A Case Study in DDF

Last night, Sana and I watched The World’s Fastest Indian. It’s a movie starring Anthony Hopkins that tells the story of Bert Munro, who through what I define as DDF, (drive, discipline and focus,) achieved something truly remarkable. The movie itself was kind of antithetical to the typical “hero’s journey”. He’s just an average guy with a very pleasing personality, but with a relentless drive, extraordinary discipline, and laser focus on one specific thing: to break the land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

DDF is a mantra I’ve adopted recently, and has slowly become a mainstay in the lexicon for my business and personal affairs: It stands for Drive. Discipline. Focus.

“Drive” is defined for me as the energy from within to accomplish something meaningful. A mission, a purpose, an ikigai as the Japanese would call it.

“Discipline” is the structure or constraints from which this mission or ikigai is accomplished.

“Focus” is the way in which the energy is directed towards achieving, or living out that ikigai.

Throughout the film Bert encounters all manner of obstacles and hardships that would make ordinary men without a Drive throw their hands up in despair and proclaim, “It’s just not worth it!”

In one scene, he encounters aggression from the local bike gang who publicly mocks and ridicules him. He’s polite enough, yet supremely confident in his skills and his abilities – which prove to be far superior to the cool biker gang with their fancy motorcycles.

He’s this unassuming, eccentric, at times flat out goofy character who is just focused on one thing in his entire life, which is to break that speed record.

In another scene, he’s interviewed by the customs officers while entering the United States so that he can go to Utah. When they ask him why he’s in the United States, he doesn’t say that he’s there too go sightseeing, to visit friends. He doesn’t even say that he’s there to participate in an event at the Bonneville Salt Flat. He says quite flatly (see what I did there?) that he is in the United States “to break the land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats.”

Now, Mr. Munro’s DDF does not equate to riches. He is very poor, he lives in a very humble abode in Invercargill, New Zealand. He has to mortgage his measly property just to pay the fare to the United States, shipment of his motorcycle, etc. And while he’s in the United States, he sleeps in his car, and relies on the kindness of strangers so that he can save expenses such as staying in a hotel room and find fixes to problems such as the tire falling off the trailer carrying his bike.

His drive, and his singular focus on that one thing, breaking the land speed record at the Bonneville salt flats in Utah, makes everything else in the periphery. How he should behave in public, who he should be seen in public with, even the rules of the event when he arrives and realizes that he hasn’t properly registered, his motorcycle is not “up to specs.” He simply will not be denied. Through his DDF, he literally breaks the will of the event organizers to allow his mission to proceed as planned.

Drive, Discipline. Focus. That is how anything meaningful is really achieved.

If you don’t have the purpose, the mission, the ikigai, how will you know what to do with your energy that you’ve been given?

If you don’t have the discipline to set schedules, establishe processes, do trivial and sometimes tedious tasks related to the accomplishment of your vision, nothing will get done.

And if you don’t have that laser focus that is directing your energy into accomplishing that mission… Well you’ll be plenty busy, you’ll be very active, but will you be productive? Will you really accomplish anything?

If you don’t have that combination of the DDF, your expended energy will be in vain. (And you also can’t be a jerk, as Bert’s affable personality got him out of many a jam 😉

Now if you’re reading this, take heart in that most people, I would say 99% of people walking this earth will never have a real mission, a real purpose for their lives. They have been trained since birth to just go with the currents of society. Think the thoughts that the media pushes into the public consciousness. Have the biases that certain so-called thought leaders want us to have.

It could be you’re reading this email because it’s part of your own purpose in life that you perhaps have yet to discover – or an important means of accomplishing your purpose such as a media project that we can help out with.

Whatever the case may be, life is meaningless without purpose, not to mention the structure and the focus to live out that purpose in a meaningful way. I actually interviewed a fellow who wrote a book on the topic of Ikigai some time ago, and I broke it out of the vault and put it on the Ba Vojdaan podcast feed just this morning.

Just press the “play” button above and begin thinking about your own Ikigai.