Day 61: On Extreme Actions
You don’t get extreme talent, fame, or success without extreme actions.
It’s important to approach your goals in a sustainable way, thinking in terms of months, years, or decades instead of mere days or weeks. However, at the same time, taking extreme actions can pay handsome dividends, too.
Balancing between the extreme and more sustainable approach is a difficult art, but in essence it comes down to taking extreme actions during a relatively brief period of time, while ensuring that your actions are sustainable over the long term.
For example, when my first book became a bestseller, I stuck to a strict publication schedule to benefit from the gained momentum. I launched my second book (on which I had been working since I finished the first draft of my first book) a mere three weeks later. My third book went live in another two weeks, and my fourth was released three weeks after the previous one.
From there, I slowed down my pace, but I still managed to release at least four new books each year. In the short term, my actions were extreme. And precisely because of that, I was able to build a large following quickly. However, after an initial sprint, you need to slow down to go the distance— and that’s when I transitioned to a little less extreme approach, but one still exhibited by few authors
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Are you taking extreme actions to gain momentum and separate yourself from the ones who don’t have the self-discipline needed to push themselves hard for a short period of time? How can you intensify your efforts for a couple of weeks or months to maximize your results before transitioning to a more sustainable and less extreme approach?