4 Tips To Become a Designed Outlier
This post was inspired by two amazing books, “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell and “Great by Choice” by Jim Collins.
These books largely focus on companies rather than individuals, but the lessons still ring true. The greatest companies are not the greatest by chance or by luck, they are the greatest because they do the things that make them the greatest.
They choose to be great.
Before we go too far, let’s define a designed outlier.
A designed outlier is someone who is successful by choice. Someone who has designed themselves to be successful. An individual who lives their life in a way that facilitates growth and invites success.
So, what can we take away from this concept?
One strategy to become successful is to reverse engineer already successful individuals to see the tools and habits that they have. By understanding and identifying how they became who they are we can better understand what we must do.
Here are the 4 things that can be done to become a designed outlier.
Continue to learn. Chances are if you are reading this then you are already doing this. The most successful people are life-long learners. Learning for them didn’t stop at high school or college. In fact, it has accelerated as they get older. Learn to be curious. Learn to seek out information. Don’t get complacent.
Read books. Bill Gates reads on average 50 books per year and he is not alone. A vast majority of successful people swear by the fact that being an avid reader is one of the necessary steps to becoming successful. Reading allows you to continue to broaden your horizons and absorb information. Reading is perhaps the easiest way to get smarter.
Take action and be proactive. Successful people are proactive, they do not wait around for lucky things to happen to them, they create their own luck. In Sam Walton’s (the founder of Walmart) book, “Made in America”, he talks about how one of the qualities that made him so successful was the ability to be proactive about protecting his business. He went and learned from his competition. Sam Walton was notorious for studying the layouts of all of his competitor’s stores. He would walk into their stores with a clipboard, and be relentless in asking the managers questions about what is selling well, what isn’t selling well, and why X item was on this aisle instead of the other one. On a few occasions, he was asked to leave the store, but that didn’t stop him.
Discipline. Waking up at 5 am won’t make you successful, but sticking to a well-designed routine will. Design a routine that allows you to live a healthy, growth-oriented life. Go to the gym. Eat healthily. Don’t cave to the desire to spend hours and hours mindlessly scrolling social media. Understand that whether you are successful or not is entirely up to you. You hold the keys to your success. Only you can choose to be great.
What we are reading this week: The Strategy Of Conflict
This book is probably one of the more technical books I’ve read. It goes pretty deep into different game theory models and the logic behind them. Books like this are fun. They take a deeply technical, theoretical concept and use real-world examples that are extremely actionable. I imagine this will be one of my favorite books.
Quote of the week:
“When the sea was calm, all ships alike showed mastership in floating”
William Shakespear