Vishen Lakhiani argues that 80-100 hour work weeks are counterproductive: productivity drops after 50 hours and overwork damages health and relationships. He contrasts grinding with Michael Singer's approach of building success through meditation and flow, and introduces four levels of consciousness that determine which strategy actually works.
Chapters
Do you believe that hard work is what it takes to be successful? I know this sounds bad, but I think it's one of the most bullshit ideas that's emerging in the culturescape today. Hard work has very, very, very little to do with success. But do this right, if you just open up Instagram and follow like most entrepreneurial channels on Instagram, there's this bullshit simplistic motivational pictures that you see consistently about working 100 hour weeks, about working harder than the competition. I mean, check this one out. This one is apparently a quote from Elon Musk that says, work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hours every week. This improves the odds of success. Problem is, it doesn't. You see, science shows that after around 50 hours of productive time, your productivity goes down. But what happens is if you continue pushing yourself, often due to lack of sleep, depending on due to lack of taking care of your health, you have failed relationships, you have failed social connections, you have sleep deprivation, which is reducing your cognitive abilities, which means your performance starts depreciating, you start aging more. And so this whole idea of hard work as a means to success is one of the most dumb ideas that entrepreneurs are putting out. I used to believe it and it ruined me and it slowed down my growth. Now there's an alternate idea, right? And if you've read Michael Singer's book, the Surrender Experiment, he's at the whole other end of that spectrum in the Surrender Experiment. Michael Singer, he, by the way, is the guy who also wrote the Untheated Soul, which was a New York Times best seller. But I prefer his book, Surrender Experiment. He built a billion dollar company through what he calls the art of surrender. Regular meditation, getting into flow. So what is going on here? How do you have these two opposing thoughts from people who are building massive businesses, who are massively productive, and one is about hard work and one is about surrender. Now, I was thinking about this a lot for the last five years, right, because this matters to me as an entrepreneur. I want to be able to get a lot done, but I don't want to break myself doing it. And what I realized, and I shared some of this in my book the Code of the Extraordinary Mind, is that it's not binary. It's not about hard work, nor is it about surrender. It's not binary. Rather, there is a layering to it. In my theory, I suggest that there are four different levels of consciousness. And if you're at the first level of consciousness, you need hard work. But very Rapidly you can move to the next level of consciousness. And at this secondary level of consciousness, you start learning particular tools that allow you to do more with less work. Now you want to move up. Now there's a third level of consciousness which a lot of people don't even know exists. At that third level of consciousness, your goals no longer even become important. At that third level of consciousness, you are tapped into something else. And there's a fourth level of consciousness, which is where some of the most remarkable people in the world I've seen play at. And they just seem blessed by luck and they are not breaking themselves with hard work. So, in short, this binary idea, hard work versus surrender, is not really binary. You can flip it around and what you need to do depends on what of the four level of consciousness you're currently operating on. So if you find this idea fascinating, if you've wondered about this hard work idea as I have, check out this masterclass I'm doing. It's about an hour, 10 minutes that, that I go deep into these theories and I share with you the four levels of consciousness and the protocols and the tools that I've been bringing in in these four levels to maximize my impact in the world. And I think you might find this really interesting. So, as you guys know, I'm an ardent consciousness hacker. From teaching meditation to five years to launching meditation apps, to putting myself through a lot of different systems for playing with my consciousness, I've tried to figure out how to access altered states to maximize productivity. And really, this whole thing about hard work guys is rubbish. It is absolute rubbish. It's a bullshit idea that needs to be swept into the dustbin of history because it only applies to people who are operating at the most basic level of state awareness. So anyway, check out this masterclass. If you find this idea interesting, I'd love to know your thoughts and I'd love to see what you think. Sa.
