The 6x6 challenge

The relationship between commitment and ultimate success has preying on my mind on and off over the last year or so.

It is starting to become obvious to me (and the patterns become more obvious the more I read and the more people I meet) that the reason most people never succeed is really for one of two reasons:

1) They don't have a goal to focus on
2) They do have a goal but fail to commit to achieving it

What do I mean by this?

Imagine you are a sailboat in the middle of the ocean of life. Pushed and pulled by the wind and tides, you mill around and follow a haphazard path dictated mostly by random chance, never getting anywhere. Sometimes you see a mirage on the horizon and chase it for a while before the wind changes and it suddenly seems easier to go with the wind in a different direction for a while. You don't know where you want to go and are too scared to start sailing one way for sure in case you head in the wrong direction. This is the vast majority of people's lives.

Now, let's imagine you want to get to a port. You don't really know exactly where it is yet but you have a vague idea of how to get there so you set sail and go. Six months later you see another boat and ask directions only to find out you set off in the wrong direction and have to make a huge detour to get back on track. At this point you can choose to give up, or to use what you have learned to more accurately guide you towards your goal. Along the way you encounter storms that blow you off course, tides that make progress almost impossible, but sometimes also fair winds and clear skies that see you zipping along towards your destination. Eventually, after some years, you find you have covered thousands of kilometres in the right direction and you cannot comprehend how far you have come. This is the life of a successful business owner, or politician, or actor, or singer, or rock star, or olympic athlete.

What is the difference? The person who succeeds in the long run knows WHERE they want to get to, and COMMITS to getting there no matter what. That constant push even in the face of adversity, even when they seem to be going backwards, is EXACTLY what gets them to their goal.

After having crystallised it in my mind like this, it seems self evident and ridiculous that anybody would think otherwise. I am baffled by the myriad hordes that surround me of people who constantly wish for things yet never put their mind to actually getting them.

But as with everything, once you possess the knowledge, it is always obvious. It's the DISCOVERING of it that's the hard part (I think Isaac Newton may have said that but not sure). Everything I have ever learned from other people, from physics, from evolutionary theory and from observation of natural systems all mirror this pattern. Entropy is the natural order of things. In order for progress to be made against entropy, there MUST be a consistent driving stressor towards an ultimate, static goal. In evolution this ultimate goal is reproduction. In physics it is represented as an energy differential. Whatever the system, the pattern is the same.



Enough waffle. How can we actually APPLY this theory and get some real world results? Well I'm gonna test it. I'm starting the 6x6 challenge. For the next six days I will play six hours of focussed guitar every day. I don't mean sitting in front of the TV fiddling with some lick I got from inaccurate internet tab. I mean learning scales, note drills, sheet music and perfecting chord transitions. Proper learning. And I will document it in my journal to hold myself accountable.

I don't know if I can keep this up for six months. But one week is a much easier goal to shoot for, and if I manage one, well another one probably won't look so hard by then, and after two weeks, it would be a shame to give up when I'm already over halfway to three wouldn't it? ;-)

I try never to talk about doing something and not do it myself, so here is me walking the talk and applying my thoughts. Expect updates on my progress here.