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I’m an avid audiobook listener on my commute to work and just recently finished “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure”. I found some really good nuggets of wisdom from the book that I wanted to pass along. Please see the list of 9 essential takeaways below for my key insights:
Table of Contents
You Need Bigger Goals
The book states setting 10X higher goals, but in general, if you don’t remove the artificial limits we placed on our own thoughts and set goals high enough, you won’t be motivated to achieve them. You need goals big enough to motivate you and excite you. The case can be made that even if you don’t achieve your lofty goals, you’ll still have done better than you would have if you aimed lower.
You Need Bigger Effort Towards Those Goals
The book states putting in 10X effort to reach your goals. In my mind, this simply means putting in maximum effort. Most people are inherently lazy (myself included), so they’ll only do the amount of effort required to meet the goal. If you have outsized goals, you’ll need to expend outsized efforts to reach those goals. This means getting ridding of activities that don’t contribute to your goals, making your efforts as efficient as possible, and expending as much time and effort as you can. You will know you are nearing the limits of your effort when you literally do not have any more time to give, and people start commenting on your work ethic (both positively and negatively).
It is Unethical to Give Less Than Your Best
In the book, Grant mentions that he considers it unethical to set big goals and give maximum effort to those goals. If you think about it, this is true. When you aren’t giving your all when you know you can, you are being dishonest with yourself, your employer, your customers, really everyone involved.
There is No Shortage of Success
There is enough success to go around for everyone. Thinking big and achieving your goals is not a zero-sum game. There is no shortage of problems, challenges, and opportunities in the world that need solving.
Extreme Ownership
I was first introduced to this idea when I read a book by the same name by former Navy Seals Jocko Willink and Lief Babin. Extreme ownership means taking responsibility for everything that happens to you in your life, whether it was your fault or not. Having a victim mentality, whether justified or not, will not help you achieve your goals. You need to be able to look at events objectively and use the lessons learned from those events to become better.
In the book, Grant gives an example of the power going out during a storm. Instead of whining about the effects of not having power or complaining about the power company, it’s much more effective to take responsibility for the outage and prevent it from happening next time. For instance, you could buy a whole home generator or invest in solar panels and batteries to ensure that the next time the weather knocks out power, you have an emergency system in place to maintain it for your residence.
Seek to Dominate, Not Compete
I was first introduced to this concept in the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. In a nutshell, you should seek to find markets where there either isn’t high levels of competition or where you have or can create an advantage or moat so deep that others can’t follow.
New Problems, Fear, and Criticisms are Signs That You Are Making Progress
In the book, Grant mentions that he leans into fear and criticism. Also, when you start achieving success, you’ll know it because you’ll inherit a new set of problems.
Fear and criticism are usually validation that you’re doing something everyone else isn’t. In many cases, it’s better to be a contrarian and do things differently than the herd. A great example of this is the classic quote by Warren Buffet:
“…be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
– Warren Buffet
In many walks of life, there are great opportunities for contrarians. An example that Grant gives in his book is that a competitor of his client reduces marketing expenses on face to face and calls, and instead of doing the same, he encourages them to increase spend on marketing in this fashion in order to gain market share.
The Only Way to Increase Time is to Get More Done in the Time You Have
While this seems obvious, it’s an important point. If you have big goals, big efforts, and are hitting a wall, it means you need to find a way to get more out of the time you have. This could mean reprioritizing and removing nonessential tasks, adding automation of some kind to repetitive tasks, and even hiring employees to do the tasks you don’t enjoy or aren’t as efficient at.
Conclusion
I found “The 10X Rule” to be a great resource for how to live your life. It doesn’t go into many technical details about how to actually achieve your specific goals, but instead gives you a high-level blueprint of tried-and-true ways to think and act in order to achieve your goals. The real-world examples seemed relevant and showed how Grant had incorporated this philosophy in his life to great success. I wrote the key points that resonated with me, but there is more to the book, and I encourage you to read or listen to itself.