Jake’s Notebook | Remember When You Used to Be Good at Waiting?

0:00Hey friends, welcome back to my notebook. Can I just start by saying that I don't take it for granted that you come back and listen to this week after week. it also doesn't go and notice that I get so many lovely messages from people telling me that they actually feel like these these notebooks are intended for them and it feels like it's speaking to you and if that is the case I am so happy because there is no script with this okay this is unscripted it is unpolished it's totally unfiltered it's the things that have been on my mind over the last few days that I've made very simple notes about in my notebook which I have sitting right here on my desk i'm up in my study as usual and for the next 20 minutes in between sips of coffee i'm going to share with you the things that i've noted down over the last few days because i've been making notes for the last 20 years of my life and they are so good at giving me clarity helping me to understand things um sometimes i write stuff down because i don't understand it and then talking about it on this podcast actually is so helpful for me and i wanted to say that as well like i know some of you feel like i'm giving you this stuff but i'm also getting so much from this it's actually so helpful for my own wisdom um my own perseverance i guess it helps me understand the world a little bit more to sit here and talk about the stuff that's on my mind um can you do me one quick favor before we get going though um i love sharing this stuff with you but it's so helpful for me if you can just hit subscribe if you can hit the follow button I would love that so much because it means we can carry on with the show it means we can grow the show it means we cannot impact more people than ever before and look finally before we get going I hope you're good you know I get so many messages from you but I want you to understand that you are doing really well even if you're filled with doubt about so much of your life right now I believe in you because so much there so much of the time it doesn't feel like it's the right time but there is also only right now so in some ways whatever's on your mind at the moment i want you to start before you're ready i don't want you to prepare and prepare and prepare i want you to begin um because you can't control how you feel about the world but you can definitely choose how you act about that feeling um and as i think i'm about to share with you now for the next 20 minutes or so you are one decision away from a completely different life so let's do it remember you used to be good at waiting remember you used to be good at waiting so the reason for this is because i'm just becoming more and more impatient i think it's to do with the fact that i'm edging towards 50 you know every time i catch a look of myself in the mirror i'm reminded that i might feel and think that i'm 21 or 22 but i'm really not and i think this sense that the years are flying by and the time is going ever faster sharpens my thoughts about the fact that I don't have that long left and I know that sounds depressing I'm like 47 years old and you might be going of course you've got a long time left well I don't think I've got what I've already had right and if you're not at this point that's a pretty sobering thought I don't think I have what I've already had and obviously that fills me with devastation because there are so many things i still want to do i don't know if you've seen hamilton the brilliant play musical where alexander hamilton says there's a million things i haven't done i feel like there's a million things i haven't done but the reason why i need to change how i feel about time flying by is because i used to i feel that the greatest weapon i used to have was my ability to delay gratification remember years ago i did um i did a level psychology and we learned about something called the marshmallow test which was that they gave kids sweets right i think it was marshmallows hence the name of the test but they gave them two marshmallows um and if they took two marshmallows no let me get this right so it's called the marshmallow test yeah this is it so they offered kids a marshmallow and they could eat it at that moment or they could wait and if they waited they ended up with two marshmallows and you know what they found from that is that the kids who were able to wait the two marshmallows weren't stronger they weren't smarter they trusted the future they trusted the future and that trust right because they followed these kids later that trust turned out to predict everything for their lives from the grades they were going to get at school to the happiness that they felt to what their future health looked like how mad is that their grades at school their health and their happiness was defined their ability to do well in life was determined by their ability to practice patience and i've stopped doing that you know when i first started high performance i've had lots of people ask me actually the last couple of months about the power of organic growth and whisper my production business has grown to hundreds of staff and um many many millions of dollars of turnover um you know it's a nine-figure turnover business and that is through us constantly reinvesting what's in the bank into more people more ideas more creativity growing the offices growing the headcount not about taking the money out of the business that's that has been the last thing that myself and my co-founders have wanted to do is draw the money out of the business when i first started the high performance podcast i didn't take any money from it for the first three years but more than that right when i first started high performance i don't think i even looked at the listener numbers till the end of the first season now i find myself almost like obsessing daily over how many people are listening i don't think it's healthy for the show i don't think it's healthy for me there's going to be good and bad times but also what why are the numbers important for goodness sakes like the numbers don't matter the impact on people's lives is what really matters And I think that being able to delay my gratification actually allows me to focus on the things that really matter.

6:01I think it's really important because this isn't about, yeah, this is it, right? This isn't about discipline. If you're listening to this now and you're thinking, why is he talking about delaying gratification or delaying the good stuff? It's not about being disciplined. It's about finding freedom. It's about being able to skip an impulse purchase tomorrow so you can travel next summer. It's about cooking a meal this evening at home so that actually in the long term, your health compounds. It's about staying on a project, whatever yours is, when results are slow, because that's the place that most people quit.

6:32And the gap between where you are now, where you want to be, I promise you, is not talent. Because I've seen that the world is not determined by people who have talent. It's determined by people who take their time, who are patient, who are consistent. You know, what is that great phrase, that great quote from James Clear? The cost of your good habits is in the present. You see them every day if you have good habits. the cost of your bad habits is in the future so if you're making bad habits right if you're delaying your gratification sorry if you're not delaying your gratification if you're going after the short-term win right now yeah you feel like you're winning fantastic where could you be if you delayed the short-term win for the big goal in the future what did i say at the beginning you're one decision away from a completely different life maybe your decision over the next week or so should be delaying the joy um the next thing that i wrote oh yeah recreation versus recreation i have to give the credit to this one to my father-in-law ivan and i wanted to share this with you because it changed so much for me there was a time where i was so bad at being on holiday after the first 12 hours i'd say to my wife i need to get home there's loads of stuff i need to get on with them wasting my time laying on a beach reading a book why are we hiking up a hill to look at the sunset when I could be having more of an impact in my television presenting career or why am I lying on a beach reading a book when I could be recording with the person who's written the book for my podcast like what am I why am I wasting my hours and it was only when my father-in-law Ivan and he's nearly in he's in his 80s actually you know he's been alive an awful lot longer than me he's learned more or he's probably forgotten more than I will ever learn he's so wise he's read so many books he said to me just remember you look at it as recreation but it is recreation and he sort of explained to me that going on holiday taking my foot off the gas wasn't about being lazy wasn't about putting myself over my achievements it was a strategy when you step away from the noise when you don't take the meetings when you don't have the phone calls when you don't feel the pressure you're not you're not stopping progress you're renewing your ability your capacity for progress your capacity for growth your capacity for impact you know we spoke on the podcast um on the room where it happened to atif rafiq and i'll talk about him in a moment actually because it's something i want to share from him but afterwards i said what are you up to and he's he was in london he said you know i'm just going to really enjoy a few nice meals because i never get the chance to do this and i think that creators founders um business people musicians athletes they know that recovery is one of the most important parts of their performance we had keely hodgkinson just recently on high performance like she knows that getting eight hours sleep is as important for her as doing the sprint training because recreation and recreation are the same thing and recreation is where reinvention happens because you don't just recharge your batteries and return exactly to where you were you recharge your batteries and you return to something new i promise you i've just come back from three days at Glen Eagles.

9:37Can I just say, by the way, Glen Eagles is probably the greatest hotel I've ever stayed in in my life. It's up in Scotland. I went with Harry and the kids. We had the best time ever. We just had long dinners and played Uno. We just went to the pool and me and the kids played manhunt with each other. We just borrowed some pitch and putt golf clubs and hacked our way around the little pitch and putt course, laughing at how bad we were. We just watched Florence doing cartwheels and handstands with the gorgeous scottish pylons in the background like it was just a whole lot of nothing but at the same time it was a whole lot of everything so if you are pushing and pushing and grafting and grinding and not allowing yourself a moment to step back and take a breath you are missing where the magic can live because it's not just recreation it's re-creation um a really quick one i wrote here anything above zero compounds i need you to understand this one i get messages from people all the time telling me that they're they're doing what they think is right but they don't think they're doing enough you're not doing enough how will you ever know when enough is enough so the only way to know that enough is enough is to do so much that you break in the end and then you go oh i found my limits is that healthy no anything above zero compounds so some weeks your impact and the work you do is incredible other weeks it's just a little bit above zero right but anything above zero compounds so as long as you keep doing a little bit more if you improve one percent a day one percent by the end of the year you're 365 percent better you're three times what you were people think it's about the big numbers it isn't it's about the small numbers consistently compounding again and again i wrote down here perhaps it's meant to feel like chaos and that's because um i've sort of i felt like there's lots of things going on in my life at the moment which some of which i'm happy to talk about here some of which i just can't for various reasons like after perhaps it's meant to feel like chaos i wrote all will be well there's a big thing going on in the background at the moment that would change my life my family's life maybe even my grandkids and great-grandchildren's lives but i'm totally out of control of that thing i'm waiting for it to happen i'm waiting for other people to make the decisions to do what needs to be done and i'm waiting for a phone call or an email or a message and then everything can change um and i'm not very good i'm not very good with um uncertainty i catastrophize i think the worst so i wrote that down to remind myself there's a lovely phrase from julian of norwich who is a theologian centuries ago and the quote is so simple all will be well and all manner of things shall be well and when i was going through some tough times a few years ago i used that a lot and i've relied on it again over the last week because it's so easy to think that the things that we're out of control of that are the things that are going to go badly it's not necessarily the case just because you can't control it doesn't mean that the wrong thing is going to happen what did will ahmed say to me a couple weeks ago in the room where it happened the founder of whoop things don't happen to you things happen for you so even the bad stuff happens for you and i need to remember that i need to remember that being bullied and changing schools being fired from mcdonald's losing a family member to suicide getting a stack of rejection letters being forced to walk away from some dream jobs all of those things happened for me and at the time i thought they were bad at the time i thought they were the worst things that could possibly happen and it's only now as I joined the dots looking backwards as Steve Jobs once said I can see how important in fact how vital those bad moments were because just because they were hard for me they weren't bad for me and maybe it's meant to feel like chaos is just that there's a lot going on at the moment I'm trying to think so hard about what high performance looks like in 26 and beyond and I'm not just talking about the high performance podcast I'm talking about the rumor it happened and Jake's Notebook and Untapped and Goldmines and The Energy Equation and On The Men and the other shows that we want to make and the live shows that we want to do and the newsletters and the audience and how do we connect better with you?

13:54How do we put our community at the heart of what we're doing? How are people going to be absorbing content in 2029 and 2035 and 2050? What does the future of the high performance business look like? So many things that are unknown so many things that are out of my control and therefore i don't know which direction to move in and therefore it feels like chaos but i wrote down underneath you decided to do this so stop fighting it how much of the things that are stressful in your life come from the fact that you're successful or that things have gone the way you want them to go the job that you were desperate to get is now causing you anxiety the kids that you dreamed about are now stressing you out.

14:34The house you worked so hard for is now adding to your jobs list. The friends that you tried to impress so greatly are now causing you sleepless nights. You decided that you wanted to be successful, that you wanted to have impact, that you wanted to leave a mark. So therefore, is it not a privilege that so much of your anxiety and stress and worry and fear comes from the fact that you've been successful you are successful and therefore that comes with the price and the price is what you have to pay every single day listen before i finish i want to talk to you um about how much my mind has changed since i first started podcasting you know it's been almost six years since we released the first episode of high performance and the one thing i've learned in that time is that what i thought high performance was it is not i thought it was about the sacrifice the hard work, the late nights, the early mornings, the grind, the graft, the pain, the suffering, the stress.

15:35It's not about any of those things because what is the point of high performance if it gives you all those things? It really isn't because I've met people at the top of fame, the top of wealth, the top of success and they're not happy. It's about happiness, it's about flow, it's about joy, it's about contentment. And therefore the only way to find that is to explore it is to hold your beliefs lightly it's to realize that you don't need to have all the answers you can't possibly have all of the answers and i'd love you to listen to the most recent episode of the room where it happened with atif rafiq who is the guy who transformed mcdonald's they took a two billion dollar tech gamble and he was the guy that convinced them to do it honestly the story about atif going into mcdonald's and convincing them that the way they were running their business was not going to be future-proofing is incredible i think it's such a brilliant conversation whatever your walk of life whatever your business wherever you're at in your life just go to after you've listened to this go to the room where it happened at if rapheek episode have a listen and tell me what you think and he shared a quote from eric hoffman that conversation in times of change learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists so learners people who are happy to be proven wrong are happy to fail are happy to get things incorrect they inherit the earth because the earth is always changing while the learned the people who've read a book and they have the answer the old way of leading this is the direction because i know the answers they find themselves perfectly equipped for a world that no longer exists because the rate of change in the world that we are operating in now is greater than ever things are changing so blummin fast you cannot be learned you need to be a learner you need to think differently about the world next week next month than you did last week last month i promise you it is the thing that will equip you for the future you know sometimes we feel particularly in your similar age to me in your 40s you feel like man the world is moving at such a pace I'm kind of like I'm yesterday's guy it doesn't have to be like that you just need to be learning about the world with the same wonder that you did when you were seven and 17 and 27 just because you're 47 like me doesn't mean that you should stop learning about the world so those are the notes that I wrote down I'm going to finish as I have done as I think you love with a quote from my favorite book that I read every morning the daily stoic and this one is um i think you'll like this one this is a quote from marcus aurelius one of the great stoics let each thing you would do say or intend be like that of a dying person this kind of links nicely right to the fact that i feel like the years are flying by have you ever heard someone ask what would you do if you found out tomorrow that you had cancer yeah now that question is designed to make you consider how different life might be if you were suddenly given just a few months or weeks to live because we all know there's nothing like a terminal illness to wake people up but here's the thing you already have a terminal diagnosis i can give you one right now because we all do um the writer edmund wilson put it like this death is one prophecy that never fails so every person is born with a death sentence each second that passes by is a second you never get back once you realize this it will have a profound impact on what you do you say and you think so don't let another day tick away in ignorance of the reality that you are a dying person we all are so can today be the day we stop pretending otherwise i'll leave you with that from my favorite book by ryan holiday the daily stoic thank you very much for listening to my notebook please pass this to someone who has not heard the notebook before and might be impacted or helped by it please finally can you hit subscribe can you hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this that's all I ask it'll take you two seconds and it changes everything for us see you next week when once more I will sit here with my coffee in my study and open up my notebook I can't thank you enough for listening see you soon