Strugglers and Smugglers

The way I see it, there are Strugglers and Smugglers.

I’m not good at a great many things.

I’m ter­rible at sav­ing money. I’m also ter­rible at going to the gym reg­u­larly, stick­ing to strict diets, wak­ing up early, writ­ing on the same pro­ject every day, com­pil­ing time reports. The list goes on and on.

So what, you ask. Lots of people would say the same thing. 

Am I just anoth­er entitled asshole for not want­ing to do the things that I find to be boring? 

Or worse — am I just a slack­er who lives under the illu­sion that I’m some­how too spe­cial for mono­ton­ous work?

During one of my pro­cras­tin­a­tion ses­sions, I came up with this the­ory: there are Strugglers and there are Smugglers.

Let me explain:

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

In my mind, a suc­cess­ful per­son is thriv­ing mainly due to their habits. They have an almost hero­ic amount of self-dis­cip­line, they have their eyes firmly fixed at their tar­gets, and they go after them fiercely yet patiently. One inch at a time.

“Successful people got their shit together.”

Well, for 40 years now, I haven’t had my shit togeth­er at all.
Does this make me, like, unsuccessful?

At 40 years old, I’ve adop­ted a new way of look­ing at success.

Here’s the rab­bit hole I decided to go down:

I’m not actu­ally “unsuc­cess­ful.” But I cer­tainly don’t “have my shit togeth­er.” How does this work?

Then, a little bit deep­er down the rab­bit hole:

I struggle a lot, but for whatever reas­on, it’s as if the struggle with the struggle itself isn’t in my wheelhouse. 

Then, a little bit deep­er down the rab­bit hole:

It all seems very much like a Pareto prin­ciple thing: If I “struggle with the struggle” for 80% of my time, it still only yields 20% of the pos­it­ive results.

Then, a little bit deep­er down the rab­bit hole:

To get by, I do things to cope with every­day struggles, like writ­ing this blog. I always feel guilty about it, simply because it feels so good.

Then, a little bit deep­er down the rab­bit hole:

However, the things I do seem to yield 80% of the pos­it­ive res­ults. So, there we go with the Pareto prin­ciple again.

And, at the bot­tom of the rab­bit hole:

It seems that I should be doing less of what typ­ic­ally makes oth­er people more suc­cess­ful and more of what makes me more successful.

What’s this all about? Why is everything counter-clock­wise down here?

Strugglers and Smugglers

Most suc­cess­ful people seem to be great Strugglers, yes. But maybe not all of them? 

Maybe some suc­cess­ful people are suc­cess­ful for oth­er reas­ons rather than “hav­ing their shit together”?

My hypo­thes­is is this:

There might be a sub­set of suc­cess­ful people who can­’t help them­selves but focus on doing things that no one is ask­ing for right now. They sneak their stuff out in the wild to see what happens.

Allow me to call them Smugglers:

To smuggle is to ship a con­stant stream of nov­el con­tent, nov­el ideas, and nov­el solutions. 

As opposed to the Strugglers:

To struggle is to do all the things you’re sup­posed to do even though it’s hard.

The Pareto Principle of Smuggling

Since I encountered the Pareto prin­ciple down in that rab­bit hole, why not go all-in?

Out of suc­cess­ful people, 80% are Strugglers, and 20% are Smugglers.

We can­’t all struggle all the time, and we can­’t all smuggle all the time.

Since Strugglers will get 80% of their res­ults from 20% of their struggles, they should find a bal­ance of 80% strug­gling and 20% smug­gling.

Since Smugglers will get 80% of their res­ults from 20% of their smuggles, they should bal­ance 80% smug­gling and 20% struggling.

Of course, this whole line of thought could be 100% nonsense.

But what if there’s a hint of truth to this? 

I’ve tried to shift from 80% struggle to 20% and do the oppos­ite for smuggling.

And, I could­n’t be hap­pi­er about the results.

The Benefits of Being a Smuggler

By accept­ing myself as a Smuggler, I’ve encountered sev­er­al stag­ger­ing benefits:

Since smug­gling, at least for me, yields 80% of the pos­it­ive res­ults, I now get sig­ni­fic­antly more and bet­ter results.

I get so much energy from 80% smug­gling that the remain­ing 20% of strug­gling now feels like a sooth­ing breeze on a sunny day in the park.

I’m now less hard on myself, which makes me hap­pi­er, which yields even more pos­it­ive results.

Pretty cool, right? 

This shift in mind­set, how­ever non­sensic­al, seems to be work­ing well for me. 

How does it work daily?

How to Smuggle Successfully

Here are a few prac­tic­al examples of how smug­gling works for me:

I find to-do lists suf­foc­at­ing, so I keep them to an abso­lute min­im­um. Instead, I use “have-done-lists” to doc­u­ment the things I ship dur­ing a day. The more I send because I want to, the more energy I get.

If I feel down some­how, I take a break and cre­ate some­thing nov­el. For instance, a cli­ent could sud­denly get a white­pa­per with a detailed solu­tion to a prob­lem they did­n’t even know they had.

I pair up with tal­en­ted Strugglers, people who get lots of energy from abso­lutely crush­ing their to-do lists but who might get anxious about uncer­tain­ties. We can share the load while boost­ing each oth­er with energy.

I intro­duce nov­elty to oth­er­wise typ­ic­al struggle-type tasks. For instance, in the gym, I bring a note­book and chal­lenge myself to devel­op ten excit­ing ideas dur­ing every workout. 

Could this idea apply to your life in any way?
I hon­estly don’t know. 

For sure, this could very well be the most non­sensic­al art­icle I’ve ever written. 

Still, I just had to ship it.

Update: I did a per­son­al­ity test called the Big Five Aspects Scale. Given my out­land­ish the­ory above, the res­ults sure was interesting.