Something that I hear all the time from people who have achieved great things in life, be it in sports, art or business, is that everything started happening for them after they decided to go all in.
This always did more to make me feel down and powerless than it did to fire me up. I would think “It must be nice to have the time to go all in on something”.
I felt like I missed the boat. Going all in on a passion project looked to me like something you can only do in your early 20s, when you don’t have a mortgage or haven’t committed to a career and you have limited responsibilities. I didn’t have that kind of focus in my early 20s so it must be too late for me.
I am great at generating excuses that help to justify staying in my comfort zone and feeling good about it.
The way I saw it, going all in was simple, it meant spending all of your time and energy towards one goal. It’s a bit more nuanced than that in reality.
Going All In Is A Mindset
The go-all-in mindset doesn’t mean dedicating 100% of your time and effort to one single thing. It means that when you commit to something, you will give 100% effort and dedication to that thing while you are doing it. You will hold yourself accountable to this commitment and do whatever it takes, with the time that you have, to bring that goal to fruition. It’s about quality of effort more than quantity of effort.
All in is going to look different to an Olympic athlete than it does for a tech startup founder. It will look different to a writer than it does to a musician or a middle manager from a big firm.
People who are extremely effective in any given field have gone all in towards it in their own way with the resources that they had. They don’t focus on all the obstacles that stand in the way.
Go All In Mindset Exemplified
The real-life example that helped me internalize this concept is Nick Bare.
Nick is a US Army veteran that started a sports nutrition and supplement company from his apartment in his 20s while he was still on active duty. He has since grown that company into a multi-million dollar business that employs a team of passionate workers. He is also a YouTuber, a dedicated husband and an impressive specimen of an athlete, running a sub-3-hour marathon, competing in iron man triathlons and 100-mile trail races while maintaining a strong physique that is atypical in endurance sports. In short, he does many things very well. It’s in Nick’s DNA to go all in.
How can someone like Nick perform so well at all these things? He definitely has his natural gifts, as do all of us. He also has an incredible work ethic. I would argue that cultivating a go-all-in mentality amplifies his attributes and brings him to the next level. His ability to commit to a project and execute it to his highest ability with the time that he has available allows him to crush whatever he takes on.
He has many responsibilities and obligations with his family and his company but he still manages to go all in on his athletic goals because they are important to him. He plans his objectives, commits to the process and holds himself accountable to stick with it until he reaches his objective.
He treats all of his goals, not only his business, like a professional.
Act Like A Professional
Acting as a professional would in any arena you are trying to conquer is a great roadmap to going all in. I like using the professional marathon runner as a model for this mindset.
A pro marathoner runs a lot. It is common for them to run 100 miles or more per week during their peak training blocs. That adds up to around 12 to 15 hours of running per week. Does this mean that if I run 15 hours per week for a year I will be at an elite marathoner level of performance? Of course not.
The pro marathoner begins his year of training by setting targets for herself throughout the year. She will then most likely seek help from a coach to craft a detailed training plan, working in reverse from the most important meet of the year so that she can be her best self on race day.
The pro runner will then show up to each of the individual workout with the intention of executing it perfectly to get the desired result. She won’t run too fast on slow days and she will go all out on speed days. She will consistently make the small, incremental progress typical of the professionnal.
In reality, each workout most likely starts the night before. She will nourish her body with the right food, spend some time doing active recovery, cross-training and hydrating properly.
The pro runner knows that being an elite marathoner is not just about showing up for those 12 to 15 hours per week of training and going through the motions. Being a champion runner is much more than that. It is completely dependent on the commitment to all these aspects of running that happen in the background and will allow her to show up to each workout, and ultimately to the race, prepared and ready to execute at the highest level.
How can you go all-n, aka. act like a professional in your own life?
If you have been coasting in your career and want to progress to the next level, think of the marathoner. Simply showing up physically each day will not get you there. Can you find a coach or mentor that’s gone where you are going and can help to shed some light on the path you need to follow? Are you taking the necessary actions to make sure that you show up each day ready to give your best effort?
On the flip side, going all in on your career doesn’t mean that it has to soak up all of your time. It means that you will use the time that you already dedicate to it more effectively. Working late just to show your boss that you are committed won’t get you anywhere unless you are doing something of value during that time.
The same goes for passion projects outside of our day job. If there is something you have been meaning to do, give it an honest try. Don’t just dabble. What would a professional do with the time that you have available to make that thing happen? Do that. Go all in.
It’s Scary But Worth It
It’s scary to move from an excuse mindset to a go-all-in mindset. I struggle with it daily.
If we carry a dream around long enough but never really give it an honest try, it’s easy to comfort ourselves and believe that we had what it takes to achieve it all along. We simply chose not to go for it. There is a reassuring comfort to this narrative. We tell ourselves “I had the talent to do it, I just chose to prioritize something else but I know I had what it takes”.
This excuse mindset allows us to stay in our comfort zone because it doesn’t have quite the same painful bite as trying your hardest and failing. Especially when taking on dreams that are rooted at the core of our identity.
Saying “I know that I could have done this, I just never gave it an honest try” is much easier to process than “I really thought I had what it takes, I gave it everything and it wasn’t enough. I failed”.
This excuse based narrative has been my default for most of my life. Too afraid to fail, I cut myself short by not really trying.
The irony of the excuse mentality is that it acts like band-aid. It protects your ego right now but does nothing for future you.
Failure is a gift disguised as a slap in the face. It feels like crap in the moment, but it’s the first stepping stone to growth and learning. Professionals fail constantly but it doesn’t destroy them. They take the necessary time to grieve a lost goal, they analyze what they could have done differently and apply that knowledge moving forward.
Multiple studies by reputable sources such as The Guardian, Forbes and Today.com have asked elderly people what they regretted the most in their lives. This question has been asked time and time again. A recurring theme that shows up near or at the top of the list is something along the lines of “Not having the courage to live a life according to my own rules”.
When it is our turn to be grey and old and we have reached the winter of our lives, we will feel much more regret over the things that we had always been interested in but didn’t have the courage to pursue. We will regret the “What ifs” much more than the “been there, done that”.
The time is now. Pick a thing and give it an honest try. When you fail, take a minute, analyse what happened, correct course and keep going. You might even find that consistently failing at something that’s important to you is more satisfying than succeeding at something you are indifferent about.