“People Waste 20 Years To Avoid 20 Hours” - Alex Hormozi
CChris Williamson
Adult EducationSmall Business/StartupsManagementMental Health
Transcript
00:00:00you can get competent at nearly anything in 20 hours the problem is most people spend a decade
00:00:05delaying the first 20 hours more potential is wasted through inaction than incompetence
00:00:10i saw a ted talk years ago where a guy talked about how he learned how to play the guitar in
00:00:1520 hours and that ted talk changed my life not because i learned to play the guitar but all of
00:00:20a sudden complex tasks or seemingly complex tasks felt much much more attainable i was like okay i
00:00:32might not be the best website developer in the world but in 20 hours i can have a website
00:00:36and that 20 hour mantra for me has just been like two days two full days two 10 hour days fully
00:00:42focused you can pretty much go from zero to not hero but zero to competent um and when you string
00:00:49hundreds of those 20 hour days together i think you become incredibly dangerous we were talking
00:00:54earlier about range the book i think being cross-departmental being cross um what's the
00:01:03multidisciplinary thank you disciplinary multidisciplinary is is
00:01:07is hard to calculate how valuable it is because of the because the the first 20 hours of almost every
00:01:16discipline is probably the biggest most meaningful concepts from that discipline not being able to
00:01:20ride a bike to being able to ride yes being able to not read to read um even if you can't read
00:01:25shakespeare but you can read all of a sudden like 80 the world of shakespeare is now opened up to you
00:01:30it's just a matter of time before you get there yeah and even if you could never read shakespeare
00:01:34the 80 of the books that you can read as a result of a sixth grade reading level is basically more
00:01:39books than you have time to read um and you will get the largest returns from those first 20 hours and so
00:01:45there's a very strong argument for trying to collapse the time between uh wanting something and beginning
00:01:49those first 20 hours and because the the 80 20 of your of the skills you gain that are that have
00:01:56utility like that your usefulness across a huge amount of domains is multiplicative not additive so
00:02:03i i've said this example before but like you know jay-z in the very beginning it's like he might
00:02:09have had some rhythm or something and then all of a sudden he you know learned how to rap and then he
00:02:13learned how to sell now some people say maybe it was sold earlier than that but i'll just leave it
00:02:16there he learned how to sell and then all of a sudden he learned how to market and with each of
00:02:20these additional skills his income didn't go up by like oh one plus one equals two it went you know
00:02:25one well one's a bad number so two to the tenth power all of a sudden becomes significantly greater
00:02:30um than what you can do and so when when unsure about what step like when you're not sure what to do
00:02:39build potential because when the opportunity does come you want to be ready and so it does make
00:02:53sense in the beginning of your career to maximize optionality it's just that you have to be willing
00:02:57to trade it in and so when you're not sure what to do the logical thing to do is i don't know what
00:03:02i'm going to do tomorrow but i'm going to get a good night's sleep i don't know what i'm going to
00:03:05meet a mate but i'm going to start getting in shape now i don't know what i'm going to sell but
00:03:08i'm going to start building an audience making content there's always an argument for like you
00:03:11if you don't know what to do there's still plenty of things to do and but the goal is not necessarily
00:03:16to do those things forever it's to do those things to then use them as the launch pad to get the thing
00:03:20you really want the trap is opening up so much optionality without the concordant decisiveness
00:03:27that you end up being trapped yeah you end up being stuck because you think i've got all of
00:03:33these directions that i could go in i've spent all of this time building up
00:03:37uh panoply of roots that i could take my life down and i do not have any ability to decide on which of
00:03:46those to take panoply panoply you like that myriad cornucopia a plethora yeah
00:03:51two people that are obsessed with language have a war with each other but one is british so he wins
00:03:59you only need to get rich once so you might as well work as hard as you can to get it done as fast as you
00:04:06can the fastest way to attract what you want in life is to deserve it by doing so much work it becomes
00:04:11unreasonable not to achieve it do so much work it would be unreasonable that you fail the seat at the
00:04:17table is yours if you want it do the hard work build the skills no one can ignore adjust your mindset to
00:04:23match where you want to go then pull up a chair and sit down you want to work with such relentless
00:04:28obsession that when people see you they're grateful they don't have to compete against you
00:04:32the fastest shortcut is to stop looking for shortcuts do the work are those all mine all one
00:04:40violence is the answer there's there's two there's two quotes on the on the in the first few pages of
00:04:52our sales handbook internally at acquisition.com one is volume negates luck and violence is the answer
00:04:59and i would say that those are like credos that that the team lives by
00:05:03and i think violent team mm-hmm they are um and violently successful um i think i think there's a
00:05:12lot of power in in knowing that you're doing every single thing you possibly can to win
00:05:25because if you are if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say i have controlled the controllable
00:05:31i think there's some entirely entirely the controllable not the uncontrollable those things
00:05:36can happen i could do my book launch and there can be a lightning strike and there can be no power
00:05:39in vegas that can happen but in the event that that happens if you if you leave it all in the field
00:05:45if you have nothing left in the tank i don't think there's a feeling that's more satisfying as a man
00:05:53than knowing that you've given everything that you had to give to an endeavor that you deemed meaningful
00:06:00and so layla and i have this thing that we say a lot but um a man must have a quest
00:06:06and i just really really like that it's like you need to do something you need to go towards
00:06:11something and your quest could be the best being the best father it could be it could be being the
00:06:15best musician or the best podcaster the best businessman or the best tire replacer the best
00:06:19sweeper whatever it is but like i think i think being questless being aimless and never being able to use
00:06:29the violence that you are capable of in the pursuit of endeavor that you find meaningful is where people
00:06:36find themselves lost and without hope because
00:06:43hopelessness comes from a perceived lack of options we don't know what to do
00:06:50anxiety comes from many options but no priorities and so there's many things to do but we're not sure
00:06:56which one and so a quest remedies both of those because you have one path that you're clear on and
00:07:08you know the only thing that you have left to do is destroy everything in your path to getting to where
00:07:13you want to go and i'm using strong language on purpose rather than saying that you literally
00:07:18need to destroy everyone but more so the ideas the thoughts the doubts the perceived risks that aren't
00:07:24even really risks um those are the things that we have to march triumphantly towards and i think um
00:07:32having someone in your corner uh who believes in that better version of you is one of the the rarest gifts
00:07:42gifts that you can have in life and there's a line from 300 that i love the queen says to leonidas
00:07:50she's she says um come back with your shield or on it and i think that we all want a spouse or a partner
00:07:57who can who can reward us for the good fight because what that queen is saying in that moment is not
00:08:06like i want you to win she's like i want you to die trying so and i think that that's that's like all
00:08:13we i mean to be fair that's literally all we will do is die trying all of us will die trying and i think
00:08:19um or rather all of us will die some of us will die trying and i think that's that's about as good
00:08:25of a life as i think anyone can really ask for one of my least favorite groups of people are those
00:08:31without a quest mocking those who have one
00:08:39wastes of space it causes doubt this is another reason why the lonely chapter thing resonates so much
00:08:45that people who are in it have their certainty about wanting to get out of it diminished by people who
00:08:52can't see the fact that they're in it and you go fuck all my friends are saying well why why are you
00:08:57staying in because you want to go to the gym in the morning what does it matter if you miss what does
00:09:00it matter if you miss your workout it doesn't matter if you it doesn't matter if you miss your workout
00:09:05tomorrow dude go no i really really want this thing and my wanting of this hard thing and the efforts
00:09:12and sacrifices and trade-offs i'm having to make in order to get there the doubt that already exists
00:09:19inside of me is being multiplied by people who are outside of it and if i could give everybody a gift
00:09:26it would be the ability to turn down the volume on people who don't understand the goals that you're
00:09:30trying to achieve it shouldn't be your job to explain yourself to people who don't understand what
00:09:36you're trying to do and the confusion of this person gets it and understands it and this person doesn't
00:09:44you shouldn't be listening to them at equal measure
00:09:52i have a lot of live translation that i think um i've wired into being able to handle some things
00:09:58that were difficult um which is like i pretty much translate all hate into you live your life
00:10:03against my preferences and so whenever they're saying all of these things of like no you don't have to
00:10:08go to the gym we're doing this other thing it's just saying you're living your life in a way that's
00:10:11against my preferences you're valuing things that i don't value and you're like you're right and so it
00:10:15doesn't mean like we don't need to have the same values at least in the short term um and i think just
00:10:21accepting that that is okay and that you can still be friends at least in the short term is fine and
00:10:28what they're really trying to do is get you to comply with their way of living because maybe not always
00:10:37when you live in accordance with your new values and new preferences
00:10:43it brings into sharp contrast how they are not living in accordance to theirs before we continue most
00:10:49people in their 30s are still training hard their protein is dialed in they sleep better than they
00:10:53did in their 20s discipline is not the issue but recovery feels somewhat different strength gains
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00:12:06and the full-length episode is available right here go on