Strategy And Effort

In business and in life, the main reason why you fail to achieve your goals or objectives can be found in how you executed your strategy(if you have any!) and/or the effort you employ. Likewise, whatever the goal or objective is, if you have a good strategic plan and put in the right effort then it is highly achievable. This two go hand in hand, they make or break your goal and objectives.

Mr. Beast, a famous youtuber ventured into The franchise business with his signature beast burgers. Living in a digital age, he didn't choose to open any physical stores to sell his burgers rather he made restaurants sign up to sell his burgers. They'll be taught how to make the beast burgers and he'll handle the logistics and take a small cut of the sale they make.

Now you might think this is a dumb idea, why didn't he build physical stores that sell them rather than taking a small cut? What you don't see is the scalability, If thousands of restaurants opt in to sell his burgers does it matter if he's taking a small cut? How much will it cost to setup a thousand restaurants? It's a better idea to piggy back on an available infrastructural network than building one from scratch. Also, if the idea had failed, it wouldn't destroy him financially because there isn't heavy costs involved. What he did is building a digital asset.

Mr Beast and his burger
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That's just a simple example of a brilliant strategy with the right effort.

Strategy

Overall, just having a strategy could give you a competitive advantage in life and business. However, the right one will take you where you want to go. Without strategy, you're like a boat without a paddle mindlessly drifting along the river. Having the right strategy immensely helps in achieving your goals, it points you to the right direction and also guides your way with steps or moves that you have to make to get there.

Coming up with a strategy might seem difficult but it is not. It requires some background knowledge, sensible thinking and an ability to connect the dots between things. Reading ancient Greek stories has been a good source of strategy building for me. They embody the peak of rational thinking. How can you not get fascinated by their mythologies; Zeus and his kingdom, King Odysseus in The Odyssey and The illiad with the Trojan horse.

The trojan horse
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I think all this stories - in some way - depict the breath of the human intellect and how it can be utilized to get what you want. That's what strategy is all about, finding direct and indirect ways to get what you want.

Effort

Strategy is the intention while effort is the act. Effort gets the job done and completes the process. You might have a grandiose idea, a well thought out plan but if you don't back it with actions, it really means little to almost nothing.

I think this is a problem for most people, we come up with very good ideas and plans but we don't know how to take actions with it up until fruition. So they remain as objects in our imaginations.

Making efforts is a little complex than planning a strategy. On one hand, having a strategy will help in pointing out where you should put your efforts instead of just doing things randomly. And on the other hand, you have to build motivation and discipline so that you will be able to execute the strategy on the days you don't feel like doing it.

This are the two problems with efforts. Having a strategy automatically solves the first problem but the second one is harder to solve. Building motivation and discipline requires a lot of will power which many people don't currently have by default.

The trick is to have a stake in it. This simply means having a lot to lose or gain with it, the bigger the better. With that, effort wouldn't be that hard to cultivate. Give it a try and see!

You tend to be more disciplined and motivated when you have a stake in something. It is even more evident when it's something big you might lose.

In Conclusion

Strategy can be seen as a skill that can be develop with some practice. For example, You can start by developing a strategy to read ten pages from a book everyday.

Having a strategy in everything you do will help in shaping things in the direction you want rather than being vague and nebulous. It also unlocks new levels of understanding than you didn't have before by giving you the ability to be able to connect the dots between things.

However, an unloaded gun can't make a kill so you need to work on your efforts too. Not every day will you feel good to execute your strategy. And your strategy wouldn't come to fruition without constant efforts. Work on that will power.

A simple way to start is by doing one thing every single day. I notice that having a daily routine greatly helps in structuring discipline into your system.

What's your strategy? Are you putting in the effort?