Most people think success is about discipline or working more hours. And sure, they will get you to the top 10%. But to reach the top 1%, the rules are completely different.
I was once homeless and I thought I was a failure. Today, I'm a multi-millionaire investor, board member, adviser, two billion dollar tech companies. And I didn't get there by working harder, but by designing systems that did the hard work for me.
So instead of giving you motivational fluff, I'm going to share five simple principles to finally do the hard things you've been avoiding. Principle number one, you need to trap yourself. In 1519, the Spanish concistador Hernand Cortez landed on the shores of Mexico with just a few hundred men.
They were there to conquer the Aztec Empire. Now, they were outnumbered in an unknown land, facing impossible odds. Now, guess what he did to make sure his troops had no option but to win.
Cortez ordered them to sink the ships. There was no going back, no retreat, no surrender. That's exactly what we need to do in our lives because when you don't have a plan B, you will find a way to make plan A work.
I learned that lesson in my career when I was the chief operating officer at a large company [music] and we acquired a new company and it was an adjacent business uh with an attractive revenue stream and several hundreds of employees joined us [music] and they had a terrific management team but they were in a different [music] city and there were no direct flights from New York. So I wasn't sure if I was going to travel there much. But when you acquire a company, you have to put in a lot of time and effort to integrate the two companies.
People, [music] culture, systems, product, customers, all of that has to come together. And I remember my CEO putting his hand on my shoulder and saying just two lines, okay, man, I'm not going there. You own it.
And that was it. And at that moment, the whole idea of traveling there every week didn't seem like a chore or a choice. That became my plan A.
And there was no plan B. We had to make the deal work. We had to make the integration successful.
And that required me to pay full attention to the acquired company because my CEO was going to work on a larger picture. [music] and he trusted me fully to take care of our new employees and make sure we became one company. In behavioral design, these are called forcing functions.
The constraints that corner you and force you into growth. Here are the four forcing functions you can set for yourself. First, public commitment.
Tell people what you're going to do. Announce [music] it. Social pressure is one of the oldest motivators on earth.
Second, [music] financial stakes. Pay before you feel ready. Like putting money down on that gym membership or that training course that you always wanted to take.
Our example of that acquisition was a financial state. We spent a lot of money. We had to make it successful.
Third, cut the access. [music] Delete the app. Block the site.
If things that distract you aren't available easily, it becomes a forcing function itself. And fourth, time box. Give the task a hard window.
90 minutes ship something at the end of it. You know when retreat is not an option, hard things that seemed impenetrable first become inevitable. This lets you overcome one thing everybody blames when they can't stay consistent.
That's when principle number two comes into play. Do you know what that is? It's willpower.
We've all had those days. It's 800 am and you feel like it's going to be an amazing day. You're gonna get so much done today.
And then it's 800 PM and you've renegotiated almost everything from your list and you feel like you have failed, but you haven't. That's just how our brains work. Yours and mine.
One of the world's leading willpower researchers, Roy Balmeister, ran a study that literally flipped the idea of discipline on its head. For me, at least. He brought people into his lap and put fresh baked cookies in front of them.
Now, half of them were told not to eat them. Don't touch it. The other half wasn't told anything.
And after a while, some of them ate cookies, some of them didn't. Both groups were given a set of impossible puzzles to solve. And now you're going to say, "Of course, I know where this story is going.
" Those with the willpower did better. But that's the twist. Those who resisted eating cookies gave up on puzzles 50% faster.
Now, that completely surprised me, too. But there is an explanation. Our willpower isn't infinite.
It's like a fuel tank. Every decision you make and every distraction you fight ends up draining that tank. So, by evening, the tank's going to be empty.
That's why you feel like you failed. Not having willpower is not a sign of failure or weakness. It's just biology.
Judges deny parole more often in the afternoon than in the morning. Same cases, same type [music] of facts, but their mental fuel is depleting. We keep trying to solve a biological problem with vague solutions like willpower.
Noah Li is the world's fastest man right now. Now, he doesn't chase willpower or discipline. He engineers it.
How? Well, he has ADHD. So, he doesn't trust willpower.
He trusts his internal rhythm. 6 days a week, same track, same playlist, same warm-up, same bodily movements. When the gun goes off, he says, "I'm not thinking.
My body already knows what to do. " That's not discipline. That's [music] design.
He's not fighting biology. He's using it. When the margin between a gold medal and a silver is just 1 500th of a second, those routines give him the edge.
So why not use the same logic to your advantage? Pick one task that you've been avoiding for a while or the task that has been avoiding you for a while and lock the three variables, time, place, and trigger. Let's say it's deep work that you want to do and it's always 9:00 a.
m. on Thursday. And so at 9:00 am on Thursday on your deep work day, show up at the same desk, same playlist, phone on airplane mode, no Slack, no email.
Now you're on autopilot. [music] That sounds terribly simple, right? But that's the point.
Simple systems are the hardest [music] to break. The more you force yourself into these kind of rhythms, the less you have to rely on willpower anymore. Instead, you'll be able to take advantage of your mental algorithm.
A psychologist at NYU, Peter Galwitzer, studied students who were trying to exercise over Christmas break. And he did something very interesting. He divided them into two groups.
One group was told to set goals like, "I want to work out more. " And the other group was given something like an if then plan. So, if X, do y.
If it's Monday at 7 a. m. , then you were at the gym.
Both teams had the same motivation, but two different instructions. And the results were so surprising. [music] The goal setters failed 62% of the time, but the if then planners only failed 9% of the time.
That's just how our mental algorithms work. [music] If X, then Y. If this happens, do that.
It's a simple but powerful system that changes your behavior. We avoid hard things because what we're really trying to avoid is the emotion that comes from it. The frustration, the doubt, discomfort, the uneasy feeling, the imposttor syndrome.
So your brain starts bargaining with you. Let's skip this just just for today. You know, promise tomorrow we'll do it twice.
It doesn't work, does it? The fix. Run the algorithm.
[music] Why? Because the if then algorithm helps you see those emotional bargains as just data signals. You take out the drama, you take out the debate, and in your head, you just run the code.
If it's 3:00 p. m. Thursday, your deep work starts.
If you had lunch, you walk for 15 minutes. If it's Friday afternoon, you review your week. If it's Sunday night, plan for the next week.
Whatever it is that you want to program in your if then algorithm, you can do it. and then execute. Take out the debate.
But here's what most people don't realize. Even with all these systems in [music] place, there is one step that makes everything stick to outsource your decisions. Atul Gawande is a famous surgeon and he was curious about surgical errors.
While he was doing his research, he found something very disturbing. [music] That worldclass surgeons were making so many mistakes that were totally preventable. [music] They knew better.
But somehow under pressure, their performance was uneven. So he worked with the World Health Organization and they developed a 19step surgical checklist. And you will think the list would be like super technical, right?
But it had the simplest things like confirm the patient's identity first. Make sure all the antibiotics are given. Make sure that the right leg to operate on is marked so you don't chop off the left leg.
That kind of stuff. Now you think, wait, this is so elementary. But when the hospitals put this simple system of checklists into practice, postsurgical complications fell by 36%.
and deaths dropped by 47%. Same surgeons, same skills, just a simple checklist as a safety net when their cognitive load was peaking. That's the power of the system working for you.
And the paradox here is that the better you get at mastering something, the more structured the systems you will have to rely on. Checklists aren't just for beginners, they are for experts, especially experts who do hard things. That's why pilots with 10,000 hours of flying still read the same checklist every single flight.
Not because they forgot how to fly, but because they don't trust their own memory under pressure. So no matter what level of expertise you're at, you can use checklists to become more effective. The three checklists I love making in my life, to-do list, the two want list, and to be list.
The to-do list is about execution. The two want list is about expansion and the tob list is about personal evolution. These checklists aren't about creating bureaucracy.
They are about creating bandwidth for your brain so it can focus on what must be done on the hard things. If your craft matters to you and if your career matters to you and you take pride in doing hard things, [music] then the easiest way to keep track of what you want to do is your checklist. But even with the simplest system like checklist, there is still one problem.
What happens if your brain tries to bypass the system entirely? Which brings me to principle number five. You have to become the system.
I've seen great musicians and great leaders and great spiritual masters and they all have this one thing in common. Harvard researchers scanned the brains of Tibetan monks during their meditation sessions and they found that all the monks had their brain waves [music] synchronized with each other across all the individuals perfectly in rhythm. Now these monks weren't trying to focus or they weren't trying to motivate themselves and they were obviously not trying to synchronize their brain waves but their nervous system over time had evolved into developing that pattern.
Years of repetition had given rise to this beautiful resonance and they didn't need motivation to do it. So what's the secret that these monks can teach us? Motivation doesn't drive repetition.
Repetition drives motivation. When your brain can predict the cadence, it starts craving the queue. Over time, you [music] don't have to push yourself every day.
Your biology starts to pull you forward. That's how your brain lights up and [music] that's how you become the person who does the hard things over and over again. But it almost seems effortless.
Now it is not effortless. [music] That's just a myth. When you see someone like Raja Federer doing that perfect serve, it seems effortless.
But he has put in thousands and thousands and thousands of reps over countless years, day after day, night after night. But our brain over time starts following those patterns. And once the pattern takes over, your brain stops chasing the reward.
It starts craving the repetition itself. So tonight, don't just try to change your entire life. Design one tiny rule that changes your tomorrow.
Build the right systems and those systems will build the right you. If you like this video, subscribe to my channel for more content like this and check out my recent video on why you feel so stuck in life and how to find [music] success. I'll see you next week.
