I believe I have experienced a rare & fundamental shift in identity, and I believe it is for the better in my life at this point. Up until about a month ago, my identity as far as achievement goes was overwhelmingly that of a strategist. I would always love to think my way to achieving great results by crafting improved strategies to be executed. However, this may have been fundamentally changed this past month to something new for me, which would be an identity of production.

Identity Construction in April 2010

This past month, in April 2010, I experienced a shifting in mindset over a period of a couple weeks’ time that ultimately hit the point of a shift in my identity. Before this past month, I was going along just fine, living life, building my ventures & projects, and looking for the next big thing to engage. However, for reasons I don’t know, I started to question some of the fundamentals of my current path & approach in life. Not only did I begin to find a lot more personal meaning in effective action-based production of results, I also began to not believe in my current likely success with anything other than what I am truly committed to personally. On the morning of April 11th, this entire process came to a tipping point of what I think is a fundamental identity shift towards this concept of production.

Militant Production Identity

What I mean by the term “production” is finished product work. You could imagine a factory that is driving itself to produce more & more finished product units of whatever it makes. Now think of yourself personally as a little factory pumping out more & more units of finished product work that is relevant to your life. To engage in this mindset & activity day after day, typically takes a higher amount of energy & mental performance, at least for me. It is like becoming a machine with a focus on finished product work in your life. Compare this to strategically thinking about your work or doing your work without a focus on consistently pushing forward your production at a high rate. A mindset of production is in action and consciously pushing forward towards the end result of the task or project.

We all engage in this production at times, and some do so frequently. Not often for me though. I’ve always primarily been a strategist. My natural mindset is to think about solutions. Now, since a lot of my work is strategy work, that can potentially be production in itself, however, I’m more so talking about production with functional work tasks, like writing a document, building a website, making phone calls, etc, where there is a direct external action & result.

I’ve had fleeting mindsets present themselves in the past that were very similar to this one, such as Raw Financial Achievement, however, this feels different. This doesn’t feel like an energized whirlwind state of mind that just came over me. This was built out of logical & emotional shifts over a couple weeks’ time. I now fundamentally believe that militant production will advance me much further in life at this point and so it feels like I’ve had a real shift in identity towards this. I deeply feel like this is what I must do, that I will get further, and that I have a fundamentally increased appreciation for production. It feels as though I have more positive emotional connection to the process of implementing within this identity, versus not much at all with a mindset of raw achievement. I’ve also let this mindset sit for a couple weeks so far. It is still strong and my production is noticeably up due to it.

Strategic Options Plateau

I was born a natural strategist with how my mind works and I’m also a professional strategist within my strategy firm that I operate. So, I still very much believe in the power of strategy. In fact, I still believe that strategy is probably by far the highest leverage component of human achievement, especially with big goals & ample resources. However, part of being a great strategist is having a great capacity to understand the underlying nature & function of things.

Well, I believe I’ve hit a strategic plateau within my life which was a big catalyst for this militant production identity shift. A fundamental limit within my life right now is my personal willingness to take on certain types of opportunities & plans of action. With some of these options, they actually consist of much better strategic opportunities for me. It isn’t that I’m ultimately unwilling under any circumstances, however, I finally feel as though it is very firm that I will not predictably pursue them at this point. Along with helping to catalyze this identity shift towards production, this realization simultaneously served to really sharpen my current focus in life as well as take some pressure off of my mind to continuously consider alternate paths.

Since I now feel like there is only a very limited, yet still powerful, direction to proceed in at this point, with regards to achievement in my life, I am now focusing solely on that from a militant production mindset. I’m always open to strategic alternatives, but I’m not pursuing them, even mentally, at this point. This strategic plateau is what I think drove the nail in the coffin for my recent militant production identity shift.

My Sharpened Focus

I figured out that I’m only really committed to the areas of business building & my personal brand within my life right now, so these areas are where my focuses lie.

Here are my sharpened focuses to engage in militant production with…

Here are my basic plans of production with these sharpened focuses…

So that is it for me. I don’t see much else going on at this point when it comes to my achievement. I don’t want to spread myself too thin, so this feels like enough.

Overcoming Lack of Diligence

My biggest enemy that will very well challenge the implementation of this militant production identity shift will be my personal diligence constraint that I haven’t yet successfully beat. However, I have confidence in the power of this recent shift in identity towards production. Production is very much tied to diligence, so it may be that I’ve installed a permanent upgrade in diligence along with this identity. I’ve certainly noticed an upswing in my productivity lately with this. My best bet is to stay in action and in the mindset of production as much as I can at this point. Doing so will help condition it into a habitual pattern that I can build off of. It really helps that I am often able to bike outside in warm weather and work around the city in different spots to maintain more positivity & momentum while working. I’m very focused on anchoring this identity & mindset now.

*****

Overall, I am happy about this shift in identity to that of militant production. It is now my duty to perform on it and extract the great benefits that it can bring in life. The best way that I can proceed in doing that is by anchoring the mindset more deeply by staying in a habit of productive action throughout the majority of each day. I feel focused & ready to really commit to this process and build within this framework.

I like the thought of imagining myself as a manufacturing factory and the work I’m producing as finished units of product coming off of a conveyor belt. The notion is to not stop producing more & more or else all hell will break loose!