Just recently, I was reading the book “The Bezos Letters” by Steve Anderson. After reading the famous Jeff Bezos shareowners letter from 1997 an interesting thing happened to my brain, for some reason it connected the statement “you can work long, hard or smart; but at Amazon.com you can’t chose two out of three”, with an experience I had a few years ago when I participated in fire brigade training. Stay with me here.
Have you ever heard about the fire triangle? If not, here it is! The fire triangle, or combustion triangle, is the three components needed to ignite and sustain a fire. The three ingredients of a fire triangle are: fuel, heat, and oxygen.
1. Fuel: a fire cannot begin if there is no material to burn
2. Heat: a source of heat is necessary in order for the ignition occur
3. Oxygen: to sustain the combustion reaction, oxygen is needed.
Similar to Amazon’s culture, if any of these three element is cut off, it will kill the fire.
For years, I’ve used a “system” that supported me to develop myself professionally and personally, and only recently was I able to actually make it simple to explain and perhaps help others. I am not saying that this is the only way to live by; however, this principle has worked very well for me. So now I’m here, humbling sharing and hoping this perspective could help you.
I grew up playing tennis, but I’m passionate for sports in general. When you play sports competitively, goals, energy, and discipline must always be there with you in order to improve your craft.
Throughout my life journey, I always tried to “connect the dots,” and I realized that I could translate similar practices from the tennis court into my life.
The goal I called AMBITION, it is the fuel for progress. The energy I called FOCUS, it is the spark. And discipline is… well the DISCIPLINE!
Although it made a lot of sense to me, I could not easily explain how to link ambition, focus and discipline to improvement or progress. This changes now.
Based on the fire triangle, I present the progress triangle. Which, like the fire triangle, has three elements to sustain PROGRESS. The three elements of the progress are: ambition, focus and discipline:
1. Ambition / Fuel: progress cannot begin if there is no motivation to “burn”
Very often people correlate ambition with money -nothing wrong with that. In fact, you can think about ambition and relate it to anything that you want to achieve. It could be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social…There is no limit! Just make sure you have a strong motive to achieve that.
A strong motive is so important because once you start, there might be setbacks throughout the process, and as long as the “fuel” is abundant, focus and discipline will keep the spark alive.
2. Focus / Heat: a source of energy is needed in order for activities occur;
This correlation is because focus requires mental energy to keep the concentration for an extended period. Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and former monk Dandapani explains it clearly: “Concentration is the ability to keep your awareness on one thing for an extended period of time. If your awareness drifts away to other topics, you are being distracted, and you can use your mental muscle to bring your awareness back to the task at hand.” A focused mind is like a glowing ember; it is the true ignition source.
3.Discipline / Oxygen: to sustain improvement, discipline is needed.
Discipline’s correlation to oxygen is because they both are responsible to provide basic building blocks to sustain the progress/fire.
Similar to fire triangle, if any of these three element is cut off, it will kill the progress.
Again, I’m not saying this will work for everyone, or that it is the only way to live and development yourself. All I can say here, is that this system has helped me achieve my goals and perhaps it could help you as well. Nothing makes you feel more alive than being able to make progress.
The power of progress is very well explained by Tony Robbins, which he says “Progress equals happiness.” That’s because reaching a goal is satisfying, but only temporarily. … “I don’t care what it is you’ve achieved, and the reason is because life is not about achieving the goals, life is about who you become in pursuit of those goals.”
If you are feeling stuck somehow, remember the progress triangle, check if your motives are strong enough, and pay attention if your focus and your discipline are truly there.
Just humbly sharing my thoughts. Feel free to share comments or stories below
Cheers!
DY
Gostei muito Doug. Interessante como ao ler este artigo me recordou a época que trabalhamos juntos. Abraço!