# Newsletter Two

Hello!

It is another weekend and it comes with yet another opportunity to be world class.

This week, I will be doing brief takes on certain aspects of three core things that determine your level of success.

These things are:
1) Habits
2) Performance
3) Thinking

I will be treating these topics as usual in three different sections and I hope you are able to learn one or two things.

### Smarter Habits

A wealthy man requested an old scholar to wean his son off of his bad habits.

The scholar took the youth for a stroll through a garden. Stopping suddenly, he asked the boy to pull out a tiny plant growing there. The youth held the plant between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled it out.

The old man then asked him to pull out a slightly bigger plant. The youth pulled hard and the plant came out; roots and all.

“Now pull out that one.” said the old man, pointing to a bush. The boy had to use all his strength to pull it out.

“Now take this one out.” said the old man, pointing this time to a guava tree. The youth grasped the trunk and tried to pull it out but it would not budge.

“It’s... – It’s impossible.” said the boy, breathing heavily after that effort.

“So it is with bad habits!” said the sage. “When they are young, it is easy to pull them out but when they take hold they cannot be uprooted.”

The session with the old man changed the boy’s life.

Now this story goes both ways; it shows you how bad habits can be hard to break, but when deployed the right way, you can build solid good habits.

There is a saying that goes thus: _It takes 21 days to build a habit and 90 days to build a lifestyle._

So any habit that you want to build, commit to doing it consistently for 21 days and it will most likely stick.

When building habits, you have to approach it smartly. Understand that environment plays an important role and it is actually more important than motivation.

Your environment can be physical and digital. My digital environment is filled with people whose actions challenge me to get better.

Especailly on Twitter, I have tailored my following based on the people whose level of wisdom and expertise I aspire to reach. Seeing their tweets and achievements daily constantly forces me to level up.

So, when it comes to building the right habits, take stock of your environment and eliminate people who make you fall into bad habits. Work on putting those who model the right habits in view.

### Smarter Performance

When it comes to performance, there is a quote that perfectly captures the message that I am trying to pass across.

_Don't mistake activity for achievement._

This rings true because it is very easy to fall into the trap of being _busy_, and at the end of the day, you will realize that you have not achieved anything.

The best way to increase performance is to create delibrate systems that would ensure it.

I use this in my writing and other forms of creative actions. I have been designing consistently since April and I don't go to bed if I have not done my design for the day.

Increasing performance involves learning to focus on the things that matter in a world where a lot of things are battling for your eyeballs.

You would also need to recognize the things that bring distraction and avoid bringing them into your work space.

For example, Instagram is the worst place to go for any reason during work hours, even if you want to do a research there on something that you are currently working on.

The User Experience of Instagram has been programmed to keep you on the app for as long as possible. You would notice that sometimes you open Instagram to search for something, and you immediately get carried away on the explore page. You end up forgetting why you opened the app in the first place.

This is an example of the things that build up your activity hours instead of the productive ones.

So in your day to day activities, understand that your performance depends on your ability to not just manage distractions, but eliminate them totally.

### Smarter Thinking

I taught a course on creativity two months ago called **Unlocking Creativity**

In the course, I dispelled myths about creativity and showed the participants how anyone can become creative.

Like leadership, many people believe that creativity is something that someone is born with; like it is either you have it or not.

However, that is not true. Anyone can learn to lead. Anyone can learn how to be creative. It all depends on your willingness to learn and apply the right principle.

I started UI design in April and right away people started praising my work and asking me if I had prior design experience. They always found it difficult to believe that I was a beginner.

However, what they didn't know was that I had been programming my mind for design months before I even started.

I followed designers on Twitter and also design blogs on Medium long before I began design. This already exposed me to a lot of design principles and concepts.

This is also the same approach I used when it came to improving my writing. I exposed myself to a lot of quality works by expert writers.

Anything that you want to become good at, you should study. Study the work of the giants in that field and you will learn to create like them - and with enough work and consistency, you will become even better than them.

In his book , **Steal Like An Artist**, Austin Kleon gives a run down of what true creativity entails. Steve Jobs also summed it up when he made this quote:

_Good artists copy. Great artists steal._

Now you may be screaming in your head, **is this not plagiarism?**

The copying or stealing is not bad on its own. What matters is how you do it.

Good theft involves honoring your source, studying deeply to locate the principles, stealing from many, giving credit, transforming and remixing what you studied to create your own.

Bad theft involves degrading your source, stealing from one person and skimming his work, plagiarizing and ripping off the person‘s work without acknowledging it.

Many people are stuck because they have not been able to get _original ideas_, but there is nothing like that. Everything you have and see today was created by remixing and combining existing ideas.

What this means is that, in whatever you are studying to learn from and replicate, seek the principles that made that thing work and not just copy it because it works.

A giraffe does not have a long neck because the skin can stretch, it has a long neck because of the way its skeleton is structured.

So when getting inspiration from somewhere, seek the principles or skeleton; those things that are behind the scenes that make it work well.