The Mistake Keeping You From Reaching Your Goals

Goal, time, money. This is a framework that I've used for years to make really hard decisions in my life. If you want to advance a goal, you have to sacrifice time and.

Or money.

If you want to make more money, you usually have to postpone some sort of personal goal and, or it costs you time. And if you want more time, you usually have to postpone a goal and. Or it costs you money. No matter what you pick to focus on, it's going to cost you something.

The problem is most people aren't aware.

Or conscious of that cost.

What they want is they want to advance all three, and as a result.

They end up achieving none of them. So in this video, I want to break down why this framework is so important and how to think about these different variables. Achieving a goal, unlocking time, or making more money, where you recognize that in order to achieve one or move one further along, you inherently have to experience some sort of cost in one or two of the others. So first, let's start with what is a goal. So a goal can be anything that.

You want to improve or achieve in your life. It could be going to the gym more often. It could be learning a foreign language.

It could be reading 20 pages in a book every day.

It could be learning a new skill.

It doesn't really matter. A goal is anything that you want to spend time doing to achieve an end. Now, your goal could be to make more money, but if money is the goal, then that also means that all your other pursuits in life come second, which is fine. But this is one of those areas where I feel like people don't have a lot of clarity around this decision.

What they do is they sort of lump the decision into this broad bucket.

In their brain and they go, I want, like, my primary goal is I want to make more money, but I also want to get to the gym every day.

And I also want to eat healthy.

And I also want to start going.

To the sauna every Saturday.

And I also like, it's just they.

List out all these other personal goals.

They don't really realize that in order.

To make progress on any of them, you have to decide which one is the priority.

And so if you're saying to yourself.

My priority is I want to make.

More money, that is the primary goal, that's fine. But you also have to internalize and.

Remember that it's going to cost you.

Something in order to achieve that goal. And what it's going to cost you, if the primary goal is money, is.

All of your other goals or many of your other goals.

And it's also going to cost you time and again. It kind of comes back to this faulty belief or this misunderstanding that people.

Have where they think that they can advance all three simultaneously.

And that is not how it works.

And when you're not honest with yourself.

About what the cost is, then what.

Happens is, as you start to advance.

One, you get frustrated because you feel.

The deficit in one or two of.

The others, and you don't want to feel the deficit, right? You don't want to feel like it's costing you something.

So what do you do?

You then bounce to the next one and you're like, but I want more time. Okay, sacrifice main goal. I'm going to reclaim some time.

Oh, I reclaimed time, but now I'm.

Not making as much money. Okay, so refocus on, I want to make more money, but then it costs you something else.

Oh, now I don't have any hobbies. Okay, so then you make the hobby the priority.

All right, well, then maybe you make.

Less money and you have less time. So there is always a cost.

There's always a cost.

This is sort of the same concept.

As it's very easy to make to do lists, right?

Everyone loves making to do lists.

Everyone loves starting the new year with, here are all my New Year's resolutions. Here's all the things that I want to do. That's not the hard part.

The hard part is deciding all the.

Things that you're going to remove, AKA all the things that you're going to be okay with it costing you.

Right?

When you remove something from your schedule.

Or from the expectations that you have within yourself, when what you're really doing is you're coming to terms with that cost, you're saying, this other thing is more important than all the others on my list. I respect that. This is the most important thing.

I want this to be the priority.

And I'm okay with it costing me. I don't want to take as many meetings, or I don't go out with friends as often, or I don't go out to dinner as much as I used to, or I don't get to the gym six days a week. I can only get there three days a week.

Right?

Whatever it is, you're coming to terms with that cost. And where I see so many people go wrong, myself included. Whenever I find myself in a chapter.

Where I feel like I'm not making the progress that I want to make, in some way, it's rooted in the fact that I'm not Aware of the cost that's required.

It's not that I can't achieve the goal.

It's not that that can't be a priority. It's that I haven't come to terms with the fact that it's going to.

Cost me something in order to achieve.

That goal, in order for it to be a priority. And whenever you're not honest about what.

The cost is, then what happens is.

You just keep bouncing between know, goal, money, time, and you, you're like, I advanced the goal, now it's costing me money. Uh oh. And then I, I get back, I'm making money, now it's costing me time, uh oh.

Then I reclaim time.

Oh, but it's costing me my goal. Uh oh.

And you just stay in this loop.

For, for forever and ever. And this is the only framework that I've really found to help me internalize.

Why this is so important. And every time I sit down and.

I ask myself, what is the priority? What do I want to do? What do I want to focus on? I continue to train my brain to ask the next question, which is, what cost am I okay with incurring in order for this to be the priority?

And if you don't know what the.

Cost is, here's a great rule of thumb that I've learned over the years.

If you don't know what that cost.

Is, that means the cost is in more areas of your life than you realize. It's actually costing you other goals and.

Time and probably money. You're just not aware of it and.

Or you're not willing to consciously admit it. Instead, it's much easier to just sort.

Of live in the delusion of I'm advancing all three.

You're not. You're not. You're advancing all three very, very incrementally. And as a result, none of them accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. Okay, so now let's talk about each individual variable. So you have goal, some sort of goal.

Doesn't matter what it is.

It's something that you want to have.

Happen in your life as the result.

Of effort, time, reclaiming time doesn't matter. If you want more time to yourself, you want more time to do leisurely activities, you want more time with your family, your kids, your friends, doesn't matter. You are focused on reclaiming time to reallocate somewhere else. And then money in some way, you want to make more money. Now, both time and money can be the primary goal. It's just worth reminding yourself that you probably have more than One goal, right? There's habits you want to build, there's personal achievements that you're.

You're aiming toward.

There's little things that you want to have happen multiple times in a day or in a week or in a month, right?

All of those are goals. And so they actually are all competing.

Against each other, including time and money. So here's how to think about these different variables. So first, let's talk about goals without leverage.

This is a very important nuance.

Without leverage, you can only advance one.

Goal at a time.

And the reason is, because progress requires effort, you don't have leverage.

So all progress is dependent upon your effort, and effort is constrained by your.

Time and energy, okay?

So you do not have infinite effort.

You don't have infinite time, you don't have infinite energy, right?

So this is a very important nuance.

And it took me a long time to understand this.

Without leverage, you can only advance one goal at a time.

Now, on a micro level, what this looks like is there's no such thing as multitasking, right? Like, I literally can't read 20 pages in a book and simultaneously meditate at the same time. Two different goals, right? Maybe I could get away with like reading while I'm in the sauna, you know, I can't like go to the gym and, and separate goal of, I want to be better about eating four meals a day and hitting certain macros, right? Two completely different things. You can't do 99% of goals on a micro level at the exact same moment.

It always requires sequence, right?

I read and then I go to the gym, right? Or I go to the gym and then I read or I go to the gym and then I eat healthy, right? It always requires sequence on a more macro level without leverage.

What this means is that in order to really move something forward in your.

Life, it could be just the consistency of a daily habit, or it could.

Be a larger project. In order to make progress, your progress is dependent on effort, right? Leverage means that you have other assistance.

You have assistance with the help of other people. Maybe you have assistance by leveraging capital, you have assistance by leveraging automations that you took the time to build, right? If you don't have any form of.

Leverage, then all progress is dependent upon.

Upon you sitting there doing the work, right? It is dependent upon effort.

Now why is this so important?

Because most people are not conscious of the fact that effort is constrained by time and energy. And so what happens is they spend.

All this time making all these lists of all these goals that they want to achieve.

Not realizing that every single goal on the list, right?

As you move from goal one to.

Two to three to four to five, right. Inherently, you can imagine, you know, goal one, if that's the priority, you have a full bucket of I have some time, and I have a good amount of energy, right? Goal two, well, now I've used some time and I've used some energy because I focused on the first one. Goal three, I have less time and I have less energy because I focused on the first two.

So it's really easy to make these long lists of, here's all the things.

That I want to do, all the things that I want to achieve. Not realizing that without leverage, you can.

Only advance one at a time. And each one that you advance is.

Costing you this finite resource, right? You don't have infinite time and you don't have infinite energy.

So as you try to do more, your results, right, Your ability to generate.

A result actually falls off a cliff. By the time you get down to goal 10 in a day, you're out.

Of time, the day is over, and.

You'Re probably out of energy. You're fried, right? And if you push beyond that point in that first day, what happens?

Well, the next day, you're exhausted, you.

Have to sleep in. You lose more time, you have to sleep in to reclaim more energy. You're dealing with a finite resource.

So this is a very important point.

Because I think a question that a lot of people don't ask themselves is, how many goals am I trying to advance in my life at the same time?

And the nuance is, how many goals.

Am I trying to advance where I don't have leverage?

Advancement goals fundamentally means my direct involvement.

And is dependent upon my direct effort. If that's the case, you can only.

Do one at a time.

Because you don't have leverage, you don't have scale. Okay, now here's what. Here's where things get interesting is with leverage, you can actually advance multiple goals at the same time. However, there's another nuance.

As long as each goal requires minimal.

Effort from you, because effort is, again, constrained by time and energy. So what that means is if you've ever built a team or built a company, like entrepreneurship has taught me this so well. There are different types of hires that you make. Leverage is a hire, right? It's labor leverage. I can hire someone to take over a task.

Now, there's a little framework that I.

Have in terms of hiring. If you think about labor leverage, which is when you're Hiring someone for a given task or for a role or for a department, there's sort of three different types of hires. There's one person who is the lowest leverage role, and their job is simply to take over the task.

Right.

So a great example would be like an executive assistant or like a, like an overseas virtual assistant. You've been doing a task called, you know, I need to send 100 cold outreach messages a week or a month. You know, all of the things that go into that task, you've repeated that task a zillion times. Now you're simply hiring someone to take that task over from you. And the reason it's, it's the lowest leverage is because all they're doing is they're helping you reclaim existing time. So they're not actually that. Usually with that role and that low, low leverage sort of task, they're not taking something and then going beyond the amount of time that it was costing.

You, where they end up saving you even more time or they create even.

More assets in replace of you.

Right.

So they're not building something new. They're simply taking over an existing task. That's the lowest leverage role. The middle leverage is when you hire.

Someone to take over an existing task.

Or a bundle of tasks and you go, I want you to run this, oversee this, and maybe even grow it a little bit.

Right.

So now it's higher leverage in the.

Sense that they helped free, free up your time. You're no longer the one doing the, the ongoing work. But they take it a step further.

In the sense that now they're able.

To look for other things that grow the thing without your involvement.

Right.

The third tier and the highest leverage.

Is when you can hire someone to.

Fundamentally build something from the ground up.

Without very much involvement from you. Okay. What this looks like would be if, for example, tomorrow we wanted to build like a affiliate partnerships vertical. Now the lowest leverage thing would be for me or for Dickie or someone in our company to go, I'm going to figure out how to do this first, which would cost us a lot of time.

And then I'm going to go find.

Someone to take it over. And they're just going to replace the work that I've figured out how to do.

Right.

That's the lowest leverage. The middle leverage would be, I'm going to figure it out, but I'm also going to hire someone to sort of like figure it out with me. We might have like similar levels of proficiency and I can maybe pass things off to them faster. Right. I Don't need to like fully document or master the task. They're higher leverage. They can help me with that.

And maybe they're bringing something else to the table.

Maybe they're bringing like an existing Rolodex, or maybe they have some experience here. And so they already have some of these skills. Whereas I would be trying to figure them out, costing me time from the beginning.

Right.

The highest leverage would be going and finding someone who's already built the exact.

Same thing that we want to build.

Hiring them and going here, here's all our resources. You have access to everything that we have internally. Go build this department from scratch. That's the highest leverage.

It's also the highest leverage because it requires the least amount of time.

So with leverage and in different tiers.

Of leverage, you can advance multiple goals at the same time.

Now, the highest form of leverage, at least I'll speak in this example, is actually capital. It's money.

Right.

If you think about what is the, the thing that would yield the, the greatest possible return for the least amount of your direct involvement in energy. Well, a great example would be I cut an angel check to a new startup. So I give them $25,000, I get a small piece of their company, that.

$25,000 works for me.

Now, obviously there's risk associated with that. I'm just using it as that 25.

Grand works for me.

And there is a scenario, right? Depending on the startup, might not be a very high percentage scenario, but there is a scenario where that 25 grand could generate 2x5x10x100x1000x, right. Which means the 25 grand is working for me with essentially no additional effort. The only effort that it took from me was writing the check. That is why capital is such a.

High form of leverage. Could I advance multiple goals at a time?

If I was hiring someone to build something from the ground up, and I'm buying 10 years of experience, for sure, they could go build that while I give them a tiny bit of direction and then I'm done.

Great.

You go build that. Could I also advance another goal where I cut a 25 grand check or a 50 grand check into a startup and then that's the only effort that I deploy, and then that can go work for me. Yes, I can.

Right.

The nuance is that as you gain leverage, you have to be choosing initiatives.

That, no, they do not require ongoing involvement from you. And if there is ongoing involvement, it has.

It has to be minimal because the.

More ongoing involvement there is from you.

Fundamentally, you Go back to what we were talking about before, which is you can only advance one thing at one time because the involvement from you is dependent upon your direct effort. And your direct effort is a finite resource. And this is one of those nuances that people don't understand or think about enough, which is that they think they have leverage by maybe hiring someone to take over an existing task, or they think they have leverage by investing a little bit of money into a company. But really along with the money, there's an expectation that you do a call with them once a month or you give ongoing feedback. Right in the moment, none of those.

Things seem like a big deal.

You're like, oh, it's hopping on a call once a month, that'll take me.

30 minutes, that's not that much.

But if you start to stack those on top of each other, you start to realize that you're actually creating a big bucket that competes all for the same finite resource, which is your direct involvement and your time and energy. And that becomes a problem. And so part of this idea of how do you advance a goal or how do you advance multiple goals at the same time comes back to this idea of is the goal dependent upon your direct involvement energy? If it's not, then yes, you can start to stack other goals on top of each other, right? And you can have either labor leverage or capital leverage start to work for you, right? But if it is, and it is dependent upon your direct involvement, time and energy, then you need to be really careful about all the different things that you sign yourself up for. Because what's going to happen is all of these commitments are going to start competing for the same resource, which is.

Your attention, which is your energy. So that's the goal side.

There's a lot to think about with that.

Now, time is also really interesting.

There's a lot of different ways to think about time because time in and of itself is a resource. In many cases, people think about reclaiming time as, you know, oh, I just, I wish I had more free time. And the way that I think about it is with excess time, you can.

Either generate a short term output by.

Deploying effort to advance a singular goal. So what that means is I can generate a short term output by working really hard on something that is where there is a direct correlation between my effort, right? I could go grind for a weekend. I know that if I work on.

This specific thing, it yields this result.

Thus, you know, more time in, more output out.

So with excess time, you can either.

Generate a short term output by deploying.

Effort to advance a singular goal. Or you can generate a long term.

Output by deploying effort to build leverage that allows the advancement of multiple goals. So what that means is if I free up 5 hours tomorrow, I could either reallocate those 5 hours to some sort of work that generates a short term immediate output, or I could reallocate those five hours to I'm going to go build a process or I'm going to build an automation, or I'm going to go take the time to try and hire the right person that builds leverage that allows me to actually tackle multiple goals. Right now when you do that, you are not going to see a short term output. In the short term it's going to seem like, why didn't I just do the first thing right? Because the first thing is what yields the short term output. I know if I work really hard for five hours I can make X amount more money and then it's in my pocket, right? But it's also very short term because.

You'Re not building leverage.

So what happens is that you keep.

Repeating that loop over and over and.

Over again until all of a sudden there's big time diminishing returns and you're like, all right, yeah, I could pull this lever a thousand times, but I'm not actually building anything.

Right?

It just becomes different levels and glorified versions of trading time for money, right? Or time for some sort of output. It could be any goal really. I'm just using money as an example. The other way to allocate that time is to deploy effort in some area that allows you to build leverage to.

So that over a longer time horizon.

You can advance multiple goals at the same time. Right now in the short term, there's some pain with that. That's going to cost you time. And it's also probably going to cost you money in the short term because you're not going to see the result of the advancement of multiple goals until later over your income. It's almost like you need a vehicle in order to feel the impact of if I work harder, I can make more money right there. It's like a little machine. I put more effort in and I know that I yield more of an output over here.

I didn't realize I did not understand.

This until I started building companies and selling products of my own. And once you do, what's really interesting about building this little machine, right, where you deploy effort and then money comes out the other side like in our existing business. I know that if at any point If I want to put myself through a Sprint and I want to spend 100, 150 hours building a new digital product, I know I put 150 hours.

Into the front end of my machine. And I know.

Out the other side of my machine comes hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? It's a very clear trade. Now, it didn't start out that way, right? In the beginning, it was, I bet if I grind for 20 hours this.

Weekend, maybe I could sell an ebook.

And make an extra couple hundred bucks, right?

It's actually the same machine, right?

It's just over time, I have built higher and higher versions of leverage, right? But it's the same machine fundamentally. And how it works is you put effort in and then you yield some sort of output on the other side.

The challenge.

The challenge. And what happens is that as you get your machine up and running and.

As it grows and as it starts.

To produce more money, the way that.

You perceive money changes.

Because money is no longer just money. Money could also be transmuted into time. So what that means is my machine could spit out $1,000. I could either take that thousand dollars and put it in my pocket, or I could take that thousand dollars and go hire someone that reclaims time. I could take that thousand dollars and go spend it, maybe on a sponsorship, or I could run ads.

Different form of leverage, right?

In some way, I'm hoping that that little machine produces, turns the thousand dollars into $2,000, right? Or $3,000. So I could either use money to.

Hire someone and reclaim time, and it.

Could reclaim time that I reallocate in the short term to make more money, or I could hire someone to reallocate time to then go and find a higher leveraged person and hire them to achieve multiple goals at the same time, right? Or I could take that money and I could put it into a different machine, and there's risk associated with that, right? If I take that thousand dollars and I go spend it on meta ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads, whatever, there's risk. But maybe I can get that capital to work for me, and then the thousand dollars turns into $2,000, right? And this is what a clear trade. Now, it didn't start out that way right? In the beginning, it was so fascinating about money and different levels of money, and especially as it relates to this.

Little machine that you. At different points in the journey, it.

Actually makes sense to think about money differently.

There are some points in the journey.

When you want to de. Risk yourself. You're like, you know, I've got a lot of things going. Maybe you see things changing in the economy or you see things changing in your industry, and you're like, I want to take some money off the table. The highest leverage thing that I could do is when my machine spits out 100 bucks, I'm going to take that 100 bucks and put it in my pocket.

Right?

I want to de risk.

That's one way of looking at money. Another way of looking at money is going, you know, we're in a period where the like, my machine's working really well. I feel good about the inputs and outputs. I have this other goal that I want to advance. I know in order to get there.

I either need to reclaim time in.

The short term, or I need to reclaim time and reallocate it to hire someone else so that I can achieve.

Multiple goals over the long term. So what do you do?

You don't take the output and you don't put it in your pocket. And with excess money, what you do is you rebuy time, which sort of recirculates the whole mission, right? This is again, something that is very hard to wrap your head around at.

The beginning of the journey.

And it's also not something that I would necessarily recommend obsessing over at the beginning of the journey.

Right.

In the beginning, all you're trying to.

Do is figure out, well, how do I get a machine working in my life and how do I get some sort of input and output where there's a clear measurable impact of I put effort in and I yield some sort of output on the other side?

Then as you have that, you have.

That little equation, that machine working for you, then it becomes a question of, so what is the best way to allocate the output, which is money?

And how all of this ties together.

Is you sort of need to understand how goal, time, money, all work independently so that you can better understand the relationship that they have between each other.

Right?

And I go back to what I said in the beginning, which is the mistake that most people make is they go, I want to advance the goal. I also want to reclaim time. I also want to make more money. And fundamentally what that means, though, is they don't understand the relationship that they have between each other. Because excess money can help you reclaim.

Time or can help you achieve your.

Goal or can help you achieve multiple goals, but you have to change the way that you think about it, and you have to understand the relationship that it has with time and goals.

You can advance multiple goals at the same Time.

It's not whether you can or can't. It's a question of which goals are.

You trying to achieve and are they.

All dependent upon your direct involvement, your direct effort? If they are, you have to recognize.

That, be honest with yourself and know.

Oh, wait, I'm trying to achieve five goals that are all dependent on me. They're all competing for the same resource. That's not going to work.

Right.

How can you achieve multiple goals at the same time? You could pick one that's dependent on your direct involvement and then you could.

Advance another or another two that aren't dependent on your direct involvement.

Right.

Maybe you have labor leverage, maybe you have capital leverage with time. Sure, you can free up more time to sit in the backyard and do nothing.

Or you could look at time as.

A reallocation bucket and do you want to reallocate time to generate a short term output?

Right.

Go back to your machine, more effort, more whatever on the other side, usually money.

Or do you want to reclaim time.

And then reallocate that to building leverage so that you can achieve multiple goals.

Or make progress on multiple goals over.

A longer time horizon? And you know, even just writing up my notes for this video helped clarify this for me so much. This is something I've been thinking about ever since I sort of got into entrepreneurship. I was 26 when I started my first company. That was almost a decade ago. At this point, it's about eight years ago. And I've thought about this general framework many times and it's gone through many different iterations in my head. But this is the simplest version that I've landed on, which is that in.

Any given moment and with any given.

Decision, the entire game is really about being honest with yourself about where the cost is. And if you don't know where the cost is, like I said, the cost is probably everywhere and it's costing you all three buckets, right?

When in reality what you want is.

You want to pick one and be okay with the cost of one or.

Two of the others.

When you do that, well, then that's okay because you're advancing, you're at least advancing the one. You're going to feel the cost somewhere, right? You're going to feel it. So you might as well be honest about it. If you're not honest about it, then what happens is you don't advance any one of them, but it ends up costing you all three. And I think that is one of the biggest mistakes that I have made over and over and over again in my life. And again, whenever I go through periods where I'm feeling like I'm not making the progress that I want to in some way, I find myself coming back to this very simple framework, you know, goal, time, money. And almost always I'm not aware of the cost or I haven't admitted the cost to myself. And because I haven't admitted it, I don't end up making progress. So I hope this is helpful for you. This is one of those, you know, maybe listen to this a couple times, let it steep. You might also need to listen to this, you know, once now and then again in six months, and then again six months after that. But I always find that these types of frameworks, at first glance, it's very easy to be like, yeah, I understand that. But the real understanding, right, the true internalization of it is something that happens.

Over a much longer period of time.

And most importantly, little framework I use for any sort of personal development or any sort of learning is that it can't just be logically understood. It has to be embodied.

And the only way to embody a.

Learning is to tie it to an action. So it can't just be enough that you understand. Yeah, cool. That makes sense. Goal, time, money.

Great.

Got it. The only way that you prove that you understand it is when it is tied to an action in your life.

And fundamentally, what that means is, okay.

So what goals are you trying to make achieve in your life right now? And how are you thinking about or using time, and how are you thinking about and reallocating money? And which one's the priority, and most importantly, which one is the cost?