How to Optimize your life and business systems

Step 26 - Belts, Suspenders, failing to fail, the Six Sigma Heartbeat and How to not crash your F-22

Imagine if you could lower the amount of mistakes you make in your life, how much better would your life be?

This step 26 of the 67 steps helps you figure out possible mistakes before they happen so you can better prepare.

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How to Optimize your life and business systems

Tai Lopez describes a scenario that happened between him and his mentor, Joel Salatin, where Tai asked Joel why he used a belt and a suspender.

Joel’s answer was simple and yet very tactical. He explained to Tai that there will be a time which the belt fails and most likely it will be at time that he needs it to work the most. However, the suspenders will be there to minimize the chances of the pants falling.

You see, in order to prevent mistakes you must think about what could happen so you can then create a system with no single point of failure!

Hence, number one key to minimizing failures is to never rely solely on one thing or one person. Expect that things and people will fail you but you will not fail yourself!

For example, let’s say you are a parent who usually depends on a baby sitter. Be sure to always have on two or more in your contacts so when you truly need a baby sitter, you will have more than one to count on.

Once you start expecting things to go wrong, chances are they never will. This occurs because once you materialize the idea of failure, your brain usually starts working on ideas to prevent it and that's how you can optimize your life and business systems and prepare for the future.

Plan for failure and they won't happen

So, key number two is to realize and materialize possible fails so you can plan ahead and prevent them from happening. This can be accomplished by utilizing the F-22 Pilot Exercise Technique (at least that is what Tai calls).

The exercise consists of describing three scenarios and creating a plan for each one. Let’s say you are a business owner of a start up company, this is how you would plan for your company’s future:

F-22 Pilot Exercise Technique

A - Best Case Scenario + Plan

Ex:What would you do with all the money once your company hit a great profit

B - Most Likely Case Scenario + Plan

Ex:How would you keep your company afloat considering all the competition

C- Worse Case Scenario + Plan

Ex: How would you come back up after a bankruptcy

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If you are all about being positive and want to discard all ideas of thinking about the worse case scenario, then you need to change the way you think.

Charlie Munger, the multimillion dollar investor, describes how he spent his life preparing for the worst and made him a lot happier.

The Six Sigma Level

Big companies are constantly thinking about the bad, that’s how they keep customers happy and items free of defects and mistakes.

Motorola, for example, uses the Six sigma Level to test their products. The Six Sigma level is a quality control tool that uses levels to analyze mistakes and defects.

This is how it works; the percentage represents the amount of mistakes and defects per million

Level 1 - 69%

Level 2 - 31%

Level 3 - 6.7%

Level 4 - 0.62%

Level 5 - 0.023%

Level 6 - 0.00034%

Level 7 - 0.0000019%

Level six is the level which companies strive to be in. Level 7 is practically perfect and as much as humans can try, no product is perfect and free of mistakes and defects.

Now, here's a question for you, what level in the Six Sigma Doctrine would you say you are on? How many mistakes are you making ?

Take some time to think about that and then take some time to plan for mistakes that can happen in the future.

Planning is easier than you think. Start analyzing and thinking about what have others have done that made them fail? What would you do differently? How would you solve certain problems and situations?

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You see, most of us have much to say and advice to give to others but we tend not think about our own lives and how we could do things differently for ourselves.

Which is the very reason why Tai suggests to make war with a multitude of counselors and that means reading more books, acquiring more mentors, going to more seminars so you can step out of your own box and take a look at your own life and analyze your actions and how will they lead you to your end goal.

Finally, it is important to remember that you can definitely learn from mistakes but who said they have to be yours?

Books Mentioned in this step:

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

The Optimistic Child by Martin Seligman

The Story of my life: Helen Keller's Autobiography

Tai Lopez 67 steps program Step 26

Tai Lopez 67 steps program Step 26