How to Rank Life Priorities When Everything Feels Important | Ep 1007

Today is a not so special day, but it is a day that I was born and I'll read some stuff to piss some people off in the comments just to get things cracking. How's that sound? Don't say I never did anything for you. And so yeah, let's begin with the tweet that has pissed everyone off. Your level of maturity is inversely correlated with how much you want other people to celebrate your birthday. I have never admired anyone who insisted his birthday was a big deal. And I only really clear. I think celebrating other people's birthdays, absolutely. Honoring people for being alive, for making this far, all for it. I think the difference is when you demand everyone do it for you. I think that's where you get the this is my birth week, this is my birth month, all that kind of stuff. And I think that is I think that is the wrong direction on entitlement. My two cents, obviously, you know, it's all it's worth and you can take for what it is. But on this not so special day, one of my one of my team texted me this thing, which was my favorite text of the day. And he said, today is the day that Genghis Khan died and you were born quote from the Khan, there is no good in anything until it is finished. And I love that. It's all about starting what you finish. And so I'll read this to you because I've had a lot of deeper thoughts on my mind lately, as I think you, whenever deadlines you have, stand tall, don't crack, endure, you can die tomorrow. Today, you do the only thing you can do, you fight, you rage on, you do what you came to do, you finish what you started. Now, no matter how much it costs, how long it takes or how much it hurts, because you said you would. Being cringe is the tax you pay when you start to prove to the world that you care more about what you want than how you look. One of the things that no one tells you about delayed gratification is that once you learn how to do it, you keep doing it until you die and then what you delayed never happens. Your goals become easier to accomplish when you become harder to distract. Whenever you get worried about not achieving your goals, just remember there's plenty of room at the top because the majority of people are just whiny, overweight, in-depth, little bitches. You'll blow past them so fast it'll look like they're standing still because they are. Be more dangerous than the forces that hope to destroy you. Make reality your bitch today. If you do not have courage, nothing else matters. So with that being said, as our premise for today, as we get cracking and lacking, I thought I would, I had this little little video that put some notes together for you that I think I like. I think the goal of youth is optionality and the goal of adulthood is commitment. And these two things are at odds, and I think that at some point you have to reconcile which one you are. Are you still stuck to your youth or have you decided to become an adult? An adult means you eliminate alternatives. You walk through one way doors where you know you can't walk back. It's difficult to undo a marriage. It's difficult to impossible, possible, but not really. It's undue a child, right? There are some one way doors and I think that a lot of the best things in life come on the other side of commitments. And I think that we have a society that overemphasizes the value of optionality. And the reason I said what I said earlier, which is that if you delayed a gratification, optionality in a lot of ways is delaying gratification. It's this idea that I'll keep my options open. But the thing is is that options only have value when they are exercised. And until you exercise them, they are valueless. It's like dying at the end of your life as an aunt that put a big pile of crumbs that you never ate. Right? At some point you have to pull the trigger. You have to make the call. You have to make the decision. You have to cut off one future. And so I think what's interesting is that when you make that decision, it means that you're going to decide that one thing is more important than another, which means that you also open yourself up for criticism, which I think a lot of people have a lot of difficulty with. And so I want to give you 10 priorities, which make no sense at all because priority only recently in the English vernacular was ever even used in the plural. Until about 1950, it was only priority. There's only one because only one thing can come first. Right? That's how it works. But here's our 10 things that most people say are incredibly important. And so how do we make sense of them? So number one, we have community, giving back to your community. We have romance, marriage, your partner. We have parenting for your children. We have family, so to your siblings, into your parents, into your cousins, etc. We have recreation, so having fun, relaxing. We have friends, spending time, etc. We have your career, your career aspirations, professional aspirations, your physical health, your spiritual health, and then you've got your personal growth. It's us 10 different elements of life. And if I were to ask you to prioritize them, you will have a different priority than the person next to you. And so the reason this is really interesting is that if somebody looks at your list and it is different than theirs, they will call you as wrong because you do not live your life the way that they would prefer. And that is why they are fucking retarded. All right? Like we don't have to like we don't have to live according to anyone else's preferences. You have to follow the law, but besides that, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want. And we are so shackled by the idea that other people don't like what we're doing. It's like great. That's why they have their life to do what they want to do with. And so what's interesting is that you get to pick your regrets or they will be chosen for you. Real. And so whenever you invest in any of those 10 things, you pull away from others, right? If you add an hour here, you take an hour from here, we have a zero sum life when it comes to time, right? And I do have one interesting tactical strategy that has helped me navigate these, but I think the biggest one is just an understanding that you will live an imperfect life. Period. Like you cannot have a house by the mountains in isolation, and then also be walking distance from restaurants, and then also be on the beach, and also be ski and ski out. It doesn't work, and you can't have a rich neighborhood if you want to be in isolation. Now, all of these things are okay to want. It's just that they will not, they literally sit in it, they're conflicting. They're conflicting priorities. And so whenever you say, and you make a decision in your life, people will take the equal opposite extreme. So if it's literally the the upset spouse, right? You know, you know, wife comes in and says, Hey, do I look at you know, do you look at in this dress? You say, Yeah, you look great in this dress. You're like, Oh, so I don't look good whenever I'm not wearing this dress. That is what people will do to whatever decisions you make, because they're too cowardly to make them get themselves. And I really mean this, like people are fucking cowards. They're, they're, they walk around afraid. They, they, they, they don't want consequences. They don't want conflict, because they think that other people's opinions about their lives matter more than their own. And it's ridiculous. You must make trades. You have to make a trade. And I love the definition of the word decadera, because it's laden, but the root of it means to cut off. And it's just what, what future are we cutting off today? And I think that that is, and I think as I'm, you know, I've, I'm at an annual little date for myself. And so I look back on, on the last year. And I think that your maturity level is directly related to the amount of commitments that you have made, the number of people who rely on you. And if those commitments are the elimination alternative, it's means that you've cashed in optionality, right? You've chosen to do things in lieu of others. And so even if you were to divide your life into 12 hours per day. So let's assume that you've got four hours for eating, showering, you know, hygiene, all the, the living, right? And let's say 12 hours is your, the hours that you can just be focused, right? On anything. If you were to divide those, we've got those 10 things that I outlined. If you were to give an hour and, you know, 10 minutes per day to each of those things. It's like, okay, you're going to an hour and 10 minutes to your career, an hour and 10 minutes to your spirituality, an hour and 10 minutes to your, your, your family, an hour and 10 minutes to your kids, an hour and 10 minutes to your relaxation time, an hour and 10 minutes to your physical health. Like you go through it and it's just like, I can't, I can't do it all. It's like, right, you have to make fucking trades. It's what it is. And so I'll just say, as somebody who has, I would say, min-maxed to a degree on some of those traits, really helpful to just order them for yourself. Which of these is most important for you? And, and here's the, here's the, this is the one tactical tip I've got. This is, this is it. This is my one tactical tip. Try to do things that check multiple boxes. So for example, the reason that lifting with friends is so valuable to me is that I lift with people I work with who I'm also friends with. And so it checks off recreation. It checks off a degree of, of career growth. It checks off physical health. And so I get three or four boxes checked from this one, one activity. And so I'm able to block more time with it. And there's probably some version of that for you that you can do for two or three things. And I'm not saying you're going to get it for everything. But every once in a while, you can get lucky. And you can just do, you can check a few boxes with one action, right? No extra time. And so I think that's a big W. Now, I think that you will do the best that you can to manage these things. And at the end of your life, you will think to yourself, it would have been nice to do these other things. But when you say that, you do that from the position of having already earned the benefit of your existing trade. And so what we want is the benefits of the trades that we did not make and the benefits of the ones that we did. And so we look at the benefits of a different priority being first. And then saying, man, it would be nice if I was also hyper spiritual. It would also be nice if I was in the best shape. It would also be nice if I had the best marriage. It would also be nice if I was a great parent. It would also be nice, etc, etc. But you can't trade everything in. And so basically like you get to pick your regrets. You get to pick the things that you say were less important. Otherwise, they will be chosen for You and I think what's really interesting is whenever I I think this to this natural end, I think to myself, I am the problem, something to explain. I think we always want what we can't have and I think this is an inherently human trait, right? Single people want to be married, married people want, you know, to be single. People with no kids want kids, people who have kids want to night off. Employees want to start their own business someday. Employers or jealous of how their employees can clock out and not take their work home with them. There's just countless examples of whatever you don't have is what you want. Because right now, everyone who's listening to this, you have accomplished things that you said would make you happy. Like, there is something in your life right now that earlier on in your life, you said, "If I had this, I would be happy." And yet, here we are. And so whenever I think this, I just think like, "I am the problem." Like, "I am the constant." Like the constant source of dissatisfaction is me. And it's just 'cause we want it all. But you go to a store where there's 10 amazing shoes and each shoe is $100. And you have $100 in your wallet. And in order to justify our decision, we make everyone else feel bad about buying a different set of shoes than us. When it was just a choice, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. 'Cause a lot of people, I think, look at the life that we have, which I think is super blessed, et cetera. But we've traded other things. We've traded other things. And I think that if those things are more important to you than like, "Good for you." To the degree that you can possibly believe a stranger on the internet, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. If you like the priorities that you have, then fuck you one. You won. I got you one. You've already got it. Like, like, you know, like you're there. I think where people get in trouble is where they allow life to make those priorities for them, right? They don't get to make the choices. They sit passively by and let options expire. And I think that's, if there's anything that I can hopefully, you know, transfer. It's, you can be a master of your life to a degree. If you can just say I'm willing to give up these other things for the things that I care about most. And so, that's my two sentences. Take those 10 things, rank them one to 10. And then of those, see which one you think is off as in like, "Okay, I said this is number two, but I don't think I'm really putting number two out of 10 effort into this." And I'll tell you two for me. I think that I've been, I've been not as good as a husband as I probably should have been. I probably should have spent more time with Layla and I'm going to prioritize doing that and I've started to do that. And I think that I've, I have, I have a higher desire for friendship than I have in my current life. Like, I see friends sporadically. I would say outside of me like lifting, which is basically almost the entirety of the recreational like friend time that I have. I had a buddy of mine who was here for my birthday, which was awesome. That Layla kind of surprised me with, which is super sweet of her. And those are very like filling to my soul. And I think that I'm going to make trades in the coming future where I'm going to decrease some of these other stats in order to make some room here where I think that the incremental return that I'll get on losing an hour on call it career and adding an hour somewhere else, I will have a little bit less, but my overall life benefit will be higher. And so I think the meta of this is the game that you want to play. And so I'll give you an interesting story on this. So I can't remember the name of the founder, but he was on David Centra's podcast. And really smart guys, so I was going for like $10 billion or something like that. And he said, you always want to look for the most dominant game. And I was like, huh, this is really interesting concept. He said, so for example, my space lost to Facebook because Facebook had a more dominant game that they were playing. And so my space, for example, wanted to get the most users. That was the game they were playing. That was the metric they were optimizing room. Facebook was optimizing around monthly active users, MAU, which then became kind of like the social media norm in terms of what social platforms are measured by. But that one little misstep in terms of what metric they were optimizing around meant that Facebook was literally playing a superior game. And so in thinking about this concept of like, there are subset superset games. There are some games that even if you were just playing them, you beat everyone else because the game that you're optimizing for is just a superior game. And so I think that I think this is entirely individual. But if we look at those 10 categories that I outlined, so I'll repeat them again for those of you who are just joining. So the list is this, you've got community, you've got romance/partner, parenting for your kids, you've got your family, so siblings and your parents, you've got recreation and rest and fun, friends, career, physical health, spiritual, and then personal growth, right? Those are kind of like 10 categories of living. And I think that some people make their entire game one of them. And I think the larger game is trying to win it life. And realizing that each of these are components of it. And I don't know if, and I think that you will have different. And when I say this prioritization thing, people also have a hard time allowing other people to change. 'Cause it just makes them, it's just intellectually more work. And so it's like, how dare you change your mind? In front of me, how dare you, right? How dare you be really into your physical health and then decide that your kids are more important and so you don't work out as much, right? How dare you? And so I think that like, people will get upset because they're weak. Like people are pets, like people are so small-minded, self-interested. And the things they will say in no way have complete context on their life. And so it's like trying to listen to 100 people that know two sentences about you. None of their opinions matter. 'Cause the person who's the most context on you is you. You're the only one who has to live with you. And I know obviously it's hard because when we're kids, we're raised to listen to other people and shame has a very good place in society. You should feel bad if you do things that hurt people and like those things work for enforcing social rules. So it's this very odd dichotomy between, it's good to have other people on the outside telling you, hey, maybe you shouldn't be a fuck ass. But at the same time, being able to differentiate between, call it law-breaking activity and rule-breaking activity, but I see it's very different. So we have legal laws that have written out consequences that we have discernment, like it or not, that you have to abide by to live in whatever area you're in. But then there's rule-breaking, that's spoken and unspoken. And so many of you get different cultures, different rules, your parents and different rules. And it's realizing that there are no consequences or the consequences that happen from those rules are not nearly as severe as we think they are. And so the reason that I open the book with offers with only three words, which is there are no rules. I guess that's forwards. It's because it's always a reminder myself of like what rules am I being weighed down by right now that I'm choosing, like what box am I living in that I'm unaware of that has invisible walls that is keeping me in? Real quick, I'm gonna show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to a hundred million plus that less than 1% of companies finish I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business. What the constraint feels like? Like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it? And then what steps we actually took to graduate? And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick-and-mortar, all of this and it works. And it's my gift to you, it's aptly free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you, all free. (upbeat music)