My feeds in social media are filled with Cheatsheets, Hacks, Templates—all sorts of tools. They attract lots of interest, lots of requests. People are looking for anything they can do to help them do their jobs, to find the shortcuts or secrets to success. I look at them, most are pretty good, there are always interesting ideas and approaches.
But there’s a problem with them………
They don’t really work.
Let me revise that, they work extraordinarily well for the people that develop them.
But they aren’t as effective, ultimately don’t work for everyone else. People read them, perhaps try them, ultimately, file them away in a “Cheatsheets/Hacks” folder, never to return. They search for new Cheatsheets/Hacks and go through the same cycle with them. They never deliver on the promise to the consumers of these tools.
Why don’t they work?
Decades ago, when “strategic planning” was in vogue, companies would invest lots of time and energy in developing their “strategic plans.” The result might be a document or a presentation, sometimes I thought their value was assessed by the number of pages or the pounds/kilos the document weighed. And most of the time, the documents were abandoned, or perhaps the next year, people blew the dust off the plan, updated it, presented it to management, then filed it away.
What people learned about this process is the value wasn’t in the final document or the presentation. It was in the thinking, analysis, debating that went into developing the document. The interactions and discussions to align everyone on the priorities were so important. So while the documents, themselves, were of little value, the process of developing them were extremely valuable.
As “strategic planners” learned this, the following phrase became important/fashionable, “Once you have written the strategic plan, tear it up and throw it away!”
It’s the same thing with the Cheatsheets/Hacks/Shortcuts people devour in our social media channels. The real value is not the end document itself, but what the authors learned in the process of developing these. It’s in the mistakes they made, the changes and shifts in direction, the struggle to figure things out that created the real value, and the results they achieved along the way. And the Cheatsheet is the summary of what they found useful for themselves. Inevitably, they don’t need the worksheet themselves, they have internalized their experience and what they have learned.
But, in looking at the Cheatsheet, we are “cheating” ourselves out of that learning, experience, hard knocks the developers experienced in creating it. As a result, when we hit the first obstacle, we don’t have the experience and understanding to respond in a meaningful way. We can read what’s on the Cheatsheet, but applying it to our circumstances is virtually impossible.
There is no substitute for doing the work! There, there are no shortcuts to success!
So what should someone do?
Rather than spending time trying to have someone tell you the secrets to success—it’s always the secrets to their success, not necessarily yours–invest your time in developing your own secrets to success, develop your own Cheatsheet. Every top performer I meet has one. Perhaps it’s not written down, but it is so deeply internalized and understood, they can explain it very quickly.
The other thing these top performers do is they are constantly refining and updating their Cheatsheets, as things change.
But some of you might still want the Cheatsheet. So here’s the only Cheatsheet you’ll ever need: Your success is based on the constant cycling of Obsessive Learning and Relentless Execution. Learn from everything you can, learn from your experience, learn from your mistakes, learn from others—then execute based on what you have learned. Then, based on that experience, cycle through the process again, and again, and again–constantly improving.
Afterword: For the Cheatsheet on this article, hit me up in email 😉
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. It’s quite good. And at about 7 minutes into the conversation, they take a fascinating twist, introducing the concept of mentorship and guidance in developing your own capabilities and skills. It’s a fantastic twist. Enjoy!
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