dream | act | succeed

Yesterday, everyone could watch an awesome formula one race from Italy. Those 20 drivers, not only heroes, but also top performers in their field. For them, there is just one goal in life!

But for us, mortal beings, this is not really possible, is it? We have a job, a family and other “burdens” that hold us back from becoming the next formula one star!

“But if they were not there, I would …”.

And this is where I want to start. We can do what ever we want to do in life. Never ever in history, was it that easy to connect with people, start a business or live your dream. But most of us do not do this. They live a normal life, a simple life.

But there is actually a way. Even for us! I will call it the 5% rule.

What ever you are doing, get into the top 5%.

Instead of having one big goal to actually get to the top, you should rather have multiple once where you aim high, but not too high. Reaching the top 5% is ambitious, especially if you have a lot of different goals, but for the amount of time you are having, this is in my eyes the better option.

So how do we do this? How do we get into the top 5 %? Where is the top 5%? And who is in there?

Being an engineer, just guessing is of course not the best option, but because of the sake of simplicity, we should just assume for now and check later on during the process.

So, how do we start? Well, you hopefully know what you are passionated about, so just take what ever it is and try to get the big picture.

• What do you want specifically?
• What do you need to do in the next year to get started or increase your efforts?
• Do a benchmark. What are the professionals doing? How are they practicing?
• Use the Pareto principle. Where can you invest some time to increase your overall performance significantly? Make a schedule of how to tackle this.

And now, just do it!

So what does it take?

It takes everything. It takes a lot of your valuable time! It means to make sacrifices! Cut back on certain areas. You need motivation and focus. You need to work on this continuously! You need a new mindset! You need to reflect on your performance. Develop better and more efficient strategies to use your time in a better way. And of course set new stimuli.

But what does it not take?

Your freedom, your family, your friends, your life. And why? Because you are not investing 100% of your time. And by the way, even if you would invest 100% of your time right now, the learning curve wouldn’t be that different. Once you have created a foundation, you can increase the workload, and even change priorities. You never know how your life will look like in 5 to 10 years.

Ok, but enough about me, talking about general stuff. Tomorrow we will actually start on how to work on this. I will try to explain the way I am doing it. Hopefully this will help you!

See you next time!