How To Know If You Are On The Right Track

Have you wondered if you are doing the right thing?

Have you ever wanted to know if you were on the right track?

This question plagued my mind constantly when I was in university. Running a 5-year and $ 50,000 experiment to find out if it was worth it or not terrified me.

I didn't want to climb a mountain only to realise I climbed the wrong mountain, and I needed to come back down.

The thing is, there are almost no signs of success when you are pursuing long-term goals. They are multi-year experiments, and you have no idea of the outcome.

If you know anything about experiments, then you know experiments fail way more often than they succeed.

It's a problem that got me thinking. If I could go back in time to tell 18 year old Josh not to worry so much because if you see these signs, you are on the right track, what would those signs be?

In this letter, I am going to reveal what those signs are so you can have more confidence in yourself and avoid the two most common mistakes people make that ruin their success.

The first mistake is that they quit too early, missing out on the rewards they deserve. Their dreams remain dreams, and their goals are unachieved. Researchers in the science of motivation found that the fastest way for someone to become demotivated is for them to feel like their efforts are futile.

You won't feel that way if you notice these signs.

The second mistake is that they continue trying due to the sunk cost fallacy. I already put so much time, effort and resources into this thing, I can't turn back now. Most climbers die on high mountains because they weren't able to turn around when the weather changed, or they ran out of time. Sunk cost fallacy becomes their fatality.

But before we can get into the signs to look for, we need to talk about how to measure success. Don't skip this part because, if you don't get this right, the signs wont reveal themselves to you.

How to measure success

My current goal in the gym is to pack on more muscle.

What should be my definition of success, and what metrics would I track to know I am making progress in the right direction?

The definition of success for my bulk is to weigh 82 kg by October while putting on minimal fat.

Key metrics I am tracking are:

• Macros — am I hitting my calorie and protein targets most days?

• Weight — am I gaining approximately 0.25 kg per week?

• Strength — Are my lifts increasing in terms of load or reps?

If yes, then I know I am on the right track to hit my goal. If no, then I can adjust quickly.

These are outcome based measures of success and they are extremely useful for tracking progress for fitness goals. You can tightly control nearly all variables dependent on success.

That is, your efforts are directly tied to your outcomes.

When you receive the outcomes you wanted after your efforts, you receive a neurochemical cocktail of dopamine, serotonin and testosterone that motivates you even more. You build momentum and become unstoppable.

But what about goals where your efforts are not directly tied to the outcomes?

As I have brutally learnt:

• I can study my hardest for a test and I can still fail

• I can put 100 hours into a video and it can still tank

• I can sink 12 years into engineering and consider that maybe engineering isn't for me.

For goals that cannot be tightly controlled, we no longer have objective metrics to track progress anymore.

We need a different approach to defining and measuring success.

The classic advice for people is to construct our definitions and measures of success by our efforts instead of the outcomes:

• I am successful if I prepare well for a test, not if I pass or fail

• I am successful if I am proud of a video, not if it gets a lot of views.

• I am successful if I enjoy my time being an engineer, not if I remain an engineer.

These sound great on paper, but if you are anything like me, hearing this is extremely dissatisfying.

The harsh truth my mind comes back to is:

If I am not getting the outcomes I want, then my efforts do not matter.

So the question is how we can measure the success of our efforts based upon the outcomes within your locus of control.

Basically, we still want to optimise for outcomes, not inputs.

Signs you are heading in the right direction

1. Market research

In two business books, The Lean Startup and Zero to One, the respective authors say that the first thing you should do after having a good idea is to validate it against the market. In essence, you are determining whether there is a need for your product or service before investing time, energy, and resources into it.

Not doing adequate market research and validating ideas early and fast is one of the biggest reasons start-ups fail.

Do not be the guy who makes something that no one wants.

We should have a similar approach to our lives.

You are not an employee. You are a business that is contracting your time to another business. You get to decide what you bring to the table.

This is simple but often understated. Do people want what you are offering? If no, do not pursue that path. Just because you want to and think it is a good idea is not going to cut it.

The easiest way to validate the idea is to look for people who have done what you want to do and have achieved success by doing it.

Let's say you were thinking about doing engineering at university. How can you validate that career option as fast as possible?

The easiest way is to look for what companies are looking for in job listings. Use tools like whatsthesalary.com to check the salary if it isn't advertised. Notice patterns:

• What industries have the most jobs?

• What industries pay the most?

• What skills are being advertised the most?

• What are the most common qualifications required?

Don't be like most people and only look for jobs when it's time to get one. Use the job listings to guide you through the market.

Go on LinkedIn. Find engineers who are at the companies you have been researching. Send the engineers a DM. Ask them questions about their role. Treat them like they are an expert at what they do. Not everyone is going to reply. But you will be surprised by how many will be excited to teach you something they know.

If you are lucky, you might make some great connections, and you might be able to shadow an engineer for a day. Basically, you follow them around, and you get an idea of what their day is like.

You can validate any degree this way. I should have done more of this between 17-19. Once validated, you can have more confidence that you are moving in the right direction. Or you can pivot quickly rather than a 5-year experiment.

Let's say you want to start your own social media venture. How can you validate that idea as fast as possible?

Chances are, you got the idea because you saw someone on YouTube and it inspired you. I had a lot of self-doubt about what I was trying to do with this channel until I found Dan Koe.

Seeing Dan make millions per year as a one-person business by writing about his interests online opened my eyes to what is possible. I thought,"If Dan can do it, why can't I?".

The great thing about social media is that most of the information you want to know is already there for you. Consume all their free content. Buy their low-ticket courses if you can afford it and reverse engineer their success.

If you can find people who have done what you want to do and achieved success by doing it, that's a pretty good sign that it is possible.

If you think a particular niche is saturated, like health and fitness, it's not. You are just in an echo chamber where you see a lot of people trying to do it. But if you zoomed out, you would see it's not as many people as you thought, and small creators are still doing pretty well even in the "saturated niche".

Now, if what you want to do has never been done, you are going to need a very different approach that is beyond the scope of this letter.

The reason why I spent so much time explaining the market research is that it is the most important sign you can have. If you validated your idea against the market, you can have confidence that you are pursuing a worthwhile goal.

Now you need to look for outcome-based signs that you are making progress.

From here, I am going to assume you have a meaningful goal in mind.

2. New Levels — New Devils

There a concept in the art of impossible that I love. Impossible with a capital 'I' are goals that have never been done. Think of inventing the internet, flying the first plane and designing reusable rockets. Then there are goals which are impossible with a little 'i. These are goals that you have never done before. Think getting into the best shape of your life, overcoming your social anxiety and starting that business.

Most of us are chasing impossible goals — things other people have done but we haven't.

One of the signs I trust most when pursuing the impossible is, am I embarrassed by what I was like 6 months ago? The answer is nearly always yes.

If you are embarrassed by where you were 6 months ago, it means you are continually growing and improving. You are remaining in the Goldilocks zone of experience where your skill and challenge are perfectly matched.

Like in a video game, as you improve and get more skilled, the challenges get harder. You get faster and more efficient. So you can progressively stack more load on.

You even begin to remember concepts more easily, like they become a part of you.

I say this often: if you are unsure what project to start, go to the gym. Make improving your body your first project. I can tell you, it's not easy because it requires your continuous effort, but it will be the easiest project of your life.

Often, that's where you need to start before you take on the scarier challenges.

You might expect that doing the things that scare you will help you fear less. Not the case.

As Steven says in The Art of Impossible, for peak performers, fear becomes a directional arrow. Unless the thing in front of them is a dire and immediate threat to be avoided, the best of the best will often head in the direction that scares them most.

They don't do it despite the fear; they do it because of the fear.

If you are achieving new levels and facing new devils, you can trust you are on the right path. You will come through the other side even if you haven't pulled off the impossible yet.

3. Effort is proportional to enjoyment

Optimise for the outcome. In other words, optimise for what you want.

Too many people get caught up in 'working hard' or 'grinding' for the sake of working hard and grinding. They miss the point entirely.

The point of 'working hard' is to create a life you enjoy. Not enough people talk about the importance of enjoyment.

Why try to work hard to eventually enjoy your life when you can choose to do things you enjoy? It makes no sense to me.

It should be hard. You should be close to your limit. But it should not feel like a grind all of the time.

Grinding, technically speaking is a very inefficient, energy intensive, and high friction process. If you are going through that grinding cycle daily, you are on the wrong path lil bro.

Don't fall victim to the glorification of the grind, it's an empty life.

Don't fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy either. Establish your boundaries and walk away when they are compromised.

In contrast, a sign you are on the right path is when the more effort you put in, the more effort you want to put in.

That is, the effort is proportional to enjoyment.

The harder I tried at university, the more I enjoyed my course.

The harder I tried developing the product at work, the more i enjoyed the process.

The harder I try with these letters, the more i enjoy writing them for us. I make these for myself as much as I make them for you.

Optimising for enjoyment is a shortcut to happiness

4. Rays of hope

You know, in the final battle of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang is trying to take Izo's bending ability. Izo's will almost completely consume Aang's until there is only a ray of hope coming out of Aang's eye. Then Aang's will explodes outwards to consume Izo's and the battle is over.

When you are trying to do the impossible, you need to believe there is at least a single ray of hope that you can pull through.

You might wake up every morning when crippling self doubt about what you are doing. The situation might feel dire. The signs of progress might be hidden in failures.

That is the real battle of posting content on social media.

Yet, if you still have some optimism in you and there is still at least a ray of hope beaming out, I think that is a pretty good sign you will pull through eventually.

As you stack more small wins, more rays beam out of you, and you begin to believe in yourself more and more. You slowly begin to make larger bets on yourself.

You will take losses. Your confidence will take a hit. And your self-belief will fluctuate. But as long as you can find nuggets of progress and that's enough to fuel you, you will be just fine.

As long as you got that ray of hope, don't give up.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

Josh