Why Trying Harder Isn't The Answer

Good morning. I was in my journal today and I found a list of my top 12 books to document. This is 1997, remember. I've told you about some of them. Influence. The E-Myth. The Seven Habits. The One to One Future. But this one is different. It's a book called You Squared by Price Pritchett. I'd never heard of him. My friend Joe Stump introduced me to it. And I've read it probably a hundred times. This was one of the books that got me thinking bigger. Getting out of the way and letting things happen. A couple of things stood out. First, it's small. I own a company right now called 90 Minute Books. And part of the genesis of it was realizing how impactful a little book can be. Because I know how impactful this one was for me. You sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting. And it's one of those books where you don't need to do anything. There's no seven step process. You read it, you get the insight, and you're changed because of it. Here's how it opens. He's telling a story. He's sitting in a quiet room at the Millcroft Inn. A peaceful little place hidden among the pine trees, about an hour out of Toronto. Funny thing. The Millcroft Inn was fifteen or twenty minutes from where I was living at the time. It's late July, just past noon, and he's listening to a life or death struggle a few feet away. There's a small fly burning out the last of its energy trying to fly through the glass of the window pane. The whining wings tell the whole story. The fly's strategy is try harder. But it's not working. And the struggle is part of the trap. It's impossible for the fly to try hard enough to break through the glass. It has staked its life on raw effort and determination. And this fly is doomed. It will die there on the windowsill. Across the room, ten steps away, the door is open. Ten seconds of flying time and this little creature could reach the world it's looking for. With a fraction of the effort it's wasting now. The breakthrough is right there. It would be so easy. So why doesn't the fly try something dramatically different? How did it get so locked in on this one route? What logic is there in continuing until death with more of the same? No doubt it makes sense to the fly. And that's the idea that kills it. Here's the line. Trying harder isn't necessarily the solution to achieving more. Sometimes it's a big part of the problem. If you stake your whole hope for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever... you may kill your chances. Now think about when I first read this. I'd just lived it. When I started out as a realtor, I made a hundred cold calls a day. That's manual labor. And the second you stopped, it stopped working. Then I got introduced to direct response. To marketing. And I figured out I could put words on a postcard, on an ad, and have people call me instead of me calling them. My entire life changed. And I see it everywhere now. People in real estate, in any business, trying harder and harder at the traditional, manual thing. When there are quantum leaps sitting right there. Just from a simple shift. But you have to be open to it. Aware there might be an easier way. And sometimes that awareness builds its own momentum. Go find the book. You'd really enjoy it. And before you try harder today... look for the open door. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/104-why-trying-harder-isnt-the-answer/