David Goggins on limiting beliefs, Jack Dorsey on getting ideas out of your head, and an email from Steve Jobs

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: David Goggins on limiting beliefs

“Sadly, most of us give up when we’ve only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. Even when we feel like we’ve reached our absolute limit, we still have 60 percent more to give!

That’s the governor in action! Once you know that to be true, it’s simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance, letting go of your identity and all your self-limiting stories, so you can get to 60 percent, then 80 percent and beyond without giving up.

I call this The 40% Rule, and the reason it’s so powerful is that if you follow it, you will unlock your mind to new levels of performance and excellence in sports and in life, and your rewards will run far deeper than mere material success.

The 40% Rule can be applied to everything we do. Because in life almost nothing will turn out exactly as we hope.

There are always challenges, and whether we are at work or school, or feeling tested within our most intimate or important relationships, we will all be tempted to walk away from commitments, give up on our goals and dreams, and sell our own happiness short at some point.

Because we will feel empty, like we have no more to give, when we haven’t tapped even half of the treasure buried deep in our minds, hearts, and souls.”

Source: Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

2: Jack Dorsey on getting ideas out of your head

“I found myself very early on thinking about something - like this early idea for Twitter - and saying to myself, “I could build this.”

And then you start thinking, “Well, I could really start doing this if only X - if I had this person, or if this technology existed, or if this happened, or this happened.”

What I realized I was doing is I was constantly making excuses for not working on it. And then the window had passed, and I couldn’t do anything.

I think it’s really, really important to write it out, or to draw it out, or to code it. But you need to get it out of your head.

The reason you have to get it out of your head is you need to be able to see it on a surface that is not in your mind. Once you can see it, and once you can step back from it, then you can also decide, “This pass is my filter. This pass is my constraint.”

The sooner you can do that, the more momentum you have around it. You can really decide if you want to commit to it and work on it more, or put it on a shelf for a later date.

The realization that I think everyone needs to have about that latter option — putting it on the shelf — is that you can come back to it. It will surface again in another piece of work or another idea at some point in your life.

Having that ability to close off a chapter and move on is really, really important. You can’t have all these open threads. That’s what I realized I was doing.”

Source: Jack Dorsey: Becoming a Better Storyteller

3: An email from Steve Jobs

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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