The Peter Principle

Whose Website Is That Anyway?

Oct 03, 2022

Big news before we dive into this week’s newsletter. Ya boy is getting more official BY THE DAY. This week we unveil the new Dragon Strong website and let me tell you, it is SEXY

https://dragon-strong.com/

Go look at it and tell me how great it is. Then go tell Natalie how amazing of a job her team Oh Hello did creating it. It was definitely more work than I would have guessed but damnit if it doesn’t look good.

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle is the (mostly satirical) concept in management where employees are promoted based on their success in previous roles until they reach a level where they're no longer competent.

Each new promotion is based on success from skills used in the previous role. The new role often requires new & different skills. Being a great sales person does not mean you’re going to be good at leading a team of sales people for example.

The more promotions you get, the more learning that’s required. But the act of promotion is validating. You’re being told you’re great! So it’s quite confusing to learn how much you have to change in order to succeed at the next level.

Some people learn and grow, but most people continue relying on what got them there and stagnate.

Add to this, the fact that many lower level jobs can be brute forced… You can absolutely get by working harder not smarter. But as you move up the rungs you have to reverse that mindset. It becomes less about hard work and more about efficiency, creativity, and leadership.

Boiled down into a sentence:

The skills required to succeed at the next level are not the skills that got you to where you are today.

Peter’s Diet Principle

This is exactly why most people put the weight back on after a successful period of weight loss. (It’s also the same reason why lottery winners go broke.)

If you don’t take the time on your journey to build the skills you’ll need at the end of it, your journey is going to end in failure.

If you white knuckle your way through the process, the results are going to be temporary. If the plan is to sprint to the finish line so you can go back to doing what you were doing before, your’e going to have to run the same race all over again very soon.

Learn how to be more efficient. What are the 20% of things that deliver 80% of the results? How can you get them done in less time?

Spend the time to build habits that automate the easy stuff. That will free up your time and energy to focus on the hard things.

Renting Success

Willing yourself through hardship is admirable. It’s a skill that can take you pretty far in life. But it’s choosing to play the game on a harder setting, and it definitely won’t lead to sustainable results in the gym.

I’ll say again, the skills and habits that make for fast weight loss:

Depriving yourself of food you like
Pushing through painful workouts that suck

Are not the skills & habits that will allow you to keep the weight off for a meaningful amount of time.

The good news though, is that these skills are MUCH easier to develop. They are on the work smarter not harder side of the hard work matrix. Losing weight, going to the gym, eating healthier, etc. None of these things have to be a suffer fest.

A few of my clients have had massive success recently just doing the following:

Eating a high protein breakfast
Batch prepping protein for lunches that week.
Going for more walks
Looking for and being aware of stress triggers in their life.
Not punishing themselves for mistakes or disappointing days/weeks

Simply bringing awareness to what they’re eating, how much they’re moving, and what events in life tend to trigger unhealthy behaviors, they have experienced life changing transformations.

The Guilt Failure Paradox

Stop me if this sounds familiar:

You go on a diet or start at the gym. It’s going amazing. You’re losing weight, getting in shape, crushing it. Then something happens. You tweak your knee and miss a few days or you go on vacation and it completely throws off your routine and before you know it it’s been weeks since you’ve tracked food or gone to the gym.

You feel guilty and embarrassed and frustrated. Maybe next month.

In our minds the cause and effect is this:

Failure in the gym → Feeling Guilty & Defeated → Because we suck

You failed. Now you feel guilty right?

Wrong.

Missing a few workouts or going off the rails on your diet doesn’t really matter. In fact it’s completely normal. It’s really hard to get back into the swing of things when you get back from vacation. I’m still not back to my pre Croatia routine.

Oh well, as long as you trend in the right direction you cannot miss. You WILL get there eventually. Unless…

You allow guilt to derail you.

The problem was never the missed workouts or the indulgent meals. It would be silly to think you’re never going to miss another workout or never have delicious food again. The problem was the guilt. Because the true cause and effect looks like this:

Feeling Guilty & Defeated → Giving up on our workout & diet plan

It’s not your discipline or lack of willpower. It’s the guilt you feel when you mess up. Eliminate the guilt and you’ll eliminate the drive to quit. Don’t avoid guilt and disappointment by giving up or setting your sights lower, eliminate it by accepting that you’re not perfect and striving instead, for better.

I think you would be shocked how far from perfect your diet can be and still lead to amazing results. Literally anything better than what you’re doing now will elicit improvement.

Audit where you are today and make 1-2 changes that result in a 10% improvement. Once that becomes the new normal and you’re doing these new changes without even thinking about it, do it again.

It’s really that simple.