Prompted: Daily Action
Prompted: Daily Action
Learning to enjoy the journey.
Good afternoon. I hope you’ve enjoyed a relaxing and productive weekend. As you begin to set your sights on the upcoming week, I encourage you to grab a pen, your favorite notebook and dig into your thoughts on Daily Action.
Thanks for reading and don’t be shy! Feel free to hit reply with any thoughts or feedback. I’d love to hear from you.
Kevin
Daily Action
“You have to love doing it more than you love the reward for doing it.”
Erik Anders Lang
We live in a world centered around rewards. Most folks are obsessed with the finished product. Social media is filled with hundreds of posts at the finish line of individual journies the rest of the world knows nothing about. Behind every marathon finish is months of training. Behind every promotion on LinkedIn is countless hours of work. Behind every polished photo of a celebrity is a life you likely know nothing about.
While all of these people are being rewarded with medals, salary increases, or public approval, there is no way to tell if they enjoy the daily actions that got them to this point. The best at what they do don’t treat their work as a means to an end but instead enjoy the work for its own sake.
It’s easy to look past our daily actions and focus on rewards (trophies, likes, recognition), but when we stop enjoying the process, we are trading small but frequent bursts of pleasure for the hope of a big reward if we reach our goal.
Delaying gratification is a virtuous skill. The trouble is, the rewards at the end of the journey are not as fulfilling as advertised. People spend their whole lives telling themselves they will be happy once they achieve “x“ or they’ll retire when their net worth reaches “y”, but the reality is nothing changes when those arbitrary goals are hit.
True happiness and success come from the balance between the enjoyment of the daily actions that carry us toward our goals and enduring things we don’t enjoy in the pursuit of something bigger.
Prompts
What would you line up to do every day even if you never received the typical rewards or recognition?
Do you enjoy your daily actions for their own sake? Or are you pushing through something you don’t enjoy to achieve a reward or receive validation?
Where are you over-prioritizing short-term pleasure where you should be valuing long-term gains instead?
Deep Dive
Chop Wood Carry Water - Joshua Medcalf
Subtitle: How to Fall in Love with the Process of Becoming Great
I Will Teach You To Be Rich Podcast - Ramit Sethi
Ramit interviews couples with millions of dollars in the bank who struggle to spend their money and enjoy their wealth because they are constantly in the pursuit of bigger goals.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin Bronander