The reality behind why gurus think people are lazy and how to solve it.

Figuring out what you’re willing to “give up” to achieve your goals can be misleading. It’s typical guru advice to think about what your goals are and then consider what you have to change or give up in order to meet those goals.

This is actually close to being good advice, but needs a slight tweak.

Short and sweet – people don’t know what the process is to achieve a goal when they come up with the idea. Want to become a muscly monster like Jay Cutler? It’s not going to the gym 5 hours a day like you may think. It’s taking tons of roids AND actually only going to the gym 1 hour a day. Want to have an ultra lean physique? It’s not just “drop drinking soda,” but eating extremely carefully and rarely deviating from a set diet.

The reason people don’t finish courses on things is they didn’t know what they had to do to succeed. – Truthcake

Gurus sit back and call everyone lazy for not “taking action.” But if you don’t know what action it is you have to take, then that’s not particularly fair to the people that go through courses.

The number 1 thing you need to know about a goal is knowing what it takes, specifically, to achieve it. Not just “hard work” or nebulous nonsense. Once you know what the work is, then you can decide if you want to do it or not.

Splitting a goal up into 2 parts is an easy way to think about it: 1) What is the work, and 2) Will I do the work?

Most people focus on the 2nd part, or they focus on what goal to set to begin with. But they would find themselves much more productive if they focused on knowing what specifically is the work?

What’s one goal you “gave up” on, not because you didn’t like to work, but because you discovered the type of work it required and realized that it wasn’t something you’d feel comfortable doing?