Happy Wednesday from the Shinkansen train heading north bound to Tokyo, Japan from Osaka.
My wife and I are approaching the end of our three month Asia trip and I’ve been taking some time to reflect on some of the personal lessons that I’ve learned along this journey and more lately for the lessons I’ve learned about myself, how I move through life and how I want to continue to move through the world as I “reintegrate real life” when I get back to LA.
I was working out yesterday morning and wrote some notes in my phone as it’s when I tend to have a lot of clarity of thought that is uncluttered by everyday life.
And I think I’d love to write about that today and who knows I might delete all of this. If you are reading this it means I didn’t haha
Notes:
“- It’s not because you have free time that you have to use it.
It’s not because there’s money available that you have to spend it.
It’s not because there’s food that you have to eat it.
It’s not because there’s something in front of you that you have to do anything about it.
It’s not because there is an emergency that you have to react to it.
Pause. Be intentional. Embrace Slow Living.
→Japanese culture is really big on preservation of material, finances, everything that is why their vintage market is in such good condition.
→They move not slowly but with intention which can look the same if you aren’t paying attention.
→The speed at which you move through a task has zero correlation with the quality of the outcome. Zero.
*That applies to our own health & fitness transformation as well. Quality & speed aren’t tied together.
It might be impressive to get something done fast but it will never be of the level of quality of someone who took their time to really master their craft.
A master can do it “faster” than a beginner but in reality that master has taken 10, 20, 30 years to get to that speed level and therefore for the beginner is technically “faster” than the master.
But we can see here that the work that the master would produce would be of higher quality.
A job done isn’t always necessarily a job well done.
→You don’t need to add a practice to fix your nervous system. You need to subtract the urgency you’re layering onto things that don’t require it. The writing doesn’t need to be fast. The typing doesn’t need to be fast. The walk doesn’t need a podcast. The afternoon doesn’t need a task.”
These are just some of the notes I’ve left for myself because I often found myself being “rushed”. It might be because of my age (32) and my hunger to grow because I’m in “those building years” or it might be a result of the culture I grew up in.
Who knows but all I care about is that I don’t like feeling rushed all the time. I’m not that guy and I never liked it. So for the past few years I’ve been consciously trying to curate my life in such a way where I didn’t need to be rushed all the time to reach my goals.
I realized I can only take on 2-3 projects per day. Prep for a meeting with my employees, have the meeting, workout, record one podcast. That’s it. The previous version of me would take 5 meetings, train and try to record four podcasts in one day.
By forcing myself to do less, I have to be more intentional with the actions I do take and it forces me to be creative with how to come up with the highest leverage action for my time and effort.
This trip was really eye opening. It helped me create some distance between how I was living my life in Los Angeles, which wasn’t bad from the exterior, but internally I wasn’t being my true self. I was afraid to leave my comfort zone, afraid to be me fully because I was uncomfortable being fully me.
Life is such a beautiful odd ride haha and I’m grateful that I’m catching and realizing these lessons now. I feel blessed for all the ups and downs that have brought me here.
I’m excited to see what I learn and reflect on when I sit down to write next week.
I hope it served someone on their journey.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Maxime
