You Don't Have to Figure It Out Alone

I’m not quite done pulling the thread on last week’s topic…

As I’m building… one of the big realizations I've made recently is that you don't need to do it all by yourself. Leverage someone else's 10,000 hours.

That's a simple thing to say out loud and understand. Hell, I’ve been saying it for ten years, and have been regularly cooperating with others. At the same time, there were a lot of lessons I still wasn’t picking up.

It’s not that I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had to have it all figured out by myself. There's a difference.

The first one is arrogance. The second one is isolation. And honestly, I'm not sure which is worse.

I heard Brené Brown say something on the Diary of a CEO podcast this week that stopped me: "In order to fit in, the first person you betray is yourself."

I think there's a version of that for people who are building something - a business, a career, a comeback. In order to look like you've got it together, the first thing you sacrifice is the help you actually need.

You tell yourself you'll figure it out. You convince yourself that asking for help defeats the purpose. That leveraging someone else's expertise somehow diminishes what you're building.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, during the same podcast binge: "At no time should you overvalue your own thoughts."

I love that. Not because your thoughts don't matter, they do, but because the best thinking doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in collision with other people's experience, perspective, and yes, their 10,000 hours.

I spent a long time believing I needed to earn the right to ask for help by first proving I could do it myself. That's backwards. The people who build the fastest are the ones who borrow wisdom early and often.

Here's the other thing about doing it alone: it's exhausting. And the exhaustion doesn't just slow you down, it erodes your confidence.

I've been thinking a lot about swagger lately. Not the performative kind, but the quiet belief that what you're doing is the right thing. That you're on the right path. That the work matters.

It’s a cornerstone of successful selling, and #7 of my Seven Steps to Sell Like You.

It’s hard to maintain at all, and even more so when you're isolated, when every decision sits entirely on your shoulders, when there's no one to say, "Yeah, that's the right call" or "Have you considered this?"

Swagger is more than just confidence. It's supported confidence. If you want that support, you’d better let people in.

Back when I was a rep standing in orthopedic operating rooms, we had a saying we’d go back to over and again, “Perfect is the enemy of really good.”

No, it’s not a good idea to try to freehand cut a sliver of bone that’s less than the thickness of your saw blade… With such thin margins, it’s way more likely that even a good surgeon will make things worse than improve them to perfection. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.

I was thinking about this at the gym the other day. Sometimes, you just need to get going. I’ve turned my mind into a pretzel in the past because I should be lifting heavier weights, working on my mobility, or doing some golf-specific work…

Look, I have a lot on my plate, and I’m not going to grace the cover of any magazine anytime soon. I really just need to move a little more and get my heart rate up.

The same is true for asking for help. You don't need the perfect question or the perfect mentor or the perfect moment. You just need to start. Reach out to someone who's done what you're trying to do. Borrow their map. Let their shortcuts become yours.

Go even deeper, and try to figure out why their shortcuts worked, and what their map addressed to help them get to where they want to go.

It’s good advice not to make the same mistake twice.

It’s expert advice to not make the same mistakes 1000 people have made before you.

I’ve always been pretty good at the former. I’m starting to catch up with the latter.

This isn't about outsourcing your thinking. It's about expanding it. You still have to do the work. You still have to make the decisions. But you don't have to start from zero every time.

Someone else has already made the mistakes you're about to make. Someone else has already found the path through the part where you’re stuck. The question is whether your pride will let you ask.

Mine almost didn't. I'm working on that.

Cheers,
JB