Summary – Collaboration with Claude AI
What is truly important to me is putting in the daily effort to refine my talents and develop my skills. The key to superior performance is quiet, steady dedication practiced for the long term when no one is watching.
I’ve learned many valuable life lessons through competitive sports participation. I credit competitive distance running with developing my willingness and ability to take the long view. My twin brother Don and I are obsessed with personal development and continual learning. We’ve pushed each other to invest time and money into our growth.
When my son Ryan was diagnosed with childhood cancer in 1996, my ability to tenaciously focus on core priorities was tested beyond imagination. My wife Terri’s memoir tells our family’s story of this challenging journey.
Over the years, I’ve pursued initiatives that exemplify my commitment to consistent effort and self-improvement. These include a daily planking streak with Don that has lasted 2,277 days so far, cofounding our #TwinzTalk initiative to share personal development tips, and dedicating myself to writing during the pandemic, completing four unpublished memoirs since June 2020.
I believe that to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world. Dedicate yourself to improving and helping others through small, consistent efforts practiced long-term. Find a tribe to encourage and inspire you on the journey. With commitment and belief, the compounding impact of your focused dedication will amaze you.
What matters most to you? Whatever it is, pursue it relentlessly, for that is the path to growth and fulfillment.
Full Original Writing
What is important to you? Is it important enough that you are willing to work on refining your talents and developing your skills every day? Every day, in incremental effort, where progress is not felt or noticed? Yet, the key to superior performance is the daily dedication performed quietly for the long term, done in the quiet of your life when no one is watching.
The best hack is to realize that there are no shortcuts to success and commit yourself to the steady drip, drip, drip effort to enable you to reach your best level of preparation. The process is a life-long adventure.
I believe that competitive sports participation teaches many lessons that carry forward into the game of life. I wrote about this in my April 2024 blog post titled “From Setback to Comeback: My High School Running Adversity to Overcoming and Growing for Life.”
The following Daily Stoic and Seth Godin blog posts resonated with me, and I hope you find them inspiring as well.
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman meditation for June 8, “Brick by Boring Brick.”
“You must build up your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible—and no one can keep you from this.”
–Marcus Aurelius
“If you follow The Process in your life—assembling the right actions in the right order, one right after another—you too will do well. Not only that, you will be better equipped to make quick work of the obstacles along that path.”
Seth Godin’s June 16, 2018, blog post, “The danger of not good enough,” reminds us that it is a trap to dismiss others or ourselves as “not good enough.” The more accurate sentiment should be “not good enough yet.” Seth’s closing sentence is a thought we should hold onto:
“It’s true that you’re not good enough yet. None of us are. But if you commit to trying hard enough and long enough, you’ll get better.”
If you commit to trying hard enough and long enough, you’ll get better. If you are committed to the deliberate and steady process of investing in yourself, you will progress.
“Today, I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow, I can do what others can’t.”
–Jerry Rice
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
–Tim Notke
With a willingness to work hard (and smarter), you WILL exceed many more talented peers. You control your willingness to prepare. In matters of importance to you, be relentless in your dedication and daily focus.
The greatest attribute I have been blessed with and embraced throughout my adult life is a willingness to put forth consistent effort that is matched by few. My twin Don and I share this attribute and have pushed each other throughout our lives. Above, I mentioned competitive distance running as a prime contributor to developing my willingness and ability to take the long view throughout my life. Examples of deliberate focus and effort, as a lifestyle of investing in myself, include:
- After graduating from college in 1981, I inherently knew that continual learning and development were imperative to my career and life success. Don and I have shared an obsession with personal development. We believe in investing personal time and money into learning. When portable computers were first available, I remember spending weekend nights in the office (Coopers & Lybrand public accounting in the early 1980s) tinkering around with VisiCalc spreadsheet software. This moment started a love of technology that Don and I have shared and leveraged throughout our lives. In our early to mid-twenties, we were alone in the office on a Saturday night while many of our peers indulged in more ordinary entertainment choices. With our dedication to competitive distance running (a serious endeavor until age 25) and professional personal development, we were comfortable on the less traveled road!
- My dedication and preparation to find a better way to work became a career and life survival imperative when my son Ryan was diagnosed with childhood cancer on October 17, 1996, at the age of two years and two months. My ability to tenaciously focus on my core priorities was tested beyond anything I could have imagined. Terri Tomoff’s memoir The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey: From Mayhem to Miracles, published in March 2021, tells Ryan and our family’s story.
- On March 25, 2018, Don and I started a 30-day planking challenge. What started as a unique challenge to help our physical conditioning has become a part of our lifestyle. As of June 18, 2024, we have done a daily plank for 2,277 days. On March 26, 2023, I wrote a blog post celebrating five years of continuous planking!
- On April 16, 2018, Don and I cofounded our #TwinzTalk initiative, where we share personal development encouragement and tips to help others in our network. Tip One was dedicated to highlighting our amazing friend, Rich Flanagan. Since then, we have shared almost 1,300 tips on LinkedIn, and we receive great joy and fulfillment from sharing our knowledge and expertise to help others.
- On June 8, 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 Pandemic started spreading across the United States, Terri and I joined an online writing initiative called Writing in Community. While Terri dedicated her time to completing her memoir, The Focused Fight, I pursued writing my unpublished personal memoir, “Living Life…Off The Track.” I have now written four unpublished memoirs. Four years later, we consider ourselves writers and have met many inspiring, kind, and generous people who share the love of writing and being in a community of practice. On the other side of the pandemic, we believe our lives have been profoundly enhanced through our writing efforts and community relationships!
“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.”
–Elaine S. Dalton
What is important to you? Dedicate daily effort to improving yourself and then helping others. You will be amazed at the compounding impact of small efforts consistently performed over the long term. Find your tribe that will inspire and encourage you. You got this. Believe.
Very good Bill! You exemplify an inch at a time!