Every time a writer publishes a story or pitches an idea, they risk rejection.

5 min readDec 3, 2020

In Robert Greene’s book, Mastery, he writes, “To learn requires a sense of humility. We must admit that there are people out there who know our field much more deeply than we do.”

Back when I was in sales, my mentor asked me if I feared rejection. I answered, no, demonstrating my ability to lie with a straight face. I didn’t think it was okay to admit being afraid.

I moved to the 168-hour plan, which is less of a routine and more a way of keeping myself accountable. Just try the 168-hour plan for a few cycles and see how it works. It’s been over five months for me and my productivity has improved as have my physical and mental health.

He explained, and it became clear that he used the term with seriousness and sincerity. I may have been a struggling salesperson, but my mentor thought of me as a superstar because I had given up a stodgy and safe career to embark on an uncertain path with great potential but a real risk of failure. No matter the outcome, he said, I had escaped from mediocrity and become exceptional.

By my early thirties, I had grown disgusted with who I had become. I languished in a cubicle job, unmotivated, and with no transferable skills outside my employer. I had never done anything noteworthy, nor had I even tried.

Last night, a thunderstorm woke me up at 3 AM. It boomed relentlessly for an hour before subsiding. I laid awake until 5 AM and then slipped out of bed to make some coffee.
“Daily rituals are great, but they are not the only way to make things happen. By being creative and looking at all 168 hours in a week, we can often find space for more things than we think. The 24-hour trap limits possibilities. Looking at 168 hours opens things up.” — Laura Vanderkam

But to escape from mediocrity, you must push forward on days when it’s inconvenient, on days when laziness seems more appealing. The plausible excuse is, perhaps, the most insidious roadblock to growth because it’s so hard to argue against it.

Never rest on what you already know, even if you’re the brightest in your field. Adopt the attitude that, in any discipline, you can never know more than 1% of what there is to learn. It keeps you humble and hungry.

site:

I’ve been a writer, entrepreneur, investor, salesperson, copywriter, finance professional, and computer programmer. In every field, I’ve found books and courses promising a shortcut or quick way to success or mastery. I’m embarrassed to say, I’ve tried a few, and none of them ever panned out.
The world brims with people whose expertise consists of impatience and arrogance. They read a few articles, take an online course, spend a month practicing, and think they’re experts who know enough. Then they complain about their lack of success.
In a desperate attempt to energize my struggling business, I hired a mentor. I worshipped him at first, but the honeymoon period passed, and this guy began to grate on me with his habit of calling me “superstar” instead of addressing me by name.

“Daily rituals are great, but they are not the only way to make things happen. By being creative and looking at all 168 hours in a week, we can often find space for more things than we think. The 24-hour trap limits possibilities. Looking at 168 hours opens things up.” — Laura Vanderkam

Fear is normal. Nobody has ever figured it out. Exceptional performers, however, have learned to push forward when they’re scared. I learned to overcome it by practicing the experimenter’s ethos.

Shortcuts are nothing more than detours that end with road-closure signs. The more time you waste on them, the longer it takes you to acquire the skill and experience to achieve excellence.It’s tempting to hit the snooze button or veg out in bed for a half-hour before you start your day. If you do that every day, you’re wasting 180 hours per year. How much could you get done with those extra hours?Recently, I watched an interview with the author, Dan Brown, who said that he wakes up around 3 AM to begin his writing. He gets a lot of flack about his writing from critics, but even his haters can’t knock his work ethic.

The distance from average to exceptional is measured in inches, not miles. It has nothing to do with wealth, popularity, or any other culturally defined metric. It’s about continually pushing past your boundaries in whatever domain you apply yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” He was right, but I’ll add a footnote. The problem with fear is that we try to pretend it doesn’t exist, thinking it’s a sign of weakness.

The simplest way to recover productivity is to eliminate dead-time. That’s the time you spend in bed before getting up, the time you waste getting ready to do your real work, the time you blow on mindless distractions. To become exceptional, be mindful of your dead time, and eliminate it.

Every time a writer publishes a story or pitches an idea, they risk rejection.

Written by Raseldit