Why You Should Let Go Of 80% Of Your Life

Welcome Back to the 10X is easier than 2X series. My name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I'm an organizational psychologist and author of multiple books. I wrote be your future self now as well as 10x is easier than 2x, the third book in my trilogy with Dan Sullivan. And this is video number two in a multiple video series that's made just for YouTube by me. Breaking down the core concepts of 10x is easier than 2x. There's so much psychology strategy insight on this book. In this video I'm going to break down one of the core ideas which is really and honestly this is the big idea of the book which is letting go of the 80% using the 8020 principle. I'm going to share my screen in a minute and go over the core model of this book. But the main idea of 10x is easier than 2x. And it's the subtitle explains it how world class entrepreneurs achieve more by doing less. 10x is not about doing more, it's actually about doing less. 10x is about higher quality and less quantity in all that you do and in all that you think about the core bottleneck, and this is according to constraint theory, the core bottleneck of all of life and of human beings is our attention. And so it's about letting go of 80% of what you're doing and taking your attention and going much deeper and getting a 10 times return on your attention. This has a lot to do with flow and honestly just the quality of your time and attention. So I'm going to go ahead and just talk about letting go of the 80% because in order to go 10x using the 8020 model, you have to let go of 80% of your life. 80% of your life right now represents your past self and your present self, but it does not represent your 10x future self. And the core story, I guess you could say of 10x is easier than 2x. The core example is Michelangelo. And by the way, if you've not read this book, please do. The introduction on Michelangelo is crazy, showing all of his 10x jumps. And by the way, just as 10x is about higher quality and less quantity, 10x actually really is qualitative, not quantitative. A lot of times when people talk about 10x, they think you just add a zero and do 10 times more of what you're now doing. That's kind of how I would say Grant Cardone teaches it. And I love Grant. I've got nothing against Grant, but this book I would say goes deeper into like the true Depth and the true core of what it means to go 10x and 10x is fundamentally about quality, not quantity. It's about a qualitative transformation. Let me give an example and then I'm going to share my screen and we're going to just talk about the core model and fundamentally how to let go of the 80%. Because the 80% again represents your past self and your current self. And there's a, there's a lot that's keeping you holding on to your current self and your past self, which would stop you from going all in on the 20% and then transforming that to become your 10x future self. So Michelangelo obviously, when he created the David, he was asked by the Pope, how did you do it? How did you create the David? What's the secret? And Michelangelo basically just said, I stripped away everything that's not the David. So that's the 80%. Your 10x future self, your future self is what's ultimately who you want to become. And you want to let the future dictate the present. If you're operating linearly, which is 2x, then you're letting the present dictate the future. That's a non effective approach to time and identity. A much more effective approach is to let your 10x future dictate the present. And there's a lot of research that shows the more connected and more vivid you get about your future self, but also using 10x, the bigger your future. I actually love the quote from Dan. The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger. In subsequent videos in this series, I'm going to break down the psychology of time and the psychology of identity and show you how everything we do in the present is based on our story and our views of our, of our past and our future selves. You want to let the future dictate the present, not let the present dictate the future. And so this takes us to Steve Jobs real quick. And I'm just going to explain why 10x is about quality, not quantity. Although when you make a qualitative transformation, it's that transformation that opens up new quantitative doors. As an example, going from crawling to walking, as I see it, is a 10x upgrade. Now that you can walk, now you have so many possibilities that you didn't have while walking. Going from horse and buggy to car is a 10x. Going from car to flying is a 10x. It's a qualitative transformation. And so an example of this is Steve Jobs back in the late 90s. The music industry was CDs. If you heard a song you liked on the radio, you would have to go to a store and buy a CD to get that song so you could listen to it whenever you wanted. And so you would buy a full album. And that album, that CD may be cost you 10 to 20 bucks and it has like 15 songs on it, but you really only wanted one or two of those songs. And then you would have to lug around a big bag of CDs with you everywhere you went. And using the 8020 principle, 80% or more of the songs on those CDs you don't even listen to, you don't even like. And so what did Steve Jobs do? Going from CDs to an iPod was a qualitative transformation. Yes, it's still music, but fundamentally it's a different concept. It's a transformation. He stripped away the 80% of what it meant to listen to music. No longer have to go to the store. You can buy music online on itunes. He digitized music in such that you could buy one song at a time for 99 cents and you could have all the songs in your pocket, just the songs you wanted. So he made the experience of music 10 times easier and better, more affordable even too, he stripped out a bunch of the costs. You don't have to buy 80% of music you don't want. You don't have to lug around. The CD is great all in your pocket. So that's, that's a concept of first principles, thinking. And that's what happens when you go all in on the 20% and then you start to go deeper on the 20% and you transform that 20% and make it 10 times better. That's why 10X is really about qualitative transformation. Going from CDs to iPod. And then, because now you've gone through that qualitative change, now you have an ipod. Now that opens up 10x or 100x the quantitative possibilities. Now you can scale it like never before. And so you going 10x is equivalent to going from CDs to iPod. That's why it's qualitative first. But it opens up infinite options on scaling if you choose to. So now, with that said, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. So this is the core model of a 10x psychology. Your identity, your time and your leadership. Identity is two things. It's your story, the story of your past self and future self, which ultimately shapes your present experience. It's also your standards, which is Your floor and your ceiling. And a big aspect of identity is raising your floor, which you're most committed to, because you're what you're most committed to and your identity are both the same thing. And so as you raise your floor subconsciously, you elevate your sense of what you believe you deserve, what you believe you can have, and then that opens up integrity as your future self. And a big aspect of raising your floor, by the way, is eliminating the 80%. Eliminating the 80% means you're no longer saying yes to things you used to say yes to. And I'll go into that in depth. But time is all about attention, the quality of your attention, the depth of your attention, and the return on your attention, and then ultimately leadership. And all of these things have to do with the 80%. So this is the core model of the book in chapter 1 of 10x is easier than 2x. Please grab the book, please listen to it. But the idea here is, is that if you want to go for 2x growth in anything, you're going linear. And in order to go 2x, you can keep 80% of your current life, your current strategy, your current habits, your current beliefs, your current clients, your current behaviors. To go 2x is basically just doing what you're doing now, just a little bit more or a little bit better. It's very linear. You. So to go 2x means that you're letting the past drive the present and the present to drive the future. That's the core concept there. It's a linear and sequential approach to time. Whereas 10x is a nonlinear approach to time. And you let the future, a seemingly imagined future. And by the way, speaking of nonlinear time or relative time, Albert Einstein did say that imagination is more important than knowledge. And so rather than letting the present dictate the future, with 10x, you actually imagine a seemingly impossible future, which you feel most excited, most called to, and you let the future dictate the present. And so a 10x future is such a big, such a high future that it will only allow you to keep the best 20% of what you're doing. To go 10x, you can only keep the 20%, you have to eliminate the 80%. And so this whole video is going to talk about, really, and I'm going to probably do multiple videos, because this is the big idea in the book, which is that in order to go 10x, you have to let go of the 80% and you have to 10x the quality of the 20%, 10xing, the quality of the 20% is what Steve Jobs did when he transformed CDs into the iPod. He went deep into the 20%, and he ultimately created something new, something at a high level. Simplification is really what innovation is all about. But in order to get things simple, as Steve Jobs said, you've got to go really deep. But once you go deep and once you make things simple, then you can move mountains. That's essentially what he did when he created the transformation of going from CDs to iPods. So what is the 80%? There's a great quote, and the quote says that the system is designed to defend the system. So your 80% is your past self and your present self, but it's also the life you've built for yourself. I'm going to talk about both levels when it comes to the system is designed to defend the system. The 80% is both subconscious. It's your past identity, it's your hidden commitments, but it's also your life. It's your behaviors, it's your. It's your current job, it's your current income, it's your current business model. A lot of times when people imagine a 10x future self, that future self is going to highlight the 80% of things in their life right now that don't resonate with 10x. And so 80% of your life right now is what got you here, but it won't get you there. For some people, that might be an abusive marriage. For some people, that might be their job, a steady paycheck. One thing to note is that the 80% represents security. And subconsciously we seek security. Human beings want security. We want homeostasis. And so we, we build and design an environment and a life around us to protect ourselves. And our subconscious is actually literally designed to protect us from uncertainty. There's a great book on this subject, and I'm going to go into the subconscious side first and then the, and then the actual external side. So there's internal and external systems that are designed to defend the system. In other words, they're designed to, to keep you where you're at. And that's what we're describing as the 80%. The 80% is your current systems, internal and external, that are going to stop you from seeking your next level of growth, what you want. Which is why it can be really hard, for example, to change your habits or to make changes at all because you have internal and external systems that are designed to stop you from making changes. They want your life to be homeostatic. Robert Keegan is A Harvard psychologist, and he is one of my absolute favorite psychologists. He's come up with so many models that, that inform how I think about life and business and psychology. But he wrote a book called Immunity to Change. Immunity to change is all about how our subconscious is built in as an immunity to any changes we seek. So when I as a person want to make some form of change in my life, say I want to get a six pack, or say I want to build a business or I want to run a marathon, those are conscious changes that I want to make. But I have an immunity, a built in immunity to any of those conscious changes I want to make. And what Robert Keegan calls that immunity to change, that built in immunity to change is our hidden commitments. We have hidden commitments we've made in the past, which is back to the idea of identity. Your identity. Is that what you're most committed to? Also beliefs, Our identity, the identity of our past self. We formed beliefs and commitments in our past that are now a huge aspect of our subconscious that drive our behavior. So if you observe any form of behavior that you have, it's because subconsciously you have a commitment that's driving that behavior. If I'm eating candy, there's some form of hidden commitment that I've formed in the back of my life, you know, in the past, that is driving that behavior. Maybe I eat candy when I'm nervous, or maybe it's, it's just something that I, I, I in my mind think is pleasurable. Whatever it is, I formed commitments in my past and those commitments are now driving my behavior. But that behavior is now in my 80%, and that 80% is now in opposition to my desired 10x. You want to start stripping away the 80% and creating space back to the idea of attention. In order to go 10x, you want to go deep on a few things. You want higher quality and less quantity on your mind, less cognitive load, less on your mind, but also less in the back of your mind. And when I say in the back of your mind, I'm meaning subconscious. Like you've literally let it go. Similar to like a trauma, you've let it go. And even a lot of the best things in your life that got you here often become a part of your 80%. Just because something got you here doesn't mean it will get you there. I shared the example in the first video in this series of blogging. One of my 10x jumps, I guess you could say, was going from non author to professional author. I was a first year PhD student when I decided I wanted to ultimately commit to and become a professional author. And it's a lot more powerful to operate from your future, so you operate from your future self. This is a concept that psychologists call deliberate practice. The process is shaped by the goal. So whatever goal you're pursuing is going to determine your process. Naval Ravikant said, it's not 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 iterations. But those iterations are all toward a goal. So whatever your goal is, that's what's going to shape your process, your practice, and ultimately who you become. And so when I wanted to become a professional author, that shaped my 20%. My 20% back then call it, for three to five years, was to become a professional author, was to go deep on blogging, to build a massive email list and to learn how to shape ideas and to write and to think. And ultimately I did. I went 10x, I became a professional author. I went from making about $12,000 a year to making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But I also had a massive email list. And I also was able to start writing books professionally. But by going 10x, I now had a new opportunity. I had a new future self. And each 10x, by the way, is nonlinear from the last. It's not like you just keep going in the same direction. Once I went 10x and I became a professional author, then from there, it's kind of like going from the base of a mountain to the top of a new mountain. Now that I'm on top of a new mountain, I can look and scan new horizons and go for new mountains. And so my next 10x was very different from my last one. So rather than just, you know, continuing what I was doing and continuing to blog as I'd done, my new 20% was based on my new future, which was different from the future that got me here. Just like, and this is really important with the future self research, the research on future self says that your future self is different than you think, way different than you think. And I'm going to do a full series on the future self book. Main idea here though, is, is that your future self is massively different than you think. And that the key is to start to have empathy, compassion, clarity and conviction on your future self. And as you start to get connected to and clear on your future self, you let your future shape your present, shape your identity of the present. This goes to the whole model of be. Then do then have you start being your future self now doing what your future self would do, and also letting go of the things that are no longer relevant. One thing that I think is really powerful about this model is that when you're looking at your current life from your future self, it's a lot easier to let go of the. Of the 80%, because those aspects of your 80% which are important to your current self are no longer part of your future self. And so from your future self's perspective, it's a lot easier to let those things go. But it's also powerful and important to realize that it's the future that determines what you say yes to and what you say no to. And so because as an example, me going 10x, I was now a professional author, I now imagined a new future, which for me then was writing 10 times better books, selling millions of copies, and stuff like that. And so that shaped my next vision of my future. And so because of that, blogging, which had gotten me here, shifted from my 20% to my 80%. There's no longer any reason to blog anymore. Just because I had be, just because it had worked in the past, doesn't mean it was useful or effective for my future. So I let it go, and I now had a new 20% to go deep on. One way of looking at the 20%, by the way, is, is that this is the next form of mastery that you're going to go into. You're going to go deep on this, and you're going to develop extreme levels of mastery in whatever that 20% is for you. The 20% for me, back when I was going from basically starting blogger to author, was writing headlines, learning how to communicate, learning how to connect ideas. Like, there was a deep form of mastery that I developed there, and it allowed me again to the idea of quality, first thing, quantity. I got 10 times better at those things. And by getting 10 times better and going 10 times deeper in this, it allowed me to go 10x. It allowed me to go basically from crawling to walking. I now was a professional author and I was in a new place, a new mindset. I had a new level of freedom. One of the things that Dan Sullivan talks about, which we share in this book, one of Dan's core models is what he calls the four freedoms. Freedom, freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose. Once you go 10x, you have greater value and quality of time, money, also access, relationships, and also sense of purpose. And that purpose is your next 10x jump, which is going to determine your present. So now your next 10x is going to invite you into a new 20% where you're going to form different levels of mastery which are not exactly going to look the same as your. As your mastery from before, although it can build off of it. So the 80% is any aspect of your life that no longer fits the 10x vision of your future. And you have to let the future determine what that 20% is to go all in on. And you're gonna have to let go of the 80% if you want to go 10x. The 80% is security. The security is the system you've developed around you which is designed to defend itself. That 80% does not want you to let it go. It wants things to stay the same. That's your emotions, that's your identity, but that's also your relationships, your environment, your situation. Maybe it's your job. I like 10x thinking, or I like letting the future shape the present because it's a truth filter. The truth filter is, is that most of what you're doing right now is a distraction. Most of what you're doing right now is what got you here, but it won't get you there. And so you've got to start being really honest with yourself about the aspects of your life that are more an indicator of your past than they are of your future. And also if you're getting really clear and connected on your future self. Part of being honest with yourself and part of having integrity, but also part of having a sense of being an intention. Intentionality is recognizing the few areas that really matter, the few things that are now important and the other things that have become urgent, the things you don't want your present situation to determine your decisions. You want your future self to determine the decisions you make. And so you're going to ultimately start letting go of those hidden commitments. So those hidden commitments are the things driving you into the 80% again. For some people, it's unhealthy relationships. For me, to be fully honest with you, and I'm going to do a full video on this at some point. But while I was writing this book, 10x is easier than 2x. I really, because I was going so deep in writing the book and also connecting with my bigger future, it became clear to me that this is likely the last book I would do with Dan, Dan Sullivan. Even though I absolutely love the three books we did together, it became clear that doing those books was. Was shifting from my 20%, which had gotten me here, into my 80%, which was something that was beautiful, but it was more a representation of my past, not my future. And it's, it is a truth filter to let the future determine the present because then it, it weeds the things out that are absolutely incredible. Some things that are not so great. Like there are aspects of your 80%, and I'll call that the floor, the idea, the idea that we all have a floor and a ceiling. The lowest parts of your floor are also part of your 80%. Those could be addictions, bad habits. That's things in your past as well. And your subconscious hidden commitments that you're going to want to let go of to free yourself. Because going 10x is about lightening the load. It's kind of like Newton's third law of motion. When you have an equal and opposite reaction by letting go of various things, it creates a propulsion towards the future. A lot of the things you'll let go are in the subconscious. They're hidden commitments, their ideas, their beliefs in the past that no longer serve you. Part of the 80% could be worried, worrying about what other people think about you. So their ideas, their beliefs, their commitments that are driving your actions and behaviors, but also their aspects of your life, they may be your job, they may be your environment. I'll share with you a few aspects of my 80% that I've been in process of letting go of lately. But the, the idea here, back to Michelangelo, is that you strip away everything that's not the David. And, and the 10x feature, self is the David. And you're going to strip away 80% of your life that no longer represents that 10x, even though it's beautiful things. And I think one important thing to, to note here is that when you're letting these things go, when you're letting go of the 80%, first off, as humans, we have a massive aversion to loss. There's a lot of research on this by Dr. Daniel Kahneman. He wrote the book thinking fast and slow. Human beings are more avoidant of loss than even seeking of gain because losses seem to hurt. And so when we're letting go of our 80%, we often perceive it as a loss. How I look at it, and we wrote, and it's written about in this book, in chapter four, when you let go of the 80%, it actually is a gain. You're letting go of something to create space, space for something new, fresh and better. And so you're not just letting go of it for nothing. One of my friends said that alcohol was part of his 80%. Right? It was what got him here, but won't get him there. Now there's no, there's no need to have anger or resentment towards your past self. And when you're letting that go, it could feel like a big loss and it truly is the loss of your past self. That's what it is. It's kind of like a birth and it's like a death and rebirth. But we, when you're letting go of aspects of your past self, hidden commitments and even identities, you're letting that go and it's actually a massive step forward. It's multiplication by subtraction. You're letting it go to create space and you are actually stepping forward. In my opinion, one of the greatest leaps of faith is letting go of your old self, letting go of the things that are no longer serving you. And so when you're letting go of the past self, a lot of people, they overly, from my opinion, dramatize this. They overly dramatize it and they, they go through either stages of anger or even stages of grieving. And it's almost like the loss of, you know, a child. It's the loss of your former self. The key here though is, is, and I, I, I like what Marie Kondo talks about. Marie Kondo talking about in the life changing habit of tidying up, when you let go of a shirt, for example, you thank it, you, you are grateful for it. It got you here, but it won't get you there. It just doesn't fit the desire, you know, the filter of where you're trying to go. It's not the quality to the standard of where you're now going to. But you don't have anger towards the shirt you're letting go of. You actually thank it, you celebrate it. And so from my view, when you're letting go of the 80%, the key is getting to a place of celebrating it for what it was. It got you here, it won't get you there. Even addiction. One of my friends, Joe Polish, talks about how addiction is not necessarily the problem, it's actually a solution to a problem. It's not necessarily a healthy solution, but it's your best coping mechanism for what you're dealing with. So even addiction can serve you for a time. I'm not saying it's a healthy serve, but at some point when you let it go, you don't, you're not angry toward it. You just say it got me here and it won't get me there. There's also a really big recognition. An important thing to, to realize here is, is that you're not your past self. You're not the person you were in the past. You're not even who you were a week ago, but you're definitely not who you were a year ago. And so there's no reason to have any forms of anger or regret towards your past self. Instead, you just recognize that your past self is different from you. They were in a different context, they had different situations, different choices. And so you're not your past self, but you can massively celebrate your past self. You want to have compassion, empathy and love for your past self, but also celebrate your past self, but also recognize that you're not your past self. You have a different view, different priorities, different purpose, but also your future self is not the same as you. And so when you're letting go of the 80%, I would just get to the point as fast as possible of celebrating what it was and that it got you here, but it won't get you there. And that as you let it go, you celebrate it for what it was. And so I massively celebrate, for example, the fact that I got to write three books with Dan Sullivan. It was beautiful and I'm nothing but in the gain about it. And we get to choose our narration of the past and our narration of the future. And a positive psychology means you have an increasingly better past and an increasingly bigger future. And that better past is your decision. Key point here is, is that the system is designed to defend the system. We all have an 80% and that 80% is going to try at everything. And you got to realize mostly this is just your identity and it's your subconscious holding these things in place to seek security. We seek security. The 80% is security, the 20% is freedom. And as you strip more and more of the 80% away, that's the biggest leap of faith. You're creating space so that your identity can connect more fully with your future self and that you start bringing your future self to you. I love the quote from the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. He said, we do not attract what we want, we attract what we are. This goes back to be, then do then have. As you start letting go of the 80% which is your past self and you celebrate it, but you create space. Thinking back to attention, you create space. There's a quote from Aristotle, actually. He talks about how nature abhors a vacuum and that if you think about things like when there's emptiness, nature tries to fill it up. If there's an empty plot of dirt, all of a sudden weeds are going to start to grow. So the 80% is going to start to try to just fill itself in. If you, if you remove something, we as people are going to ultimately start filling it with something else, with busyness for that short term security and dopamine. And so when you create that space, you open yourself up to a new future which then starts coming at you. This hits on to what psychologists call pole motivation. Rather than pushing yourself forward, you let go of the 80% and you get pulled by your future self or you pull your future to you. So I'm going to go deeper on this in a while, but the idea here is, is that to go 10x you gotta let go of the 80%. The 80% is your past self, the 20% is your 10x future self. You go 10x deeper and better. You let go of the 80% and you 10x the quality of the 20% and by 10x in the quality then you'll go 10x in quantity and then you'll transform your life. And so I'll go deeper on this soon. My name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't yet, please grab a copy of 10x is easier than 2x. Down below is my website benjamin hardy.com where you can find out more where you you may be able to work with me. Please subscribe to the channel and I'll see you on the next video video three of this series soon. See you.