#140 A Doer Will Always Outperform A Thinker.

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Paid for by Pharma. Here's something you don't want to hear, so I'm going to give you a hug while I say this. You think way more than you do, and that's the problem. While you're thinking about the plan, the progress, I don't know, your next steps, a bunch of people less smart than you are just out there doing the thing. And I know that's tough, but you're lying to yourself. You've mistaken preparation for progress. By the way, lots of us do this. And somewhere between your third productivity app and your 14th motivational podcast— not this one— you've realized that you've thought way more about the thing than done the thing you know you needed to do. Procrastination can get way more attention because it's more insidious than scrolling TikTok. It's color coding Notion boards. It's attending the conference to get inspired. If all you do is plan, reality never gets a chance to reject you or help you win. And believe it or not, that is actually your loss. And history is full of brilliant thinkers that nobody remembers. Who do people actually remember? People who got their hands dirty and made peace with looking stupid in public. I'm Codie Sanchez. This is The Big Deal Podcast, and today we're going to do the damn thing and not just talk about it. So let's go. Before we get into it, if you're new here, The Big Deal Pod is for people who are done talking about what they're going to do and actually want to get it done. And if that's you or if that's who you want to become, hit subscribe. It helps us book the right guests, bring you the type of practical tactical tips to actually achieve greatness in your life. And to those of you who have already subscribed already, High five. Thank you. You're my people. Now let's get back to history's greatest founders. I wanna talk about the Wright Brothers. So known around the world for inventing the world's first successful plane, right? 1903 or something. But maybe what you don't know, they had a competitor, like a serious one. Samuel Langley had all the coin. He had all the money, the headlines. He had the Smithsonian behind him. And back then, the Smithsonian behind you was a big deal. The professional credibility he had was It was for years and days. The Wright brothers, they had a bicycle shop, a homemade wind tunnel, and a tolerance for crashing. They just like built, tested, crashed, built, tested, crashed. Every failure though, it gave them data, right? And that's what eventually gave them the edge. So Langley, he liked to pontificate, you know, he was refined. He was waiting for the perfect public moment. Well, that was one big launch. And guess what happened at the launch? It crashed and that was it. So he was done because he ran fewer experiments and he relied on this one big thing, which when it failed, crashed everything. The Wright brothers, what did they do right? It's simple. The Wright brothers won because they were doers. Samuel Langley, he was just thinking, spending years before he ever seriously tested anything in the real world. And I think this law of getting ahead is that action creates data. And action actually compounds, I've found, in 3 ways. First, the more you move, the more clarity you get. You stop guessing and reality kind of tells you what's up. It tells you what's true. Second, action builds confidence. So that comes from just seeing yourself actually be a person who keeps your word. Third, it brings credibility. You know, people do not trust your intentions. They trust your receipts. What have you done? Like, uh, great example of this, James Dyson. So the founder of Dyson Vacuum. He didn't actually think his way into a category-defining product. Like, vacuums didn't exist like this. The Dyson vacuum, he built prototype after prototype after prototype. How many? The lore goes 5,127 of them before his bagless vacuum finally broke through because he understood what every great doer gets. Failed attempts are a form of tuition. You just gotta pay it if you wanna become great. So frequently doing will train your brain to get more done in 1 week than most people can get done in 12 months. So how do you actually move? I call it the one-week method. Let's break it down right now. Okay. W, wage one war. Most people lose because they try to change their whole life at once. Haven't you done this before? Like you wanna get thin, launch the business, fix the marriage, write the book, meditate, learn Spanish, drink enough water. Don't do that. For one week, you pick one war to wage. Not get healthier, train 5 times. Not grow the business, send 50 offers. Not, I wanna become a writer. Write 7 ugly pages every morning. That one target becomes an obsession. That's why I love this story about Benjamin Franklin. He got this centuries ago. So he built a virtue chart which focused on one single virtue at a time, that he would track his failures at this daily. So he used the week as a unit of character change. So this week, have I been just? This week, have I been true? That's how real progress works. You don't do something vague. You have a concentrated attack and you track it. So if you try to improve at everything, you'll actually improve nothing. So we gotta pick one bottleneck and you put that fucker in a chokehold and you keep it for 7 days straight. And that's how your life starts actually moving. E, engineer ease. So the part that people hate because it kills the fantasy, discipline is not a signal of high character. It's a signal you respect systems that keep you disciplined. Believe it or not, a lack of discipline tends to be a design problem. It's not you. And usually I say it's you. It's the brain is not wired to chase abstract long-term potential greatness. You know, I think about this, like this guy by the name of Roy Baumeister's research. So he was at Florida State and found that willpower is a finite resource. Like it depletes like a muscle through use. And once it's gone, your brain defaults to whatever requires the least effort. So that means Every decision you make throughout the day, every time you resist, choose, kind of draws from the same reservoir like water going down. So by the evening, your kid's like, "Can I have that ice cream?" You're like, "Fuck it, have two," right? And the bad choice is still sitting right there because it's easy and waiting. So you do it. And when you keep making the wrong call, it's not that you're lazy, it's because you've built a life that hands temptation the home field advantage. And then you blame your, you know, player for losing on the field. I don't know, sports analogies, but like that's how I picture it. So we wanna engineer ease here. What does that mean? Small stupid things. Do small stupid things. Put the phone in the other room, open the document the night before, lay out your gym clothes next to the bed, delete the damn app during the week. Make the smart stupid choice easier and it actually makes the really dumb choice harder. Or as my husband likes to say, don't be dumb when you're doing stupid things. So if you wanna do big stupid ridiculous things, don't be dumb while you're doing it. Now people I think also like to say, I just need more willpower. No, you don't. You just need to negotiate fewer times. I mean, how many times as a parent do you know, like I have nieces and nephews and when they try to negotiate with me 452 times for something, by about the 30th time I'm like, wow, man, this little terrorist, he's gonna get what he wants. And so if every good behavior requires a full-on hostage negotiation with yourself, no, you're not disciplined. And so set up your life a little bit more easily. The second E is for earn evidence. So this is where the real thinkers get exposed. The thinker, maybe this is you, ask yourself, is this you? Did I feel productive today? The doer asks, what did I ship? So we gotta ask ourselves, what did we actually produce at the end of each day? Like, did you write the page if you're writing the book? Did you do the workout? Did you make the sales call? Not that I think about it. Like, what did you do? And you do not need 12 months of inspiration. You need 7 days of just doing the thing you say you're gonna do each day. And this matters because daily evidence actually changes your identity, which is wild. Lots of studies show that when you have evidence, it changes your identity faster than if you talk positively to yourself in the mirror. I never really believed that. You're like, I am strong, I am smart, I am beautiful. You're like, no, no, no. If I actually do the thing that shows I'm smart, I'm gonna believe it more than if I yell affirmations in the mirror. I think every day you keep your promise to yourself, it's like casting a vote. You're voting for what your identity will be. Are you gonna be a doer or are you gonna be somebody who thinks about something and nobody remembers? Then we got kill, which is kill escape routes. Most people don't fail because the target is too hard. They fail because they left the back door wide open. Right? Like notifications on, snacks nearby, YouTube one click away. Like they don't have a deadline. And so when you don't have a consequence for drifting, you're just gonna walk out the easy door. And I think that's why most people cannot compress time. You wanna know why some people can turn one year of results into a week? Because they don't give themselves an exit. For one week, they kill the escape route. That means no fake work, no research that's procrastinating, no like sitting around the water cooler. Like, make the call. You already know what matters, so you gotta act like it. And that's it. Like, you wage one war, you engineer some ease, you earn evidence, and then you kill your escape hatch. And I think, you know, McKinsey actually found fascinatingly that companies using data-driven personalization generates 40% more revenue than those operating on gut instincts alone. Like, the doers aren't just moving faster, they're moving smarter. Because they know what's working. And that's exactly what Beehive gives newsletter operators. So if you're already running a newsletter somewhere else, here's the honest version: you're probably flying blind. Beehive's analytics don't just show open rates, they show you which content is driving new subscribers, which posts convert to revenue, and where you're losing readers. Readers aren't some vanity metric, they're your community, your customers, and your scoreboard. So the referral program turns your existing readers into your best acquisition channel. Compounding subscribers without buying ads. The built-in ad network brings sponsors directly to you. They handle the pitching, the invoicing, the reporting. And if you've got expertise worth charging for, the paid subscription is already built in and waiting. Newsletters on Beehive grow 2.75x faster than the industry average. That's the gap between a thinker with a newsletter and a doer with a business. So if you're on another platform, I think you should switch. Use code CODIE30 at beehive.com/codie for 30% off your first 3 months. Codie30@beehiiiv.com/codie. We're talking all about doing here, but I wanna talk about the opposite of doing for a second. Waiting. You and I kind of know the cost of failure, right? The embarrassment, the wasted money, the bruised ego. We have whole conversations about what we might lose if we try and fall short. But have you ever actually calculated the cost of not trying? Like every week you spend getting ready is a week your competitor spent getting reps. You know, every month you wait for the perfect The next moment is a month of compounding you don't get back. I kind of obsess on this. There's a great study in 2016, a bunch of researchers at Cornell University found that when people imagine their future regrets, they overwhelmingly regret the things they didn't do, not the things they tried and failed at. And there's also a beautiful book written on this by a hospice nurse because at the end of life, people don't say, "I wish I hadn't started that business that didn't work out." They say, I wish I had tried. Think about the last time you were really genuinely proud of yourself. I call this so proud of yourself you could build a statue in your honor. I like that visual representation. Why? Was it because you researched something really hard? You made an incredible plan? Or was it because you did something hard? The something, the doing was the hard part. And I don't know why, but I've never heard anyone say at the end of a good life, Man, super glad I waited. So glad that I never took the chance. So like, I think we gotta reframe the stakes here. The question isn't, what if I fail? The question is, what is this delay already costing me? Because time is the one resource you cannot get your way back. You can make more money, you can rebuild up even a bad reputation, you can relaunch a project, but that Tuesday you spent overthinking, Gone. 6 months you spent preparing to be ready, gone. The doer is actually kind of reckless. They understand that the clock is running whether they act or not, and so they'd rather have the scar than the regret. I don't know, the next time you catch yourself saying, "I'll start when," add in blank, fill out with whatever, ask yourself, is this like a real condition or is it just a story that's letting me stay comfortable? I think you have to become comfortable with being mortified, super scared, no idea if you're gonna do it. Like, that's how you exercise discipline. You have to become disciplined by doing the scary thing even when you don't want to. And so some ways, like how, how do we trick your brain into liking discipline? I think first, you're not going to manipulate your brain. You're going to cooperate with reality. Procrastination. Might not be a personality flaw. It's like this warning light, a sign that however you're setting up your life, it's not actually gonna work well because when good behavior is hidden and it's hard to do and boring, of course you delay. You're, you're reasonable. You're not an unreasonable, ridiculous human. So this isn't like your fault, it's just bad design. So I think the last thing that you do is add my second framework, which I call Doer. And this is really simple. You're just gonna de-design the cue. So I never rely on memory. I have a memory like a goldfish. So I don't wanna rely on, hey, I promised I was gonna do this. I wanna tie the habit I need to do to something that I already do. So I'm gonna tie the habit to something that already exists. Maybe after coffee every day, I have my toothbrush sitting by coffee if I'm not a toothbrusher. Also, who's not a toothbrusher? But like, You get the point. Let's say next to my coffee is actually my computer because I know I need to write in the morning. Maybe after lunch I need to send a hard email, so I put a little note on there every day that says, "Send the hard email today." Like, this is just habit stacking. You piggyback on an existing behavior so the new one doesn't have to fight for attention from scratch. And then I kind of think about O is for open and tiny. Like, you don't have to solve everything at once. Start really teeny tiny. I'm gonna write one ugly paragraph, right? You don't have to say, I'm gonna become a runner. You can say, shoes on, out the door 5 minutes today. The point isn't to win the whole battle. It's one little baby move. Then we got E for engineer reward. Engineer reward is this idea that your brain likes to get an immediate payoff. So use that. Like one of my friends used to talk about the fact that every time he went to work out, he would actually, allow himself to have a candy bar before he went. And I was like, "What is wrong with you? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?" He's like, "No, no, no. My brain would know when I go work out, I get to eat a little bit of this candy bar, which means I get rewarded for this action." Maybe you get to listen to your favorite playlist while you're training, some sort of visible streak chart and a small reward after the rep every time. And there's lots of studies to support this. Behaviors become easier to repeat when they're obvious, when they're attractive, when they're easy to start and satisfying to complete. So this behavioral scientist, James Clear— if you guys haven't heard of James Clear, he actually talks about these as the 4 laws that govern how habits form, and they correspond to the brain's own feedback loop, which is basically cue, craving, response, reward. This is just some neuroscience, baby, and now we're going to use it for ourselves. R is for repeat until your identity catches up. So this is one of the deepest parts. You don't become disciplined by deciding. You're going to do it by just collecting the evidence every day. Bring in the proof, stack the proof. So can you do it even when you're tired? Can you do it when your feelings say no? Exactly the moment that you don't wanna do it, can you do it? And eventually that behavior stops feeling like effort and starts feeling like self-respect. The last thing I wanna talk to you about is shame. And I think we gotta talk about this one like out loud real quick because a lot of the reason why we don't do the things we say we're gonna do is actually not cuz you don't know all this shit. You're like, yeah, Codie, I'm aware that if I lay out my workout clothes, I'm gonna go to the gym more. Like, I get it. You're not the first rocket scientist that's told me this. But what I think a lot of us don't talk about is that you, you might be super scared you're just gonna fail miserably at this. You're not gonna make it. And so why would you even try? And so you got this giant ball of shame sitting in your stomach. But at least if you never try, that shame never becomes fully real. Other people don't have to see it. It's like that monster that only comes out in the dark when nobody else is around. And so they don't need to know. And I'm kind of convinced after years of helping people build businesses, buy businesses, I'm kind of convinced that shame is one of the biggest reasons you don't actually change your life because you're too scared of what will happen if you try really, really fucking hard and you can't hack it. What does that mean about you? Does that mean you're a failure of a human? And what will other people think about you? And I think quite honestly, that's sometimes why we don't ask the guy or the girl out, and that's why we don't start the business. Because if you never did it, they can't say no. And I just want you to know, I have been there. I have sat across from the crush back in my day when I was single and thought, "I'm never going to say something because there's no way that guy would like me. I am never going to try to get that shot at that job because there's no way I'm qualified for that. They'd be crazy to give it to me." And I think that voice inside of your head that's telling you you're not good enough is often the reason why you cannot get done in a week what most people do in a year because you don't even believe in your ability to get started. And so if that's you, I just ask the shame to come out in the light. I would just ask yourself, why do you think so poorly of yourself more than almost anybody else does? And what would happen if you said, fuck it, and did something you're a little ashamed to do anyway? And so what if you fail? You're probably not going to die. Nobody's actually going to care because nobody's paying attention to us anyways. And you just might change your life. And so if all the productivity nonsense guru stuff that we talk about doesn't hit, maybe this will, that the thing holding you back is actually the vision that you have of yourself when you look in the mirror. And if that's you, I see you. Tell me why in the comments. But I actually believe you're probably way more capable than you give yourself credit for. And it would be a fucking shame if you didn't take a chance on yourself. Thanks for being back with The Big Deal Podcast. I'm Codie Sanchez, and if you haven't done it already, hit that subscribe button. See you guys next week.

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