Give me 20 Minutes and I'll Give You Back 20 Years of Your Life

This video might save you 20 years of your life, or maybe just move your life 20 years forward. My name is Alex Hormozi. I run Acquisition.com. It's a portfolio of companies that last year did over $250 million in aggregate revenue. And so here's the thing, you don't need to own a company for this to work. You just have to have more dollars than you have time and want to make a trade. Some of the recommendations will add up $20,000 a year, but you can get started as long as you make over $15 an hour. And I'm going to show you 7 investments and the exact order to do them that that will save you an entire week every single month, and that's a quarter of your life. The first thing is getting your meals taken care of. And so whether you use Uber Eats or use pre-made meals, it's about $16 an hour in terms of cost to get this done for you. And so as long as you make more than $16 an hour, you still arbitrage on your time. And many people who are especially trying to reinvest in their time, even if you didn't, as long as you use that extra time to increase your skillset, It's absolutely worth it. So these are all the things just outsourcing your meal prepping to gets you back. So number 1 is groceries. So all the time you spend driving to the store, coming back from the store, unloading the groceries into your pantry, all of that time. The next is meal planning because believe it or not, you think, well, what am I going to have for dinner tonight? And that takes mental bandwidth. On top of that, you have, okay, well, if I know what I'm going to have, I still have to cook it, right? And then after you do the cooking, what do you do? You got to do the cleaning, right? And then on top of that, you then have to still prep all the food as in like I have to store it and I have to put it away in the fridge and I have to portion it out. If you're going to do something like that and whether you do it at the time you cook it or when you eat it, you're still portioning it for yourself and it still takes time and it still takes bandwidth. And the average American spends 13.5 hours per week. Huge. Per week, right? That's 2 full workdays. Think about that. Right? 13.5 hours a week just doing this stuff that's not really value-additive. And so right now you can get 2 meals a day, which is what I recommend. Have a shake in the morning, do a lunch and a dinner, makes it very easy, times 30 days per month, and that's about $750 per month. That sounds like a big ticket, but remember, you're not buying groceries anymore. You're not buying anything else because all of that food is getting delivered and just don't eat anything besides that. It also, as a side note, is a great way to get in shape if you're a little bit overweight. Now I will give you an alternative if you're somebody who likes to have a little bit more variety. There's a lot of, you know, I would say self-financed, whatever, you know, type people, they'll say never eat out and all that kind of stuff. I would say just my life exists as an exact opposite. I eat out all the time and I just see this as more flexible meal prepping that another business does more efficiently than me. And so for a period of multiple years, I ate Chipotle twice a day. And it came out, it was like 500+ transactions at Chipotle that my accountant told me. And he was like, I can't believe you're spending so much money. I was like, but think of how much time I'm saving. And also I was like, look at my grocery bills. They're nonexistent because I, only thing I was buying was Red Bull and Coke Zero, right? So if you want to Uber Eats or you want to order and have somebody deliver to you, I think it's totally fine. It does cost a little bit more, but net-net, it's up to you. So boom, 13.5 hours saved. Whoa, but we're not done yet. So this is laundry. And guess what? The average American spends— do you think it's 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours a week? That's a half a workday. 4 hours per week doing clothes cleaning related activities. So that means 30 minutes a week sorting your actual stuff and folding it. Putting it away is like an hour plus per week. Washing and drying cycles typically have to be close to it. That's 2 hours a week.. And so in total it's 4 hours per week, which is 16 hours per month. All right. So again, boom, we just found 2 workdays right there per month. And so the question is, okay, well, if you can get 2 full workdays back, you should totally do that. Well, how much does it cost? Right. Well, you can do drop-off service. Drop-off service is usually $1.50 to $2 a pound, right? At least in the US today. All right. And so most people average 30 to 40 pounds a month unless you crazy and you're a big fashion icon. I don't know. I mean, I'm obviously a fashion icon, so I know all about this, but the monthly cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 to $80. Now you might be wondering like, why didn't I start with this one rather than the groceries? The thing, the reason I like the groceries one is I think it's for many people, they want to get in shape better. This can check multiple boxes. Like you can have better energy, you can clear up your skin if you eat too much oily shit, you can lose weight and save time. It just like, it checks so many boxes up front. It's one of the first things I recommend. This one is small and obvious. Like I have never— I've not met many founders who are like, you know what, I really look forward to laundry, right? Like just I've never heard it. Some people love cooking, different thing. But as far as your daily drivers in terms of activities, not worth it. So there's a picture of Layla and I actually sitting outside of laundromats working on our laptops. We did this because we were actually moving around the country so often that it was very difficult for us to find like a specific launderer, I guess you could call it. It was actually just faster. So as a side note, I actually think that laundromats do make sense, especially if you waste a whole day going from laundry to cleaning to dry all day long while you're watching the football game or whatever it is. Way better to just go there, get it all done, and then be out. And I'll give you the world's smallest tip, smallest tip. If you do choose to wear the same thing every day, it makes it so easy to get up and go every morning. Like, because I have one shelf that just says wife beaters, and then I have a shelf below it that has black shorts, and I grab one from here and one from here, and I can do it in the dark. So I— probably zero thinking, and I'm out the door in like 5 seconds. All right, so, so far we saved 13.5 hours a week with groceries, and we saved 4 hours a week with laundry. So what's next? Jesus. Next up is house cleaning. So someone to clean your house or apartment— just think bathrooms, kitchen floors, dusting, just kind of the whole place— so this is how much it actually saves for you. So on average, the average American spends 3 to 4 hours doing a weekly deep clean and about 30 minutes per day, which is another 3-ish hours per week tidying up their home or their desk or their room or their workspace, whatever. And so in total, we're looking at another 6 to 7 hours per week, which gives us 26 hours per month. All right. I also weirdly have yet to meet an entrepreneur who's like, you know what I really love? Just deep cleaning, you know, just putting the, putting the gloves on and getting in the shower grate and like picking up the oven thing or the, the stovetop and getting in there. I mean, some people are crazy, don't get me wrong. And if you love cleaning, then by all means you can skip this one, but most people don't. And so if you can get yourself another— remember, this is 26 hours per month, 3 more workdays per month that we're adding back to your life. And the total cost is, as long as you make more than $20 an hour, it's It makes sense. And so our monthly cost here, all in, so we had our $60 to $80 here. Here we've got our $200 to $300 per month. And then here we've got our $750 per month. All right, so you can see as we're adding this up, we're making progress and we're chipping away. We're buying time back. My team just asked me, when did I start investing in this? The real, real answer is I just didn't clean. And the way that I didn't clean is I just wouldn't touch anything in my apartment because I didn't want anything to get dirty. So I wouldn't have to clean. So, so far we've saved 13 hours a week, 4 hours a week, and 6 hours a week in total. So we're looking at 23-ish hours per week, and it cost us $750, $760, plus $200. All right, so all in, we're looking at $1,000 a month-ish right now for an extra 23 hours per week. We're talking multiple workdays per week already. You seeing how this stuff adds up? So let's do the next one. Blackout curtains and earplugs. All right, now I'm telling you, in terms of ROI, like, you spend a third of your life sleeping, and the idea that so few people have optimized what they spend a third of their life in— like, you spend so much on your car, you spend so much on your house, but a third of your life, right, is spent in a bed. It is the cheapest environment to optimize. I live in Vegas, and so there's lots of noise, and so for me, I have earplugs that I put in And if you ever try doing these, the first like week or so, your ears will hurt a little bit. Then you will 100% adjust and you don't feel it at all. And now I only sleep with earplugs. Like, I can't hear anything. And just the ocean sound, you know, when you like put it in, it's like that sound is now like, I just like, I'm ready to pass out. But on top of that, you want it to be dark enough that when you open your eyes, you can't notice that your eyes are open. So you open and it's just as black as when you're closed. That's when you've darkened it enough. You can also get electrical tape because sometimes there's tiny little lights that you have in your room. Just put electrical tape on them, and electrical tape doesn't usually rip off paint or anything like that. And so those 3 things, like, so worth it. Now, if you want to spend a little bit more money, I think it's like about $2,000 one time, you can get one of those cooling mattresses. I strongly recommend it, especially if you live with somebody— well, you sleep with somebody, rather. I strongly recommend getting one of those sleep mattresses that cools you down. It also will dramatically reduce your heating and cooling bill because some— we have to— we cool our entire house just so that one, when we're underneath of the, the blanket, it's a certain temperature. But you can just cool that tiny area and it'll save you a ton of money. So I think net-net, it'll actually save you money on your bill, especially if you're at work all day or anything like that. If you like sleep masks, you can use those. I would recommend the ones that have the big cups. I actually do both. So I have blackout curtains and that, like, I don't want to see or hear anything. You probably already know this, but you probably don't do it, which is don't watch TV on your phone, whatever, before you go to bed.. And as soon as you get one of these mattresses that tracks your sleep, what you'll notice is that your REM sleep gets pushed back. And so one of the things is like, if you ever feel like, man, I feel like I've got no juice in the middle of my brain, you know, you get that tired feeling. So the no juice thing is not because you have no juice left. It's actually because you accumulated waste in your brain. And so you need to give your brain time to basically clear the waste out so that it can function properly again. And so that's functionally all we're trying to do here. So how many hours does this get you back? I think it's more that it increases the productivity per hour, if we can get another 2 hours of productivity out per day without actually creating more time, to me it's still a net benefit. And again, this is one of the cheapest ones you can do because they're one-time expenses that have permanent improvements. And I'm so hardcore about this, like I will buy it for a founder who doesn't have it. I'm just like, stop what you're doing right now, whatever, like immediately put whatever money you have in your bank account towards doing this. Like it's a non-starter, it makes no sense to not get better rest. Like you live longer, you're in a better mood, you make higher quality decisions, you have more energy, like You recover better if you train in your workout. Like, there's zero sense to not doing this. All right, next up, landscaping. So I actually don't assume that you are truly landscaping. You probably use a lawnmower, but that would have been more difficult for me to catch out of thin air. And so we're going with this thing. As we're moving through this, we're going up in how much it costs, right? One of the things to remember is like, you only get these savings once. Like, I can't go back and get this ROI again. Like, if right now I could go get myself another 100 hours a month for $1,500 a month. My God, I go to the Time store and just buy it over and over and over again. I would jam on the purchase button. You can only do it once, which is why I think it's one of the highest ROI purchases you can ever make. How much does this normally cost people? Well, it normally saves you 1 to 2 hours per week just for mowing. Now obviously that's seasonal depending on where you live. The next you've got weeds and trimming, which is another 2 hours. Now this is per month. All right, so this is a little bit less, but But again, like, as we get further up here, you're gonna get less time for more, for more money. But that's just the trade you make. You've got gutter stuff, gutter cleaning, all right, which you should do because otherwise your house will get all messed up if you are into that kind of thing. That's about 4 hours twice a year. It's on average, it's about 8 hours per month. And so all in, you're looking at about $300 per month to get that time back. Now again, you'll notice that the dollars per hour continues to go down, but like, welcome to becoming more successful. Like, you have to spend more. And then once you've done all ones, it only gets more expensive from there. But these are the easiest ones that I get almost all my initial founders to commit to. Now let's look at the next one. Whoa, it's a car, very small car, and hopefully you're driving a car bigger than this one. Now before I get into this, let's look at what you've saved so far. 13.5 hours per week for $750 a month. You've got 4 hours that you're saving with laundry for about $60 a month. You got 6 hours that you're saving with cleaning and cleaners for your house. Then you've got sleep, which is going to get you more hours for all this stuff for about $200 a month if you financed out one of these fancy mattresses and at least the earplugs and the blackouts are super cheap. Then you've got 2 hours a week that you're saving for landscaping and mowing and all that kind of jazz. And so if we're adding this as we go, which I hope you are, it's like we're looking at $800-ish, $1,000-ish, $1,200-ish, $1,500-ish per month. Now, hey, I'm not saying this is cheap stuff, but what is it getting you? You're getting in total so far 10 hours, 23.5 hours, plus more for that time. Now we're at 25.5 hours per week, 3 full workdays per week back, which most people are just wasting their weekends on this stuff. What am I doing with this car? All right, so if now if you make over $50 an hour, you should consider this. So what is this? So this is, you can either get a driver if you want to be a super baller, right? Or you can just use the virtual driving economy that exists, which is Uber and soon to be Tesla taxis or whatever it is. And the driverless fleets that are going to be there, because I'll bet you that's also going to dramatically decrease the cost of having someone drive you to and from places. It's going to approximate the cost of energy. It's like energy plus depreciation on the car. Like, that's going to really be the equation for transport, which is amazing for all humans, because when you look at how economies work, the base, the base level of everything is energy. And then from energy above that, you have transportation. And so it's a very foundational level of like how efficient an economy is.. And so for you, if you could take the 30 minutes a day or 45 minutes a day that you spend commuting, which by the way, the average, if you're curious about it, is 1 to 2 hours. Let's just call this 1.5 hours per day that people spend. And that also doesn't include the hassle of parking and, you know, walking from wherever they are at to their actual final destination. And so believe it or not, this is a monster one. So this is about 30 hours per month conservatively that people spend, up to 50 depending on where you live. And so the question is, okay, that's a lot of hours. And we said $50 an hour to start this because you got to be willing to spend a little bit more to get this. So in general, this is going to probably run you somewhere in the neighborhood of like $600 to $1,000 per month. And you're like, why is the range so big? Well, it depends how far you drive and how much you drive, right? But it's a pretty penny. At the same time though, there's also a lot of hours back, but you might be thinking, well, how do I, how do I make those hours productive? That's a key point, right? So a lot of the tweets that you see from my account, whatnot, I actually tweet while I'm being driven, right? And so that way I'm either checking Slack messages that I have so I can update, you know, threads and Asana boards and whatnot. I'm kidding. I'm not on Asana, but like, whatever. I'm sure people could do that. But for me, it's tweeting and checking Slack to make sure that I can move the ball forward on the projects I'm involved in. All right, let's zoom, zoom to the next one. And I'll just draw it for you because this is what we're looking at, which is getting a plane. There you go. You don't have to buy a jet.. But what you don't know is that you can also just get semi-private flying. So I found out about this way too late in my life, but you can basically, there's plenty of places like JSX. I think JetBlue has some of this stuff where you can get on a plane with like 20 people. And by doing that, you get avoid all of the TSA, all the security. You literally just roll up to the plane, walk in, walk out. And as somebody who flies a lot of private, I'm telling you, it's so close to what you get in private for such a fraction of the, of the price. It's, a great deal. And so probably somewhere in the neighborhood of like triple the cost of travel. But if you compare that to what private costs, it's way less. So like if, for example, if I want to go from here to LA, so I'm in Vegas and that's a 30 or 45 minute flight, it's still going to probably run me $15,000, maybe $20,000 for that, for that flight. There's obviously round trip, things like that. But let's just use $20,000 as a placeholder. For the same JSX flight, it's probably $300. Now you could get a Spirit or something like that for probably like $50 or $60. If you, if you time it right, maybe $99. So it's going to be about triple the cost of one of the kind of commercial airlines, but the amount of time you save instead of it, honestly, instead of it being a travel day, you just work and then you just drive to the place, you get on the plane, add 30 minutes, and then you're wherever you're at. And so if you have to travel for work, I just like, I can't recommend it enough. So on average, if you fly 50 to 100 hours per year, it's going to be somewhere around 1 hour per week.. And how much does this cost? Well, this is gonna cost you significantly more, right? But the thing is, is that, that one, if you travel, if you include all the other costs associated with it in terms of time, sometimes this can be 10 hours, right? Per week if you travel, you know, a lot. And so this one's super variable, but usually it's gonna cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 a month on top of what you would normally spend. If we're adding all this up and we do this weekly, you got $1,350, you got $1,750., you've got 23.5, you've got more optimization, you got 25.5, you've got 26, 27, and then you've got 8 on top of that, 35, and then 10 here, you're 45. You basically buy yourself an entire week back. Now if you're like, wait, hold on, if I did that, I'd have a whole nother work week. Well, the answer is kind of yes, and I'll explain what I mean. A lot of people want to work all day and they work their available hours per day.. But many of their hours are taken up by what I call humaning, right? Which is doing the stuff that you have to do. Like I've got to feed this thing and I got to clean this thing, this body suit that I wear, and I got to take it from place to place, right? It's such a pain. So if we add all this up, $750, $760, $200, $200, $300, $600, $1,000, we're looking at $3,100-ish. So $3,000 a month to get all these benefits. Now if you're not traveling as much, boom, you're at like $2,000-ish per month. Now some of you might be like, well, in my market you'd be crazy to get that. It's like, great. Well, you probably also earn more because you're also in that market. So chill out. All right. The point here is the concept more than the actual dollars and cents. And time is real right now. Some of you be like, I don't spend that much time cleaning. Amazing. I love that for you and for everybody else. Find use. All right. But the big picture is if we think about focus as the hypothetical extreme, which is doing nothing except for the task that we set out to do, then anything that is not that task distracts us from the ultimate goal that we have.. And so this may seem crazy to outsource humaning, but unless you get significant value or purpose or meaning from doing some of these more mundane activities, then I would strongly recommend getting yourself an entire week per week back. And so if you can do that, like I said at the very beginning of this video, you can get 10 years back, but you could probably get a lot more than that in terms of productive hours, right? Because you're sleeping 8, so you really only have 16, right? So if all of a sudden you can get an extra 4, 5, 6 per day back because you're not doing all this other stuff. All of a sudden people are like, how does he get so much done? It's like, well, I literally have 2 weeks for every week. And this is accessible for anybody who has a business over a certain level. And you don't have to do it all at once. You could start— if we had to make an order here of where I would order these, I did it in the order that I would recommend doing it. So do this first, get your meals and stuff taken care of. Second, get your laundry and stuff taken care of. Then you've got your cleaning for the house. Get that taken care of next. This one, I would say make this zero. You should for sure do this, but I didn't want to start with sleep because it wasn't an hours thing, but I think super important. Okay. After that, you've got your, your lawn care and all that other jazz. All in, we have 7 if we include our zero. And so you can do them in this order and they cost this much, and it's one of the highest returns you can get on your time, more than the S&P 500. Go spend this money so you can increase your active income rather than obsessing over passive, and you will thank yourself for it in a few years.