Grit, Talent, and Hard Work Are Meaningless Without This One Skill

Most people don't fail, they just run out of time.

Oct 08, 2021

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had trouble paying attention, sitting still, and controlling my impulsive behavior.

I have ADHD, and it impacts my whole flubbin’ life.

When you’re hyperactive and inattentive, your greatest enemy is the clock. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how often you show up, or how gritty you are if you can’t manage the time in front of you. This is because qualities alone don’t impact your experience, the actions caused by these qualities do. When you’re petrified by procrastination, your experience will always be limited.

There’s one skill that I’ve cultivated since I was 10 years old that helped me become a pretty high-level Jiu-Jitsu athlete, a decent internet writer, and now, suddenly, a business owner all at the same time.

That skill is time management, and this is how you can cultivate it at a world-class level.

I used to be a serial athlete

When I was in middle school, I loved sports more than anything in the world.

I thought that becoming a good athlete would make me admirable to peers, girls, and my parents, so I became obsessed with becoming a successful athlete. I studied the behaviors of top athletes, analyzed their routines, and even copied their mannerisms. I was 10, but I was a 10-year-old on a mission to do something remarkable in competitive sports.

Becoming a high-level athlete was (and still is) my magnum opus.

I was fixated on replicating the behavior of a successful athlete. I played every single sport my parents would allow, and on as many teams as were feasibly possible. I played soccer year-round, along with wrestling, baseball, basketball, football, and for a brief (but slow) moment, I ran track and field.

I should add that I was painfully average at all of it.

However, my skill level and my medals from middle school really aren’t important in the grand scheme of my personal development. I learned a few obvious life lessons from sports, like resilience, teamwork, and discipline, but the lifestyle that was required to play all those sports was what has really helped set me apart as a young adult.

Ultimately, I learned how to do a lot of things at once.

In the time that I was playing all these sports, along with balancing school (if I had any C’s on my report card I wasn’t allowed to play anymore), and social life, I needed to have insane time management skills at just 10-years-old. I had to learn to sink or swim if I wanted to be a good athlete.

Specialization is not the move

When I was younger, a lot of parents in my area forced their children to choose one sport or activity and to focus on that one skill.

This is a common tactic used by competitive, helicopter parents because they want their children to become the very best at their chosen skill. Every parent wants their kid to be the first chair on the violin or the captain of the soccer team. The problem is, most research suggests that early specialization is a horrible thing for children. People want their children to be prodigies, and because of this, children quit their chosen activity by the time they turn 12.

I was lucky. My parents didn’t give a crap about my competition results.

Sure, they wanted me to do well, but they were very hands-off when it came to my youth athletic career. Even after watching me get pinned nearly 30 times during my 8th grade wrestling season, they never told me to quit, work harder, or “just keep trying”. I had to figure out the “game” of sport all by myself, and because of that, I now am able to apply this understanding to anything I do in life.

My parents supported me, but they didn't hold my hand.

Instead of telling me to quit during my torturous 8th grade wrestling season (I finished the season 4–28), my parents did the opposite. I wasn’t allowed to quit anything unless I had a good reason, and “I don’t like losing” or “this guy on my team is a jerk” is not a good enough reason to give up. My only option was to immerse myself in wrestling and figure out a way to get better.

As I’ve grown up, the lessons I’ve learned have also trickled into the other aspects of my life like work, relationships, and personal development.

Stop killing time

We don’t have 24 hours in a day.

Between sleeping, eating, commuting, work/school, and all of the other essential activities that take up the time of an average human being, we really only have around 2–3 hours per day to pursue our own growth (and that’s if you’re lucky). That isn’t very much time at all. So, why would you waste time by investing it poorly?

It’s called “killing time”, and it’s the bane of your existence if you want to be successful.

I’m not saying that every moment of the day has to be optimized (doing this is actually worse for you in the long run), but I am saying that what separates champions from the rest of the field is how their time (particularly their downtime) is spent. In highly competitive endeavors like martial arts or business, everyone is talented, everyone is working hard, and everyone is gritty.

What separates the best of us from the rest of us is healthy time management.

How I manage my time as an athlete

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is an individual sport, meaning that my training and my preparation for competitions are all in my hands.

It’s my job to study technique, show up to training, get my reps in, eat right, lift weights, and train my mind. I have a coach, but my coach is more of a mentor than an actual “guide”. He can’t do anything for me, he can only show me the way.

If I show up to compete and I’m underprepared, it’s no one’s fault but my own.

In order to approach training intelligently, it’s not enough to be disciplined. I have to text my list of training partners to ensure they come to training — nightly. I have to book my massage appointments so that I can avoid injury — weekly. I have to create and execute my training camp so that by the time the competition rolls around, I’m not just prepared, I’m peaking.

If I’m slacking during my downtime, this is shown through poor competition results.

Writing and work are no different. When it comes to writing and my freelance business, I’m not trying to peak every 4–6 weeks, but I still need to maintain a disciplined schedule so that I can get all of the things done that I need to do. I need to set aside time to write — daily. I need to set aside time to read — daily. I need to set aside time to do my financial reports — weekly. This all takes time. If I waste time, my work suffers, my business suffers, and the wasted time will trickle into my sports regimen as well.

It’s not just regimented work, but regimented analysis. The discipline is what follows. Discipline is nothing without time management and self-analysis.

Having a regimen is everything when it comes to success. If you look at the top writers on this platform, the top athletes in the world, or world-class entrepreneurs, there are a lot of variances. However, one thing remains constant across domains and skills: top performers manage their time incredibly well.

Closing thoughts

Between my 2 main endeavors (one physical and one mental), I have to allot most of my time during the day to work-related activities. That’s where the most important aspect of time management comes into play:

Balance.

Without balance, time management is just regimented hustle. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to hustle anymore, I want to own my time. If you own your time, you can develop the ability to truly own your life.

Time itself isn’t wealth, time is a tool. If you use the tool poorly, it’s meaningless.

Whether you’re looking to become a better writer, a more disciplined artist, or reach your athletic potential, hard work, grit, and discipline can only get you so far. Without the time management skills to properly schedule a life that allows you to do the tasks required to reach your goals, you won’t be much different than a hamster on a wheel.

If you can understand how to master your time, you will reach new heights in whatever you do.

The Only Book You Need to Become Wealthy, Happy, and More Peaceful

I’m currently nose-deep in The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen.

If you’ve never heard of Naval, well, first of all, you’re really missing out. Naval is the CEO and founder of Angel List, an early investor in Uber, Twitter, and OpenDNS, and he’s got one of the most insightful Twitter accounts in the world. When it comes to modern philosophers, there are few whose value rivals Naval’s.

I first heard Naval on Joe Rogan a few years ago, and I’ve since listened to him speak both on Tim Ferris’s podcast (episode 1 and episode 2) and others (like his own).

The “Navalmanack” is fascinating because Naval didn’t actually contribute to it himself. The book is based on the years of tweets, blog posts, and podcast interviews that Naval has been a part of. It’s not a “book”, it’s a resource of the ideas and philosophies of one of the most underrated philosophers alive today.

I highly recommend it.

Before you go, I just wanted to thank you for reading this edition of Who’s That? On the Mat?. I’ve got a lot of projects coming up, including my free ebook, 15 Ways to Learn Jiu-Jitsu Faster (everyone on this email list will receive a copy of it) coming out next Wednesday (10/13), along with one more ebook before the end of the year, and my first novel coming out in the first half of 2021.

In the meantime, if you’d like to support my work, I’d be thrilled if you purchased a Medium subscription using my referral code or if you shared this article with someone who you think would get value from it. :)

As always, if you enjoyed what you read, please share, tell your friends, or reshare the article from Medium. It helps me out a lot.

Wishing you the best,

—Chris

The Grappler's Diary

Discussion about this post