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

by Dan Sullivan

continually boosts your confidence by allowing you to reference your progress.

High-hope people take every experience they have as a learning opportunity—no matter the experience. Everything happens for them, not to them. They utilize every experience to improve how they live and approach life.

Practicing a gain mindset is very simple. At the end of each day, you could write down three “wins” you had that day. Those wins could be things you learned (even from things that didn’t go well). They could be literal progress you made toward your goals, even if it was minor progress. It could be experiences you had, such as spending time with your kids. Whatever you focus on expands. Whatever you see, you create more of. By focusing on the gains in your life, you’ll begin to feel like you’re always winning. You’ll begin to see and create more gains from every day and every experience. Consequently, you’ll be able to create more gains from every day.

But look at your past, and you can see that you’ve already done it at least once. And you can do it again.”

take some time to reflect back on your previous 10x jumps. Also, reflect on the core 20 percent of each of those jumps—the things that remained when you were one-tenth of where you’re at now. Also reflect on the 80 percent you let go of in each jump you made. By clarifying the 20 percent in each stage, you’ll see how you’ve continually refined your Unique Ability to create 10x freedoms in your life.

Now it’s your turn: Identify five of your past 10x jumps. Give each of your previous 10x jumps a name and a timeline. For example, mine could be named: Getting on the mission (2006-2008), getting into BYU (2010-2011), getting married and into a PhD program (2011-2014), growing my family and becoming a well-paid professional author (2014-2019), 10xing as an author and evolving emotionally as a person (2019-present). Clarify the 20 percent of each of your 10x jumps, as well as the 80 percent that you let go of at each level. As you reflect on the 20 percent of each 10x jump you’ve made, reflect on how that 20 percent helped you further develop your Unique Ability.

Thich Nhat Hahn said, “There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.”

The scariest and most courageous thing you’ll ever do is to be yourself.

What are you ultimately going for? What are you “optimizing” for? What level of capability and results do you want to develop and master? What are the standards you want to refine and actualize? Defining your fitness function is as simple as defining the specific standards or criteria you want to grow into. The criteria you feel called to and want to create. The more specific your fitness function, the more specialized, nuanced, and valuable you will become. Your agency as a person is based on what you choose to develop yourself into. We all will become someone. It’s your responsibility to define what you want and to direct your focus and attention toward that. Your fitness function is your filter.

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.

If you’re in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage.”

The more you invest in your Unique Ability, the more 10x transformations you will make. Your Unique Ability is how you transform yourself again and again into the most unique, valuable, and true form of yourself. Unique Ability is how you create unique wealth and value, which others will happily pay increasing amounts of finite money for.

Rejuvenation is about making yourself, your enthusiasm, your excitement, and your ambitions young again.

If you want to 10x the quality and value of your performance, you’ll need to transform how you approach your time.

Being busy isn’t how you become world-class. You’ve got to approach time qualitatively and non-linearly—where you’re increasingly freeing yourself up to transform yourself, your perspectives, your vision, your insights, and your relationships.

Free Days (rejuvenation days) Focus Days (performance days) Buffer Days (organization and preparation days)

The more successful you become, the more recovery takes the front seat to everything else. Research shows that recovery is essential for flow and increased high performance.

Recovery is crucial for being fresh, operating at your best, as well as career and life longevity.

If you’re never fully unplugged, you’re also never in the zone. Your ability to turn 100 percent “on” and work in a flow state is in equal proportion to your ability to turn 100 percent “off” and fully release and let go. Focus is contraction. Recovery is expansion.

How you do anything is how you do everything. If you want 10x better flow and performance and work, you’ll want 10x better and more restorative recovery. 10x is about quality, more than quantity.

Creativity and innovation are about making unique and sometimes distant connections. This involves new and interesting inputs as well as the indirect reflection and fermentation process that can only happen when you have space and time.

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.

By giving yourself more space to recover, think, and innovate—you increase the value of your own time. You transform yourself enormously, while others are on the chronos-hamster wheel.

Create bigger blocks of open space for deep work.

Research shows that there are three essential preconditions of being in a flow state: Clear and specific goals. Immediate feedback. The challenge and/or risk of the activity is beyond your current skill or knowledge level.

Commit to scheduling Free Days throughout your week, month, and year. Choose the number of Free Days that scares you a little bit. You’ll be surprised that you achieve more and better results by doing less.

Structure your week for high performance and flow. Stack and schedule similar activities like meetings on the same day. Only have meetings on various days of the week. Have several days per week where nothing is scheduled.

Adopt a maker schedule, where you have huge time blocks dedicated for deep work and innovation. This is how you’ll get 10x better. Apply focus-flow and recovery-flow at an even higher level, where you not only have focus and Free Days, but you have focus and free weeks, and even focus and free months.

Having a Self-Managing Company is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a company and team that manages themselves. You’re no longer involved in the day-to-day. You have a team that works for you—without being dependent on you. Again, this doesn’t mean you’re not the visionary and leader. But you’re leading in your proper sphere, where you’re innovating and transforming yourself—and continually exploring and exploiting radically new and exciting opportunities. You’re no longer the bottleneck, involved in or managing the team, system, or structure of the business. Instead, you’ve brought on world-class Whos that are better suited for managing the affairs of the system, processes, and team.

“Go for the fringes of the bell curve. Going for the middle is death to growing a culture, community, and business.”

The reason people join any organization or association is psychographic alignment. All humans have a deep desire to feel a sense of belonging and connection to a group of people with shared beliefs and culture.”

sense of belonging and community among their members.

The Enemy: “You have to have an enemy,” Tim said. Interestingly, it’s often easier for people to bond on what they don’t like than what they do. This taps into in-groups and out-groups, where you can clearly point to something and say, “That’s not us.”

shared insider language, with unique words, acronyms, and shared meanings which are continually used in conversation and presented in education materials.

Every organization, association, or movement has a leader. This leader is seen as an attractive character and a servant. They are not the hero of the story; each individual member is the hero. The leader is simply there to serve, guide, and support all the members. The leader takes the customer or member along the journey, helping them through the transformation and process of their own hero’s journey, which the association provides.

When you’re a “Buyer” rather than a “Seller,” you’re very clear on the results you want to create, you have high standards for everything you do, and you only work with increasingly high-impact players who are proven and committed.

The more you place your focus and energy into your 20 percent Unique Ability and get more consistent at producing 10x quality results, the more valuable your time and results will become. Your revenue and income will go 10x again and again, enabling you to get more Whos in all areas of your life. 10x is about depth and quality. To become a master at what you do, you can’t have a million things on your mental plate sapping your cognitive load. Focus on higher quality and less quantity of things. This also applies in your personal life. If you can get someone to come and clean your house, do various tasks like laundry and dishes, run errands, etc., the higher the quality and depth you’ll have with your family.

Level two entrepreneurship is evolving beyond the rugged individual to becoming a leader who applies Who Not How. By applying Who Not How, you begin operating far more in the 20 percent of your 10x process—which is your Unique Ability. You fully trust the Whos to handle the Hows of their various roles, and you don’t micromanage them. You give them autonomy and trust with clear vision and standards.

It takes commitment and courage (200) to begin transforming your life. All progress starts by telling the truth. Once you make commitment and courage toward 10x dreams, you can and will evolve to the higher dimensions on Hawkins’ map. You can reach a place of acceptance, love, peace, and even enlightenment.

As you develop your Unique Ability to unfathomable levels, and as you consciously choose a life of freedom, you will have increasing power in your life. You’ll stop operating out of brute-force emotions or energy.

When you’re pulled by what you want and what excites you, that’s freedom and intrinsic motivation.

When you insist on doing what you’ve been doing, 10x is essentially impossible. Only when you expand your vision and focus on the 20 percent can immediate and transformative results be yours.

10x is easier than 2x. 2x is doing the same thing, only more of it. It’s brute force, not intelligent, not transformational, not an upgrade in thinking. 10x is an entirely different way of doing things, based on an entirely different future. To go 10x, you can’t avoid the bottleneck—the 20 percent. Instead, you fully embrace and transform it, knowing all the while that the bottleneck has always been yourself.