“Every next level of your life will require a different you.” -Leonardo DiCaprio
1: Most people get stuck in a 2x mindset. They struggle to manifest 10x in their lives.
They have it backward, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy write in 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less.
When we choose a 2x goal, we choose “doing the same things we’re doing now, only more of them,” Dan and Ben write.
“But a 10x goal jumps us out of that, beyond that. 10x requires operating in an entirely different way that bypasses the stresses and complications of a 2x goal.”
When we commit to a 10x goal, the world around us changes.
We experience a “surge of commitment and excitement,” Dan and Ben write. “Going 10x means you’re living based on the most intrinsic and exciting future you can imagine. That 10x future becomes our filter for everything we do, and most of our current life can’t make it through that 10x filter.”
As author and business coach Marshall Goldsmith writes, “What got us here won’t get us there.”
Psychologists use the term “pathways thinking” to describe “highly hopeful people [who] continually adjust their pathway until they ultimately find and create a way to their goal, even in the direst of circumstances,” the authors write.
Ben’s PhD dissertation focused on the point of no return: “After a person’s perceived point of no return—which was the moment of commitment often involving financial investment–their focus, motivation, and insights skyrocketed. As one entrepreneur I interviewed in my research told me, ‘It’s like I become Neo in the Matrix and can dodge bullets.'”
Because as Tony Robbins says, “When the ‘why’ is strong enough, we’ll find the ‘how.'”
2: “Counterintuitively, 10x is much, much easier than 2x,” they write. “It’s much simpler than 2x. But ‘easy’ and ‘simple’ aren’t exactly what they seem.”
As American poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “A condition of complete simplicity. . . costing not less than everything.”
Because to experience the “easy” and the “simple,” we must focus on the essential 20 percent that drives 80 percent of the results. And leave behind the 80 percent that only drives 20 percent of the results.
“Economists and statisticians have clarified a crucial and well-understood concept for this exact phenomenon,” the authors note. “The fundamental idea is that a small portion of inputs or efforts often leads to a disproportionately large portion of outputs or results. While the exact ratio may vary, the general principle holds true in many scenarios.”
Dan and Ben write: “Only by living with a 10x frame of reference do we become highly critical of everything we place our time and energy on. Having a 10x mindset means we know and understand that to accomplish more, we must actually do and focus on increasingly less.”
We “know that working more hours does not equate to better results, but on the contrary, working more hours usually means we’re grinding our wheels and not innovating our thinking enough.”
Working more hours? 2x thinking.
Focusing our efforts on the essential 20 percent? 10x thinking.
Which is where transformation happens.
“10x simplifies,” they write. “When we make 10x our target, 80 percent of our current clients and relationships become impediments. Also, 80 percent of our current activities, habits, and mindsets become impediments.”
Every time we commit to 10x, we must go through the same process.
Is letting go of the 80 percent easy or simple? Of course not.
Why? “Because the 80 percent is our comfort zone,” they write. “To go 2x, we can keep 80 percent of our comfort zone. We only need to make minor and subtle tip-toe adjustments along the way to go 2x.
“Letting go of the 80 percent may feel as extreme as literally killing something we love.”
Difficult. Scary. And transformational.
3: As Jim Collins writes in Good to Great: “Good is the enemy of great . . . The good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing…”
What is required is 100 percent commitment. After that, it becomes “easy” and “simple.”
“10x becomes our filter and norm,” Dan and Ben write. “Once we define the 10x jump we most want, we’ll quickly distinguish the 20 percent from the 80 percent. When we eliminate the 80 percent, 10x growth becomes organic and accelerated. Going all-in on our 20 percent makes us and our lives 10x better, simpler, and more exciting.”
10x becomes our new standard and our new identity.
“Our 10x future self will be a different person than who we are now. In a short time, we’ll have freedoms we can’t presently fathom,” they predict. “The 10x value and quality of our time, money, relationships, and purpose will seem impossible to us now but will be completely normal to our 10x future self.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What is my 20 percent that if I went all-in on, I’d become 10x more valuable and impactful? What are the few things I do and the few people I work with that produce most of my success and excitement? What is my 80 percent that keeps me grinding away, and ultimately a distraction for my most considerable future jumps?
Action: Journal my answers to the questions and commit to taking action.
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