This Is How You Change Your Life - FDDTC #37
26 Aug 2024 · 4 min
Devin Zander argues that procrastination feeds anxiety and that showing up daily with five key tasks, using Andy Frisella's Power List framework, puts you ahead of most people. He shares how his own six-pack came after years of inconsistency, then suddenly fast, once he committed to consistent work instead of chasing distractions like Instagram and YouTube.
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I've got a message for everybody out there who's trying to be successful. By the way, this is Devin. This is the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. Let's not get into all that. But anyone out there who's trying to be successful, my advice to you, and this is my advice to myself right now, too, is just do the work, okay? There's so many times in life where, oh, I'll put it off. I don't feel like doing it right now. And it can get so bad that we give ourselves extreme anxiety where we sit down at the desk to do the work, whatever it is, right? We sit there, we think about it, we contemplate on it, but we never actually start. And then the idea of actually doing the work becomes like this very crippling, just riddled with anxiety. You feel awful, you don't want to do anything. And the more you do this, the harder it becomes to actually do the work. When in reality, you and I both know that if you just sat down and you put the pencil to the paper, or you lifted the weight, or you wrote the email, or you wrote the ad, or you researched the product, whatever it is, right? It's never as bad as we make it out to be. And the truth is, is if you want to be successful, it's not about doing or working, you know, like, 40 hours a day, which obviously is impossible, right? It's not about working till you bleed. It's about working consistently, about showing up every day and doing just enough. One of my mentors, Andy Frisella, talks about the Power list, which is five tasks per day. And if you can do those five tasks per day, right, you're automatically ahead of. I don't know the actual stat, but I'm gonna guess, like, 95% of the competition. They say most podcasts don't make it past, like, 10 or 20 episodes. So it's not that things are difficult or they're more competitive than ever, which, you know, there is more competition, but also attention spans are shorter than ever, which means more business owners just aren't being consistent. They're not doing the work. I've talked about this before, but it's a reminder that the harder it feels to do something, like, the more internal resistance there is to the idea of doing something, it's the more that that's a signal that that needs to be the first thing you do. It's a signal that you need to drop everything else and focus on that, because that is going to be the biggest needle mover and Making this episode is one of those things for me where I've been wanting to podcast, I've been wanting to do it for a while and I'm sitting here at my desk, I've been sitting here for an hour, like fuck. And just not doing it for no reason. Because now I'm here, I'm doing it, and it's not painful, it's not difficult. And the reward is so much greater than not doing it. Because there are two possible outcomes at the end of the day, either A or 1, right? You did the work and you moved yourself towards your goal and it feels good. And you can rest easy that night knowing you work towards your progress. Option number two is you don't do the work. And maybe it feels okay in that moment because you can go on Instagram or whatever it is that you do, right? But then that night when you lay down to go to bed, you have a lot of anxiety, you feel terrible about yourself, all the doubt starts to creep in. And what does doubt come from, by the way? Get? Doubt comes from lack of results. How do you get results? Effort, right? Doubt comes from just you not taking the steps to succeed because confidence can only be gained from experience. But option number two is you don't do the work and you feel fine in the moment. But when you lay down in bed at night, you have anxiety, you feel terrible, and it's a self perpetuating cycle that will continue to repeat itself because the more often or the longer you put off the work, the. The more difficult it becomes to do so. And then that's not even talking about the consequences down the road because showing up, doing the work right, compounds over time. You get results, you make money, you have a better lifestyle, better house, more freedom, no worrying about bills, whatever, not doing the work again, short term pleasure.
Ooh, Instagram. Ooh, dopamine. Ooh, Tinder. Ooh, whatever, right?
Ooh, porn. Look at those gross bibs. But down the line, what happens? Your situation doesn't change. Your attention span gets worse and worse and then you kind of. Eventually your willpower becomes so low that you kiss your dreams goodbye forever. And you are destined to either repeat that cycle of anxiety and awfulness, or you just give up on your dreams and accept that you do not deserve any better and that you will live this way forever. So the option is yours. Do you do the work, right, and start the cycle of goodness and happiness and dedication and perseverance and success and reaching your potential, or do you continue to put it off, continue to make yourself Feel anxious for no reason and kind of end the cycle and accept that you will never achieve greatness. You will never get to do all those things that you set out to do. You will never be the person that you know you are capable of being. And you accept that how your life is right now, or worse, is how you choose to live forever. Because you couldn't give up Instagram, you couldn't give up YouTube, you couldn't give up porn, you couldn't give up whatever it is that was so important that it kept you from achieving those goals, and it kept you from giving your family, your wife, your husband, yourself, your children the life that they deserve, right? So what's more important? Fooling off a little bit longer, Devin, or viewer, whoever it is, or sitting down, putting your ass in that chair, right? Hands on the keyboard or pen to the paper, whatever it is that you do, getting out there and making it happen and achieving a life worth living. Because you got one chance. Maybe we come back, I don't know. But as far as I can tell, bro, we got one chance to get out there and make it happen. And you don't have to do it forever. Five years, five years from now, your life could be entirely different. A lot can be done in five years if you're consistent and show up every day. I thought it would take a lifetime to get a six pack. I tried for 15 years issue. I was never consistent. I'd give up. After not seeing results for three weeks one time, I finally said, I'll be consistent. Guess what? I got six pack in six weeks after trying for almost my entire life, since I was 12 years old. It doesn't take forever. You don't have to slave away every day for the rest of your life. You might actually, if you choose not to do the work, but if you get after it, you stay consistent. You start today and you don't stop. A couple years from now, your life could be entirely different. Maybe you could retire, maybe you can do whatever you want. But it starts today with a conscious decision to do the work. So, Devin, that's me, all those of you who are watching, do the work. Let's do it. This from delivery driver to CEO podcast. Peace.