or shoot them a funny meme or joke, to make initiating a meaningful conversation easier when the time is right.
5. Be there for your close friends or colleagues when they are going through tough times. Give them a listening partner when they need to vent or talk through a challenge they are facing.
6. Use physical touch in a suitable place when it feels appropriate.
7. Review all of your written content and remove any superfluous words before sending. Consciously use the active or passive voice according to the situation.
8. Review any presentations and see if you can make them into a story.
9. Keep practising the above. It will take time for it all to work together organically and harmoniously.
Cuts To Success:
1. Review any situations you have coming up that require people to work together collaboratively to deliver a common outcome. How can you create shared responsibility and vulnerability? Write all the options down. This could form part of a standard catalogue of options for future scenarios as well.
2. Choose the one you think will work best and try it out. Depending on what it is, you could run it past the group of people you want to apply it with so they buy into the plan. Or, you could implement it directly, so they don’t have the
opportunity to push back without trying it first.
3. Once you’ve applied it, review if it is working and creating the right outcome. If it’s not, look at what options or controls you could tweak, test these adjustments and monitor until you get
the right outcome.
4. Reflect on your vulnerabilities and how they are preventing you and the team from getting to the goal. Communicate these with the group and discuss options to improve. Welcome the group to share any of their vulnerabilities.
5. Watch the magic happen.
6. Try and help someone, in whatever way presents itself to you. There are so many ways – let it happen organically, or create a way you’re comfortable with. This could just be a trivial
random act of kindness. Don’t be scared to do it.
7. Reflect on the response you get – how does it feel? Helping people may not appeal to you in your current stage of life. It may never appeal to you. That’s more than fine.
8. If it does feel good, be creative and think about how it may find it’s way into your purpose statement.
Part 5 – Sucess System
Cuts To Success:
1. Visualise where you are spending your time by entering the main things you do into the spreadsheet at www.successby1000cuts/resources/visualisetime.
2. Write down your list of priorities. Hint, this might just be your SENTs, or it could be more granular and all-encompassing.
3. Write down your list of non-negotiables.
4. Remove anything you don’t want to waste your time on.
5. Review and update your sequence of how you do things to create more time.
6. Review how you do each of your activities with a critical lens. Consider how to improve your processes and remove any further waste. Think about if there is any opportunity to lean them out while you are doing them.
7. Automate where possible.
8. Pay for things to create more time.
9. Practise deep work to increase your ability to focus and complete your highest priority tasks. Start with 15-30 minutes with no phone and all notifications silenced to get started. Increase from there.
10. Do more of the things you want to do.
11. Review your time management practices monthly and improve where possible.
12. Book your first mini retirement and go on it.
Cuts To Success: