There’s a shortage in the world today.

A shortage of fox.

No, not the kind well-bred English people murder for country entertainment. #sports #tradition #plebsgohome

So, not canid foxes. Abstract foxes. These are the kind we all have in limited supply in our bodies and minds, yet go around giving all too freely.

You can’t go around giving fox all willy-nilly.

That’s a recipe for disaster. Not mediocrity. Disaster.

Giving too many fox is so dangerous that, ironically, doing it will produce LESS than middling results in your life.

Trust me. I know. From experience. But you can do better, be better and act more wisely than me. Learn from my errors.

Trying to please everyone and do everything doesn’t mean you end up with a 50% hit rate. No, it means you end up with a 0% hit rate. To reach even mediocrity requires sacrifice, requires sucking at and neglecting most things (even if only temporarily) in service of whatever you have decided is a better thing. To achieve not mere mediocrity but excellence requires EVEN MORE sucking at everything else.

We use the word “mediocrity”, and its morphological variants, as an insult. We shouldn’t. And we wouldn’t if we knew better. Even mediocre performance is a miracle of planning, effort, triage and vision. Even a sucky movie is a miracle, simply by virtue of having been made at all. To get any number of human beings (including just one — it’s a miracle just getting YOURSELF to cooperate with yourself, and that’s N=1) to cooperate for an extended period of time in the service of a single goal, and actually bring it to completion (not perfection, mind you, just fruition) is a miracle. An utter miracle.

A house with consistently clean toilets and washed dishes isn’t “just normal”; it isn’t just “table stakes” for civilized life — no doubt it far king well should be, but it isn’t — no, it’s a daily miracle of discipline, dedication and decisiveness.

That’s why 80% of winning is showing up, because most people don’t even do *that*, and I speak, unfortunately, as a guilty party here. I have been on both sides of the showing up equation. From lived experience, I know that respecting it works and ignoring it does not work. So take my word for it; don’t reinvent this wheel; don’t bother reprove this experiential research finding: show up relentlessly in the literal handful (1-5 areas) where it matters. Show up and you’re almost guaranteed to win.

You can’t make more abstract foxes. They don’t breed like the animals.

So what do you do?

The only solution is fox triage. Not rationing, because rationing implies that everything gets at least some fox. No. Fox that chit. Triage. Some things get no fox. If they ask you your name, you say it’s Cyril Fox Givens, because you give zero fox. That’s right, I built this entire article around a name pun. The article itself is mere decoration for juvenile wordplay. A lot like the movie “Meet the Parents”, which, if you remember that era of film, is a whole gosh darn movie written around the fact that Ben Stiller’s character’s full name is Gaylord Martha Faulker (I prefer this spelling). Because that’s how winnin’ is done, bruh.

Don’t try to be an eight-direction beauty (八方美人). Even Instagram models know that they’re not beautiful from every direction, in every way, inside and out. So they work their best angles and delete unflattering photos like the CIA redacting FOIA documents.

Don’t be greedy. The reason you want to do everything perfectly is because you’re greedy for love. You want all the love from all the people. Well, guess what? You’re not gonna get it. Not even from yourself (if you burn yourself out, that is). Some people will hate you for failing; some will hate you for succeeding; some people will love you for failing; some people will love you for succeeding. And most people will literally give Cyril Fox about you because they’ll be too busy with their own lives.

Don’t be Hitler. Don’t fight multiple-front wars. Don’t spread your forces thinly, like Marmite. Glob them on like organic butter. Thick. Thick, I tell you, like Ashley Graham. (That’s right, I’ve been creeping Instagram lately; I know some modern Internet celebrity names now). Let most projects wither and die so that a few may live and even thrive.

Change your name to Cyril Fox Givens. Stop feeding the weeds. Tend only to the flowers. Enjoy the beautiful garden that results. What’s the difference between a weed and a flower? It’s whatever you say it is. You’re in charge of definitions. Just know that the flowers, almost by definition, are likely going to be a minority (at least initially). Fox shortage, don’tcha know.

#俺はシリルフォックスギヴェンズ