Psst … here’s a dirty little secret: You’re highly unlikely to succeed by reading success books until you answer a basic question about yourself.
Success book authors start from their own success and reverse-engineer it. They work backward from a successful today to their starting point.
Here’s why their success book won’t work for you: They started from a different point:
- Different bank balance
- Different education
- Different natural talents
- Different physical appearance
- Different family connections
Those differences got them to success faster, or slower, than you’ll get there because you’re starting with a different combination of the variables that can lead to success.
Most importantly, success book authors like John Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Tim Ferriss, Jon Acuff and Pat Flynn started with different values—or, more specifically, things they found valuable. Some examples of things successful people find valuable:
- Accumulating wealth
- Creating revolutionary products
- Ending injustice
- Living true to their faith
- Location independence
- Putting family first
- Discretionary time
But what do you find most valuable? That’s the basic question you need to ask yourself before you can determine where in a particular author’s path to success you’re starting.
Let me give you an example from my own life. What I find most valuable is:
- Discretionary time: The freedom to do what I want, when I want …
- … with my family: Specifically, my fun and adorable Favorite Older Daughter, Favorite Younger Daughter, and Favorite Son; and my talented and beautiful wife.
A success book helped me achieve that most valuable thing: Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. The book gave me:
- The concept of discretionary time as wealth.
- The idea of lifestyle design: Instead of letting life happen to you, you can design the life you want.
- Knowledge about tools for designing my life, like virtual assistants.
But I didn’t follow Tim’s path to success from start to finish.
Rather, in fits and starts (it wasn’t easy!), I figured out:
- Where I was starting from
- How my starting point compared with Tim’s
- Which steps in Tim’s success path to take, and which to reject
- And most importantly … where I wanted to go on my path.
Where I want to go on my success path is discretionary time with my family. God be praised, I’m already there. It’s a beautiful day outside as I write this. Because I’ve done the hard, hard work (with lots of help from success books!) to design my personal, professional, and philanthropic pursuits around the thing I value most, I can totally cut out today in the middle of the “work day” and take my kid to the park.
I might just do that.