What are some things you should be good at to succeed?
There is obviously a list that applies to your specific job, or the job you want. Here is a list of things everyone should be good at to become successful:
- Energy Management
- Sales
- Risk Evaluation
- Communication
- Persistence
- Building Skills
- Prioritizing
Be Good at Managing Your Energy
One of the greatest predictors of success in life is your energy levels.
There are 4 primary areas that will determine how much energy you have:
- Sleep – If you are not getting adequate sleep, you will not have the energy to be successful. Practice good sleep hygiene.
- Diet – Eating garbage food is almost a guarantee that you will have low energy. Pay attention to how food makes you feel. If you are crashing within two hours of eating, probably best to avoid those foods and find something more wholesome.
- Exercise – A basic exercise routine will raise your energy levels. Aerobic and strength training. You don’t have to be a body builder, but if you are looking to get the most out of life, you should be exercising.
- Work – Work on something you care about. Find something that makes you excited to work on it.
Figure out your energy and you can achieve almost anything.
Be Good at Sales
If you were to choose one thing to get professionally good at, let it be sales.
You sell yourself to get into a good school, find a high quality job, and find a partner in life. If you decide to start your own business, sales can make or break your effort. There is no skill that can bring you more value in return for getting better at it than sales.
To learn more about sales, check out Alex Hormozi’s YouTube playlist and follow @BowTiedSalesGuy on Twitter.
Be Good at Risk Evaluation
Your choices can lead to riches or ruin.
Life presents many opportunities. Your job is to determine which ones are worth pursuing and which ones are better left alone. There are 4 basic categories of risk.
| RISK / REWARD | HIGH | LOW |
| HIGH | Only if You Have Nothing to Lose | Avoid Like the Plague |
| LOW | Path to Rich Life | Path to Mediocre Life |
Spend your time looking for and pursuing Low Risk -> High Reward opportunities.
Be Good at Communication
High quality communication will let you multiply your efforts.
If you can clearly explain how to do something, you can teach someone else how to do it. Then you can hire that person to do something for you. If you can communicate why something needs to be done and the benefits, you can get people on board with your ideas (back to selling).
There are multiple forms of communication (written, spoken, visual) and you will need to be able to use all of them as people “hear” better in different ones.
Be Good at Persisting
The most successful people in life are the ones who keep going.
A majority of people give up too soon. If you can develop a process or belief system that allows you to consistently create for a long period of time, you can succeed. You need to be able to continue even in the face of failure. Rejection and failure are difficult emotions to handle. They are the primary reason many people get discouraged and give up.
The key is to persist at the low risk, high reward opportunities.
Be Good at Building Skills
You need skills to do things. You can learn new skills.
As billionaire Tom Bilyeu said, “Failure is the most information rich data stream you can get.” There is nothing that can teach you faster than trying something out and making a mistake. No amount of reading and theorizing is a substitute for actually doing something.
A good rule of thumb is you should spend at least twice as much time practicing as you should spend “learning” (probably 4-10 times more).
Be Good at Prioritizing
Life is an endless set of opportunities arrayed in front of you.
Your job is to choose the most important one and go after it. You can only have one priority. Only one thing can be the most important. If you have more than one priority, you don’t have any priorities.
The best way to know what is the priority is the answer to this question: What thing could I do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? (Credit to Gary Keller in his book The ONE Thing)
Summary
There are so many things you could get good at. But a few will be worth more over your life than the others. Learn to sell. Learn to find good risk reward opportunities. Learn to communicate ideas and processes clearly. Learn to stick with things. Learn to build new skills. And learn to prioritize.
These handful of skills are a foundation that will serve you in any profession, career, or business you pursue.