Mountains of Arizona
Clear 67 Degrees
7:21 a.m.
Yesterday I had a “strategery summit” with a mountain biker I’m working with.
To say he’s talented would be quite an understatement. He’s won national titles over the years and even earned a slot on the US Master’s Downhill Team.
I could tell you what he does, but it’s easier to show you.
We’re building his media platform and the systems he needs to support a mountain bike coaching and training business.
I had to undo some serious brainwashing to realize that “hard work” is not all we’re told it is. It’s almost like we were programmed to think there’s some value to it regardless of the context. Like it is our penance for all of our shortcomings we’ve been trained to think we have.
Any system that trains you to work hard so you can be somebody is a system that’s scared to death for you to ever realize you already ARE somebody.
“If you’re not suffering you couldn’t possibly be doing anything worthwhile!”
Yeah right. Load of B.S.
I’ll give you my “dose of crazy from Jason” version:
If you creating your livelihood isn’t really easy for you, then there’s probably a better way for you to be doing it.
You have genius inside. The work is to figure out how to best share it with the world.
But the “hard work” trap goes even deeper…
Because for many people, “hard work” serves as a never ending diversion from having to face themselves.
A lack of work creates space. In that space all you have left to do is BE with yourself. And for much of humanity, that’s scary as hell!
When busy is a drug, you have to ask yourself if that’s really how you want to go through life.
So when I’m helping people design media platforms and the systems that grow up around them, I use a process I’ve come to call:
LAZIFICATION
In my world, we hold up “lazy” not as something to be avoided but something to be pursued at all costs!
Despite what the name sounds like, sometimes, it’s actually a lot of work.
How do you create the biggest result and the biggest impact with the least amount of effort?
We’re talking about thinking here, not digging ditches. And if you do it right, you do it ONCE.
So it’s a smart path, in my opinion.
Here’s just one example:
Plenty of people have an email newsletter. Plenty of people also have a podcast.
They wake up one day and send an email, they wake up the next day and record a podcast.
Each day it’s a question of where the effort goes.
“The podcast isn’t doing so well…”
“We need to get more email subscribers.”
Focus is split between two or 12 different things.
The Lazification expert might look at that and say, “there’s improvement to be had here.”
How do we structure these things so that one fuels the other? How do we make the podcast fuel the email list growth, or vice versa?
That way, we focus energy.
The whole goal is to focus your entire system on one or two primary leverage points. When you add energy to those points (energy could be money, time, effort, whatever), it powers the whole machine!