The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Concentrate the energy.
Fantastical grandiosity will make you flit from
one fantastic idea to another, imagining all the accolades and attention
you’ll receive but never realizing any of them. You must do the
opposite. You want to get into the habit of focusing deeply and
completely on a single project or problem. You want the goal to be
relatively simple to reach, and within a time frame of months and not
years. You will want to break this down into mini steps and goals along
the way. Your objective here is to enter a state of flow, in which your
mind becomes increasingly absorbed in the work, to the point at which
ideas come to you at odd hours. This feeling of flow should be
pleasurable and addicting. You don’t allow yourself to engage in
fantasies about other projects on the horizon. You want to absorb
yourself in the work as deeply as possible. If you do not enter this state
of flow, you are inevitably multitasking and stopping the focus. Work
on overcoming this.
This could be a project you work on outside your job. It is not the
number of hours you put in but the intensity and consistent effort you
bring to it.
Related to this, you want this project to involve skills you already
have or are in the process of developing. Your goal is to see continual
improvement in your skill level, which will certainly come from the
depth of your focus. Your confidence will rise. That should be enough
to keep you advancing.
Maintain a dialogue with reality.
Your project begins with an idea, and
as you try to hone this idea, you let your imagination take flight, being
open to various possibilities. At some point you move from the

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planning phase to execution. Now you must actively search for
feedback and criticism from people you respect or from your natural
audience. You want to hear about the flaws and inadequacies in your
plan, for that is the only way to improve your skills. If the project fails
to have the results you imagined, or the problem is not solved, embrace
this as the best way to learn. Analyze what you did wrong in depth,
being as brutal as possible.
Once you have feedback and have analyzed the results, you then
return to this project or start a new one, letting your imagination loose
again but incorporating what you have learned from the experience.
You keep cycling endlessly through this process, noticing with
excitement how you are improving by doing so. If you stay too long in
the imagination phase, what you create will tend to be grandiose and
detached from reality. If you only listen to feedback and try to make
the work a complete reflection of what others tell you or want, the
work will be conventional and flat. By maintaining a continual
dialogue between reality (feedback) and your imagination, you will
create something practical and powerful.
If you have any success with your projects, that is when you must
step back from the attention you are receiving. Look at the role that
luck may have played, or the help you received from others. Resist
falling for the success delusion. As you now focus on the next idea, see
yourself back at square one. Each new project represents a new
challenge and a fresh approach. You might very well fail. You need the
same level of focus as you had on the last project. Never rest on your
laurels or let up in your intensity.