25 января, 2005
Моделирование
О том как полезно искать совета у людей, кто достиг большего успеха, чем ты. И как бесполезно искать его у тех, кто находится на твоем уровне или ниже... Если ты зарабатываешь $50K в год, какой смысл спрашивать совета у того, кто зарабатывает $10K в год? Нужно найти такого, кто делает $500K или даже $5M в год.
One of the most effective concepts in personal development is modeling. Modeling simply means that you find someone who's already getting the results you want in some area, learn what they did to get those results, and then basically just do the same thing. It's a lot like following a recipe to re-create a meal.
As an example, years ago I met a man who had gone from earning $40K/year to earning $400K/year over a period of two years. I asked him how he did it, and he told me. One of his main ideas was to find out what has made you money in the past, and do more of it; then find out what has lost you money in the past, and do less of it. But as brain-dead simple as this idea sounds, I found that it worked really well when I looked for ways to apply it, and I doubled my income in about six months. For example, I discovered that releasing products made me money, but developing products didn't generate income at all. So I found a way to release new products faster. Simple idea, but very effective.
But something I've found helpful is that the reverse concept works pretty well too: If you find someone who isn't getting the results you want in a particular area, don't take their advice. This is an overgeneralization of course, but I find that more often than not, it's pretty accurate.
While it seems logical that just about anyone could potentially provide valuable advice on any subject, the problem is advice that often sounds good just doesn't prove effective in the real world. This is why modeling can save you a lot of time. The person who is currently getting the results you want has probably already tried and discarded many strategies that don't work. And they've obviously found at least one strategy that does work, at least for them, so their ideas have already passed the reality test.
On the other hand, be careful not to get trapped into the situation of continually seeking advice from people who aren't getting the results you want. For example, I often see single people who are looking to marry ask other single people for advice on how to attract a future spouse. And these people get lots of well-meaning advice that simply won't work. If you're single and want to get married, then the best people to ask about how to do it are happily married people. Duh! And most likely you'll find their advice very different than that of perpetual singles.
A big mistake people make when trying to increase their success in some area is that they'll ask advice from people who aren't getting the right results. For example, let's say you're making $50K per year right now, and you want to be earning twice that amount. Most people will seek advice from all their friends who are making $5-10K per year. And they'll get lots of advice. But it will be essentially worthless. It's far better to talk for 15 minutes to a person who's making $150K per year than it is to spend a full day seeking advice from people who aren't at that level yet. This might sound like an exaggeration, but I honestly don't believe it is. I'd rather get answers to just one or two questions from someone who's far more successful than me in some area than to chat all day with people who are roughly under my own level.