Life rewards Action, not Intelligence | Conor Neill | Leadership

life rewards action not intelligence life rewards action not intelligence took me a few years growing up to really learn this I think U my sense in school was I did quite well in exams just through intelligence without having to do a lot of work and for me when I was quite young I I valued intelligence over action I think one of the dangers is is smart people that the smarter you are the better you're EXP excuses the more accomplished you are in talking yourself out of taking action in proving to yourself that every action that

you could take is too small too meaningless and not worth it and George Leonard who uh brought uh jiujitsu from Japan to to the US one of the things he said is absolutely you cannot do everything but you can do one thing and another and another and that's the way you make massive progress in life doing one thing and another and another this idea that life rewards action not intelligence this YouTube channel very often I sit down and think you know these ideas they're not particularly deep or wise but what makes this channel grow what

makes you come and connect is I guess the ideas aren't terrible but I show up and I share them and the the matter that you show up and try and act week after week month after month year after year uh with a little bit of intelligence you start to get better and better and better you start to become more articulate so this thing even if the action is poor action you're going to learn something from it and and it's so easy to talk yourself out of action but it's so important to remember that life life

rewards action not intelligence not smarts in your brain but action into the world and discipline is is necessary in our life in order to to generate consistent systematic action but I think until you measure something that matters you do not know if you're disciplined and and perhaps for me the time that I learned this most was when Esa my mentor here in the early days as a teacher at essay Brian leot would ask me if I would do some writing just write a few technical notes and months passed years passed and I just wasn't making

progress and I hired a writing coach and for one year I had a call every Wednesday with a writing coach and every call would begin with him asking one question how many words did you write this week and he pushed me to measure how many words I wrote each day how many words I wrote each week and early on it was very painful it felt like I was putting a lot of energy into writing but the actual number of words being produced day after day week after week was very low and it was only when

I really got this measure and made sure that I looked at this measure each morning each day each evening each week each session with my coach that I started to realize that so much of the effort was in my head and not turning into words on a page and it's only when you measure something that really clarifies whether you're getting the actions done that you start to realize whether you have discipline or not so be very careful in evaluating your Discipline Your Capacity to turn ideas into action by by some measure of whether you feel

like you're making an effort cuz your mind will cheat you into believing you're being really busy you're being really putting a lot of effort for me it was it was brutal the feeling in me was I was putting a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of energy into writing but those early weeks seeing that it was result in so few words being written videos you know make a video uh a video is a very clear measure of whether you finished something or not uh so again reminder this week life rewards

action not intelligence action leads you to grow leads you to engage with others action everything good in life happens when you're off the sofa and engaging with the world so my hope for you this week is is find a measure of something that matters pay attention to whether you're making progress on the actions that lead to that measure and look at what needs to happen in your discipline so that you value action above thinking or intending to take action so have a good one Connor here at Esa business school here in Barcelona teaching a three-day

program to a group of wonderful senior Executives this week have a great one thank you for your likes your comments your questions keeps me coming back making these videos have a good one