What I learned from “The Victory Project – Six Steps to Peak Potential”

The authors lay down a framework for achieving peak potential with the help of certain behaviors & solutions.

Solutions leading to help you attain peak potential are: 

 

Specialize: In today's world, you need to have to be specialist in at least one skill to live a comfortable life. How to achieve that is being spoken by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. He states a common finding from all leading professional athletes & experts spending at least 10,000 of deliberate practice before being called an expert. 10,000 hrs that would take us almost a decade of practice.

Let’s talk about great professional bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman who is the only person along with Lee Haney (1984-91) to win 8 Mr Olympias (biggest & toughest international bodybuilding competition). He had already completed 10,000 hours of training by the time he had entered his first competition in 1995. He started training at the age of 12 and was 30 (1995) when he won his first professional competition. 

 

Simplify: “The definition of genius is taking the complex & making it simple”- Albert Einstein. Simplification is indeed the ultimate sophistication. It may sound easy but simplification is an outcome of complex processes and deep understanding which can come as a product of specialized skill & knowledge.Gaining or losing weight is simple math of calories intake. To gain weight you need to intake more calories & vice versa to decrease weight yet most of us struggle to do so.

The authors suggest simplification through building habits & through principles/rules. Study of lives of great minds suggests habits like reading, intense focused work in solitude, seeking high-quality input & criticism and a well-defined routine simplifies a lot of things in your life. Simplifying through rules can be achieved by specializing, being original and combining originality & specialization into deep thought. 

Spiritualize: Spirituality involves acknowledging inner self separate from the material or the physical one. It does not refer to a specific practice here but rather giving you a way of life to look at things. This is especially important in the high-stress world we live in, constantly bombarded with notification, work related stress & threat of getting mediocre results.

Constant comparison of your return on investments in the stock market with that of indexes or peers makes life miserable for a lot of us. The fluctuations of the market which should be our friend turn out to be our enemy & make our life difficult. This affects not only you but your friends & family too. Spirituality through meditation would calm our minds & make us better at generating ideas & taking better decisions.

Behavioral attributes required for attaining peak potential are:  

Clutter Reduction: Knowing what to prioritize & focus on is a tough task but doing that would remove decision fatigue, give you more time and help you stay calm. We have so many things going on in our mind that tasks needing intense focus can almost never be done. Add to this our constant need of dopamine rush which we get from mindless scrolling, watching videos and constant use of social media. It not only leads to distraction but also leads to loneliness, extremism & anxiety.

Watch Social dilemma on Netflix if you don’t believe this. To de-clutter & focus start by making a list of tasks according to priority & get things done by focusing deeply in chunks of say 20-30 mins to begin with.

Creativity & Memory: Original thinking is an art in today's age of plagiarizing world. It is difficult but doable. Identifying your deep driving desires is the first step towards original thinking. To develop original thinking read voraciously along with your chosen specialized field, explore the world, work hard & produce a lot of ideas.

Make it a routine to produce ideas, discus it with people you look up to, let them criticize, build on it, try & fail. You will end up with a few successful ideas every now & then.

Collaboration: Working collaboratively towards common goals allows you to achieve more & learn more from those around you. Often times you can achieve much more collaboratively than you can do alone. Successful organizations are built on collaboration & team effort people.

To sum up specialize in a skill, simplify things & tasks and spiritualize to get maximum of your potential. Reduces mental clutter to save energy, activate your creative mind & generate a lot of ideas and collaborate with the best people to multiply your success.

PS: The credit for almost all ideas goes to the authors of the book Saurabh Mukherjea & Anupam Gupta. I have discussed ideas I could understand and relate most to. Please read the book to get more from the original ideas of the authors.

The Books:

 The Victory Project – Six Steps to Peak Potential 

Outliers: The Story of Success