Most people approach success backwards, and it costs them years of progress.
They obsess over outcomes they can't control while ignoring the only thing they actually have power over: their daily actions.
Understanding the distinction between inputs and outputs changes everything:
Inputs are what you control: the effort you invest, the work you produce, the consistency you maintain.
Outputs are what happens as a result: the views, the revenue, the recognition.
If you post a 60-second TikTok, that's your input.
The likes, shares, and comments? Those are outputs.
You control one. You influence the other.
Here's the framework that actually works:
Phase One: Optimize for inputs, ignore outputs entirely.
For the first 30-60 days of any new endeavor, your only metric is whether you showed up.
Did you create the content? Run the ads? Make the calls? Ship the work?
Quality doesn't matter yet. Results definitely don't matter yet.
You're not trying to be great, you're building the capacity to show up every single day regardless of how you feel or what happens.
That skill is infinitely more valuable than talent, strategy, or initial results.
Here's the counterintuitive part most people miss: bad early results are actually better than good ones.
If your first ten videos get 47 views each, that's useful data.
You now know something isn't resonating: the hook, the topic, the delivery, something.
That information makes your next input better.
If your first video happens to go viral?
You've learned almost nothing. You can't reliably replicate it. You have one data point surrounded by noise.
Volume creates pattern recognition. Bad data is still data.
Every terrible result is feedback that compounds into eventual excellence, but only if you keep showing up to collect it.
Most people never make it through this phase. They're so worried about being good before they start that they never start at all.
They wait for perfect conditions, better preparation, more confidence.
Meanwhile, the person who just begins discovers something critical: doing the thing reveals information you couldn't have known beforehand.
The data, the nuances, the real obstacles, none of it shows up in planning. It only shows up in execution.
Phase Two: Once consistency is automatic, optimize for outputs.
After you've proven you can show up every day, then you start studying the data:
What's working? What's not? Where are the leverage points?
This is when you get better. Not before.
This framework transforms how I structure goals entirely.
Instead of setting a goal to reach 200,000 Instagram followers, an output I don't control, my goal becomes:
create three videos daily for one year. That's pure input.
I either show up or I don't. There's no luck involved, no algorithm to blame, no external factors to hide behind.
The Separation Mechanism
Here's what most people don't realize:
while you're executing on inputs, everyone else is still optimizing their strategy.
They're researching the perfect posting time. Studying viral hooks. Waiting until they have better lighting, better equipment, a better offer. They're convinced preparation is the path to success.
You're six months in with 180 pieces of content published and a growing understanding of what actually works.
They're still on video three, discouraged because it didn't perform.
The gap isn't about talent. It's about time in the game.
Input optimization creates compounding separation from competitors because most people self-eliminate when they realize the work required.
They want the shortcut. The hack. The strategy that lets them skip the repetitions.
There isn't one.
But that's actually your advantage.
Every day you show up and they don't, the distance between you grows.
Not linearly, but exponentially.
Because your Day 200 input is informed by 199 days of data they never collected.
They'll still be "getting ready to start" when you're already winning.
The fascinating part? When you make showing up non-negotiable, luck has a funny way of finding you.
Not because the universe rewards persistence (though maybe it does), but because volume creates surface area for opportunity.
You produce more, learn faster, and compound small improvements into significant advantages.
The person who controls their inputs doesn't need to pray for good outputs. The outputs become inevitable.
Believe in the process. Control what you can control. Keep going.
-Anthony
