Onyx, Vanilla Ice, Baha Men, Skee-Lo…Remember them? How about their songs “Slam”, “Ice Baby”, “Who Let the Dogs Out”, and “I Wish”? Probably so. Nonetheless, these musicians are typically categorized as one-hit wonders. They are victims of the belief in product over process.

They are not alone; this belief transcends many industries. In his book “Built to Last”, Jim Collins compares good versus great companies and argues that great companies focus on developing the process that creates the great products as opposed to hoping for a great product to sprout up. As physic students, we were taught to memorize Newton’s laws of motion, when in fact it would be more fruitful for us to contemplate Newton’s thought processes that eventually lead to these three understandings so that we could find the 4th and 5th laws! As fans, we oftentimes become enamored by the performance of athletes when in fact, their real world performance is simply the product of how they practiced (a process of simulating the real world).

Process over product is no different than teaching a man how to fish rather than giving him a fish. What are your physical and mental processes, habits, routines, and/or rituals? How are they helping you or hurting you on your quest to realize your full potential? No one has a patent on the best process; you have to find or create a sequence of processes that work together to produce the best you.

Live purposefully!