You know what you and I can bring to the table when we weren't born into a lot of money or a ton of opportunities and when we're not the smartest or the most talented? You and I, we can tap into something that apparently has become forgotten for the most part in our society today. Good old fashioned hard work. Listen to me very carefully when I say that that is your ability to even out the playing ground in every door that you walk through in life. That's something that you could always count on and I hope that my story has been the embodiment of that and allows you to...
believe that foolhardily, right? I term it in the definition of compounding results when I speak to people, but it's the same light that people speak on compounding interest in economics. It's the idea that if you have daily inputs, that you will eventually have a massive return in the long term.
And it's the same idea in our society today. Most of us are incredibly unfocused because there's so many distractions. If you can show up every single day for yourself, Over the long term, your return will be massive.
So no matter what type of advantage that somebody has on you, if you can take control of your life right now and say enough is enough, you too with hard work have a great opportunity to have massive success in your life. And I know that you probably want to jump into working smart because there's so many tools around us that allow us to do that these days. But if you can't fundamentally work hard first, It won't make any difference when you can work hard and have that be such a pillar in your life and match that with working smart. Eventually, when you have the body of work to reverse engineer and to curate systems through, then you are going to become a powerhouse, right?
So I hope that this video can practically teach you how you can start working hard right now. My name is Xun Yu. If you're new to the channel, welcome.
If you're returning, welcome back. Hard work, I believe, tends to be this concept thrown out to us at a very young age where you're... not necessarily sure how to capitalize on that, right? Because there's just so much opportunity where we're thinking, okay, I want to do X, I want to do Y. So how can I fundamentally work hard so I can make a dream lifestyle of mine actually a reality?
I'm going to teach you in this video. Please give this video a thumbs up. Leave any questions that you have in the comments.
And of course, subscribe, sit back, relax, and enjoy the video. Number one, you need structure. And I know the two immediate responses that I get, which is one, that it's an individual attitude. that believes they already have that under wraps.
They're really good at scheduling. And then on the other side, we have somebody that thinks that they're too spontaneous or too creative or a structure makes them feel limited or restricted. And I would say both sides are likely wrong, right?
Scheduling and time blocking and curating a structure that is feasible and practical and allows you to enjoy the fruits of life is a skill. And most people haven't developed that just yet. So I would probably doubt that you are too good at curating structure because you probably wouldn't be watching this video in the first place if you already have that ability to do that. Then you have the other individual that feels that they're too restricted. And I would say actually structure is supposed to be liberating because it allows you to be present in every single moment.
When you're scheduled to work, you work hard. When you are scheduled to play, you play hard. When you are scheduled to be around your friends and family and your loved ones, you can be present in those moments without feeling guilty. That is structure. In the past year...
As my business has scaled and I've gotten a chance to connect with really successful people, that one commonality across the board is this ability to curate structure, where their Mondays through Fridays look awfully similar to their Saturdays and Sundays. And they might have their work from 9 to 5, but they're really good at curating structure either 6 to 9 before they go to work or 6 to 9 after their work, right? They have this ability to understand that they need structure in order to make the most of the finite time that we all have. If you are a student right now that has done nothing in the last three months to prepare yourself, whether it's for the school year or prepare you in different aspects of life, I'm talking directly to you. If you're somebody that now has nine to five that is working full time, but you have no structure from 6 to 9 a.m.
or 6 to 9 p.m. And then you're asking why you haven't been able to make progress towards your internal goals that are away from your work. This is why you lack structure. And this is your greatest opportunity right now immediately to start curating small blocks of time.
And I say small, I don't mean you have to block out every single minute of your day into work. No, even 30 minutes back in towards actual endeavors that you want to pursue means a lot because that's going to allow you to have compounded results in the long term if you can do it on a daily basis. So please take action on that. Number two, you need to be able to complete all three of these stages. research, execute, and refine.
I find a lot of individuals that are good at one or two of them, but you need the entirety of those three steps to have massive success and to be able to channel your work ethic into high utility areas of your life. So what I mean is anytime that you're given a project, anytime that you have this desire to develop a skill, you should naturally do those three steps. You should be somebody that can have a lot of preparation. You can utilize the resources around you and the tools around you. The internet is a massive one.
People around you are a massive one and to do the research necessary to curate a vision or a plan for yourself so you have direction. But you also need to be somebody that can execute, right? You need to get that tangible, practical experience by putting your plan into action.
And the third part is to refine. So if you're never analyzing your current work protocol, there's a lack of efficiency likely happening. And so what you want to get good at is researching and executing absolutely, but taking time to assess if what you are doing is actually efficient and getting you to where you want to be.
And if it's not, then you have to adapt the system to ensure that you can do that, right? So if you can get good at all three of those, whether you are in the academic sphere or you're in your work and professional sphere, or if you want to pursue a high value skill like content creation, whatever that looks like for you, you should be somebody that can do all three of those things immediately. And then you're going to be somebody that can actually take hold of your life and take action towards the goals that you have.
Number three, you need to be able to say no more. I'm talking directly to my people pleasers here, right? I know that we, and I say we because I used to be a massive people pleaser because we want to be liked. We have this tendency to say yes to everything. And then we're also affirmed with these thoughts when everyone tells us, take advantage of every opportunity around you and go and say yes to everything more, right?
Get outside of your comfort zone. Look, I understand that there's a time and place to say yes to things, but you have to ensure that they're high utility, right? You have to ensure that they actually are meaningful.
A lot of times what happens is we say yes to a lot of things and we have finite bandwidth and then we don't ever have time for the things that we want to do. So when you say no, it is not you being rude or being mean. It's actually a deeper yes to the things that you want.
It's saying yes to your goals. It's saying yes to those pillars of your life that are important to you. It's saying yes to those endeavors that you've committed to. And so having an opportunity to, when somebody gives you an opportunity to be grateful for it, to be respectful about it, and then tell them, hey. you know what?
This sounds like an awesome opportunity. Thank you so much for it. And I'm so happy that you thought of me for it. But I believe that I'm not necessarily in the right time and place to take action on this decision, but I'd love to stay in contact with you further ahead.
That's if in a more professional setting, but even around your friends, you should have an opportunity to speak to your friends and say, hey, I actually don't want to go out this weekend, right? I want to pursue X, Y, and Z thing. And it's going to take me a lot of time. And school's been a lot of busy work at this point. And I need my weekends to focus on this.
If they can't respect that. then there's a good indication that they don't want the best for you, right? So being able to create healthy boundaries is extremely important to your success. And that allows you to channel your effort and your work ethic into domains that matter.
Number four, you need to stay committed. And there's two important aspects of this that you need to do. The first one is break down your overarching macro goals into micro goals.
A lot of times I will speak to somebody and they'll tell me about their goals. And I say, all right, how can we make that a little bit more specific? How can we make that measurable?
How can we make that... actionable? How can we make that something that's realistic?
And how can we ensure that we have a timeframe? There's a great acronym called SMART. And I'd highly encourage you, there's a lot of resources online to tell you about SMART goals. But it's just that concept where if you can make your goals more fitting of these requirements, these specificities, you actually have the ability to make progress towards them and then track that progress.
And it makes you feel better and allows you to create momentum in the future. So if you have these overarching goals, that's great that you have some sort of direction. But you need to actually put that energy of yours on a daily basis into high utility, smaller micro goals so that you can have the ability to create momentum and confidence moving forward.
The second important thing that I would highly encourage you to have is some form of accountability system where if it's an accountability solely with yourself, having that journaling session on your daily basis is an important aspect. But if you have... a community around you to help you stay accounted for that can also be extremely powerful. So in our mentorship program in the winning formula for self-growth, we have just that.
So everyone does the June's four wins of the mental win, the physical win, the spiritual win, honest accountability win, and everyone can see each other's posts. And we ensure that everyone sticks to that on a daily basis. And it's okay that you falter, right?
We're human beings, but can you have that community around you to say, you know what, like, how are you going to respond to this, right? How can we ensure that we help you and provide you? any type of support that you need so that tomorrow doesn't look like today.
I think having that type of accountability group, accountability community can be tremendously powerful. So break down your micro goals into micro goals, have an accountability system, whether it's for yourself or whether it's with the entire community too. Number five, you simply will need to live.
differently. Everyone has to make sacrifices because of our finite time. The greatest privilege that a lot of us have is to choose those sacrifices, right? We have the opportunity to elect what is of importance to us.
And if you've never asked yourself, hey, why am I doing this? Or hey, why is this important to me? That's probably a really good first step. But you have the ability in this 24-hour bandwidth where, of course, you're going to have time for sleep and rest and, of course, your day-to-day responsibility.
But how do you spend that free time? Can you spend it in a manner that... is actually aligned to the lifestyle that you want to curate for yourself.
Because if you want to be a massively successful business owner, that doesn't happen accidentally. You need to have those daily inputs. And that requires an ability for you to say, I'm going to select my own sacrifices here.
So yes, maybe I am sacrificing some weekends out with my friends. Maybe I'm not partying as much as the other kids my age are. Perhaps I'm spending more time in the gym that other people aren't.
Maybe I'm skipping out on X, Y, and Z thing because I have X, Y, and Z thing that's more important to me. You have to select those sacrifices and... if you choose to ignore my message here, I promise you that society will choose that sacrifice for you. That's like the worst situation to be in.
Then you have no freedom and choice, right? Everyone around you right now, if they're acting like the 99% and you are trying to behave in a new way right now, you want to be the few. You want to be somebody that is working towards your goals and making things happen.
You're going to constantly be surrounded by people that are going to judge you or going to look down upon you and say that you're taking things too seriously. They're going to call you boring, but guess what? You don't want to be like them, right?
Be careful to filter out that noise. And I know it might be hurtful at times, especially if it's from people that are closest to you. And I've had that experience, but in reality, you are choosing your sacrifices and your sacrifices now will dictate your future.
So I promise you all this hard work is going to be worth it. Another aspect to that is that there's probably going to be a requirement to you. working odd hours, right? If you have these daily responsibilities, whether you're a student or whether you are working professional, a lot of your coworkers and a lot of your peers aren't necessarily going to be waking up that early because they don't have that structure. They don't have this desire to work towards their goals, but sometimes you might have to, maybe you have to wake up a little bit earlier than everyone else.
and then start working right away. Or perhaps you're working a little bit later into the night, or perhaps you're utilizing your lunchtime for something else. Like there's going to be these odd hours that again, people are going to look at you weirdly about, but that's okay.
That's probably a good sign that you're doing something right. Because you don't want to just mindlessly go about your days, just focus on your daily responsibility of school or work and think that that's going to actually relinquish into a life that you want. No, you have to go out there and make the life that you want out of the other times in your days. I've shown that, right? I was a biomedical engineering major, getting both my bachelor's and master's simultaneously with a neuroengineering degree, writing a major publication and going ahead and working on a nine-month-long project with Novartis and developing medical device and going ahead and doing these internships with GlaxoSmithKline and West Pharmaceuticals.
done these things, right? But at the same time, I was creating content every single day. Like I never missed a day.
At the same time, I was working on my business. At the same time, I was working on curating products. At the same time, I was curating a social media marketing agency where I was helping companies develop their presence with short form medium channels, right? Like I did that at the same time because those things were more aligned to where I wanted to eventually go. Now I'm in a place where I have all this opportunity because I listened to all of the things that I just told you here.
So that's going to wrap up the video. Working hard is tremendously important. But hopefully now you have practical ways to think about this, whether it's mental models and ability to apply this in real time. And I truly believe you're going to have massive, massive success. And I'm just excited to witness it alongside you.
If you have any questions at all, please leave them in the comments below. Give this video a thumbs up and of course, subscribe. Until next time, please take care. And I love you guys so much.
I'll see you all at the top.