People in personal development circles don’t talk about success much anymore.
The word comes with some baggage. To some, it implies the selfish pursuit of status, wealth, and power. However, it simply means achieving what you set out to do.
By that definition, we all want success. Whether that means becoming a more loving spouse, a more patient father, or an effective writer, we’d all like to see our efforts bear fruit.
What if you’ve reached a point at which the path toward those goals doesn’t seem clear? What if you desire success but you’re uncertain about how to get there?
I once found myself in those shoes. Several years ago, I had big dreams about the person I wanted to become and the bad habits I wanted to break. Instead of making progress, I spent hours and hours reading about my problems, trying to unlock the secrets I swore must exist, and building elaborate plans for how I’d succeed someday.
In hindsight, I can see that the path to success was staring me in the face. I didn’t need to hunt for it. Unfortunately, at the time, I preferred the comfort of dreaming about my goals to the discomfort of embracing the one necessary ingredient to progress: doing the obvious thing well.
What It Means to Do the Obvious Thing
Unless you’re an elite performer in your field, there’s a very good chance that the obvious advice applies to you.
Someone who is overweight or unfit doesn’t need advice from a world-renowned expert, because simply taking action on any obvious advice would help him or her tremendously.
Doing the obvious thing means asking yourself, “What would 90 people out of 100 say is the one thing I should be doing?”
If you’re an intelligent, driven person, this advice will seem too easy. Sure, it might work, but there’s got to be a better way or a faster way to get there, you might think. You may be convinced that you need to wait to start until you’re absolutely certain how to succeed in the best way.
Instead of thinking that you’re too good for the obvious advice, try imagining that the obvious advice—the first reasonable idea that pops into your mind—is the only possible way.
If that were true, then it would change everything about your method. All of your mental energy would be directed toward that one path.
Now we’re onto something.
Apply Obvious Advice With Unusual Enthusiasm
Doing the obvious thing must be combined with one other essential ingredient: an unusual dose of enthusiasm.
In practice, for this to work, you have to really believe that doing the obvious advice with unusual enthusiasm is the key to success. A good example of this is Vince Lombardi, former coach of the Green Bay Packers football team.
Lombardi was obsessed with the fundamentals.
While most coaches loved creating clever plays and trying to outsmart the opposing team, he wanted the other team to know exactly what was coming but have no way of stopping it. His teams practiced the same plays repeatedly until they mastered a handful of obvious, straightforward plays that every other team considered elementary.
Lombardi led the Packers to five NFL championships in seven years: more success, in less time, than any other team in the sport’s history.
When the obvious advice is applied with confidence, energy, consistency, and perseverance, it becomes one of the most powerful recipes you can imagine. At least seven reasons why the obvious advice works so well is because it:
- Is Tried and True: The advice is usually the best, and saves you from having to reinvent the wheel.
- Gets You Into Action Quickly: Action provides you with real-world feedback.
- Makes It Easy to Decide: In the words of Gen. George Patton, “a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
- Leaves You Nowhere to Hide: You can’t hide behind fancy or complicated plans; you must simply do the work and do it well, or you have no hope of succeeding.
- Forces You Down a Single Path: Bypassing perfectionism means that there’s no opportunity to ruminate on every possible method, plan, or tactic.
- Builds a Solid Foundation: Iteration and innovation down the road arise from mastering the obvious, giving you the insights to try something new.
What obvious piece of advice have you been neglecting? Why not start today and take every other option off the table? It might just be the unexpected key to your future success.
