10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

by Dan Sullivan

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.

Going 10x means you’re living based on the most intrinsic and exciting future you can imagine. That 10x future becomes your filter for everything you do, and most of your current life can’t make it through that 10x filter. What got you here won’t get you there.

“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.

The most fundamental qualitative change is internal, your vision and identity. By changing these, everything else you’re doing simultaneously changes as well.

Anything that’s not 10x doesn’t meet the filter and gets released from your attention.

Every time you go 10x, you consciously choose to live your life at a particular level or standard, no matter how abnormal or seemingly impossible. You chose the standard. You commit to it. You live as you choose, transforming yourself and your world through your commitment.

“It would be impossible, unless. . ? What conditions need to be true for $10,000,000 profit in the next 12 months. Then ask yourself how can you create these ‘unless’ conditions to make the impossible, possible.”

When you’re trying to solve highly complex and particular problems, you’ll need a specialist, not a generalist, to solve your problem. You can’t just go to any doctor to reach optimal health. Almost everything is noise. Almost everything you’re now doing is a distraction from 10x.

The $500 client: “I just feel as though with this investment I am about to make in you, that we should understand how our lives are about to change and I need the results and you need to bring them, I am entrusting you with our livelihood and our lives.” The $50,000 client: “Money sent, thanks.”

2x is working in the business. 10x is working on yourself and working on the business.

The reason for their linear growth became obvious—they weren’t providing high-leverage and niche services. Almost all of their service was broad to broad clients.

Research shows that in order to activate a flow and high-performance state, a given task requires three things: 1) clear and specific goals, 2) immediate feedback, and 3) the challenge is above and outside the current skill-level.

Going all-in on your 20 percent makes you and your life 10x better, simpler, and more exciting.

“Nothing happens until after you commit.”

10x jumps, you increasingly become the leader to other

the ability to rapidly accept a new identity.

Committing fully to your next 20 percent is embracing a 10x identity wherein you transform yourself and your life through an exciting future.

Your identity is fundamentally two things: it’s 1) the story or narrative you have for yourself, and it’s 2) the standards or commitments you hold for yourself.

According to Prospect Theory, humans have an enormous aversion to loss.6 We fear and avoid loss far more than we seek gain.

To go 10x, you live based on freedom. You choose the standards you want because that’s what you intrinsically want, and you’re not worried about other people’s opinions.

To make something a new standard, you stop saying yes to the 80 percent—your now 2x identity and standards—that no longer fits. You embrace rejection and learning at the new standard until you reach a place of capability and confidence at the new standard.

next-level application of the 10x process, which is enhancing the quality and decreasing the quantity of everything you’re doing.

“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming. It’s easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It’s easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.” — TIM FERRISS22

Everything we do as people is driven by our goals or standards.31,32,33 You become whatever you’re striving for. Your goal shapes your process. Your goal also shapes your personal development and evolution.

Furthermore, the 10x thinker is solving a far more nuanced and niched problem. Rather than thinking broadly, they are thinking deeply and narrowly. They’re deep in their 20 percent and have freed themselves of the cognitive load of the 80 percent. They aren’t trying to do 100 things decently. They’re trying to do one thing at a level that’s never been seen before.

a huge margin for error that even if you only achieve one-third of the goal, you’ll reach your $10 million standard.

You stop following the crowd. You shift toward quality rather than quantity and stop competing with anyone.

“In a world that relentlessly races to the bottom, you lose if you also race to the bottom. The only way to win is to race to the top. . . . The only way to be indispensable is to be different. . . . Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth. . . . You can train yourself to matter. . . . You are not your résumé. You are your work.” — SETH GODIN35

“Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you think you are—either consciously or nonconsciously.”

You can’t see yourself as an amateur nor be satisfied with amateurish commitment and outcomes. As the quote just referenced by Clear explained, you must evolve your identity and thus your standards to a higher level or your behaviors will remain mediocre.

You can’t be involved in the great many tasks or decisions you were previously involved in. Your focus must be on higher quality and less quantity. This is why applying Who Not How is essential, wherein you simply enable capable and committed people, like Clear’s full-time assistant, to handle everything else in your life and business.

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. Your work is innovative and distinct from what the masses of 2x’ers are up to.

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.

Wealth is the byproduct of choosing freedom, and you can create as much wealth as you want.

The more specific and specialized the value you can create, the wealthier you can become. You’re creating things that no one else can or would. You’re providing an incredibly useful service that is not only desired but transformative for someone who wants it.

You’re not competing with anyone else. Instead, you’re collaborating with other abundance-minded creators.

You’re being, doing, and having what you want simply because you want it, regardless of external opinions or expectations. You’re creating the life you want by creating the value you want.

To quote Stephen Covey, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

Do you have the courage to let go of the 80 percent and go all-in on what you truly want?

People don’t get what they want because they’re too busy seeking what they believe they need. They become busy chasing means rather than directly choosing and living their desired end. There are two core types of freedom:

Living in a world of needs and rationalizations is prison. It locks you into relationships and situations you don’t want but maintain out of fear and perceived security or obligation.

And at the core of this intensity of effort is in fact a quality that is genetic and inborn—not talent or brilliance, which is something that must be developed, but rather a deep and powerful inclination toward a particular subject. This

Research shows that when someone subjectively feels their work is a calling—meaning they have a sense of purpose, and that they’re doing what they are meant to do—that they experience greater overall subjective well-being or happiness as well as greater career success than those who view their work as a job or career.

Mastery is not just the ability to do something well. It’s the ability to do something uniquely well. If it’s not unique, innovative, and uninhibited self-expression, then it’s not true mastery. Mastery and uniqueness are inseparable.

More directly, your Unique Ability is the unique way you approach what you do when you’re living at your best.

In every social situation, you’re either being a Buyer or a Seller. The difference between a Buyer and a Seller is the Buyer can walk away. The Buyer is not desperate to be there. The Buyer is the one who does the rejecting, whereas the Seller is the one who gets rejected.

If being in the relationship isn’t a compelling offer, one that offers 10x transformation and growth, then it’s a no-go for a Buyer.

When you embrace and take your Unique Ability seriously, you immediately remove yourself from ever competing with anyone again.

That’s the disturbing part of being in the gap. You’ve technically made progress but you feel worse as a result, because of the framing you’ve placed on that progress—measuring it against what it should be.

Hilariously, many gap-minded entrepreneurs rationalize their mindset, saying it’s the reason they’re successful. Because they’re “never satisfied,” they’re always stretching and reaching for more. All the while, they miss the point that they’re missing the point. Usually not until after it’s too late do they realize they paid too heavy a price to continually chase their ideals, missing this moment right here and right now.