Keith Rabois argues that successful people ruthlessly prioritize time. He learned from Peter Thiel that people systematically undervalue their own hours. At Square, Rabois rejected projects with 20% growth targets, pursuing only those with 10x potential impact.
Chapters
After observing many successful people in many contexts, whether as an executive or as an investor or board member, the single most common characteristic that the people who really succeed tend to have is their ability to prioritize time. Another Peter Thielism is Peter also taught me in late 2000 that people systematically undervalue their time. That alone led to an epiphany to me is to be ruthless in applying my time. But as a senior executive for 13 years and as a board member for the last seven across probably 20 companies, what I've noticed is the most common characteristic of people who are successful is their ability to constantly prioritize and prioritize. It's almost innate. They have an ability to prioritize naturally, whereas many people suffer. And truthfully, our calendars that everybody uses don't really help, even though they're software they may actually be making people dumber. Basically, people use software as a calendar and they fill in slots as opposed to optimizing and leveraging time. And I think training people how to leverage their time is something that takes a lot of us either learning by osmosis or a lot of thoughtful instruction. Well, one of the easiest ways to start this process is to say no. People don't like to be told to say no. That's a little bit of the flip side or similar concept as the focus point. I've just told people they can't do X. For example, back in the early days of Square, I used to walk around and say no to anything that didn't have 10x potential. Some people would be frustrated because they could say, this project will yield 20% growth. I'm like, I don't really care. I need zeros. Adding zeros to our dashboard. If we don't add zeros to our dashboard, we just don't matter. So by spending time adding 20%, it means that someone's not spending time thinking through how to add zeros. So you have to say no. It's a classic Apple lesson of like saying no to many things so you can be awesome at a few. And very few people apply this.
