Vision & Drive: What Every Wildly Successful Person Has
Vision & Drive are two words I can’t get out of my head (er, more accurately, what they represent is what I can’t stop thinking about). I’m always mentally reverse engineering the most successful people I know, and trying to identify patterns in their behaviour I can apply to my own life for similar results.
These two concepts are ones I think are obvious when spelled out, but otherwise fly under the radar for most people.
What is vision?
I mean, sort of what it sounds like. It’s perception. But in the context of our discussion today, I take the concept of vision a lot farther. Here’s my definition.
Vision is the ability to perceive, on a large-scale, how things could be instead of how they are, in order to make things significantly better.
There’s a lot packed into that sentence, so allow me to dissect it a little for you.
Perceive - This is where it all starts. You have to imagine, consciously or subconsciously, something that doesn’t exist yet. You need to have imagination. For best results: lots of imagination.
Large-scale - Vision involves details, yes, but it’s about trying to harness massive undertakings. Vision isn’t scared of commitment (in fact, it’s partnered with it via drive).
Could be opposed to are - Vision doesn’t care about the trajectory of things currently, it only cares about what that trajectory might be if the opportunity isn’t squandered
Significantly better - We’re not talking about minor improvements, although there are places for those. This conversation is centred around exponential benefit.
What is drive?
Drive is Vision Part 2. It’s the necessary next-step to make things happen.
Drive is the unapologetic, authoritative perseverance to bring that vision to life, regardless of obstacles, external or internal.
Again, a lot to unpack.
Unapologetic - Drive might step on some toes. It’s loud and clear that you want to go somewhere, and you’re going to get there. You’re not compromising on what you want to do just because it might make some people uncomfortable.
Authoritative - Another way you could describe this is almost “steadfast” or “headstrong.” What I mean is that you’re implementing your drive without timidity: you are confident in yourself and your plan and you’re about to make it happen.
Perseverance - The word “drive” is synonymous with perseverance in many ways. It’s about staying the course you lay out for yourself.
Vision to life - All the ideas in the world don’t matter if they’re never brought to fruition. Things that only exist in your head can’t benefit anyone but yourself. We want tangible. We want finished. We want end product. If it’s only 99% of the way there, it’s not done.
Obstacles external or internal - Drive is not unsusceptible to challenge. It anticipates it. It recognizes that those roadblocks are things that exist outside of ourselves in the real world, but very much also things that exist within ourselves: our character flaws, downfalls, Achilles heels.
These concepts are sounding sort of cosmic right now, but they are very much grounded in the real world with practical benefits.
Walt Disney
Walt Disney is one of my personal heroes: not because he was this amazing, moral guy (you judge anyone in the 1950s by today’s standards and no one passes, but I digress), but he’s one of my heroes because the man had endless amounts of vision that have impacted billions of people across the globe with his work.
I’ll butcher the details, but the idea of Disneyland came out of Walt taking his grandkids to an amusement park that he found underwhelming. The spark of an idea was created when he had his grandkids on a carousel and only half of the horses moved up and down when the ride was in motion. He had a thought, “What if there was an amusement park that grandkids and grandparents alike both enjoyed, where every horse on the carousel moved as the ride was in motion?”
To me, that’s vision. Most people would’ve stopped at, “Oh man. It’s a bummer this amusement park is so lame.” Walt was so taken by the idea of (what would eventually become) Disneyland, he pursued it until it came to life.
Walt Disney had so much vision it’s not even funny. The man was an idea factory. But vision alone isn’t all there is to it.
The man didn’t just imagine a bigger, better, more colourful world: he created it. He took actionable steps towards a vision he had and ultimately, one day, he arrived. That’s drive.
The fact that Walt Disney had both things in spades—vision and drive—is something that boggles my mind. People like him are very rare, and it’s no wonder their legacy lives on (and will continue to live on) for decades and decades after their death.
People like Walt Disney didn’t just settle for the way things are. They didn’t just stick to thinking inside the box. They went a mile outside the box and got it done.
Why would anyone want to possess vision & drive?
Imagine with me a future in which the following things are true:
You make more money than you currently do (like, 25%+ more money) for the same amount of hours worked
You have more control over all aspects of your life, big and small
You are more respected at work, among your friends, your family, and towards yourself
You have more job security than you ever have
You have more manageable stress and pressure (inescapable realities of life)
You are, overall, a happier person
Want all of that for yourself? (Who doesn’t?!)
That’s the power of vision and drive to me. It might seem like a utopian dream to achieve all of those things, but I sincerely believe it’s possible for everyone. If you want it bad enough.
How does vision & drive translate to success?
Great question. Glad you asked.
It’s been my experience that people respond to authority—or determination—with respect and admiration. It takes someone equally strong to stand up to someone with vision and drive. At the very least, that person will see elements of themself in you, and respect it: even if they disagree with what you’re doing.
I have also found that when you present a well-prepared plan to someone, you are more likely to get what you want. If challenged on your plans, ask the question, “What’s your better idea?” Most of the time, people don’t have an answer, and you’ll be on your way. (Note: I’m not advising you be snarky or rude. We want to aim for authoritative and self-assured. There’s a nuance.)
If you have vision and drive, you also demonstrate that you’re a person who does what they say. This is less common among humans than we’d like to believe. This get-stuff-done perception earns you authority among your peers.
Lastly, a person of vision and drive, by definition, understands creating goals and action plans to achieve them. This, again, is less common among people than we’d like to think. This is how we end up with many of the things on my list in the last section. You can look at just about anything—money, job title, stress, happiness—and reverse engineer it; understanding the necessary steps that are between you and your goal.
One big barrier to vision & drive
There is a victim complex that runs absolutely rampant in our society. I believe it has for all of time (I think it’s a human condition). I vehemently oppose it.
Absolutely: sometimes you are driving along and get T-boned. That is not your fault.
But regardless of what cars hit us in life, it is up to us to learn to walk again. It is up to us to learn to drive again.
If we complain: what good does that do? Can we rewind time and stop the car accident? Absolutely not. So other than voicing our frustrations, why complain? It’s a mostly useless thing.
Take that (very real, justifiable) frustration of being T-boned and turn it into motivation to change the way things are. It is the only means to be productive after something out of your control has happened to you.
What we rarely want to realize is that, in many instances in life, we’re responsible for being T-boned. We’re experts at laying blame on other people. Or we compare: “Yes, I made a mistake, but it was small in relativity to the size of mistake that other person made.” Doesn’t matter. If you’re at fault, own it. Make a change.
Even if you are not at fault but you still act like you are, you benefit. You’re still the one that’s going to improve. And you’re building the tools for yourself to succeed the next time you’re T-boned.
The realities of vision & drive
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, otherwise everyone would already be doing it. Here’s what you need to anticipate (as eluded to in the definition of these two terms).
1. It’s friggin hard
Make no mistake: being able to imagine something incredible and uncreated involves brainpower. It involves creative combinations of seemingly-unrelated things to bring into reality something new. But the difficulty doesn’t stop at vision: drive is where the rubber meets the road. The difficulty of drive comes a little while after you get started; somewhere around the 15% or 20% through the project mark. You realize how much more you’ve bitten off than you realized, and you’re at a fork in the road: do you continue, or abandon ship? Continuing is going to be a slog. It’s going to be showing up even when the finish line is still far away. It’s why “perseverance” is such an important part of drive.
2. It’s more work than coasting
Here’s another reason you don’t see as many people with vision and drive: it’s a heck of a lot more work than just coasting along in the direction things are going. Worse than that, it’s a lot more work that (most likely) no one asked you to do. Vision and drive means you’ve got to be willing to bust your tail for something you know is going to be better on the other side.
3. It involves wisdom and experience
You gotta know which voices to tune out or turn up. There will be various people supporting and doubting you, it’s up to you to know what ones are worthy of your consideration, and what ones to ignore. There’s no way to determine this except though previous wisdom and experience. And maybe a bit of trusting your gut.
4. It requires both
Vision without drive is just a bunch of cool ideas. Drive without vision is like running full-tilt with your eyes closed. Both are dangerous for their own reasons. You can’t give up one for the other.
5. It’s the only way
I don’t know of any other way to succeed except by sheer dumb luck. But you can’t gamble on the stars aligning for everything in your life (in fact, you should never gamble on the stars aligning). Being a person with vision and drive, I believe, is non-negotiable for massive success.
What is the evidence of vision & drive?
Part of what’s hard about vision and drive is that there’s not a real clear way for me to teach you, “Hey! Here’s how to be better at imagining things / getting things done.” I mean, there sort of is a way, but any real advise will be so unique to you and how your brain works that generic advice isn’t going to be very useful.
Even understanding what works for me doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best advice for everyone else either. You sort of need to figure it out for yourself.
What I do know is that once you’ve figured it out, you can use the below metrics to see how successful you are. Someone with vision and drive will have the following things ring true:
1. You see how any project can be made better
Vision and drive, generally, shouldn’t be handcuffed to a single area of expertise. Now, wisdom would dictate that you shouldn’t be in charge of things you don’t understand, but you can almost intuitively recognize weaknesses and strengths and make adjustments accordingly.
2. You finish what you start, and what you start is good
Drive brings you to the finish line; it doesn’t drop you off part way. It also brings you to the finish line of the right race. If you are routinely executing on the things you have to do, and you’re completing them with excellence, there is at least a part of you that inhabits vision and drive.
3. You don’t need anyone else motivating you
Don’t get me wrong, we all need someone cheering us on at certain points in the journey, but by and and large, you operate independently. You own the entire process, you don’t depend on someone else to coax you along through the undertaking. You will get there on your own.
4. You don’t need excuses because you’re to blame—good or bad
You don’t make excuses because you get things done, or you step up to the plate when you don’t. You don’t look for embarrassing, cheap, crappy things to pin your failures on. You know that things happen because it mattered that they do, or they didn’t happen because it didn’t matter if they did.
5. You recognize patterns of success among unrelated things
You can connect the dots between things that don’t share a lot of commonalities on the surface. You can apply frameworks from other areas of your knowledge to different problems you’re facing. You use that to shortcut the process and devise a better plan while avoiding the potholes of previous shortcomings.
6. You make the people around you better
All ships rise with the tide, and the people around you will have their jobs or lives improved because of their association with you. You are inspiring to the people around you for your ability to imagine possibilities they never would’ve come up with, and make that thing a reality.
You’re paid according to the size of problem you solve
Here’s the last major thought I want to leave with you before we move onto the homework section: you are paid according to the size of problems you’re able to solve.
If a company has a gigantic problem (worth millions of dollars) and you hold the magic key to fix it, isn’t it reasonable to assume that they’re going to pay you a percentage of that value-add as justifiable compensation?
Similarly, if a single person has a relatively minor problem they need help solving, do you think they’re going to pay you a monumental salary for a negligible issue?
It seems obvious when you spell it out like that, but this principle tends to get lost in the mix when we’re thinking about our passions and current skillsets.
Mixing up passion and money
We focus so much on turning what we’re passionate about into a money-making machine that we rarely stop to ask ourselves, “Is what I’m passionate about really, truly, honestly hugely valuable to anyone other than me?”
The hard reality is: many times, no. With the advent of the internet you might have a better chance of finding that small fraction of a percentage of the population that finds it valuable and is willing to pay you accordingly, but this is much more luck and timing than it is planning and skill, in my experience.
To me, this principle is not a discouragement that I am only currently capable of solving a small problem. Instead, it’s an encouragement to think about how I can learn to solve bigger problems.
All of this can be summarized in another simple question that promotes action:
How can I become someone that solves big problems for the people that pay me?
If you can reverse-engineer this question and come up with an answer that the person who pays you can’t solve, I think you’re going to be on the path to earning more money. It’s really that simple.
This is one of the most valuable take-aways about vision and drive.
If you can become someone with enough vision and drive to solve truly big problems for the people that pay you, you are going to find all the success you could dream of.
Homework
If I’ve convinced you, in some way, to adopt a stronger sense of vision and drive, here are some self-reflection questions to get you going.
Between vision and drive, which one am I worse at? What specifically do I struggle with the most?
Who are some people around me that demonstrate vision & drive?
What do I think I could accomplish (monetarily, positionally, socially, emotionally, externally, internally) if I adopted more vision & drive? List every wild possibility.
What project (or area of my life) could use the most vision & drive right now?
When am I going to set aside time within the next 3 days to re-imagine making that project better and determine steps to get there?
Where am I mixing up passion and value?
What bigger problems could I begin solving to find more success in my career/life?
