10x Is Easier Than 2x

Key Takeaways

1. A core aspect of psychological flexibility is viewing yourself as a context, rather than viewing yourself as content.10,11,12 This enables you to not overly identify with your thoughts and emotions, since you’re not your thoughts and emotions. Instead, you’re the context of your thoughts and emotions, and as you change the context, the content changes as well. When you view yourself as a context, rather than as content, then you are far more flexible and adaptive. Just as you can change the furniture or remodel a house, you can expand and transform yourself.
2. 2x is exhausting and soul-defeating. It’s extremely difficult to put the pedal to the metal and grind away for inches of progress. By contrast, 10x is so big and seemingly impossible that it immediately forces you out of your current mindset and approach. You can’t work 10x harder or longer. Brute force and linear methods won’t get you to 10x.
3. 10x isn’t about more. It’s about less. Michelangelo understood this clearly. When the Pope asked about the secret of his genius, particularly in regard to the statue of David, Michelangelo explained, “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.” Going 10x is the simplification of your focus down to the core essential. Then you remove everything else.
4. Just as 10x isn’t about more but less, 10x is also not about quantity. It’s about quality.
5. 10x becomes your perceptual filter for everything you do. Everything becomes either 10x or 2x. Anything that’s not 10x doesn’t meet the filter and gets released from your attention. According to constraint theory, the greatest human bottleneck is attention. Our attention is our most finite resource, even more finite and valuable than our time. Indeed, the quality and depth of our attention determines the quality of our time.
6. Finally, 10x is not about any specific outcome. It’s about the process. 10x is a capability. It’s an operating system you deploy for: Dramatically expanding your vision and standards Simplifying your strategy and focus Identifying and removing non-essentials Developing mastery in unique areas Leading and empowering others who excitedly share your vision
7. Expanding your freedom is the ultimate purpose of the entrepreneur’s journey, and there really is no end to how much freedom you can have or create.
8. T.S. Eliot, “A condition of complete simplicity. . . costing not less than everything.”
9. Impossible goals help you identify the ONE or FEW conditions that have the highest possible upside.
10. What is your 20 percent that if you went all-in on, you’d become 10x more valuable and impactful? What are the few things you do and the few people you work with that produce most of your success and excitement? What is your 80 percent that is keeping you grinding away, and ultimately a distraction for your biggest future jumps?
11. pathways thinking,23 meaning highly hopeful people continually adjust their pathway until they ultimately find and create a way to their goal, even in the direst of circumstances.
12. Rather, Jimmy said your video or product only needs be 10 or 20 percent better and, importantly, different, to get 4-10x the results of even the “best stuff.” Being both better and different is essential and points directly to the fact that 10x is fundamentally qualitative, not quantitative.
13. Because 10x is qualitative and transformational, it’s also non-competitive. It’s not about you doing or being better than anyone else. Rather, you’re being increasingly unique and different from what everyone else is doing.
14. In order to become the best, you must embrace the art of quitting. Those who become the best don’t hold on to any 80 percent activity or identity for too long.
15. When you embrace your Unique Ability, you stop worrying about what other people are doing. You stop competing entirely. But also, you realize in the realest sense who you truly are. You carve away everything that’s not “The David” and transform yourself into your most powerful, valuable, and genuine self-expression.
16. Wanting is about abundance and creation.
17. Wanting requires no justification.
18. Indeed, as stated previously, a primary reason people don’t go for the 10x upgrades they want is because in the end, they’re too afraid of making those around them who simply wouldn’t get it uncomfortable.
19. There are two core types of freedom: Freedom from—which is externally escaping from what you don’t want, and is avoidance-motivated. Freedom to—which is internally committing to and courageously choosing what you most want, and is approach-motivated.7
20. Nothing happens until after you commit, and it’s only after you commit that you know what freedom feels like.
21. As someone takes their Unique Ability seriously and shifts the majority of their time to developing it, 10x and non-linear jumps follow.
22. No one else is competing with you. You’re in your own world of creativity and innovation. For you, because you’re continually pushing your boundaries, it’s intense and hard, but it’s also extremely liberating. To not be free is much harder than being free.
23. Your life’s objective is to develop mastery in and fully express your Unique Ability. There’s nothing more important to master. There’s nothing more important to dedicate yourself to. It’s your work. Your life’s work, and if you don’t do it, no one else will.
24. This next concept is one Dan calls Always Be the Buyer.24 There is a fundamental and crucial distinction between what Dan calls a “Buyer” or a “Seller.” Being the Buyer means you have clear standards for yourself, and you know what you want. The opposite is being a Seller, where you’re desperate to be in a particular situation because you think you need it.
25. The scariest and most courageous thing you’ll ever do is to be yourself.
26. The more specific you get in what you want, the clearer will be the 20 percent rabbit hole you go down. Whatever you pay most attention to becomes your filter to the world. Your attention filters what you see and what you don’t see. It also reflects who you will eventually become. Your continued focus develops extremely fine distinctions and expertise in whatever you commit yourself to. Thus, in defining your 10x, you want to be as specific as possible about how you define and measure success (i.e., your “standards”).
27. “What kind of value would I need to provide wherein it would be a total no-brainer and extreme bargain to the right person to pay me $15 million to write a book for/with them?”
28. Then you ask yourself these two questions: What specific value would I need to provide such that my Dream Check would be a no-brainer and extreme bargain for the person who would happily pay me? What would need to be true of my Unique Ability to be valuable enough that someone would see it as a no-brainer and extreme bargain to write and pay me my Dream Check?
29. Rejuvenation is about making yourself, your enthusiasm, your excitement, and your ambitions young again.
30. As David Keith Lynch explained in his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, ideas and opportunities are like fish.28 If you stay at the surface level, you will only be aware of the small fish. It is only by going deep into the water that you catch the big fish. Being busy is staying at the surface. To find big ideas, you need lots of free time. But also, higher quality time. Lots of time where you’re rested, relaxed, and open. This is one fundamental reason why recovery is so essential. Your best and most innovative ideas will occur while you’re unplugged from the busyness of work and able to really expand and contract your thinking—going hyper-micro and hyper-macro—expanding the vision, coming up with new ideas, etc.
31. Structure your week for high performance and stack similar activities and meetings next to each other on the same day. Switching from different types of tasks, such as creative tasks to administrative tasks, is ineffective.
32. Create bigger blocks of open space for deep work. To get 10x better at what you’re doing, adopt what Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham calls a “Maker Schedule.”
33. No more than three personal objectives each day (important and designed for flow).
34. Completely unplug when you’re done and actively recover.
35. The more you go 10x, the more recovery and large blocks of open time for novelty, relaxation, fun, and connection are essential.
36. working when you’ve completed your three important tasks. Don’t work longer than is necessary. Productive and busy are opposites. Be in the gain, not the gap.

What I got out of it

1. A worthwhile reminder about the importance of focus, continuously refining what it is you do, focusing relentlessly on the 20% that matters and discarding or delegating the 80% that doesn’t.