Success Is Boring (and how to show up anyway)

You know what you should be doing every day. But most days you find a reason to make them tomorrow. Then the year ends looking exactly like the last one. Motivation was never going to carry you through work this boring. The people who show up every day set it up so that skipping costs them something.

Jay Papasan edited Mia Hamm's book at HarperCollins. The story that stuck with him had nothing to do with the World Cup. It was wind sprints alone in a park in the off-season heat, and the note her coach left under her windshield wiper. Being number one in your market gets built the same way, out of a few thousand hours nobody sees, and you are wired to avoid every one of them. Willpower runs out long before the work does. Jay has watched three plain strategies carry people through the hours everyone else skips. You only need one.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Three ways to keep doing boring work after motivation and willpower run out

Who else pays when you let yourself off the hook

Why the best sales scoreboards track activities, not just sales

The goal-setting chain from five years out down to what you do today

The first domino: the action that has to happen before the one you keep skipping

Which of Gretchen Rubin's four tendencies explains how you respond to expectations

Chapters:

(00:00) What Mia Hamm's Coach Caught Her Doing Alone

(02:15) Why You'd Rather Be Shocked Than Sit Still