Hacking Our Own Habits To Accomplish More With Josh Linkner

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Josh Linkner, the 2x New York Times best-selling author and speaker. He wrote the book Big Little Breakthroughs which he will tell us more about.

Mo asked Josh:

“The question I have with you is can you dig into the content of Big Little Breakthroughs and give us a big little breakthrough on how we can hack our own habits and how we can focus on the long game even when everything in life is pulling us away from it?”

Josh responded:

“That’s a really thoughtful question. I have a number of thoughts I’d quickly like to share. First of all, you are right. What I’ve noticed is the urgent and the now screams the loudest, but you know, at the detriment of the long-term.

So, I’ve kind of played around with this concept called the 70/30 rule. We know the 80/20 rule where 80% of our business comes from 20% of our best customers, etc. But think about this. Think about the 70/30 rule in regard to the next 12 months of business. If all you do is what you’ve done before, what you already know, and what you’ve already been trained in, you’re likely only going to achieve about 70% of your desired outcome.

The world is changing so quickly with competitors, consumer trends, and technology. This means, that because we are in such a fluid environment, if you are not course-correcting or adapting in a certain way, you’re likely to fall about 30% short.

So think about the 30% as your creativity gap. The problem is that every year, that compounds… On the other hand, if we fill that 30% gap with longer-term thinking or agility or creativity, then it compounds and compounds and compounds. Then we are way ahead of the competitive set.

My key point here is that too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new, but we underestimate the risk of standing still. One classic way to stand still is to get so caught in the moment and in the day, that our heads are down, and we never take the time to get our heads up.

So, with that in mind, my hack is this. Some of us have investments, maybe a 401k for example. You would never take your entire 401k and stick it in one stock. What you do is you have a balanced portfolio presumably.

I would recommend the same thing for people in terms of their effort, time, and energy. Certainly, we should be heads down at times. We need to get our job done. We need to get our inbox zero and all those other important tactical things, but let’s not allocate 100% of our resources to that. Pick a number that’s right for you. Maybe it’s 80% or 85%. Whatever number is right for you. It is important to carve out at least a little bit of time to be heads up.”

Dive deeper into the conversation with Josh Linkner here.

Reflect on how you can diversify your allocation of effort, time, and energy, similar to managing a stock portfolio. Just as you wouldn’t invest all your money in one stock, how can you apply this principle to your daily schedule to ensure you’re strategically planning for the future?

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Thanks for reading!

-Mo