How to Use Pressure to Accelerate and Fuel Your Growth

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Right.

The time is:

I’ve got a sales coaching call starting at 7am (I’ve now pushed it till 710am to get the most I can from writing this blog post).

The reasons for making sure I get hopefully the whole thing done or at least a significant chunk of it done is to ensure I prevent the punishments looming for lack of completion to be played out.

I feel the pressure of them.

I told Chris – my writing coach, that if I have not got a blog post sent across to him by 9am every Mon-Fri then I would end up committing $50 to a white supremacist organization.

Even writing those words out makes my stomach turn.

So yes I feel the pressure of committing to what I said I would do – and not having to go through the pain of helping people that would see me persecuted because of the colour my skin supported through my monetary rewards.

The upside of this is the cortisol it releases that courses through me – almost verging upon a fight or flight response –

In this instance of course given I am here – I am fighting.

I’ve become sloppy lately with my writing, and have used outside forces as a reason to not commit as I regularly used to – to a robust writing regimen.

I (not long ago) was knocking out 2.2k words per day when I was writing my novel.

Now look at me – I’ll write 300 words here, 500 words there – and have built no consistency for it all.

I’ve ‘fell off’ as a grime mc would say (I’ve been listening to a lot of Kano recently).

With this in mind, I’m trying to pile the pressure back on to ensure that I achieve the level of output within my days that I know I’m so capable of.

I feel that half of the productivity is about archetyping the environment and context to ensure that you succeed.

Point in case:

It’s now 6.53am and I’ve got sales training in 7-minutes apparently:

I did ask Max if we can start at 7.10 – but not because I want to keep writing this (I do, don’t get me wrong) – but rather because the Wifi in Costa isn’t sufficient to support a free-flowing call.

I’m going to head across the road to Cafe Du Coin and set up camp there instead.

Upping the ante – by setting myself 7-minute sprints to see what level of content I can push out is what excites me.

Chaos excites me. Disorganization because of the speed at which I want to move – excites me.

Basically – moving f*cking fast excites me.

The challenge with all of this of course is that fast is relative – and the only real reference point I have is myself.

I could be moving ‘quickly’ but with no pace, because I keep doing the wrong things.

Anyway – that musing is for another time.

The other thing that happened last night at 1230am before bed – is that I belatedly booked in a new restaurant for Strawberry and I to visit in a bid to keep mixing things up.

I already owe my accountability coach Valentina $100 for failing to do something as simple as booking a rooftop dinner with Strawberry for the weekend.

I talk to Valentina 2x per week about the short sprints I have in terms of 3-5 day goals – primarily at the moment relationship focussed.

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I’m aggressively trying to improve the quality of contribution I make to the life of mine with Strawberry’s.

Part of this is by making sure I’m making the effort to think about us, and to (initially) book things we can do together.

I failed earlier this week because somehow I could not meet a 24-hour deadline for simply booking a restaurant.

You know that saying ‘you’ll either find a way or you’ll find excuses’

I tell that to the ‘resistant’ voice that crops up inside of my head from my heart and tries to feed my mind a crock of bullshit.

I believe there IS time to do everything you want, all at the same time.

You must just get better and better with managing your time and create more and more leverage as time passes

Which brings me to my other point – it’s 7:01am and I need to get out of here.

Great – in 16 minutes I’ve managed to write closing in on 800 words.

What did I tell you folks?

Let pressure drive you. F*ck everything else.

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I’m going to find another 15 minutes a little later and finish this post.

Let’s get some!

Right I’m back and the time is:

Now, I said I’d have 15 minutes to finish this blog but in fact I’ve got another call in 3-minutes.

Allowing for a 5 minute ‘I’m just running a little bit late’ delay I think it gives me a total of 8 minutes of writing time.

Again the pressure is on – but AGAIN more than enough time to actually get things done.

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That’s the thing I think that I love about pressure in general.

It has an amazing ability to provide you with great clarity…..a way of cutting through the noise.

Things that are good only ever happen when masses of pressure are applied.

This is something that trickles down into team Pearl Lemon as well.

I treat the team as I treat myself.

We say YES to the hard projects, we say YES to things that others say no to, and I lead with the attitude of ‘fuck it – let’s do it’ and I’ll figure it out along the way

The pressure excites me (as well as stresses me out no doubt) – but I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

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