Most people are in stasis.
They do not act with velocity. They bounce from goal to goal, never following through. They overthink. They procrastinate. They do little bits of work here and there, but never make big leaps.
Zero sense of urgency. Zero pressure.
They trick themselves into thinking this is okay. But they know it’s not.
They delude themselves into thinking that if they simply wait for long enough, then they’ll escape stasis and finally experience growth.
Stasis is the default mode for most. Signified by a lack of movement, progress and change—stasis is not enjoyable to experience. But it is easy to remain in.
It is the comfort zone. And it’s a result of low velocity, low standards, and a lack of focus.
To escape stasis, you must do the opposite of what leads you into it in the first place.
You must:
- Act with high velocity to amp up your energy and intensity, kicking yourself out of the stasis loop.
- Set high standards for yourself to get the results you want.
- Cultivate laser-like focus on a singular goal.
High velocity. High standards. Narrow focus.
These are the habits that make up the triad of hyperproductivity.
In this guide, I break down exactly how you can adopt and integrate these to achieve hyperproductivity in your own life.
Note: this is a long article. It’s over 5,000 words and will take some time to read, and even more time to digest properly. I recommend setting aside time to go through it, take notes, and think through what you must do personally to integrate the triad.
Also, this article is inspired by David Perell’s piece, Amp It Up, and Frank Slootman’s book by the same name.
High Velocity – The Antidote to Stasis
If stasis is defined by a lack of action, a lack of energy, and a lack of intensity…
Then high velocity can be defined as speed, energy and intensity. All culminating in massive action.
The same way a rocket needs to achieve escape velocity to exit earth’s gravitational pull, you must ramp up your own velocity to kick yourself out of stasis.
Slightly increasing your velocity is not enough. Doing so might allow you to push the boundaries of stasis, but not escape. You will inevitably rebound, falling back into stasis as quickly as you begin to escape it.
High velocity—not just some velocity—is what you need.
Speed. Energy. Intensity. Action.
So how do you reach this escape velocity?
How do you force yourself out of stasis with speed, energy and intensity?
Most importantly, how do you ensure you stay at high velocity instead of falling back into stasis?
Let’s begin to build the triad of hyperproductivity on its most important component—high velocity—by following these five steps:
- Set a challenging, non-incremental, ambitious goal that you’re aligned with.
- Commit fully to this goal.
- Build and maintain momentum through strong, consistent execution.
- Obsessively chase the feeling of high energy and high velocity.
- Optimize physiological energy.
Step 1: Set a challenging, non-incremental, ambitious goal
There’s something deep in the human psyche that craves challenge.
Think back to the last time you worked on something that you knew for certain you could achieve. Something that wasn’t that challenging or interesting to you.
You likely got bored. Quickly.
You felt a lack of energy and velocity.
Despite how easy it was, you found countless reasons to procrastinate on it and work on other tasks and projects (that were more challenging!)
It’s hard to ramp up velocity when there’s no need to do so. You can’t just “high velocity” yourself into a vacuum. You need a reason to act with high velocity.
If you don’t have one, it causes massive dissonance. Your entire lower self is thinking, “Why are we pushing so hard? We don’t need to do this. There’s no reason to do this. Chill out.”
And this is exactly why you must set a challenging goal for yourself if you want to experience hyperproductivity. You need something that energizes you. Easy, non-demanding goals are kryptonite for the ambitious person.
Note: I’m using the word “goal” as singular here for good reason. You should not set multiple goals if you want to integrate the triad. Your chances of achieving escape velocity are significantly reduced when you diffuse your focus. More on that later.
A good litmus test for whether your goal is ambitious enough is whether it sounds a bit stupid to other people or not. It should sound a bit stupid. You should feel a sense of impostor syndrome when you tell someone else about it. That insecure part of you should expect them to say, “That sounds extremely unlikely and I’m not sure you’ll achieve it.”
If you feel this way, you’re on the right path. I know that’s weird thing to say, but it’s the truth.
As an example, my stupidly challenging goal for the next 6 months is to hit 100k subscribers on my YouTube channel.
I currently have 9k. And I’m growing at a rate of 700-1000 subscribers per month. So you can see that this is far from guaranteed to happen.
I’m not delusional. I think the probability of achieving this goal is below 50%. It’s unlikely to happen. It’s challenging. And when I tell people about it—including you reading this—it feels a bit dumb.
Like, I fully expect you to be thinking “Lol, Sam. You can’t just 10x your subscriber count in 6 months. Be realistic.”
But here’s the thing…
If my goal was to instead double my subscriber count in six months, I wouldn’t feel energized. It’s not that demanding. It’s not challenging enough. I could probably achieve that goal if I coasted and did a tiny little bit more. I don’t need high velocity, or high standards, or narrow focus in order to achieve that goal.
But because my goal is ambitious and challenging, there’s simply no way I can achieve it without the triad of high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus. This triad becomes necessary, and not just a “nice-to-have.”
And remember: the goal is to break out of stasis. You are far more likely to break out of stasis when you are required to do so compared to simply having a vague desire to do so.
Challenging, ambitious goals lead to non-linear strategies
Setting a challenging, non-incremental goal (something that requires a big leap) forces you to think non-linearly.
This is far more energizing than a goal that you know you can achieve for certain using a strategy you’ve used in the past.
Back to my YouTube growth goal as an example: if I was to simply double my subscriber count from 9k to 18k, then I could simply keep doing what I’m doing but push a little harder.
This is incremental and linear. It’s not that interesting or exciting. And as mentioned, it doesn’t require the triad of high velocity, high standards and narrow focus—so I’m unlikely to develop those.
But because I want to 10x my subscriber count, I need a different strategy. I need to set high standards for myself and create really damn good content that can get 10x the views. And I still need to maintain, or even increase the volume of content I’m putting out, because the YouTube algo is a black box and quantity is an important strategy.
As Benjamin P. Hardy writes in 10x Is Easier Than 2x:
“Seemingly impossible or massive goals are highly practical because they immediately separate what works from what won’t, illuminating the few paths that have the greatest efficacy.”
He adds:
“Small goals are unable to clarify effective pathways because they are too marginal or linear from your current location.”
And:
“With a 2x goal, there are too many potential pathways to reach the desired destination. This creates paralysis-by-analysis and makes it extremely difficult to know where to focus your best energy and effort.”
You must be comfortable with uncertainty
Any demanding goal will have some level of uncertainty.
This is not a bad thing. You can transform this uncertainty into motivational energy. It becomes fuel. You want to prove to yourself that you can pull it off. When something is certain, there’s nothing to really prove.
You should obsessively aim to reduce uncertainty through action.
You must reframe “failure”
Say there’s a 50/50 chance of achieving your goal, even if you act with high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus.
Well, there’s a significant chance you fail to achieve it. Right?
But failure is not binary. You will usually achieve far more than you would have if you set an incremental, less-demanding goal.
Back to my YouTube growth goal: if I am to hit 100k subs by the end of the year, there’s a significant chance I’ll fail. Even if I go balls to the wall and attack that goal with full aggression, leaving nothing on the table.
And maybe I don’t hit that 100k number, but instead get to 35k subs. Is that a failure? Yes, in some respect it is. I failed to hit my set goal.
But if I’d set the incremental goal of simply doubling my sub count to 18k, would I have hit 35k? Maybe. But it’s far less likely.
Like the old cliché: Shoot for the moon and if you miss you’ll land among the stars.
The reframe becomes this:
“If I set this challenging goal that has a lower chance of success, I will take a non-linear approach combined with the triad of hyperproductivity to achieve it. This combination will result in more success than I’d ever achieve with a linear, incremental approach.”
Goal achievement aside, the pure act of trying to achieve a demanding goal radically changes your productivity habits for the better. Even if you fail to achieve the goal, you still come out on top.
A note on alignment
You do want to set a goal that you’re aligned with. It’s extremely difficult to build and maintain high velocity when you’re working on something you dislike, aren’t interested in, or can’t see the benefit in doing.
This can be easy for some people, harder for others. I find it hard. The way I came to alignment on my YouTube goal was stacking up reasons and benefits for pursuing it:
- Even if I fail to achieve it but make 20+ videos in the process, then I’ve probably learned a ton of stuff and improved my writing + communication skills (which are transferable to future goals).
- I love creating content, so the work is enjoyment for me.
- I’m good at it. I can write fast, film fast. Can’t edit fast yet, but I’m getting there.
Usually, you pursue misaligned goals when you’re only motivated by status or money.
Step 2: Commit yourself fully to the goal
Nothing happens until you commit.
The act of commitment to your challenging goal is the prime mover. But you must fully commit.
Most people don’t fully commit. They keep one foot in stasis. They sit on the fence, and may lean over to one side, but they never get off it.
Commitment = sacrifice
Commitment is hard because it requires sacrifice.
But sacrifice is unavoidable if you want to be extremely productive. You cannot commit to a challenging, demanding goal and not sacrifice something.
And look, there might be things that shouldn’t be sacrificed. It’s up to you personally. Is it worth sacrificing your relationship with your wife and kids to build a multi-billion dollar business? For me, the answer to that question is a resounding no.
But it doesn’t need to be that extreme. It might simply be that you’re sacrificing leisure time, or other projects that excite you but aren’t the main thing. Or your Saturday mornings.
With my YouTube subscriber goal, I know that I need to sacrifice some things in order to improve my chances of achieving it. Namely:
- Income. There are projects I could work on over the next 6 months that would produce income in the short-term. I’m forgoing that, and taking the bet that by spending the next 6 months building the audience that I’ll maximize my income down the line.
- Social life. I’m an extravert. I like meeting people and hanging out. I’m not going to sacrifice my entire social life, but what I’m trying to do requires a lot of work.
- Other projects. I have endless ideas of things to work on. Products. Projects. Business ideas. They are all exciting to me. But they must be sacrificed for the time being because they’ll diffuse focus.
- Other “non-work” goals. I’d love to run another marathon, but the training load is a lot. It requires a lot of time. I’ll be in fitness maintenance mode for the next 6 months.
Overcoming the fear of making the wrong commitment
The fear of making the wrong decision or following the wrong path is extremely common. I deal with it all the time. It’s also why I like to set shorter-term goals (like grow to 100k YouTube subs in 6 months) when I lack directional certainty.
If you know for sure what you want to do with your life, then longer timeframes are useful. Setting a 1-3 year goal is great.
But if the fear of following the wrong path holds you back from committing to any path, then consider compressing the timeline.
Set a 3-month goal or 6-month goal instead of a 12-month goal.
Don’t fall into the fallacy of thinking that what you commit to today is what you’re committing to for the rest of your life. Do something for 6 months. Do it with high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus. Worst-case scenario is it wasn’t the optimal goal but you have the most productive period of your life. And now you’ve got more data that can lead you towards the right thing.
Another helpful approach here is to meditate on the fear of outcomes produced by stasis.
Following a path, any path will produce better outcomes than remaining in stasis. The latter leads to stagnation, decay, dissatisfaction, and often poor material outcomes (poor health, financial position, etc.)
You should fear stasis more than you fear taking the uncertain path.
Step 3: Build and maintain momentum through powerful, consistent execution
When you set a challenging, inspiring goal for yourself and you commit to it, you often experience an instant feeling of high energy and high velocity.
You put your stake in the ground. You say “this is what I’m doing, no matter what.”
And there’s an untameable energy that results from that.
BUT…
Fail to build momentum, fail to apply discipline and consistently execute towards your goal, and you’ll find that the energy and velocity you began with will quickly fade away.
It’s for this reason that you must:
A) Act on your goal straight away after committing to it.
Do not set a goal and then wait weeks before starting to work on it. You want to leverage the initial burst of energy and ride it.
Idleness will lead you to procrastination and overthinking.
B) Maintain momentum through discipline.
You will wake up one day and not feel energized.
You will not feel like acting with “high velocity.”
You will start to second-guess yourself and the goal you’ve set.
You will come up with incredibly intelligent rationalizations as to why you should break your commitment.
And when this happens, you must ignore all of the above “feelings” and rationalizations and discipline yourself to execute anyway.
Failing to do so will slow momentum.
Skipping one day might not be a problem.
But chaining multiple non-execution days together will be.
It is much easier to maintain existing high velocity than to build it back up from zero.
Step 4: Obsessively chase the feeling of high energy and high velocity
To make consistent, powerful, disciplined execution easier, you want to mentally and emotionally orient yourself towards the feeling of high velocity and high energy.
You know what this feeling is like.
You feel unstoppable. You feel like the architect of your own world. You feel in control. You are in flow. You are doing your best work.
But we quickly forget how potent this feeling is. We fall back into stasis because it’s “comfortable.” We avoid doing our deep work because it’s “hard.”
Except that’s a lie.
Living with high velocity is far more comfortable than living in stasis—at least in the long run.
Consistent daily deep work makes for a much easier life than remaining in stasis—even if it sometimes feels hard.
As weird as it sounds, you want to obsess over this feeling. You want to chase it. Crave it. Do everything you can every day to experience it. For this is where your best work will come from, and this is how you will achieve your challenging goal.
Step 5: Optimize physiological energy
You cannot ignore your physical self.
Acting with high velocity and high energy is extremely difficult if you lack physical energy.
Riding the motivational wave can get you through a few nights of bad sleep, eating junk food, and not exercising.
But eventually, your body will catch up.
You need to be healthy.
I am not saying that you need to throw the kitchen sink at this. You do not need to spend 20 hours a week optimizing everything. You do not need to become a Bryan Johnson.
But it does mean that you should prioritize:
- Sleep. It’s everything. You already know what it’s like to operate on a night of bad sleep. Chain 3-4 bad nights together and you’re in zombieland. (It’s easy for me to say you should prioritize sleep because I don’t have kids yet. If you do, then you have full permission to laugh at me when I tweet something about how damn tired I am after I have my first.)
- Nutrition. Avoid seed oils, overabundance of refined sugar, processed foods. Eat more protein probably (most people don’t eat enough). I keep things simple and track my macros every day. Eat mostly the same foods. It’s easy once you get rolling.
- Exercise. Both lifting weights and zone 2 cardio give me near endless amounts of energy. Strongly suggest you do the same if you don’t already. But any exercise is better than none.
I could write an entire article on this. But you get the point. You cannot neglect your physiology and expect to maintain high velocity over the long term.
High Standards – Strive for Excellence
Velocity without high standards will lead to poor quality work. So you need to have them in place.
Again, your goal should be challenging enough that it requires both high velocity and high standards. It shouldn’t be achievable without high standards.
But what does it even mean to have high standards?
High Standards = Going Beyond “Good”
Most people remain satisfied with “good” work.
Whether it’s publishing a newsletter, creating YouTube videos, building a business.
They get to a point where it’s “good enough” and then move on.
There’s value to doing this. If you’re a recovering perfectionist, then you need to train your “shipping” muscles to actually finish work—regardless of how good it is.
Also, there’s a strong argument for quantity over quality when you start out in an endeavour. Getting the reps in is more important than trying to make a masterpiece.
At some point, you’ve built these shipping muscles and you’re consistent. The bottleneck is now quality and excellence. This is where the going gets tough.
The reason why is because you’re so used to shipping quickly. It becomes relatively easy for you to create something “good.” You’ve done it plenty of times.
But to go from good to excellent is hard. Taking something from 90% to 99% is often more difficult than taking it from 0% to 90%. The last 9% takes just as much time, if not more, than the initial 90%.
(The reason I don’t use 100% as a measurement is because nothing is ever perfect. If you’re trying to hit 100%, you’re a perfectionist).
Having high standards is hard because it requires you to keep working past the point where you feel like you’ve done enough.
If you’ve spent 25 hours brainstorming, researching and writing a 5,000 word article, the last thing you want to do is edit it really well. You know you need to, but the temptation is to just do a quick edit and get it out. 90% is good enough, you think. You’re tired of working on it.
But when you adopt high standards, you painstakingly edit. You push through the boredom and discomfort. You get it to 99%. Every word matters.
While it’s hard to do this, the ROI is almost always worth it. Excellence gets you much better results than good. There is a deluge of “good” work out there, but excellent work is rare.
But what if you’re still in a phase where you’re focusing on quantity? Where you need to put in the reps to build your skill?
Well, you can still apply high standards. You aim for excellence in quantity of output. You set a high standard for the quantity of output, but not necessarily the quality.
For example, let’s say you want to get better at writing, with the long term goal of growing a successful newsletter.
You’ve never been great at writing. So you’re in a phase where quantity matters more than quality. Writing several articles over two weeks is a much better strategy than writing one really damn good article over two weeks.
You apply both high velocity and high standards to this goal of improving your writing. You think of what the best, most optimal way to improve would be, and you decide that you’ll write one article per day. You’ll obsessively focus on getting in the reps, regardless of how good you feel the content is.
The high standard you set for yourself is to adhere to this plan of focusing on quantity of output. The person with low standards would not do this. They would do less quantity, or they’d mistakenly focus too much on quality because they have perfectionist tendencies.
Speaking of perfectionist tendencies…
The difference between perfectionism and high standards
Perfectionism is a method of procrastination.
The perfectionist keeps working on incremental improvements, trying to take something from 99% to 100% (which is impossible).
And the problem is, there’s an infinite chasm between work that’s 99% (which should be the stopping point) and work that’s 100%. Again, 100% doesn’t exist. So you can spend all the time you like trying to get there as a without ever actually finishing anything. It’s devious like that.
One way to combat perfectionism is by clearly defining a strategy to achieve your challenging goal.
For example, my goal is to grow my YouTube channel to 100k subscribers. And my strategy for that is to post at least one video per week to take advantage of “luck surface area” as a result of quantity/volume (you never know which video will take off, so you should publish a decent amount).
With this strategy in mind, I know perfectionism will hold me back. I must get a video out every week. I cannot afford to spend an entire month on one video.
If you have perfectionist tendencies but you don’t have a clearly defined strategy, or cadence, or minimum output requirement, then it’s easy to waste a lot of time.
Set high, not perfect, expectations for yourself. Do the work necessary to meet them. Win.
Narrow Focus – Do Less, Better.
“If you seek tranquility, do less.”
Marcus Aurelius
When you live with high velocity and high energy, it’s tempting to think you can take on more and more.
The feeling of being unstoppable. Of getting shit done. It’s powerful, but it’s also dangerous if you don’t reel it in focus-wise.
When you diffuse your focus (have too many goals), either your standards drop, or your velocity decreases. You cannot have it all. You can’t act with high velocity, high standards, and do so in multiple areas. You will not achieve true excellence or greatness this way.
The best in their field have singular focus for long periods of time.
Why focus is so difficult
Diffused focus is a hedge. It’s often a result of a limiting belief. You don’t fully trust yourself to work on and achieve the challenging goal you’ve set for yourself, so you stack up some other projects and goals “just in case.”
By doing so, you’ve significantly reduced your chance at achieving your primary goal. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Another reason why singular focus is so difficult is that it exposes your procrastination habits like little else does.
When you have multiple projects on the go, many of them unimportant, you can procrastinate by doing “work.” It’s not important work. You know it’s not. It detracts from your main goal that you know should be your main goal.
But it feels productive.
When you narrow your focus and have one challenging goal, you can’t really procrastinate with work as easily. Because the work you need to do gets you closer to your goal.
This is uncomfortable. You still have the habit of procrastination, but you can’t fall back on busy work or non-important work to feel productive while procrastinating. You meet face to face with your procrastination habit and have to deal with it head on.
It becomes almost a binary thing: “Do I work on my most challenging goal like I said I would? Or do I do something else that reduces my chances of achieving it.”
And when all you want to do is anything but work, that’s an uncomfortable question to deal with.
Remember: Hedging does not lead to high velocity. It doesn’t lead to high standards. And it certainly doesn’t lead to the results you want.
What are you NOT going to do?
You have a limited amount of time & energy.
You can choose to spread it across multiple projects.
Or you can choose to direct it, with intensity and laser focus towards one objective.
“You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another—intensity defeats extensity every time…As Schopenhauer wrote, ‘Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.”
Robert Greene
The only way you can achieve this level of focus is by asking the tough question: “What are you NOT going to do?”
Again, sacrifice. Setting a singular, challenging goal requires sacrifice of other options.
If you’re an ambitious, creative thinker—you probably have ideas come to you all the time. And when you narrow your focus towards your singular most challenging goal, those ideas will still come to you.
And they will sound great.
You will start rationalizing why you should work on them (“on the side”) and how you could do so.
You’ll tell yourself that you can do more than one thing and do it well.
And slowly but surely you’ll diffuse your focus across multiple projects. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
Now, of course there’s work that needs to be done regardless of your goal. If you’re running a business, there’s work that needs to be done to keep the business running. It’s unavoidable.
But you should avoid taking on new, exciting projects that don’t align under your north star goal.
And you often know what they are.
For example, as I was setting my YouTube growth goal I told myself that by setting this goal, I’m deciding to NOT:
Grow my instagram account
- Start a new business outside my personal brand
- Travel for weeks at a time (or really at all)
- Launch the podcast I want to launch
- Start the new newsletter I want to start
- Write the book I want to write
All things I want to do. All things I could do. But all things that will diffuse my focus and reduce my chances of achieving my primary goal.
Play to win. Don’t play not to lose.
To act with high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus—you want to orient yourself towards winning.
Many of us play on defense. Psychologically, that is.
You tell yourself you want to grow your business to 7 figures, but subconsciously you set that goal out of fear. You fear that if you don’t, then you’ll fail. You’re playing not to lose.
You tell yourself you want to get good at writing and grow a newsletter, but you subconsciously worry that if you don’t do this, then you’ll fail to be able to quit your 9-5. You’re playing not to lose.
There is nothing wrong with fear. It can be a great motivator.
But playing to win is not only more potent, it feels a hell of a lot better too.
You’re trying to grow your business to 7 figures because it’s a damn awesome goal. You’re already secure. Now it’s time to win.
You’re trying to get good at writing and grow a newsletter because you want to be the best writer you know. You’re playing to win.
I want to grow my YouTube channel to 100k subscribers because I want to win. I want to publish the best content I possibly can. I want to show myself I can do it. I’m playing to win, not to avoid losing.
Drive yourself to the limits of your potential
“If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you will be unhappy for the rest of your life.” — Abraham Maslow
If you are acting with high velocity, high standards and narrow focus then it is inevitable that you will drive yourself to the limits of your potential.
Doing so is invigorating. It will energize you like nothing else can.
But be warned: is it not easy.
Relentless pressure.
Speed.
Aggressive action towards your challenging goal.
None of it is easy.
Long hours.
Concentrating with max effort.
Not easy.
Yeah it would be nice to do something easy. Play Zelda. Watch Netflix. Scroll the dopamine slot machine on TikTok.
But where has easy gotten you in the past?
You don’t want easy. You want the sense of satisfaction that comes from improvement, pushing hard, getting better, doing the work.
How to avoid falling off
This isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
There is a reason why the vast majority of people do not act with high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus. It’s hard.
And for that reason, you will have bad days.
It’s normal. You can’t expect to feel energized, high velocity, high intensity every single day.
Some days are going to be Ls.
And if you see them as tiny blips on the road to success, then you’ll do just fine. You can acknowledge you’re having a bad day, do what you can, and then reset for the next day.
But what you must avoid is chaining them together.
One or two bad days is no big deal.
But it’s easy to let one bad day lead to another, and another, and before you know it you’re in a week long slump. You’ve lost momentum. You feel like quitting.
Bad days are not a signal you’re working on the wrong thing
When people get in a slump, they often think that it’s because they are working on the wrong goal.
Sometimes this is the case, but it’s rare.
Usually it’s a lie you tell yourself. You fall into the fallacious trap of thinking that the reason you’re in slump is because you’re not “aligned” with the goal. But it’s often for some other reason (maybe physiological).
It’s unlikely you need to change course. Don’t psyche yourself out.
Increase your time horizon. Have patience.
One reason people abandon challenging goals is that they have a skewed sense of the time it takes to reach success (or even see initial results).
They get a couple weeks in, or maybe a month or two, and throw their hands up because “it’s not working.”
But success, especially with challenging goals that create high velocity, is rarely linear.
It’s exponential as a result of compounding. Quite often you’ll find that the majority of growth or achievement comes in the last 10-20% of your timeline.
I fully expect that with my YouTube growth goal, the majority of subscribers will come in the last two months (my timeline is 6 months).
Anyway, you need to increase your time horizon and have patience to allow compounding to happen. You must be aware that results may not come until close to the end, and that can be discouraging. It can start to feel like you’re on the wrong path. And hey, maybe you are. It’s possible. Nothing is guaranteed. But it pays to be honest with yourself: Am I simply wanting to quit because I feel discouraged right now? Or is this legitimately an unfruitful goal?
The question you should answer
I want to end this with one question for you:
If you could commit to only ONE thing for the next 6 months, what would it be?
What would that look like?
What would you have to give up?
How challenging would it need to be to demand that you act with high velocity, high standards, and narrow focus?
Spend some time with that question, and then start attacking the goal.
Lightspeed.
