Sharing Stories Through Active Learning, Collaboration, and Publication with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Apr 28, 2021 // by michaeld // Podcast // No Comments

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. He has published three books, including one co-written with Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan, and is currently in the process of writing three more. Dr. Hardy’s blogs and articles have been featured in Harvard Business Review,The New York Times, Forbes, and many others.

He is also a regular contributor for Inc. and Psychology Today and was named the #1 writer in the world on Medium.com from 2015-2018. Dr. Hardy and his wife, Lauren, live in Orlando with their six children.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Dr. Benjamin Hardy discusses the beginning of his writing career.
How Dr. Hardy found time to write consistently, despite a busy schedule.
The importance of reading and journaling.
Dr. Hardy’s transition from writing articles to books.
What are some strategies for moving your career forward?
Dr. Hardy talks about the online courses he offers.
Collaboration, co-authorship, and relationship building.
Learning how to create a distinct voice.
What are the learning curves for different forms of writing?
The future of social media, thought leadership, and book writing.
Trying, failing, and learning from it: teaching yourself to jump on the right waves.
Dr. Hardy’s top tip: be an active learner.

In this episode…

In a world where digital media is constantly expanding, how do you make your ideas stand out? And if you already know how to set yourself apart and you’re ready to get your thoughts out there, what are the differences between publishing digital content and publishing a book?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is well-versed in electronic publication, self-publication, and traditional book publication. With three books written, a plethora of published articles, and more books currently in the works, Dr. Hardy knows the best steps for sharing your content with the world—and he’s here to share them with you.

In this episode of The Michael Simmons Show, host Michael Simmons sits down with organizational psychologist and best-selling author, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, to discuss the process of writing, collaboration, and active learning. From teamwork and skill building to sharing work across different media, Dr. Hardy shares stories from his own experience and provides his insight into how you can move your career forward. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by my company, Seminal.

We help you create blockbuster content that rises above the noise, changes the world, and builds your business.

To learn about creating blockbuster content, read my article: Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to The Michael Simmons Show where we help you create blockbuster content that changes the world and builds your business. We dive deep into the habits and hacks of today’s top thought leaders. Now, here’s the show.

Michael Simmons 0:14

We have an awesome guest today, Benjamin Hardy, I first met Ben, when we were, he was just getting started with writing and getting a little bit of traction. And since then he’s just really blown up all over the place. He’s one at one point, he’s one of the top writers on medium. His writing has been seen over 100 million times, just one of his articles was viewed over 25 million times. He’s written three books. But beyond all of his writing, he’s just a great person. He’s been on several mission trips, he’s fostering three kids, teenagers from impoverished backgrounds, just finished his PhD in psychology. And if that wasn’t enough, that’s when he while he was doing all that he also did all of his writing. So that really comes across in his writing. And one thing I think is really unique about him is his approach to relationship, building and writing, though he’s co authored a few books now and plans to do over 10 co authored books, as well. So we’ll talk about that. And I think it’s really a new model of publishing. And finally, one thing I admire about Ben and we also share with him is just the love of learning. Those not just writing to get clicks, but his writing to make an impact, but also to learn. So he’s writing about topics he wants to learn about, is collaborating with people he can learn from. And I think that’s a really interesting model. So we’ll dive all into that in today’s session. All right, welcome to the podcast. Ben, super, super excited to have you here. And it’s long time overdue. And I want to start off by saying, we first talked in 2016. But I was thinking about it. It’s been a really busy, transformative five years for you hasn’t been

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 2:02

Yeah, the last five years have been crazy for me, obviously finishing PhD. writing books, adopting book five, yeah, five books. Yeah, written quite a few and have a lot more in the pipeline learning kind of how to do it on more the traditional side, but also non traditional side. Yeah, adopted three kids had twins, my wife’s pregnant, she’s literally having another sixth child in like two weeks from when you it’s been a crazy couple years. But it’s been a good couple years. And I’ve enjoyed, I’ve enjoyed our interactions, it has been long overdue, but I’ve enjoyed watching your work. And I also just enjoy kind of where you come from. So it’s good to freaking reconnect with.

Michael Simmons 2:46

Likewise, I appreciate that. And so, you know, I think that story, your story is super fascinating, because we know we have a program where we teach people to write blockbuster articles. And, you know, people are trying to find time in their schedule, or it just takes a while to get progress. How did you, it feels like with your story pretty quickly, you had momentum, your start, you talk more about the beginning of where you were when you started, how old were you? And how did you decide to write? And what happened beginning?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 3:19

Yeah, so I, I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010. And so when I got back, I was 22. So in 2010, I was 22. Right now I’m 32 10 years later. And I knew through that experience, because I journaled like a madman during those two years, like I learned the value of journaling and and reading books and also just having outside the box experiences serving other people seeing different types of people from different socioeconomic statuses, different cultures, just it was a really eye opening experience for me. And and through that experience, after reading lots of books on that experience, and journaling a lot. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t actually know what form of writer, whether I was gonna write like spiritual stuff, whether I was gonna write business stuff. And so from 2010 to 2015, I was studying psychology and kind of just continuing to read a lot of books and continue continuing to journal but I didn’t actually know when I was going to start actually read two really good books that got me that kind of kicked me over the edge. One of them was, Well, probably three books actually in this was in the fall of 2014. And this was right when I started my Ph. D. program at Clemson. But right about that time, I was starting to actually like study marketing, studying people like Brendon Burchard, setting people like Seth Godin and Gary Vee, and I read three books that finally like pushed me one of them was choose yourself by James all teacher, one of them was the the Icarus deception by Seth Godin. And then I read a book called The Power of Starting Something Stupid by a guy named Richie Norton. And I read those three books and I’m finally like, Okay, I’m just gonna start writing online. And I really don’t know how I found it. Actually, I took I took What’s his name? JOHN Morrows. Online Courses guest blogging course this was in early 2015. Cuz I just knew that I needed to like learn how to write headlines and stuff like that. And ultimately, I just found medium.com. I don’t know how I found it. I just started blogging on my own website and just copy pasting into medium calm and applying what I was learning from john morrows. blogging course. Essentially, I probably wrote, like, I probably wrote 40 articles in like, a two month span,

Michael Simmons 5:20

probably. Yeah, it was almost like one article every weekday. Basically,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 5:25

I was writing probably multiple for the first few months, just applying his concepts, because I know you read like hundreds of books over the last like, six or seven years. And so I was just taking his structure, mostly listicles really getting the headlines, pitching them to like low level personal development, blogs, writing them on my own blog. And then actually, he had a contest, he had a contest where whoever wrote the most powerful blog in his perspective, he would share it with his email list. And so I wrote an article called eight things every person should do before 8am. And I published it on medium and I shared it in his contest, I didn’t win, but that article ended up getting viewed like 10 million times. And so where it started, that’s like,

Michael Simmons 6:05

but it’s really funny when the contest, but that’s that’s one when one of your most successful articles, right? I mean, he’s

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 6:10

probably even to this day, because at this point on multiple platforms, it’s probably been read like 25 to 30 million times. But it’s probably my most successful article, even still, to this point. I’m, like, accumulatively, but that that was after about two months of extreme blogging, probably after, like, 40 to 60 articles written, and I was just in a deep low, you know, I was just an extreme.

Michael Simmons 6:35

Let me pause you there. Because already what you’re talking about, you know, a huge outliers. I mean, again, a post that sort by 25 million people. I mean,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 6:44

that’s over five years, that’s not immediate. I mean, that’s

Michael Simmons 6:47

from now five years over every if it’s a lifetime of an article, it gets 25 million. That’s is crazy. And even to go to 40 posts in two months, now that I’m working and teaching other people that’s really exceptional. What do you feel like you had, before you got started committed to writing that made you be able to just be so consistent, even though you were so busy at that time as well?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 7:12

Yeah, I mean, so as a first year PhD student, also, we had, you know, foster kids, which was a brand new experience to us, we’d gotten those foster kids in early 2015. And so I was already in like, an extreme state of flux. Um, I guess what I had was, I had already read so many books, and I’d already journaled for probably 10s of 1000s of hours. And so I kind of already knew how to write in a stream of consciousness way where I didn’t need to overly edit myself, like I just, I was able to just write and I didn’t, most of my articles, especially, even up to this point, or not heavily edited, I just sit down, I really think hard about what’s the concept, and then I get the headline, right, and then I get the structure, right, which is maybe like, three to five sub sections. Once I have that I just literally write in a stream of consciousness way. And I just basically keep it as it is, because that’s kind of how I would flow the conversation. If I was talking to you, I don’t try to overly edit it once I’ve got the structure, right. And so really interesting. So it doesn’t actually take that long for me to write articles. It what it takes is a lot of thought beforehand. And that’s something I did learn from Seth Godin, he says that when he sits down to write, it takes them 20 minutes. But it took him three hours before that to actually get the thinking right, once the thinking is right, and you structure it right. And for me, that’s what my journaling practice is about. So I think I just had, I had a lot of knowledge that was stored in my brain and a lot of experiences. And then I had a way of writing very quickly. And then once I got the structuring down through John Morrow, were just learning how to structure things. I could just experiment, and I had no audience at the time, I had no frame of reference. And I was naive enough to just try a bunch of stuff that was experiments. And so I just threw it out there. Whereas I think when I started succeeding, I started overly calculating my posts, which I think probably actually hurt me.

Michael Simmons 8:58

Oh, interesting. Okay, I want to get to that. But before that, this idea of journaling and reading being sort of building blocks to be a better writer, I really resonated with that. I started right reading really heavily when I was 16. How before, and I found that a business together, but we didn’t really know what we were doing. But I was just amazing that it’s been $15 on a book and get all the knowledge that you could do it. And then when I was 18, I went to this course by Win Wenger on creativity. And he his his big thing was you started journaling, I started, I made a commitment for drilling an hour a day, and I basically kept that up for a really, really long, that’s a lot. Yeah, I really don’t do that much. I don’t still do that much. But I write a lot. So maybe if you count if you just probably a lot of my journaling was just replaced by actual writing. I also keep an audio journal now as well.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 9:52

So that’s just interesting that I just keep journals for an hour a day though on my mission. For those two years. I probably averaged an hour. A day of just journaling because I was just writing my experiences. My journals are a lot sketchier now where there’s like pictures, bullets, it in the past, it was just literally like writing my thoughts writing, my experience is very paragraph oriented. And so I probably did journal for an hour a day for well over two years. So I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I never really thought about that much time, but nowadays seems like a lot.

Michael Simmons 10:19

Yeah, I had a similar transition where I went for paragraphs and very formal, right, not formal, but just more formal. And then

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 10:26

now, bullet points. And yeah, now this is like what it looks like. It’s very ugly. Yeah, this

Michael Simmons 10:31

is mine.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 10:32

Yeah, exactly. So my mind and your journaling practice probably has gone through a similar swing.

Michael Simmons 10:37

And, yeah, just for people to I think mapping the journey is really interesting. But don’t I map yours? I’m thinking okay, by 2014. It sounds like you had 1000s of hours of journaling, you know, just in those two hours. You have,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 10:49

yeah, 1000 hours of journaling.

Michael Simmons 10:51

Yeah. And then for right reading, probably, how many books do you think you had read? By the time you started writing? 2014?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 10:58

So I started really reading in 2008, when I left on that mission, and from 2008 to 2014. I probably read

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 11:06

three or 400 books.

Michael Simmons 11:08

Yeah, yeah. So that says a lot to people out there that quote, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. So if you start your journey from 2014, it just seems crazy. But but in the context, that’s

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 11:20

Oh, yeah. experience, I would say that mission experience was like 10 years of experience compressed into two I you know, on that experience, you don’t have like, you don’t watch TV, you don’t you don’t even really connected, you send one you have like 30 minutes a week to send emails back home, like I didn’t even talk to them except on Christmas and Mother’s Day. And so it’s like, it was just all flow state No, like distraction on phone. I wasn’t a normal college student. We were like, not into the media. I didn’t even know to be honest with you, that the 2008 economic collapse happened like that disconnected from the media. Like I didn’t even know about that until I got home from my mission that like in 2008, the economy crashed. That’s how disconnected I was from like the outside world, even

Michael Simmons 12:00

though I wasn’t Pennsylvania. Well, something this makes me think about is, I recently listened to the Yuval Harari podcast episode with Tim Ferriss. And, you know, he’s famously, you know, has written one of the most popular books in the last 20 years. Like it’s I think it’s like 20 million copies

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 12:15

is that same? Sapiens? Yeah, yeah, 20 million. Hmm,

Michael Simmons 12:19

that’s pretty I can’t remember. It’s all his books are just that one. But yeah, it’s definitely up there. And then the other thing that was interesting is he does these, I think it’s like 30 days per a year, he’s meditating. So when you mentioned being on the retreat, the mission and having all that space, it’s almost seems like it was that kind of space for met, how is that important to you now to have that space for meditation and getting distance and perspective, so you could think better?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 12:46

Yeah, I wish I did more of it. But to me, I look at it now, like recovery, um, as far as like, so my perspective of low is that you’re only trying to accomplish one outcome at a time. So for example, right now, your knee, the one outcome I’m seeking is to connect with you and have a great conversation if I end up trying to create any other outcome, even if that’s just to check my phone. So I can know what the text is like any, anytime you’re seeking to outcomes, your brains pulled in multiple directions, which pulls you out of flow. And so it speeds up your brain. And so for me, I think a lot of it is keeping my brain in kind of more of that alpha state as long as possible. And I think that I kind of lived in that. They say that kids who are under eight years old, basically live in that state, which is why they’re so impressionable. But, yeah, I think I try to live in in this slow of a state as possible, which just means I’m just trying to accomplish one thing at one time. And for me, it makes it easier to be in flow. So yeah, it’s like, as far as if I’m at work, just trying to do this conversation, if I’m trying to write an article trying to do nothing else, unless that are into that article gets done. You know, and I can take recovery breaks when I’m at home, trying to do nothing but being with them. And so, yeah, I think that that mindset just kind of allows for lots of space of emptiness in your brain, and where, for me, I feel like my best ideas happen when actually, if given myself the space to think, then I can, you know, and that’s why it’s just nice to have the journal nearby. And I find that my thinking is really bad. If I don’t give myself that.

Michael Simmons 14:11

Do you give yourself that space with so much busyness?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 14:15

Um, I, I mean, I’ve created systems at this point. Now I have an assistant who basically controls my schedule, I don’t even really read my emails. Um, so part of it’s just the structure at work. Part of it is telling myself I’m not going to work after 2pm and going home and leaving my cell phone as far away as possible, being accountable to my family, telling them that my goal is to keep my phone away from me as much as possible when I’m with them and having my kids know that that’s one of my goals. And just like I guess I’ve just learned as well that like, most things can wait and most things aren’t that urgent, most things that aren’t that important. And so, you know, I’m very clear on my goals. Goal, clarity is really important and also just Only knowing that there’s really only so much you can do in a day. Like if I wake up and I do my two to three major goals that day like I call it a day, like I don’t want you to do 50 things in one day. And you mentioned you stop work at two,

Michael Simmons 15:12

can you talk more about your schedule for the day with writing when it comes to writing?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 15:16

I wish I wrote more man I write a lot of I write in my I don’t write articles very much anymore. I’ve actually tried I’m making made a transition in the last three days to YouTube, which is very experimental right now. But should I still Yeah, I think in the next year, I’ve actually hired someone. So as a forcing function, I apply a concept that I’ve talked about called forcing functions, a lot of it has to do with just setting up situations. So for example, I invest $5,000 a month to work with various video editors. And whether I make the videos or not, it’s gonna cost me five grand and so that Yeah, like, you know, that financial investment, I feel compelled even though I want to do it. So, I do a lot of writing in the form of kind of sketching ideas, I’m actually writing three or four books right now. So rather than writing articles, I mostly do books. And now I’m doing YouTube videos. And so I don’t actually have a daily writing practice, except for journaling at this point. But I now write in spurts. So I like for example, if I’m working on three books, I’m going to spend one week on one where I’m just going to be reading a lot of books, taking a lot of notes on the ideas and hitting that one until I submit it to some deadline to some editor. And then I’ll work on the other one. And it kind of gives me little gaps in between the idea. So right now, my whole writing process is around specific results and specific outcomes. It’s not actually a daily practice just to get blog out there anymore.

Michael Simmons 16:40

Really interesting. You have the other people that I’ve interviewed so far. Nick, Goeke. I can’t remember, if I said his name, right. And then Nicolas Cole each of them very successful writers online, started off in articles 10s of millions of views on their content. And they’re each both reducing the articles and focusing on books. So it’s interesting to hear you say that as well. Yeah. Tell me more about that transition for you. Because you’ve been so successful as an article writer that you have, you’ve already built up the followers. So if you publish things while people are gonna see it.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 17:13

Yeah, it’s interesting. And I’m interested in your writing practice as well. Um, I guess you get to a point of burnout. Like for me, it’s not as fun to write articles. I don’t get the ROI. Except for that I can send them to my email list and just keep fueling my email list because I want to just give them value. Think Do you know who Whitney Johnson is by chance? No, I feel like I’ve heard her name, but I don’t know Whitney Johnson’s awesome. She wrote a book called reinvent yourself. I believe. She’s a heart she writes for Harvard Business Review. She’s She’s a LinkedIn influencer, I think she’s got like 2 million followers on LinkedIn. She’s worked very closely with Clayton Christensen, who is a Harvard Business professor. Anyway, she’s a friend of mine. She’s, she has a book and she talks about basically the S curve. And I don’t know all the steps. But basically, once you once you kind of plateau out or max out on a certain curve, you kind of need to start back over and start the new curve of like a new growth curve. And for me, I wouldn’t I definitely didn’t max out, you know, there’s so much room for improvement that I have as a blogger, but I kind of just maxed out energy wise on it, where I stopped, I stopped growing as much through it, I think I could have still gotten an ROI. But also, the platform that I fell in love with, which was medium changed so much, that there was no value in blogging there. Just because I was getting 1000 email, I was getting 20,000 emails a month for over two years. So my email list, I’ve had over seven, I’ve had over 800,000 people give me their email, just mostly through medium calm. But once that stopped, and once once you get into a different position, where it’s like, now you have to do bigger projects, it stops being valuable to to do those smaller projects, like I don’t know, I don’t know, I just, it’s not as enjoyable as I kind of just have done too many too much of it. I’m not learning anymore when I do it. And also, yeah, I guess it just doesn’t fit my goals anymore. Yeah.

Michael Simmons 19:05

What made books that next? You know, you could have gotten a lot of different paths there. I know, you’ve done two courses before, I think something like that. What made books that next frontier for you, and how does that fit into your goals?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 19:17

Yeah, so books are fun, because they really push you to learn things differently. So like, for example, I’m writing a book right now on time with Portfolio, which is the publisher that I have written other books with, but that that’s just, it’s just an opportunity for me to do two things think really deep conceptually, and also think really deep as a marketer. You know, because I want to, I want to create a book that could reach millions of people, but I also want to create a book, or an idea that’s totally novel, unique and may be mind blowing. It could be Yeah, I feel like with an article, what I like about actually writing articles and doing online content is you can test that at a small scale, and you don’t have to invest so much into it, but you also don’t get to go And so I’m there. I guess the thing I like about doing online content is it’s micro, it’s experimental. And it’s that fast fail or fast succeed. With a book, it’s just more of a deep work concept. But you know, the whole Cal Newport thing, it forces deep work upon you, because it’s such a big subject matter. The other aspect of books that I like, is that, you know, a book endures whereas an article doesn’t, you know, like, no one’s Yeah, no,

Michael Simmons 20:26

except your 8am article.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 20:28

Yeah, but that article, like, I’m not, no one’s gonna know about that in five years. Um, right, maybe some people but like, um, you know, I’m now doing co-authorship just came out with a book with Dan Sullivan until I saw it. Yeah, we’ll talk about that. So what collaboration is allow me to do is think about different ideas way outside my own genre. I’m co authoring a book with a guy named Richard Paul Evans, who’s a fiction writer, he’s written 41, New York Times bestsellers. And so like, his thinking is so different than mine, Dan Sullivan, 76 years old, he’s been an entrepreneurial coach for a long time, Richard Paul Evans is in his 50s. He’s, like, 20 years older than me. And he’s a fiction writer. And so like I said, one thing I like about doing books, which you could do with businesses or other things is is that you collaborate with thinkers that are so far out your zone, that it creates, you know, unique, unique ideas, unique insights, unique structures. And so I think just books are just a fun vehicle to do that through that I found.

Michael Simmons 21:18

Yeah, really interesting. So can you tell me more about the opportunity that you see in books? So you, obviously, you mentioned the collaboration there that also you get to deep work, but I was just curious that,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 21:32

like on the financial side, or like on a business side, or on a career side, like what do you mean by the opportunity?

Michael Simmons 21:37

Well, just as a maybe, is as a medium, obviously, books have been around for hundreds of years. We’re, we’re in the middle of COVID. So bookstores are closed and self publishing is becoming bigger. And I’ve also seen the rise of, you know, smaller books like yeah, Who Not How is a five hour listen, though?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 21:56

I really liked Oh, yeah, well, and I’m really into books like these. Now. I’m actually like these, like, this is like, you know, Who Moved My Cheese? Obviously a classic, but these hour long reads? You know, even like this one by Brian Tracy. Yeah, like, these little books are freaking awesome. All of these books have sold millions of copies. I mean, even The Art of Work, or like a two hour read, you know? Yeah, I’m really interested in those types of books as well. I think books can lead to a lot of things. Books, if done right can lead to really good positioning, which can lead to future opportunities, or future collaborations, future relationships. And so I think books not only can impact an audience and position you in a certain way, but they can also create future opportunities, it really depends on your goals, you know, like for me, because I really just like learning, like, I don’t know, if everyone should try to write three or four books at a time. Like, it might not make sense. Actually, James Clear, was really smart and doing one book really well. And then just marketing that one book for like, four years now. It’s sold like three or 4 million copies, like, that might be a better strategy than writing 10 books like Ryan Holiday has, you know, like, Who’s to say, but I think Ryan really likes writing. And so he would prefer to just keep cranking out more and more ideas. Whereas I think James is more like, focused on maybe some different results. And so I think a lot of it is is what’s the, what’s your reference frame reference frame? Meaning what’s the outcome? Or what’s the end of that you’re measuring yourself against? Who is it that you’re comparing yourself to, or what is they’re comparing yourself to? For me, I just really like learning. And I like, and so for me, I just, books provide me that opportunity. But they also, they ultimately create a lot of relationships that put me in a situation where I’ll make good money, but also, it’s just kind of sustains my future.

Michael Simmons 23:37

And when you think about that, do you think about yourself as Okay, I’m just gonna be pumping out one book per quarter, just really having amazing collaborations. Okay. You said, No,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 23:48

no, no, they’re all around deadlines. Like, for example, like me and Dan Sullivan have a 10 book contract, not necessarily contract, but essentially, it’s a 10 book deal with Hay House every year for such a big numbers. Yeah, everyone, Tucker Max is the one who set that up. But like, Dan has so much wisdom and ideas, he’s got millions of these little books, and I just get to choose, he’s, I’m the author. And so I get to choose whatever ideas I want, and say, This is the next book we’re going to do. So you know, the next book we’re gonna do with Hay House is going to be called the gap in the game. That’s one of Dan’s old ideas from like, 20 years ago. And so that’s one where it’s just like, you know, I’ll work with Tucker Tucker, Max edits, the books. And that’s just something that I know it’s going to come out next October, it probably needs to be done by March in order for the Hay House to do their thing. So between now and March, I’ll get that book done. Yeah. And then like the other books that I’m doing with Richard Paul Evans, it’s just gonna be according to the timeline of the publisher. But I’m not all about just traditional publishing. I’m actually doing a self published little book like this with Tucker Max and their scribe kind of doing what they call professional publishing because I kind of want to self publish. Yeah, but can only I guess I’m open to all different things. I guess. I’m not lying. I’m gonna do one a quarter. It’s just like, it’s just literally based on like the juggling timelines of these different projects, whatever makes sense to publish first. And you’re talking about this the relationships and those create possibility. And you know, just curious, do you see yourself fundamentally going forward as a writer of a book writer? And

Michael Simmons 25:17

that being your thing? Or do you feel like there’s greater possibilities, and in the future, you might create businesses around it? or? Yeah, so

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 25:25

with the book with Richard Paul Evans, for example, and a lot of people in the in the nonfiction, the business world, the entrepreneurial world, which you and I are in, they wouldn’t know who this guy is, because he’s written mostly fiction books. He’s big into the coaching idea of like, creating, like, you know, he wants to have like a planner, or a journal, or an organizer that’s kind of behind the book. So the book would be kind of the philosophy that would lead people to using the practice, which would be the planner, and then him kind of building. That’s not necessarily an MLM, but like, you know, basically a bunch of sales people who are selling the book, because they want to get people into the organizer. And so there’s a lot of business opportunities behind books that are interesting to me. You know, with Dan Sullivan, I just, I get all the money for the books, he gets all the money for the people who sign up for Strategic Coach. So I don’t necessarily have a business in that, except for just writing books. So I don’t know how I necessarily see myself I already make, you know, I have my own online courses, which, you know, I market regularly and I, that’s where most of my money comes from, okay. But books increasingly provide more financial opportunities. And I may completely pivot in two or three years, you know, I’ll still keep writing books, I imagine, maybe not at this pace. But right now, they’re providing enough opportunities and leading enough people to my courses, which create a great income, that I’m still growing at the economic level that I want to through books.

Michael Simmons 26:50

Yeah, even just taking a step back, it’s so fascinating about where we are in the the world of thought leadership, looking at historically, so 20 years ago is awkward to have your photo online, you know, or to take online courses or to date online. Now there’s billions of people creating content, you can do it for free without getting anyone’s permission raise it does well, like your article data, Amazon, it can go to 10s of millions of people at no cost to you. And so there’s so much to leverage from it. And I think a lot about that, a lot of times, it’s easy to forget where we are right now. And that were right in the middle of this tidal wave still. And so that was why I was asking you this question. So it’s interesting to hear how you’re thinking about all the different Yeah,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 27:32

in what’s your current thought process and approach? I mean, everyone’s got a different way of doing it. But what’s what’s kind of what I mean, I know you talked a lot people, but also you’re very strategic as a thinker, like what is it? What’s kind of your view of your own process? Or system or, or strategy moving forward? As it relates to writing?

Michael Simmons 27:48

Yeah, well, similar to I feel like at a fundamental level, you have to do something that makes you come alive. Because if you force yourself into the approach that doesn’t, your writing is not going to be as passionate or curiosity, curiosity. I think whatever you feel, you know, if you’re, if you’re really curious, and like, Oh, my God, this is life changing. And I think readers will feel that or if you’re laughing as you write because you think something so funny, people will, then you know, just put in, I optimise for being like a kid in the candy store. It’s up to you to it’s like,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 28:16

your articles are very that way. Like when I read your stuff, it’s like, this is a deep dive. This was for him, but it gets a lot of joy. You know what I mean? Like, yes, so dense, so long. So you know, like, you don’t care if it takes us 40 minutes or an hour to read, because it’s just like, this is it? You know, I think that’s why your contents done so well.

Michael Simmons 28:35

Yeah. And it’s like, it’s in a weird, it’s like, selfish way. But then it also well, like, it’s like I’m writing for myself, but then it also, it’s kind of on the face that there’s other people like me

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 28:45

as heck, you know, and creative. Yeah.

Michael Simmons 28:48

Yeah. And that’s kind of a design decision from that. Like, I feel like I could do more storytelling, and I probably will. But it’s also, I just partially just me wants to just go deeper on the part. And it’s not as exciting for me to go as deep on the story. At this point. Yeah. Although that probably help it. So. And then I also think about it similar to I got this idea from the little bets book. It’s a great book. There’s this idea of consolidated games that Jim, Jim Collins also has this idea of bullets before cannonballs, they do lots of little tests. And then if something really hits, then you double down on it, and then you do cannon balls. And I’m continually surprised, and I embrace this surprise over what resonates with people in your book, Who Not How you kind of talk about this, Dan talks about this with collaboration, that 50% of he comes to something or project that 50% of the idea, but part of the excitement for him is that the other 50% comes through the collaboration. And so I’ve read writing that way as well. So I’m working on a book as well around the five hour rule, but I have confidence investing that time because that’s the So well,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 30:01

that idea. I’ve seen it everywhere man like I, I know you were the one who like wrote the initial blog post, but I’ve seen so many videos on the five hour rule. And I know I remember when you wrote that article. So you’re doing a book on that?

MIchael Simmons 30:13

Yeah, yeah, I’m doing well,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 30:15

I’m excited to see your latest iteration of that.

Michael Simmons 30:18

Thank you. Thank you, I’m excited to say it’s always a little bit nerve wracking going into a new medium, you know, and wanting to get it right. But it’s exciting. And I’ve kind of made a decision also in career to do transformative courses. And so what I mean by that is, we have this writing program, which is pretty high ticket program, where it’s not as much about information, it’s pretty intensive coaching from the team. And it’s a year long program. And it’s all live classes. And everything has costs and benefits. So I feel like the benefit of going with the guy, when I’m talking to Nick, both Nicolas Cole and Nik Goeke, with writing with writing books, they can focus 100% of time on the books, let’s say in writing, they’re out of the day, they’re just writing with creating a course, I’m also spending a lot of time doing coaching calls. And during this way, what I like about that is the feedback loop is I can really see, you just see things you wouldn’t see in writing, when you’re coaching people, that it’s the information, I’ve come to feel like for some people, like if I gave you information, you can apply and get a result quickly. But for most people, they’re just not wired that way to create the habits, and just keep going through all the difficult parts without the coaching.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 31:43

Like coaching as well, you know, I have online courses that involve various aspects of coaching for me, and what are your other I would say, what was that?

Michael Simmons 31:53

What are your online courses?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 31:55

Well, my main one is called Amp, I have several you know, I have actually a 30 Day Future Self course, which is now my basically like my lead generation tool. And it’s also kind of like my what like what Brunson would call your indoctrination funnel. So like, if you went to benjaminhardy.com right now, you could then sign up for free for my 30 Day Future Self course you sign up for it, you’d get 30 emails, and each video, each email leads you to a training, which is like 10 minutes for me. So it’s 30 days of training and pushing. And that one’s free. And my goal is honestly to get a million people through that because I think if I get a million people through that, I could get probably 20 or more 1000 into my year long course, which is called Amp, which is something I’ve been doing for like four years costs $1,000. And then above that a newer program. So it’s like the Amp one, there’s like an Amp platinum, which is like $10,000, more of a coaching program, where there’s like a coaching call group coaching call with me once a month for like three hours. And then there’s accountability laid throughout it. But I liked the coaching. Because it kind of forces me to apply my thought processes, because I’m learning a lot of new stuff, but I’m not pushing it on people kind of like Dan Sullivan, you know, Dan’s thought is that if you’re not testing your ideas on people, especially on check writers, Dan always says test your ideas on check writers. You’re actually testing the validity of your ideas and seeing the feedback you get First off, your ideas aren’t changing fast enough. But second off, who’s to know if your ideas are actually any good. And so I think that it’s good to actually be testing your new processes, your new thoughts on people who want you’re coaching on people who want help on people who are already motivated to change, and you’re learning new insights, and you’re sharing them with them or pushing them through those new lenses, you can then see if it’s actually any good or if it’s valid for people outside yourself. So I think that coaching is valuable for your own thought process.

Michael Simmons 33:42

You think about the feedback loops that lead to a book don’t other words, you say there’s coaching calls, articles, what are the different feedback loops, you have to say eventually have something bubble up and say, Okay, wow, this I should focus on?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 33:55

Yeah, that’s a super good question. I don’t know if I’ve actually thought too deep about that. Like, for example, with Who Not How Dan was the feedback loop. You know, he’s been coaching for like 44 years. And that idea became that was a new insight he got that was mind blowing. And everyone you know, he built it as a central concept in his coaching program because of all the feedback he got that this was the most amazing idea. So for me, I just said, Dan, I really like that idea. It resonates with me. I’m seeing that a ton of other people love it. Can I do a book on that? Can I write Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, he’s already done all the market research over he did all that and with The Gap in the Game, which is the next book we’re gonna do together that that was the one idea out of all that I learned from him that struck me most I stuck it in personalities and permanent I thought it was so good and I’ve tested it so much in my audience that I’m like, I just liked this idea so much I feel like that’s and and I guess, kind of like the whole bullets before cannonballs. I now I’ll probably view books more like bullets, whereas in the past, I probably viewed them like cannon balls, you know? And sure, like where I used to think articles were bullets in books or cannon balls. I probably now viewed books as bullets. where it’s like, you know, if I throw out, you know, and I’m not just doing it in pure experimentation form, but I’m less attached to the outcome of each book, and I’m getting better and better at launching them. Like, in the past, launching a book was the no deal. Whereas now it’s not that stressful. And also, I’m not as tied to the launch.

Michael Simmons 35:18

Right? That book isn’t gonna be the one book that makes or breaks. You

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 35:23

know, Tucker kind of taught me to look at books like annuities. Like it’s like, it’s something that exists long into the future. And, you know, if you keep growing your career, like, it’ll pay you back for the rest of your life. And some books like The 80 20 Rule are going to be, you know, like businesses there, they’re going to be the ones that produce pretty much a percent of your revenue. But some, what I’ve found is, is that you often don’t get to that really good one without burning through one. Yeah. And I’m just not, I’m, I’m not that. I’m okay. If I crank out various books that aren’t that successful.

Michael Simmons 35:55

Yeah, yeah, that’s great mindset, I can feel it’s interesting. When I’m going to this new medium of book writing, I could definitely feel like, I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to have this one book that does so much better. And that’s definitely really slowing down the process.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 36:08

There’s a lot I love that book, which I know that this is an idea you’ve really solidified. You know, like if you’re really behind that book for let’s just say three to five years, kind of like James Clear with Atomic Habits, that one book could probably take you further than if you just spread between like the last five to eight books like so if you’re really big on this idea, you already know it’s valid. And if you take it further than you’ve taken and President notes could take and then you invest big and spreading it for a few years, that one book could be much of a very successful vehicle to getting you wherever you want to go. So yeah, there’s there’s there is value in approaching it that way.

Michael Simmons 36:43

Yeah. But it’s the same jet. Even though different people have a different consolidated gains model. It’s still theirs. They’re still using the same model like Peter Thiel and Sapiens, what I thought was interesting about those, they started off as course notes, though. I actually just the interview and Yuval Harari, I guess it’s first of all. He was teaching this course on history. And so he created these notes. And then he knows that students were passing them around, and they were almost going viral among students. Then he self published it. And it did, okay. It didn’t really take off. And then there was some ideas started to take off. And then he actually got a publisher. So it was a step by step thing over a period of time

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 37:25

is a very organic, right, yeah,

Michael Simmons 37:26

we’re organic and growing up. So one thing I want to ask you about this unit, how book, it’s an awesome book. It’s one of those books where it’s like, you think you understand the concept. And you’re like, no, like, wow, this is, this is really different. I really resonated with it. And I can see how you really live it. So the fact that you even wrote this book with Dan Sullivan, is proof of that. And I think it’s very unique. So I just my first question, as we segue closer to the book is, on the one hand, I was kind of surprised of my before I read the book at just know, okay, Dan has written four books. They’ve been some of them have been very successful. He’s great momentum. Why is he going to write a book with someone else? Dan Sullivan’s amazing. He’s built an amazing business. There’s a lot of wisdom. But you have enough of an audience and all that. And you know how to do the research, you could do it on your own and have your own idea. What made that? What did you see that no one else did? And how does that relate to your book?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 38:27

Like as far as doing a collaboration with Dan? Yeah, yeah. Um, well, so Dan is really well known and really well respected in a very small pocket. You know, there’s a small pocket of probably 20 to 50,000 people who freaking respect everything he says, and, and so I just had gotten immersed in that pocket. And I just, I had been learning from Dan since about 2015. And was applying his ideas, which helped me, you know, as a graduate student, essentially build a seven figure business. And so I just really liked him. I liked his ideas. And once I heard the Who Not How concept, and I’d actually been wanting to do co-authorships, just not not necessarily to tap into other people’s audiences. I just, I just want connections with various types of people. And I’ve been thinking about co-authoring opportunities for like, maybe a year before that, that came to be

Michael Simmons 39:27

Can I pause you there?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 39:28

Yeah, please. Yeah.

Michael Simmons 39:29

So you know, I really appreciate connection with other people as well. And so I feel like the approach I would have taken maybe it would be, you know, you have your deep enough in that pocket, you know, people where you could, you could interview him or do an interview series or write them long articles, but to commit to a 10 book deal, although you probably don’t have to do all the time, but to even commit to one book. That’s a really big commitment. What made you want to collaborate with someone at that level?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 39:55

Yeah, so it definitely was not initially a 10 book deal. Initially, it was just I wanted to do a book with him because I felt like, you know, from my perspective at the time, which is when I initiate that beginning, which is back in like 2018. I wasn’t thinking big picture, like I was thinking, if I do one book with Dan Sullivan, first off, you know, I’ll probably get 250 grand for the book, which would be great. I know that I could probably crank out a really good book in three or four months, it’s not going to take too much of my time, but I’m going to learn a lot. And I really initiated that project, because I was getting more serious about becoming an entrepreneur. And I just felt like if I was going to write that book, it was forced me to learn and apply the principles in it. Right. So learning, that was the learning curve I personally wanted to go through was learning and I felt like if I was gonna write a book with Dan Sullivan, I would get direct access, and be able to add 20 on his best ideas, which, you know, people join Strategic Coach where they’re paying 20 grand a year for, I felt like if I join, if I wrote this book was in first off, it would force me to learn how to be a better entrepreneur, but I would also be able to at 20 his ideas. And so that was kind of my mindset, plus, I knew I would make enough money on the book, at least from that standpoint, to make it worth it as far as my time investment. And I also just thought, given his audience, given my audience, it will do good enough that it will be justifiable, like the success of the book will be successful enough that it would have been worth doing anyways. Yeah, so what I hear you saying at some level, is that you’re really throughout the process, putting a really, really high value on the learning that you’re not just trying to 100 capitalize on your existing success, but that you feel like long term learning is really important. He talked about how you see what makes you value so highly. In that sense, then, yeah, learning for me is like probably 80% or more of my motivation, because if I can actually learn something, I can apply it long term. So like, for example, with Who Not How has an idea when I first started writing, Who Not How I just had it myself and a single assistant, and I was probably in more of the identity of a writer. Whereas I wanted to kind of make the transition to being a bigger picture thinker. I wouldn’t say I was looking to become an entrepreneur, as far as an identity level, but I wanted to actually have that be a part of my skill set and knowledge be good at that. And so, you know, through the process of writing the book, I went from zero to like, having six, you know, employees and, and learning to basically get who’s to handle most of the house that were ultimately distracting me. And so I felt like it was a good learning curve for me to learn how to be a better leader to having more flow. And so I just, for me, learning creates opportunities. And so I do things to learn, because I know that I’ll be able to be at a different level as a human being to create different outcomes. So I knew that in writing that book, I would learn how to be an entrepreneur and learn how to be better with my time. And honestly, if I hadn’t learned how to do that, I wouldn’t be able to do four books at a time right now, I’d still be doing one book at a time. But because of the principles, I learned through writing that one book, not only now my position differently among pretty cool community, but I now have the skills to do more of what I really want to do, which is learning right? Hmm, wow, I wouldn’t be able to do four books right now, if I wasn’t applying Who Not How

Michael Simmons 43:12

was interesting, five years ago, before I was writing my own name, I was, I had more of an agency, I was working with different people. And one of the clients, his business was around 1.5 million, this year, they’re gonna be doing 50 million. And Holy cow, it’s just really growing. Yeah, and I learned so much. So part of this part of the thing, writing it, I really did go through all this material, and is really try to, when you write something, I call the explanation effect, that when you write something, you just learned so much of a deeper level of accountability behind it. So it’s really interesting that I think I can see

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 43:49

the things I love most about writing is it forces you to be able to explain it? And if you you know, I think I think I understand that if you can’t explain something you don’t know it. And so I think part of really deep learning, and journaling, hashing and then turning into something that’s comprehensible to someone else. And I think part of that editing, you know, I think it’s not all just you and your head getting it, right. But it’s like you going back and forth with an editor, you’re learning how to explain it to other people, it forces you to know something deeper than maybe, you know, I mean, to me, that’s why I really enjoy writing is because it actually forces you to be able to teach it to other people and explain it so that you actually know what you’re saying. Likewise,

Michael Simmons 44:28

I think about it as a pyramid, that and it like it goes from the least formal at the top where you’re just journaling to yourself, or you could be speaking out loud, that’s as a benefit. Then there’s a line you cross as you go down the pyramid, where you’re actually talking to other people, and it’s informal, like I guess we’re talking to you and explaining an idea. And then at the highest level, is when you’re getting paid to teach someone and you’re doing multiple edits. It just gets a deeper level of learning. But I don’t think people appreciate the value, the exponential change that happens in learning When you go from just explaining an idea and formally to, if you’re writing a book on something, you really and you’re doing the editing, it’s not just the writing and explaining it, it’s also the editing. Can you talk more about that is, where do you see the role of editing and your own learning process?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 45:17

I think editing is think editing is where you kind of crystalize it, you turn it into structure, a lot of learning is just, you know, broad, ambiguous, you’re learning ideas, but you don’t actually comprehend it as far as like turning into a system steps or structure. And I think that’s where editing comes in, is having to turn into something that’s clickable, something that can be used something that actually has steps, you know, you have to take the material and turn it into material, essentially. And so I think that editing is just the process of knowing what to leave out knowing what to leave in learning the structure, the way to say it. And so editing is what turns it into, into knowledge. I think before that, or maybe editing is what turns it into, like applied knowledge, or Intel, or wisdom or intelligence before that it’s just broad and useful information. Maybe it goes from information to knowledge, through editing, right information to knowledge, I could see it helps make it concrete, like you said, and also the connections between the knowledge, which is probably just as important as the understand the bits of knowledge themselves. But if you’re really digging into something like for example, connecting to ideas with who and I, one of the ideas is that if you’re always doing the how, and let’s just say you’re doing 10 different houses, I’ll connect that to the idea of psychology of decision, you know, and if you know, decision fatigue, meaning if you have too many things on your mind, you’re burning out your willpower. And so I think through the editing process, you can think about a set of ideas, and then you can step back and connect them to a different set of ideas, and then pull it together so that it now is a new idea that makes a lot more sense. And so I think that the funnest part for me in writing a book is actually not the initial hash, that’s the hardest part because it’s just throwing out junk, essentially, for me, it’s really fun to get going through it, and then to pull new ideas in or to, you know, to actually connect the dots. And that’s, I think, what editing is, is connecting the dots, but also making it comprehensible. And to me, that’s, that’s the funnest part. Really well

Michael Simmons 47:15

said. The other thing that I thought was really interesting in your approach, and I loved it is back when I had the agency, I really realized that ghost writing is actually harder than writing under your own name, because you have to learn someone’s voice and their stories and things like that. And so she’s you’re, you’re already know yours. But what you did, which is really awesome is the book is under your own voice. It’s your alley, pulling your own stories, and then you’re pulling with Dan’s work, and it just felt really integrated. It felt authentic, the way cuz ghost writing feels authentic. And you can just see that you each got what you wanted out of it. And I love the interviews, pull it from David Goggins way, his book where you have on the audio version, you have the interviews, you’re interviewing him after every chapter about that chapter and the thought,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 48:03

yeah, yeah, that was that, that that was Tucker’s idea. Tucker, Tucker’s company published David Goggins book, I don’t know where the original ideas I think David’s book is the first one that did that. I know that Jim quicks book did that as well. But yeah, Tucker just talks to Hay House about it. Hay House was the publisher. And they just said, We want you to interview Dan between the chapters. And so when we record the audio book, it was actually even before I read the audio, but basically, I had two hours with Ben and I just had to like, look at the manuscript and make sure I knew it was in the chapter. And I would just basically give him a jumping off point. Hey, Dan, in chapter one, we talked about this idea, and then he would just talk, once we finish the conversation. Alright, Dan, and Jeff to talk about this idea. Tell us about it. And then after we did our two hours of interviews, then I went and actually read the audio book. Um, but yeah, that was, that was all Tucker’s idea. But also,

Michael Simmons 48:50

how about the ghost? idea there? I have never seen Well, yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 48:53

Yeah. As far as writing the book, that was the thing that was the major decision to make was, whose voice Are we going to put this in? And that was the hardest thing to start with. Because I didn’t want to write in Dan’s voice. And Dan would certainly not want me to speak for him. And so once we just kind of, because Who Not How is a great idea as far as let the who do the How? That just allowed me to say, Well, I’m the who. So I’m just going to write this book. I’m Ben Hardy. This is actually my book. And I think it came from the idea that Dan actually told me and Tucker told me that I’m responsible for the content of the book. Dan has no responsibility over the book. He trusts his who. And so I had to face the bold realization that I actually get to determine every aspect of this book. Dan has no say he actually hired me as his writer to actually write the book, and it’s actually my book, but he’s the primary author. And so I think that realization just made it took me time to realize it is is that I can make this book whatever I want to, and so I’m just gonna write a Benjamin Hardy book with Dan Sullivan’s name on it and and you know, I’m pulling a lot of his ideas. So he’s, so he gets some responsibility. But it just became the only way to write it. To be honest with you with the other book that I’m co authoring right now with with Richard Paul Evans, this is actually the current problem of that book is whose voices that in? Cuz I find that co authored books where they say we do Yeah. You know what I mean? It doesn’t feel very good. And so you almost have to say whose voices is thin? And how are you framing both authors, whereas with Dan’s books, it’s now very easy. I’m established as his writer, I get to just choose what I say it’s actually a Benjamin hardy book, but I’m just pulling from Dan Sullivan’s ideas. Yeah, it’s honestly,

Michael Simmons 50:37

it’s such a big innovation.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 50:39

Because it was unique, right? Yeah,

Michael Simmons 50:41

it’s a really big innovation, because there’s so many smart people in the world, like Dan, where he has these ideas. And they’re known in a small pocket, but they should be more widely known. And it’s, it’s harder, it’s probably not as it probably wouldn’t be as fun for you to write the book under ghosts, if it was gross written that way. And you probably wouldn’t mind having to take the

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 51:01

ownership over it.

Michael Simmons 51:03

Yeah. And then for him, if he does, it’s, it’s, I’ve had, I’ve tested trying to have people write parts of the article that I did, and it just never worked and just create more work for them, then it creates more work for me to edit there, I have to rewrite the whole thing. So I can see, I think the good part is, is that

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 51:21

Dan doesn’t care what the book is, he only cares that it’s a good book. And that’s why he just trusts the who. And also the book is a tool for Dan. Yes, he hopes that people learn these ideas, because they’re ideas that he’s been polishing and refining and, you know, learning for 40 years. So obviously, he hopes that the book serves a broader audience. And then something that that’s obviously my job to do. But primarily for him, that book is a tool to get people into Strategic Coach. And so one thing that as a creator, or as just a human being, you have to remove your ego is is that he can’t tell me how to do the book, because he himself doesn’t have the skills or the knowledge to produce knowledge that’s broad, whereas that’s a skill set that I’ve developed over the last five years is taking ideas and making them interesting to big groups of people. He knows he doesn’t have that skill. And, and so what’s great about him, and also just the idea of not how is that he wouldn’t advise me how to write the book. And he also acknowledges that maybe the book is a book that he himself doesn’t even like, but he knows that it’s positioned to hit people. You know, and, and so far, I think part of that type of creativity is knowing your role, knowing their role, and knowing that your way of doing it isn’t the correct way. And I think that’s what I like about Dan is that he, he just stepped aside, and he said, I don’t know what this book is going to be. But I don’t care, because I trust that Ben and Tucker know what it should be. And even if it’s not the book, I would have written or even known how to write or even like, it has a job, it has a purpose. And so I’m just gonna stay out of my way on that. And I think a lot of people they’re too ego egotistical, and they want to control the process or control what it says or it has to say this or that. And those things get added those things get in the way of it being effective. Yeah,

Michael Simmons 53:08

it really honestly, it was a confronting book in the most positive way you want every book to confront your existing beliefs, because I really value learning. And so I was always taking those that I’ve been focusing a lot on the how of it. And I could see how late let’s say he had practice writing Well, okay, taking a step back here. So, one thing I’ve thought about with delegation are other things that if you know how to do something, it’s easier to recruit people and to manage the process, because then you could tell what quality is. So, but it’s also he doesn’t

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 53:43

believe in delegation.

Michael Simmons 53:45

Yeah. So yeah. Tell me more about that. He, you know,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 53:48

he doesn’t go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, that

Michael Simmons 53:53

now I could see how to disadvantage in a way if you know too much about it, because you’re gonna want to, if you knew something about writing, but it wasn’t the best, you’d want to jump in and try to get everything. And it just wouldn’t have been as good as if you just giving you the freedom and almost just really partnering?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 54:07

Yeah, I mean, he doesn’t believe in delegation, because he, first off, he doesn’t believe he knows everything. He believes that other people have skill sets and knowledge outside of him. And, and so rather than hiring someone that needs to be trained, he just hired someone or teams with someone who already can get the result, you know, and so he doesn’t, there’s no training or transfer of knowledge that needs to be done. He just has a goal. And he aligns that goal with the person who can accomplish that goal, rather than him having any need or have knowledge about how to do it. He’s just like, yeah, we want a major book. It You know, I’m, he doesn’t need to know the how it’s kind of like you don’t need to know, you know, you don’t need to sit over the mechanic and tell them how to fix your car. Like, I’m okay not knowing how the mechanic fixes my car. All I want is a sweet car. And so yeah, he doesn’t Leaving delegation at all he believes in teamwork. And he believes in teaming with people who already know how to who already have the skills and capabilities to produce the result. And he just sets things in motion, he does what he does, which for him is creating ideas, testing them on his audience, coaching his audience. And then from there, there’s a ton of different outcomes that are occurring, that he has no clue how they’re getting done, you just teamed with people who know how to do those things. For example, podcast, he just hired someone who is really good at creating podcasts. And then he just lets them do their result. He just steps out of it. So yeah, I think that the idea of delegating is passing a task that you don’t want to do or that you see is beneath you down to someone else, whereas he sees it, as you know, teaming with someone who has amazing skills and abilities that he doesn’t have. And so it’s just it, he looks at people not down on them, he looks up to them, that he’s teaming with people who are amazing, even his employees who are answering his emails, he sees that is an amazing teamwork, not as a delegation. Yeah, it’s a fundamentally different way of looking at it. And so now you have people who values people as unique rather than as cogs.

Michael Simmons 56:09

It’s almost like the Warren Buffett’s idea of circle of competence, where you stay inside your competence. And then other people, you buy other people to be a nurse, it’s that apply to

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 56:19

that unique ability. He just said, I’m gonna stay right here, because this is where I want to be. And this is where I thrive. You stay over there, I’ll stay over here. And then he just finds who’s for everything else. And he chooses that he chooses where he wants to stay.

Michael Simmons 56:31

And for you, how are you thinking about the future? Now? You have now have one of these under your belt, you have the option to do nine other books with him. Alright, are you do you think you’re going to try to do one of these per year or just

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 56:44

do more? Well, it stops making sense to me. So I already know the next two I want to write I’ll write The Gap in the Game and I’ll write a book called 10x is Easier than 2x, which is another one of his ideas that I just read him. Yeah, yeah. And so we’re already you know, Tucker’s can talk to Tracy, the CEO now that the book crushed it, the book actually sold 90,000 copies last week. Last week, we actually want to make a we broke a Hay House record. Yeah.

Michael Simmons 57:09

That’s pretty good. I

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 57:09

did a I did a contest with the ebook, because ebook was 99 cents, and I did a contest. And so it led to 73,000, ebook sales, which was really unexpected. But um, one thing I’m doing differently with the gap in the game is I’m hiring Tucker max his team to actually write the book. So this is something I’ve never done before. I wrote all tonight, how Tucker edited it, the gap in the game, I’m actually going to let his team write it. And I’m going to be the editor, and then I’ll let Tucker edit me. But I’ll do interviews, I’ll go through their process of basically telling them the ideas, and then I’ll let them write it, and then I’ll edit it. And so it’s going to take me a lot less time, it’s gonna be different cuz I’ve never done a book that way.

Michael Simmons 57:48

Wow. So you’re also becoming a publisher then?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 57:50

Yeah, but I My name is on and I’m, you know, I’m almost more like a project manager of sorts, but project creator and manager. But that’s not all the books me and me. And, for example, me and Richard Paul Evans are just going to co write that book. And yeah, oh, but with with the Dan books. You know, I’ll do those two next. And I’ll just see where I’m at. I don’t know where I’ll be in two years, I don’t know where my life will be. I don’t know where I’ll be with my kids. I don’t even you know, I might, I might need a huge hit. So we’ll just yeah, we’re at, we’ll just see, I but I do want to do those next few books, because those two are interesting enough. And now each book will come out every October. So next October, Gap in Game come out into October from now, 10x is Easier Than 2x.

Michael Simmons 58:30

Yeah. And so, you know, one thing I think about is, in a way, we’re in a very real war for attention, that attention is a limited resource. There’s literally companies spending 10s of billions of dollars, mastering the skill of capturing attention and countries, you know, really well just, you know, mimicking organic social media and getting attention. And so, if you’re a thought leader or writer, you’re, you’re operating in that environment, you know, you know, although, you know, we don’t think of as a war, but, you know, that’s just the environment. And that’s, there’s a huge amount of people, I there’s something called Zuckerberg law, that the amount of social media content is doubling every year. I’m not sure, I believe. So, you’re planning to do this, you know, sounds like for the rest of your career in some way, shape, or form. So I was curious, what do you feel like is your edge or advantage over the long run? Like for I’ll just give an example. For me, I feel like it’s the research that, let’s say, if I wanted to write a book about, I couldn’t write a book about dentistry right now, because I’d have to spend hundreds or 1000s of hours have to learn it. And so I view myself similarly is building up this huge pool of knowledge that gives me the ability to write a lot about different things that other people couldn’t even write about. Unless they did a huge amount of research. But that’s just yeah,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 59:49

I think my edge is actually interestingly becoming more Who Not How you know, so like, I do have the skills and the desire to research and To package and to teach, I guess you could say is how I look at writing and sharing at least the type of writing that we do. nonfictional kind of more instructional writing. But I think my current edge is just increasing collaboration with my team, my email list, you know, I have, I already have a huge asset, which is my email list, which is like the people I have already served enormous amount I want to keep serving them. The other edge I have is, and I don’t know if I’ll be doing this my whole career, I imagine I’ll be doing content, but maybe not as Benjamin hardy into the future, maybe I’ll do it for some other organization to support their goals, but I think for the next three to five years, let’s say my edges, one I’ve got now six kids, and I kind of actually have a need to support that family. And I don’t want to so like I know. And creating content is the way that I like to do that teaching sharing. Another edge i think i have is that I’m okay, creating stuff that doesn’t work. Like, for example, YouTube, as an experiment, I know, I’m going to create 400 YouTube videos in the next, let’s just say, a year and a half, two years, I’ve already paid people to edit those videos. And I’m fine. I’m fine. If 80% of you said 400 videos, well, I have a contract with people to make 6060 a month. 060 a month. Yeah, but like, some of them might be two minutes long. And it might just be a really terrible thought vomit. And then I publish it because I’m fine doing that. And I’ve also learned that some of my thought vomit articles that were two minutes long were the ones that got 500,000 views. And so you just never really know. Um, so I guess the one edge with that with that approach is quantity leading to quality. And just being okay, with some of it not being that great. Um, so yeah, I think it’s a combination of my situation kind of requires it because I have a family that I want to support and provide for and I want to be successful. I’ve got a, you know, a five year plan of putting myself and my family into a certain financial situation. And this is my pathway to doing it. And so I want to succeed, I want to learn, I’m also fine failing an enormous amount. And I’m increasingly collaborating with people who are already well established in different domains. And what I’ve learned through Who Not How is that collaboration, if done, right does go a lot farther than individual pursuits. You know, like, Who Not How might not be my best book, but it actually might be my best book, even though it took me the least amount of time to write. And it wasn’t even my original idea. And it certainly outperformed as far as sales, all of my other books immediately. And so I find value in aligning goals with other people with different assets, and seeing how much can be accomplished if it’s not just me fully responsible.

Michael Simmons 1:02:55

Hmm, interesting. So it’s almost a combination of mindset, skills, and increasingly, who are the network? How you’re embedding yourself in a network? Yeah, situation,

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:03:04

mindset and context, context being increased collaboration in can increase, you know, relationship with other parties that I can align forces with mindset, being willingness to fail a million times. And just knowing that it’s not really going to be a failure, you know, like, if I make if I make 10 videos, you know, five of them will be pretty good. Like, yeah, I already know that. And so like, if I’m okay with that, and then as far as a situation, just my family and my goals. Right, right. It’s,

Michael Simmons 1:03:37

it’s just fascinating that you’re not even saying, I’m the same way that writing when people think about online writing, they think about the three key skill is writing itself. But you’re not saying writing I hear you saying a lot of other things. And I feel like you can. I don’t feel like I’m a bad writer. But I don’t feel like I’m a great writer. But I In other words, when I read James Altucher, or something, I know he’s read a ton of fiction, and he does all these turns of phrases. I’m like, wow, he’s really, really good. And I want to be better. But I think the amazing thing is that you’re really good at thinking about your ideas, and packaging your ideas. That’s really the most important thing and the quality of the idea. You don’t have to be the next. No, great, not late, great novelist.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:04:22

Yeah, yeah, I I think I used to be a better writer than I am now. Right? Yeah, well, at least I thought I was a better writer, like, I could sit down and write something and I would reread it and I would say that’s really good. Whereas now, I don’t have that confidence. But I look at the end product of the last two books I wrote versus Willpower Doesn’t Work, which I wrote during my heyday of blogging. So Willpower Doesn’t Work is a good reflection of the type of writing I did when I was blogging an enormous amount and getting 10s of millions of views. Whereas willpower, or whereas, Personalities Aren’t Permanent and Who Not How are more reflection of my post blogging, writing and it’s quite in there. Different. Um, there are a lot of it’s still probably feels like Ben Hardy if someone’s read a lot of my stuff. Um, but if I look at those two books, I actually think that the quality of the writing is better than willpower doesn’t work. Even though willpower doesn’t work was written more in a viral steam of writing, it was a lot faster writing, it was an integration of a lot of my blog posts, which I already knew were very successful. And it was written with a lot more confidence, I was already, you know, crushing it with my writing. And so when I wrote will present work, I just believed it was gonna go viral, because everything I was writing at the time was, whereas these other two books, a lot more thought, a lot more care a lot less. I wouldn’t say confidence, but I got a lot more help. Um,

Michael Simmons 1:05:45

and I say like confidence, you mean? Like, it’s you? Maybe you feel like you’re better than your other? It’s not like you think you’re better than your first book. But you’re just No, there’s a higher bar, maybe? Is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:05:58

Yeah, maybe it’s just a different learning curve. Whereas, like, if I read even just the introduction of Willpower Doesn’t Work versus Who Not How they were written by two totally different people. Yeah, the introduction of Who Not How is an amazing introduction, which I learned through getting amazing coaching. Whereas Willpower Doesn’t Work. When I read the introduction, I’m like, this doesn’t tell me what this books about. Um, and so. But I thought it was really good back when I wrote it. And so I guess I’m now looking at it with different eyes. And so what I like is that I wrote Willpower Doesn’t Work, when I was like, peaking as a blogger, whereas I’m writing these other two books at the bottom of my journey. Ah, so like, I’m now at the bottom of something as bottom of a huge new growth curve. And so, I, I just, I thought I was better than I was, when I wrote personnel. When I wrote Willpower Doesn’t Work, I now feel like a loser because I’m at the bottom of a huge new growth curve, but the writing is actually way better.

Michael Simmons 1:06:56

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in for your coaching, collaboration for book writing, you’re saying that, it’s, I’ve heard you talk about Tucker Max a few times. And I actually just did one of their week long challenges that they did really good. They over delivered, Tucker was live and all of them. And just like, I joined one of the programs, and your book actually came up a few times, we gave it an example of what you did, and, and Who Not How it’s very, that he was your main coach?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:07:26

Yeah, he was the editor. I mean, he, you know, I

Michael Simmons 1:07:28

personally was the editor.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:07:29

Yeah, I have a unique situation with Tucker, just because I’ve set him up in different ways. He set me up in different ways, with the books that I’m gonna do the next book, he’s gonna, you know, he’ll edit parts of it himself, just because of the relationship we have. But I’m gonna be working with a different one of his writers. But, um, yeah, I mean, he personally edited, you know, and even personalities and permanent, just because of the setup that we have together, I’ve, I’ve set him up in great ways. And he set me up in great ways. But, um, he is definitely very smart when it comes to books. And when it comes to strategy for books, and when it comes to like, for example, I’m going to do a book called Your Future Self, which kind of pulls from ideas from Personalities Aren’t Permanent and a lot of the recent science on that subject. And he really pushed me to not go with a traditional publisher on that book. Like he’s like, No, you should self publish that book. And here’s the reasons why. And so not only is, I think, a much better writer, but he’s also a much better thinker in that realm than me. So I’ve learned a lot from him.

Michael Simmons 1:08:25

Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, there’s so many, I love that you’re also just living in every area of your life in the book. And the book, you talked about doing 250 podcasts as guests in four months. And that was possible by partnering with your executive assistant who made all that possible. What, what was that? Like two more Are you hoping to get from it? And did you get what you’re hoping to get from it?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:08:50

I didn’t get what I was hoping from it. I you know who Howe Elrod is right.

Michael Simmons 1:08:55

Yeah, yep. I know how

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:08:57

Yeah. So Howe is a cool guy, he’s sold, what? 5 million copies of the Miracle Morning. And he said that the thing that really blew blew that up was going on 200 podcasts over two years. He said, that’s really the engine that created a fire, which is now just spreading itself in and so I overly attached myself to that single strategy. I just felt like and I like Howe and I respect him. And so I just, and I know that podcasts do work, but I just figured, alright, if How did 200 podcasts over two years in that started this generating fire? What if I did 200 or more podcasts that all came out the week of my launch? Like over so I’ll do? I’ll do I’ll do all these months. Every podcast I do. I’m gonna ask them please publish it during this week, you know, during June 16, because that’s when Personalities Aren’t Permanent came out. And so I’m like, and they all pretty much agreed. Although most of them were small podcast. Some of them were pretty great. And pretty much all of them agreed. And so I figured, okay, this book’s gonna come out. I’m gonna slam my nose. I’m gonna get help but also 200 pounds. Cast, we’re going to drop that week. How is this not gonna work? And it didn’t work? Like? Yeah, like, I think the Personalities Aren’t Permanent probably sold around 50,000 copies so far, and it’s been out for, like four months where Who Not How sold 90,000 copies in one week. And so it’s not gonna have every week like that, trust me, like, it’s Yeah, it’s, you know, and then hopefully, organically that looks good enough that, you know, still

Michael Simmons 1:10:25

I mean it, but the New York Times bestseller list is like 15,000 in one week, right?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:10:30

Well, it really depends on how it’s categorised Who Not How would never hit the New York Times bestseller list, because almost all of them were ebook sales, and a lot of them were bulk ebook sales based on the guy, but also all of our hardcover, at least half of our probably two thirds, two thirds or more of our hardcover were bought. And so it would never be categorized correctly for the New York Times. Yeah, yeah,

Michael Simmons 1:10:54

that makes sense. And let’s see here. The one thing I want to ask you about is, is going back to the thought leadership field, I don’t even like calling it thought leadership. I’m all for. But I don’t have a better word for it. But I think about it, this is my theory on it. I was curious in your Yeah, I don’t think so. Okay, do we have a night, early 1980s. Just, this is the beginning of the software industry, Microsoft is kind of the first software only company in the world. And now the seven largest companies in the world are all software. One of the things that enabled that was the basically you could create this, you know, pick something from your head, now you’re not reading an article, you’re creating code. And then the code can operate, you can instantly go across the world at zero cost. And then you can make updates to it instantly updates. And so that model has just worked really well. To me thought leadership is very similar, that you take something from your head, you it you put it in some format, could be a video or an article, and it goes across the world and your article got 25 million views cost you $0 to publish it or it could spread virally. So they’re similar in terms of the leverage that you have a one flaw, and then you can reach 10s of millions of people. And you know, some YouTube videos have billions of people which, which is crazy. And so, but when you look at the software industry, it really developed, you know, there’s like $50 billion a year and venture capital that’s given out, there’s all these, this whole support network of accelerators, you can get a four year degree as a programmer at a lot of different places. And there’s specializations. So you’re not just a programmer, you’re, you know, a specific language specific architecture and things like that. Almost none of this exists within the thought leadership. And also, I think the software over time, it maybe at first, it was very buggy, and you’d have is annoying, but now, you know, software is pretty high quality. For probably Gen Z people, they don’t appreciate what it was like earlier, and how frustrating it could be. And the user experience is better. So now let’s go to thought leadership. It is kind of developed a little bit later, but it’s now developing now. And some of the monetization vehicles are just coming online in the past two to three years, we have something like substack medium is trying to figure it out, YouTube paid out $8 billion to the creators last year, you could create courses, you know, 10 years ago, it was weird to take an online course. And that’s but now it’s just standard, you know, people are taking multiple courses at once, in many cases. And so all these monetization things coming online, so that somebody could go from just doing as a hobby, do it, okay, this could actually be my thing is packaging ideas and sell us a subscription. Even podcasts are now getting advertising revenue, and it’s going to go up. So I feel like it’s, it’s not going to I probably think I don’t think it’s gonna be as big as software in terms of monetarily, terms of impact, I think is just as big. You’re influencing what people are thinking the source code of people’s brains. And just like when Jeff Bezos started Amazon, and 1994, he was seeing the tremendous growth. And like, this is day one of the internet. And I feel like that way with thought leadership. So that’s my theory on where we are and where we’re going. curious, what do you think about that? And what do you think about the future of the field?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:14:22

I don’t think people are going to spend less time on social media. You know, I don’t, I think that we are we’ve crossed that chasm where it’s now kind of a part of who we are. And so I do think that influence happens through information, you know, and so I think that there’s increasing tools to make it easy to do it at scale. And obviously, people are making lots of money doing it, and there’s more and more tools to specialize, or to take small audiences or, you know, populations and kind of making them your tribe, essentially teaching them what everyone teach him whether it’s on your YouTube channel in your course. So yeah, I agree with you. I think that it’s obvious that that field or whatever you want to call that realm has totally developed in the last 10 years. And I think that, you know, they say it’s, it’s like a multibillion dollar. I think a billion dollars or more has spent a day on online courses, you know, or something like that. Yeah, it’s only gonna. Yeah, it’s only gonna grow. Um, it’s interesting. One thing that I read somewhere, I read. Oh, have you ever read there’s the little book by Paul Arden, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. Have you read the whole

Michael Simmons 1:15:33

book? No, I haven’t.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:15:34

Yeah, it’s such a cool little book. It’s it’s another one just saying, Oh, yeah, it’s not how good you are. It’s how good you want to be. It’s the one of the things that he says in that book is, is that most people are okay, with mediocre work. You know, like most people, you know, most people are okay, with mediocre food, for example, you know, most people are okay with McDonald’s, like most people are okay, with mediocre, most people are okay, with mediocre information. You know, most people are okay with reading mediocre books. Um, most people are, okay, having a mediocre day. And so like, we have low standards for what we do, even if we hire someone, we’re okay, getting mediocre product back, you know, and he just said that there’s really an amazing opportunity, if you want to be excellent. It’s kind of that whole Cal Newport thing of, it’s not how I mean, you know, so good, they can’t ignore you. Yeah, be so good. They can’t ignore you, I think what I think is interesting, you know, if you just actually get on the internet, and you scan through your newsfeed, or if you just most of it’s not very good. Um, but we’ve been conditioned to be okay with mediocre. And so I think there’s an amazing opportunity for people to create really good stuff. And if you create really good stuff, and if you get really good at communicating it and kind of what you were saying, communicating it with passion, communicating it with purpose, communicating it with care, communicating it to specific people with emotion, and that it’s not that difficult. Yes, it’s hard. And yes, it takes a lot of time to learn and get better at communicating. But there’s always going to be people who want to hear someone who has something useful to say, and who’s actually doing a good job with that thing, who’s trying not to be mediocre, but actually doing it as a craftsman. And so I think it’s gonna be huge. I think it’s just going to get bigger and bigger. Pardon me actually, like, gets less interested knowing that that’s really like, the whole future is that everyone’s gonna be vying for attention, teaching sharing, and that, and people get so good at it. You know, like, Do you know who Mr. Beast is on?

Michael Simmons 1:17:23

On? Yeah, I saw. Yeah, I have something to relate over with. Yeah, YouTube.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:17:29

It’s crazy. He’s 22 years old, he’s so good at virality, he has videos all get 70 million views of video. He’s just, it was what’s crazy, kind of like, what you were saying about software is that, you know, they call it the Flynn effect, as far as intelligence, like every generation is better than the last generation because they can build off the last. And so because of all of the content and all the stuff that’s been created over the last decade, and all that we know about virality someone who’s 20 years old, can jump in, apply the principles and immediately outpace everyone into yours, they can create billions of views, and, and be actually applying sound principles of persuasion and psychology, knowledge and, and so crazy, it’s crazy that we’ve created this new platform of knowledge and experience and education called the current Internet, and some 15 year olds can jump on take the best of what they know, or the bat, you know, they can take the best of what’s already happening, and immediately apply it. And so it’s, it can be a problem, actually, for former generations who are so so caught up in the old ways of thinking that they can’t quickly adapt to the new models. That’s a really good point

Michael Simmons 1:18:31

on a few different levels. Yeah, there’s a video that he did recently. That was about his past. And you can see, my son watch loves watching videos of the growth of subscribers over time. And there’s actually a lot you can learn from it. Because basically, he started when he was 12. This was like 2012, something like that. It’s off by year two. And the first, like six years, he only had 1000 subscribers. I know now, yeah, it’s like 60 million. So yeah, my observation. And I feel like similar to us, I feel like there’s a big opportunity in the sense that, because there’s a lot of mediocre content, there’s actually easier to actually stand out if you focus on quality than you would think. But on the other hand, I think it takes a long time, we have to go through years of not having much to show and just slowly gain a skill, like even even like you did with the journaling or reading, you’re building up that skill set over a long period of time that most people just aren’t willing to do that. But if you are almost all of the value is at the very end, like Amazon, you know, or actually Microsoft is a better example that over the past few years, they’ve doubled in value. So the first 35 years or whatever, they got to a certain point, and then they doubled that in a few years. And so that’s the power of an exponential curve. And one other thing is, I think is interesting. My son just loves Minecraft. He loves watching YouTubers and learning and then applying it and one of the people I I’ve interviewed Nicolas Cole. And he was talking about he was actually one of the world’s best World of Warcraft players in high school. And he created tons of videos and my son, I can see him now getting into creating videos after you watch all this stuff. And so I think gaming is an interesting place because you learn those skills of Okay, you just got to actually grind it out, essentially. Yeah, literally. My wife overheard my son talking to his friend playing Minecraft ever the other day, and they’re like, yeah, I wonder why this person is better. And then my son said, Yeah, he’s just been grinding for two months, and the other guy’s only been grinding for two weeks.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:20:33

You call it grinding. I played World of Warcraft two, and they call it grinding when you’re just killing people to get XP and raise your level of character. And it’s like, you can go out and do quests or you can grind. It’s like, it’s kind of funny to look at it that way. Cuz I’m not necessarily a Gary Vee subscriber. And he’s all about grinding,

Michael Simmons 1:20:50

but Right, right.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:20:51

A lot of it is a lot of it is just repetition, learning. Trying failing. Have you ever read the book by Shane Snow called Smart Cuts?

Michael Simmons 1:21:00

Yeah, yeah, that’s great book. Yeah, no, sure.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:21:02

Yeah, I listened to that back like five years ago, but I recently read listened to it. And one of the things he said that I thought was interesting, one of them obviously being laterally thinking jumping from one medium to another. So for me, that would be like blogging to book for me from blogging to like YouTube as an example. And one of the things he talks about in that book that really resonated with he talks about how, you know, pattern recognition, essentially, he talks about how good surfers Can, can time the right waves, whereas amateur surfers, like they missed the good waves, they try to jump on the bad waves, they jump on waves, whether the waves already too far past, you know. And I think it’s really you know, it’s really important to, you know, even this book right here, which kind of connects with the dots Who Moved My Cheese. Sometimes a wave was a really good wave, but now it’s gone. And sometimes you’re so your identity theirs or your strategy was so tied up in that that one, that one way, but now the way it’s gone, and so you got to accept that move on and find a better wave. And I think that just as an example, for me, for medium.com, like that was an amazing wave. But from my perspective, if you’re wanting to, like really grow into something a lot more than someone who’s getting paid like a few pennies, or like a penny per click, if you’re if you’re if you don’t want to be in that realm as a writer, and I have no interest in being like, a slave driver, writer, writer, which is basically what they’re training their, their pawns to do, like, unpredictable, kind of, no, it’s terrible. And it’s so agenda driven, so politically driven, it is such a, I am very against the politics of medium. And, and, but that wave is gone for me. And so literally, a lot of people are like, why don’t you ever post on medium? I said, there is no value like, Yes, I have got like 250,000 followers there. But it’s, it’s, it’s useless. And so for me to go, there would be like me trying to ride a wave that is 10 miles ahead of me, like it’s gone. And so there is no value in using that platform. But I think from like a, there’s two principles here, one is learning to jump on the right waves, accepting when certain waves are gone, but also being okay, with a lateral jump, sometimes this next wave may not feel like the last wave, this next wave may not be you as a writer, it may be you as an entrepreneur, or it may not be you as an accent, maybe you have a why. But you can take the principles you learned and transition them. You can even take the audience in many cases over, you know what I mean? And so yeah, it’s very true, just being willing to be adaptive and pattern recognising and not getting so caught on what worked in the past. But is that there was a lot of good principles. And there’s a related to thought leadership, because things are going to change. Things will change in five years from now, it will be different. And hopefully, you know, there’s going to be some cool waves between now and then that can be written.

Michael Simmons 1:23:48

Yeah, I feel like platforms are platform strategy is part of the writing process now and that, and I feel like there’s different predictable patterns that I’ve seen. The number one, almost all the platforms are not, it’s not for the writers, you know, in other words, that they have a different agenda, and they’re entitled to their own goal. But it’s just important to remember that no matter how good you get on that platform, they can always take you off, I see a lot with youtubers where they’re just getting frustrated, because they, they feel like they can’t do what they want to do. Or it’s unpredictable, or the monetization is weird. And so not putting all your eggs in one basket. But also at the same time. Every platform has growth hacks, they’re beta testing different features. So if you can get in at the right time, and there’s a beta feature that happens to match your strength, your voice, and really go all in on it then, and then knowing and knowing that it’s eventually going to end and then transferring the relationships you have to other platforms. Feels like that’s a winning approach.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:24:46

It’s good. Yeah, I came to the knowledge that you know, and everyone has a different strategy. You know, James Clear and Mark Manson, is it? Mark Hanson, man who wrote the subtle art Yep. Mark Manson, yeah, they both did really good at building their own websites. They just started like five years before me, for me, I just felt like tapping into an existing audience, which was medium, there’s already hundreds of millions of readers there. And so I felt like I could just tap into that. And every platform has different freedom, you know. And what I found with medium is that when I was first starting there, it was pure freedom, it was pure, just publish. And if you publish good stuff, it would then rise to the surface, whereas now they’ve constricted at all. And so you got, you know, says, you know, certain platforms do have different freedoms, LinkedIn probably has a lot more freedom, there’s still probably structures in place that I can’t comprehend, right control what goes up and what goes down. But I just found with medium as an example, they they controlled everything. At one point, like, in the beginning, it felt like the users controlled everything, which was really cool. And then it just compressed the press press. So like,

Michael Simmons 1:25:55

and can you go a little bit specific there, of course, I know, medium have published a lot there. But you feel like it was just them trying out their business model of the writers that your interest diverge is that you feel like kind of what happened at some level. Or they didn’t, I

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:26:12

didn’t mean any, I think in the beginning, their agenda was to just establish himself to actually get to establish themselves with lots of pageviews and stuff like that. And so they just promoted writers who would get pageviews. And so I was I optimized myself to getting pageviews, even though I was writing the kind of content I wanted. Whereas over time, they really needed to optimize for, you know, money, which was, they needed to then use money as the dictator of what they did not pageviews. And so then they started making different types of decisions. As far as you know, only the people who pay for content, get to see it now, only the right you know, and, and now they’ve changed it even more where I think it’s really politically driven, where they’re really focused on certain politics, and they don’t, and they ignore other politics. And so now they are saying, they only focus on certain types of content. And they push away other types of content. So now it’s money driven, and politically driven. Whereas in the past, I genuinely genuinely think it was user driven, you know, just whatever is, you know, we’re just an open platform, you can write about whatever you want, yes, certain topics are probably gonna do better. But, um, you know, whatever is good, and whatever the people like, that’s what’s gonna succeed, whereas now it’s like, right, right. Yeah, it was interesting. It was an interesting thing to fall in, I actually have no attachment to it. Like, I’m actually I’m grateful I got to ride that wave. I’m, the human being I am now has no interest in blogging anyways, like, at least in that form. And so I wouldn’t want to blog there. Yeah. But it is interesting to see how those things change may one thing that’s also interesting, there are still writers that are succeeding there. But they’re succeeding in different ways. You know, they may be making five to $10,000 a month through that, and they’re not getting a lot of email subscribers, but they’re getting some good pageviews. And they feel successful. And there are people who are still innovating, even within that little realm. One thing is interesting from like, a, like a time relativity perspective, like from Einstein’s perspective, we all have a frame. And whatever frame you have, it’s based on your reference point, like whatever you, you know, so like, medium for a long time was my reference point. That was what I like saw, and there’s hundreds of 1000s of people in that reference point. That’s all they see. That’s the reality. That’s our identity. That’s where they spend their time. When you step out of that reference point, all of a sudden, you have a new set of possibilities. And so I just think it’s interesting. It’s kind of like going from a small font to a big fun, big grey around. There’s a lot of people who are just in that world just obsessing on medium. They’re just there all day learning how to optimize it, and they can optimise it, there’s there’s a cap to every context. And so right, yeah. And there’s there’s a cap to every frame. And that frame is just it, meaning it’s not it’s not interesting to me anymore.

Michael Simmons 1:28:53

Yeah. What do you think about substack? We’ll have this as a laugh. What is session? Have you ever heard of substack? No. Wow, I can’t even imagine introducing. So substack was created about two years ago, and they raised about $15 million. And so it’s a substack.com. And basically, you can create your own newsletter. Actually, another way to think about it is what Shopify is to Amazon. So Amazon, Amazon’s a platform, if you post a product and Amazon, you don’t get the customer list, you don’t get that much data about them. But with Shopify, it’s basically your own brand Shopify is in the background of the store, and you own all the customer relationships. So substack is for my understand, take away a lot of writers for medium are trying it. So you can use it to create a free newsletter. And actually, it’s 100% free use when I send out your newsletter throughout there. If you want to create a paid newsletter, it’s pretty easy to turn on. And then they will take 10% of the cost nothing monthly, but you can take 10% of the revenue from it. So depending on if you’re just getting started 10% is nothing and you’re getting larger, that could be a lot of money every month. But, you know, their top writers are making, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, that’s pretty impressive per month, some of them.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:30:11

So substack just a new platform, essentially, it’s

Michael Simmons 1:30:13

basically a new platform. But platform. Yeah, it’s a newsletter focus. So you can also, it’s mainly, you know, it’s your Stratechery with Ben Thompson. Okay, he’s one, he’s one person who has, he has a newsletter where he started in 2014. And they have, he has reportedly, let’s say, 40,000, people paying 10 to $10 a month. And then he just launched a podcast that’s paid in the first month at 50,000 subscribers paying $5 a month. And so it’s just, it’s interesting, just seeing that new format

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:30:48

is a totally different model. And that model, maybe the model of the future where you know, you’re on someone’s, you know, I mean, you could make millions of dollars, a month or a year doing that, which is pretty cool. It’s interesting. It’s different than like having a free newsletter, and then you’re selling them stuff and getting people into your different subscription.

Michael Simmons 1:31:06

Yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:31:08

Makes sense, man. It’s really interesting. It’s crazy, all the different approaches and platforms and styles that are coming about.

Michael Simmons 1:31:17

Yeah, bottom line people have, I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity. And there’s a lot of choice, whatever medium platform style you like, that you can find an audience. Alright, so let’s put a cap on this part one, I hope that we can reconnect in the future and do do another one of these. You have a new book out? And for people who want to learn more about you and your courses and books, obviously, there’s amazon.com, benjaminhardy.com, where else.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:31:47

Benjaminhardy.com, is the easiest place getting the 30 Day Future Self course, which is free just logs you right, in that get you on the email list that gives you I would say access to, in my opinion, the most interesting ideas that I’ve come across so far first. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. benjaminhardy.com.

Michael Simmons 1:32:05

Right. And I’ll even give you the Is there a final message you want to leave everyone with? Who are thinking aspiring thought leaders?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:32:14

And I think we’ve covered a lot, I think just, it was a lot of information. Yeah, I think, you know, continuing to learn from you. I think, applying like the five hour rule. I mean, I apply that I’m always learning learning, I feel like if you are going to be a thought leader, you have to be an active learner, you have to be someone who loves learning. And I would say I would just invite yourself and myself to be more critical learners. You know, like, for example, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. But lately, I’ve been listening to audiobooks while taking notes. And just like really testing how much I actually understand, really solidifying my learning. And that makes content creating a lot better, a lot easier. And then I would just say, there’s a really good book. That is, have you ever heard of the book called When Violence is the Answer?

Michael Simmons 1:32:56

No.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:32:59

It is, he was a guy, he, he’s a guy who teaches self defence. And he teaches a lot of women specifically self defence. And for example, if you’re being attacked by a perpetrator, especially if you’re, if you’re anyone, if you’re in this position, where you’re kind of running backwards, you’re totally exposed, this is a horrible position for doing anything. And so basically, what he teaches is the only way to succeed in a situation like that is by offence, you know, so like, for example, if someone’s attacking you, he teaches women to, like, poke them in the eyes, or do it like, you know, and like a perpetrator is not used to someone aggressively attacking. And it really reflects, like what psychologists would call an approach orientation, whereas like, the other would be an avoid orientation. And I think approach orientation is just how I, how I look at content creation, you know, for example, me trying to do for 400 YouTube videos a year, like, to me that’s just mass approach, mass approach, like being on offence, not overly on defence. And I think that I just think being okay, volume and failing and learning. And, you know, those are kind of just the last things I would share, I guess. Yeah, no.

Michael Simmons 1:34:05

Great way to end it. Thank you so much, Ben.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:34:08

And you’re awesome, Michael, super cool to like, talk to you on Zoom. And

Michael Simmons 1:34:12

I know is the first time seeing each other.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy 1:34:13

I know. Yeah. I’ve been on the phone with you for hours, but it’s cool to just sit and talk with you, man.

Michael Simmons 1:34:18

Likewise, all right. Take care.

Outro 1:34:22

Thanks for listening to The Michael Simmons Show. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. If you found value. In today’s episode, you would greatly appreciate a five star rating on your favorite podcast player

The Art and Business of Online Writing with Nicolas Cole, Author, Speaker, and Founder of Digital Press

Mar 26, 2021 // by michaeld // Podcast // No Comments

Nicolas Cole is a best-selling author, international speaker, a 4x Top Writer on Quora, and the Founder of Digital Press. Nicolas is the author of The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention, a book dedicated to showing writers how to succeed online. He has helped countless thought leaders, CEOs, and business owners captivate their audience with the same storytelling strategies he uses in his writing.

Nicolas Cole has written for Forbes, Fortune, Huffington Post, and many more. He received his Bachelors of Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Nicolas Cole shares what he’s learned about consistency and algorithms
What can you learn about creating content by volume from Malcolm Gladwell and other successful writers?
How to create a flywheel that shortens your feedback loop
Nicolas talks about Minimum Viable Repeatability
How to overcome the limitations to be a better writer
Nicolas reveals how to maintain authority in the blogging space
Nicolas shares how he became a top writer on Medium and Quora
Thinking of your writing as a media company versus a one-hit-wonder
Credibility and why self-publishing is a better model than traditional publishing for making money as a writer
Nicolas shares the lesson he’s learned as his writing develops and grows
How do you attract other people to your work and stand out with your craft?
Nicolas reveals how to sell your story and create a brand your audience will support with storytelling elements

In this episode…

What is your favorite piece of writing? It could be a book you read in your teenage years or an article you recently came across. What’s important here is whether what you’ve read has created a lasting effect on your writing style and how you tell your story.

Nicolas Cole, the Founder of Digital Press, started out playing World of Warcraft and has gone on to write for Forbes, Fortune, and many other publications. He credits his success to the long hours he spent writing as a teenager and his ability to go from ideation to a written text in just a few hours. Nicolas uses these same strategies to create and sustain his personal brand on storytelling all while maintaining a repeatable process.

Join us in this week’s episode of The Michael Simmons Show as host Michael Simmons sits down with author, speaker, and Founder of Digital Press, Nicolas Cole. They compare their writing journey, chat about writing platforms, and what it means to create a flywheel. Nicolas shares his strategy for creating a repeatable process for content creation, what it means to have a career as a writer, and how storytelling has to lay a foundation for your personal brand.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by my company, Seminal.

We help you create blockbuster content that rises above the noise, changes the world, and builds your business.

To learn about creating blockbuster content, read my article: Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Michael Simmons 0:14

I am really excited for today’s guest. His name is Nicolas Cole. He’s the author of six books. And his content has been viewed over 100 million times. He only started writing about six years ago. And if you’ve ever had the excuse that you don’t have enough time, you can put that excuse away right now. He started writing when he had a full time job, get a one hour commute each way. And he was working out every day. And he’s still found time to write. And I’m really excited about this interview that Nicolas Cole and I have become friends and have a lot of similar philosophies. And one of the things that really makes him stand out is him showing the power of just showing up every day, having no excuses, and shipping. And if you just do that for a long time, you will be successful. Welcome to the podcast call I’m really excited to have you been looking forward to this for a few weeks now.

Nicolas Cole 1:15

Thanks for having me, man means a lot.

Michael Simmons 1:18

I admire you as a writer. And I’m also excited because you have different approaches than me as well, though, I’m looking forward to learning more about that. And maybe I need to update some of my models of how I view writing.

Nicolas Cole 1:32

I don’t know cuz that’s, that’s what originally prompted me to reach out was, uh, I was I was reading your stuff. And and I saw big differences between our two approaches. And so same thing with me, you know, I’m always looking at other people questioning, maybe there’s something that I’ve become too married to, you know, or I’ve become too stuck in my ways in this in this thing. So I appreciate the way you approach writing and the way you think about it, too.

Michael Simmons 1:57

Yeah. And I feel like it’s sometimes when there’s a polarity, the answer is they’re both true. And that’s currently how I view it. So when I started off writing, I focused on a blockbuster approach. So as I got invited to write for Forbes, this 2013, I didn’t have a following at all. And I had written before, when I was in college, I did a few 100 blog posts, on my own blog, and that and there wasn’t really social media then. And it fizzled out. And I was like, all right, quantity didn’t work. I need to focus on quality. And so right away, when I started to write for Forbes, my average article got 10,000, 20,000 40,000 views per article. And I think I got too wedded to it. And so, you know, after just doing people like you, you’re seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum, where it’s, in your book, The Art of online writing, you’re talking a lot about the consistency, what makes a successful writer as being a consistent writer. Yeah.

Nicolas Cole 2:55

But you know, if you think about it, that makes sense why you went that direction, though, because I think the volume, or the thing that I’ve kind of created and solidified for myself, it really is intended to work on social platforms. It’s intended to work where there’s algorithms and algorithms benefit from volume. But if you think like you were writing on a blog, which, whether you were using your own site, or using something like blogger, you know, I remember the days when I use

Michael Simmons 3:22

back in the day, I remember that too

Nicolas Cole 3:24

neither one of those had algorithms, and then writing for Forbes, all those big publications, they don’t have algorithms. So it makes sense how you got to where you did and why your conclusion was, well, I don’t have a flywheel that’s really like making this go faster for me. So I have to come up with a different way to get people to really latch on to it. Whereas for me, I was realising that these platforms, you know, there’s thresholds in place where if they see that you’re a, you’re a power creator, and you’re putting stuff out all the time, one of their variables is, well, we’re gonna prioritise this user, because they’re creating a ton of content on our platform. So that way, they

Michael Simmons 4:06

can you tell me more about that? I haven’t actually heard that before, I guess I would assume that they prioritise. Actually, I’ll just let you unpack that. How did you find that out?

Nicolas Cole 4:15

It was just through trial and error, like I one of the, you know, for context, right? Like, I was a pro gamer as a teenager. So my brain is wired for. If I look at something, the very first thing that I do is I look for all the rules. And I look to understand what what what’s all of the, you know, what are the edges of this game? How do I learn and master all the rules? And then how do I break the rules?

Michael Simmons 4:39

That’s like, right, right.

Nicolas Cole 4:40

Yeah. And so when I first got introduced to Quora, a few things immediately popped out to me as like rules of the platform. One was every person that was getting a ton of engagement. They weren’t just answering questions. They were telling stories. So instantly, I was like, cool. I need to tell personal stories. Second, second one was, every one of them was writing stuff on a daily basis, if not multiple times a day, they were like, pumping out content. So same thing, like, you see that on YouTube, you see that an Instagram, like, true creators are constantly in volume mode. So I was like, okay, there’s another data point. And, and so the more that I just picked up these different data points, the more I started to realize that it’s it, you know, I could always spot these trends where like, I would write something on Quora, and it would get a little traction, and then I’d write something again, and it gets a little more traction every day, as long as I was remaining consistent, the algorithm kept working to my benefit. And then and I see this on medium all the time, I try and either write or post something every day. And then the moment I let like, three days go by my whole algorithm just like flips and restarts, and I don’t post them. And so I don’t know these things change all the time. But I just, I, it’s, it’s a pretty clear, and I’ve heard this from a lot of people, it’s pretty clear that as long as you are consistently putting things out, the algorithm learns, hey, we want this person to stay on our platform. So we want them to be rewarded. So we’re going to help nudge them in the right direction. So that way, they keep coming back and creating more and more.

[continue to page 2]

Most People Think This Is A Smart Habit, But It’s Actually Brain-Damaging

Jan 23, 2019 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

This is the mental equivalent of eating McDonald’s every day.

As someone who has studied, practiced, and taught learning how to learn for years, I’ve come to believe that one of the most pervasive threats to our brains goes completely unnoticed.

When we think of brain damage, we think of a head injury impairing a person’s ability to think. There are laws in place that require us to wear helmets, use seatbelts, and generally do everything we can to avoid head injuries. Why? Because we know how important our brain is for leading a fulfilling, impactful, and successful life.

But a knock on the head isn’t the only way to “impair” our brains. If we think of damage in broader terms, then brain damage can be caused by anything that physically changes our brains in a way that makes us less intelligent or functional. Using this definition I’d make the case that much of the learning that people do on their own, which we usually consider a positive thing, might actually be doing many people more harm than good.

Let me explain.

First, whenever we learn something new, our brain physically changes

More specifically, the brain either makes a new connection between neurons or strengthens an existing one.

In one fascinating study that shows how much learning can change our physical brain, researchers found that certain parts of the brain of London taxi drivers who completed the exhaustive training process were significantly larger than aspiring drivers who dropped out of the training program. This shows that the training program was the cause of the growth.

How the learning impacts the brain is explained in detail in The Art Of The Changing Brain by researcher James Zull.

Second, assuming that all learning is inherently good is like assuming that all food makes us healthier.

Or that most of the news we consume makes us more well-informed. In reality, the opposite is true. The default — the easiest thing to reach for — is often junk food and junk media.

The same is often true with learning. Just like eating McDonald’s doesn’t make us healthier, “junk” or “fake” learning doesn’t make us smarter. In fact this kind of learning actually makes us dumber.

Learning is a circular process of taking in information, reasoning with that information, experimenting in the real world, getting feedback, and then taking what learn to go through the cycle again. When one part of the process is faulty, then it can throw off our learning process. For example, if all we’re collecting is bad ideas, then our reasoning is going to be bad, which is going to lead to ineffective actions and so on.

Later in this article, I’ll share how five strategies to recognize junk learning and avoid it.

Next, junk learning can cause physical changes in our brain, which then hurts our ability to function effectively

If the connections from learning are reinforcing false and harmful concepts, beliefs, or ideas, the physical result can be functionally equivalent to brain damage.

For example, one of the ideas I learned growing up was that sales is a bad thing. This single idea literally changed my brain and made me resistant to information on how to become better at this vital business skill. I had to go through a lot of pain before I was finally willing to let go of this idea. My business grew rapidly and immediately afterwards.

In some ways, it was like I was walking through the world with a hand in front of my face making it so I had huge blind spots. As a result, my brain created a false sense of reality, which led to me bumping into things.

We particularly see how junk learning can be functionally equivalent to brain damage with political polarization. Imagine you had someone come from a completely different culture who was unaware of politics. Then, imagine you had her observe the inability of many political commentators to logically consider an opposing idea without distorting it and attacking the other’s character. That person could easily come to the conclusion that the commentators’ brain had been damaged. Now, consider that this phenomena is in no way limited to politics.

Finally, junk learning is like a disease that spreads throughout the brain and causes more junk learning

We all share inherent physical growth tendencies. When we’re born, we go through a set of predictable, sequential steps that build on top of each other.

We roll over before we sit. We sit before we stand. We stand before we walk. We walk before we run.

The same thing happens with our cognitive development.

Although it’s not as obvious as physical abilities, ideas in our brain build upon other ideas in a predictable order from simple to complex.

For example, when it comes to math, we start with single digit numbers, move to double digit numbers, then triple digit, then addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and so on.

Each new thing we learn is like adding a new brick and then cementing it to other bricks to create a knowledge structure.

As we learn more, our building becomes larger.

The problem comes when we build our buildings on a poor foundation with shoddy bricks (junk learning). In this case, counterintuitively, adding new knowledge weakens the whole building.

And if we keep adding new knowledge to an unstable building, it eventually falls down. These building collapses are our existential crises (i.e., quarter-life and mid-life crises) where we hit bottom after reconsidering our deepest beliefs. Removing these fundamental ideas forces us to reconsider all of the ideas that were dependent on that idea.

This is what happens in our brains with junk learning. For example, when I first started writing in college, I somehow got the idea in my head that the key to being a good writer was producing as much content as possible. So, for three years, I wrote a new blog post every day.

My hope was that the blog would somehow become viral and be a platform for me to go into a career in writing. Instead, almost no one read my posts, and I eventually gave up and took a different career path that allowed me to support myself. As a result of the experience, I came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t a good writer and that you can’t really support yourself as an independent writer. Two more false ideas built upon on a bad one.

I didn’t come back to writing for 7 years. Fortunately, when I started writing for Forbes in 2013, I had just read a book called Blockbusters by Harvard professor Anita Elberse. The central premise is that the best strategy in the media world of books, movies, TV, and music is to focus on creating high-quality blockbusters rather than churn out volume. Elberse based her claims on years of research on who the winners are in the media world.

I applied the blockbuster idea and immediately it started working for me. Today, I am a writer and teacher full-time.

It is painful to think about how big of a detour was caused by the initial faulty idea.

Bottom line: Junk learning damages our brain and then it makes us more prone to more junk learning, which damages our brain even more.

The Top Five Sources Of Junk Learning

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler

Ok. So we’ve established a few things:

Learning physically changes our brain.

Much of the learning that people are exposed to by default is junk learning.

Junk learning effectively equivalent to brain damage and impairs our ability to function in the world.
Junk learning is like a disease that spreads throughout the brain and causes more junk learning.

Now the question is, what do we do about it?

In my experience, it’s key to first know what the causes of junk learning are. This way we can avoid them the next time we jump into an audiobook or start a learning ritual.

What follows are the five biggest sources of junk learning that I’ve personally come across over and over…

Junk Learning Source #1. The “Facts” We Know Are Slowly Being Debunked

At the same time that we are building up our base of knowledge, the knowledge is expiring. The book that woke me up to this reality is The Half Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date, which terrified me by revealing that if you’ve got liver disease and go to a doctor who graduated more than 45 years ago, half of that doctor’s information is probably wrong:

It’s not just medicine. It’s happening in computer science, design, nutrition, psychology, basically everywhere. It’s like we’re trying to bail water out of a leaking boat. We have all this knowledge, but it’s losing value. And to make it worse, we don’t even know when a piece of knowledge expires. It’s not like we get an email notifying us: “Hey, that thing you learned three years ago? It’s not true anymore.”

The end result is that we operate with false ideas and we stop getting results. Then we have to troubleshoot to find out what out-of-date knowledge and skills might be responsible for the poor results.

A fascinating 1966 paper titled The Dollars and Sense of Continuing Education plays out the implications of decaying knowledge. Assuming that it takes ten years for half the facts in a given field to be proven wrong or improved on, then:

You would need to spend at least five hours per week, 48 weeks a year, to stay up to date.
A 40-year career would require 9,600 hours of continuing learning just to stay relevant. This does not include learning to get ahead or the time it would take to simply remember what we have already learned.

Now, if that isn’t enough to blow your mind, consider that 90 percent of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today. Each of these scientists is increasing the rate at which new information is created and old information decays. Also, consider that some of the most interesting and consequential future fields (for instance, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency) change the fastest.

So what should we do in light of all of this change? One model I’ve found helpful comes from the world of personal finance.

One of the biggest distinctions in the world of personal finance is between purchases and investments. Purchases immediately lose value while investments have the potential to increase in value. For example, a car is a purchase — the second you drive a new car off the parking lot, it loses value. A home, on the other hand, is an investment: It has the potential to increase in value.

Learning is very similar. Certain knowledge is going to predictably decline in value. If you read the New York Times №1 bestseller about business or the latest fad diet, chances are it will be forgotten in a year. Other knowledge has the potential to become even more valuable: If you read a classic book that’s been around for centuries, chances are you will glean wisdom that is more universal and long-lasting.

Learning is like running on a treadmill. As the speed of the treadmill increases, you need to run faster or you’ll be thrown off. Similarly, as society changes more rapidly, you need to update your skills more rapidly or risk falling off into irrelevancy. Depending on outdated knowledge to get results in life is like depending on termite-eaten beams to hold a building up.

While you still need to keep on top of cutting-edge breakthroughs in a field, in general, many people undervalue learning investments in a stable base of knowledge that doesn’t change. In my opinion, mental models are one of the best learning investments anyone can make, because they apply across fields and across time, and will continue to apply to many situations in the future.

Lesson Learned: Look for information that actually increases in value over time. When it comes to knowledge, think like an investor, not a consumer.

Junk Learning Source #2: A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous

“The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Historian Daniel Boorstin

In 1999, psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning wrote a research paper, that introduced us to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

The idea is simple but counterintuitive: In learning any new domain, our confidence is actually highest when we start. This is surprising because, rationally, we should have the lowest confidence when we know the least. However, Dunning and Kruger found that when we don’t know what we don’t know, we overestimate our abilities. Or, as philosopher Bertrand Russell famously put it: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Of course, once we have our bubble burst and learn enough to recognize our ignorance, most people’s confidence takes a huge dip. It only slowly rebounds if we keep going. Unfortunately, many give up during the dip phase.

I’ve experienced the Dunning-Kruger effect myself. When I was 16 years old, Cal Newport and I co-founded a company together during the height of the dotcom boom. With barely any advertising we quickly got clients willing to pay us over $100 per hour. At the time, the only way I could explain this was that we were brilliant and everyone else who was decades older and making a lot less wasn’t. Then, in 2001, the Internet bubble burst and the business cratered. I learned that my self-confidence was wildly over-inflated, that I was missing key business skills, and that tech and economic cycles are a real thing.

It took several years for me to admit my ignorance because my self-image had been so big. And it took several more years to regain my confidence.

Lesson Learned: No matter how much we know, we only know a fraction of all there is to know. We must assume our own ignorance. An attitude of caution can help us avoid developing false beliefs that can lead to irrational decisions.

Junk Learning Source #3: Our Confirmation Bias Makes Us Progressively More Dumb

Copernicus published his thesis that the Earth revolves around the sun in 1543. Ninety years later, Galileo was arrested for agreeing with Copernicus. It took more than a hundred years for this model to be accepted — and 350 years for the Catholic church to officially accept it.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to only look for and believe information that supports what we already think, and to dismiss evidence to the contrary. And this example drives home just how powerful it is.

It also drives home another important lesson. A very small amount of disconfirming evidence can disprove a much larger body of confirming evidence. Consider how easy it must have been to believe that hat the sun revolves around the Earth — when for millennia all humans could see was the sun moving around us through the sky each day. Each incremental piece of evidence seemed to prove our original ideas right.

One of the biggest daily examples of confirmation bias involves our social media bubbles: We read the same sites, listen to the same friends (who agree with us!), and watch the same news over and over, which only confirms what we already believe. When we’re exposed to something that doesn’t fit our model of the world, we unconsciously either ignore it, minimize it, or attack it.

When we only hear opinions that confirm our beliefs, our learning is incremental at best. We learn the most by proving ourselves wrong, not by proving ourselves right. Many of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century independently came to this conclusion.

Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of science, explained that what moves science forward is actually the discovery of disconfirming evidence.

Joseph Schumpeter, one of the greatest economists, showed that ideas don’t simply progress in a straight line forward. They grow through a process of creative destruction where old ideas are destroyed to make way for new paradigms.

Jean Piaget, one of the greatest psychologists, showed that we grow our own knowledge the most when we transform our thinking to be able to accomodate external knowledge that doesn’t fit at first. In his model, when we are exposed to new information, we adapt to it in one of two ways:

Assimilation — We use our existing base of knowledge to understand a new object or situation.
Accommodation — We realize that our existing base of knowledge does not work, and needs to be changed in order to effectively deal with a new object or situation.

The following example shows the difference between assimilation and accommodation. Imagine, a three-year-old child who sees a cat for the first time and asks his mother, “Mommy? What’s that four-legged creature?” Smiling, she responds, “It’s a cat, honey.”

The next day, the boy is walking through his neighborhood with his mom, and he sees another four-legged creature, a dog. He excitedly turns to his mom and says, “Mommy… Mommy… oooh. Another cat!” Correcting him, she says, “No honey, it’s a dog.” The boy furrows his eyebrows in deep thought. He points to the dog and half asks half says, “doggy?!?!” His mom proudly replies, “That’s right! Good job.” and they continue their stroll.

What happened here?

The boy first tried to assimilate the new knowledge by fitting it into his existing schema. Cats have four legs. So do dogs. So they are the same.

When his mom corrected him, he went into deep thought because he needed to update his schema on what a cat was in order to understand what a dog was.

Popper, Schumpeter, and Piaget show that we stunt our growth when we ignore disconfirming evidence or distort evidence in order to make it assimilate with our existing knowledge. Focusing on learning what we already we believe is like building a really skinny wall that will topple over as it gets larger.

On the other hand, we go through a growth spurt when we actively search for disconfirming evidence and allow accomodation to happen.

It’s easier said than done because we hate to admit when we are wrong. Counteracting confirmation bias takes incredible psychic energy. It is the equivalent of doing strenuous physical exercise; it’s difficult, but worth it.

A fascinating study at the University Of Southern California shows just how unsettling it can be to go against our confirmation biases. In the study, participants had their brain scanned while they were presented with counterarguments to some of their political beliefs, such as:

“Laws restricting gun ownership should be made more restrictive.”
“Gay marriage should not be legalized.”

Amazingly, what the study found is that the same parts of the brain (for example, the amygdala) that respond to PHYSICAL threats also respond to INTELLECTUAL threats. In other words, reading about facts we disagree with can provoke the same sort of response we’d feel if we were being chased by a lion.

Matthew Inman, the creator of The Oatmeal, beautifully sums up how most of us protect our confirmation bias instead of attempting to get past it:

To some extent, we all walk around with rickety “knowledge buildings” surrounded by moats; whereas, if we let new, disproving information in, we could strengthen the building instead.

Lesson Learned: We need to identify and stress-test our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality— and learn how to handle the strong emotions that will come up when we do.

Junk Learning Source #4. We Trust the Wrong Ideas and the Wrong People

Humans are social learners. We watch someone do something and emulate it. If you’re a parent, you’ve seen this firsthand in your child. You say something or make a facial expression, and your little one copies it.

We often take the ability to mimic others for granted. But I see it as a superpower. In fact, it’s actually the superpower of a superhero in one of my favorite TV shows. This superhero is able to watch anyone do anything once and immediately master it:

But this superpower can go wrong if we copy the wrong things from the wrong people. Unfortunately, we do this all of the time as a result of the Halo Effect. This is a cognitive bias that makes us trust a person’s advice in one area of life simply because they are an expert in another area. Researcher Phil Rosenzweig breaks it down further in his book The Halo Effect (one of my favorite business books of all time):

…a tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of a general impression. It’s difficult for most people to independently measure separate features; there’s a common tendency to blend them together.

It’s like buying a Lincoln car because Matthew McConaughey drives one in a Superbowl ad. It’s listening to a famous painter give his or her grand plan for re-engineering society. It’s trusting a scientist to tell us what’s wrong with our political system when that scientist has no experience in politics. It’s following the fashion advice of a professional athlete. It’s trusting the advice of a business celebrity who turned around a big company 10 years ago and wrote a bestselling book to help us grow our startup.

While these examples may seem obvious, the Halo Effect also shows up in much more subtle ways that are harder to recognize:

In the autumn of 2001, after the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush’s overall approval rating rose sharply. No surprise there, as the American public closed ranks behind its president. But the number of Americans who approved of President Bush’s handling of the economy also rose — from 47 percent to 60 percent. Now, whether or not you like Bush’s economic policies, there’s no reason to believe that his handling of the economy was suddenly better in the weeks after September 11. But it’s hard to keep these things separate: General approval of the president carried over to approval of a specific policy. The American public conferred a Halo on its president and made favorable attributions across the board. After all, it’s uncomfortable for many people to believe that their president might be good on issues of national security but ineffective on the economy — it’s far easier to think he’s about the same for both.

And ultimately, the example in the book that really drove home the point was the takedown of Jim Collins’ books Good To Great and Built To Last, two of the bestselling business books of all time. I had read each of these multiple times and looked upon them very highly. Collins and his team spent thousands and thousands of hours identifying:

Companies that had outperformed their peers by a large margin over decades.
The qualities that made them successful.

Yet, when Rosenzweig explored how the companies did after the books came out, the results are humbling:

Collins and Porras urge us not to “blindly and unquestioningly accept” their findings but ask that we subject their analysis to careful scrutiny. “Let the evidence speak for itself,” they implore. So let’s check the evidence. We may not be able to put companies in petri dishes and run experiments, but we can check how they fare over time. If the principles of Built to Last are indeed timeless and enduring explanations of performance, then we should expect these same companies to continue to perform well after the study ended. Conversely, if they can’t keep up their high performance, well, that would lend support to the view that these so-called timeless principles were due mostly to the Halo Effect — a glow cast by high performance rather than the cause of high performance.

So how well did the eighteen Visionary companies fare in the years after the study ended on December 31, 1990? All eighteen were still up and running in 2000, so at least they were built to last for another ten years. But as for performance, the record wasn’t so good. Using data from Compustat, I looked at total shareholder return for each company for the five years after the study ended, 1991– 1995. The results? Out of seventeen companies, chosen specifically because they had outperformed the market by a factor of 15 for more than sixty-four years, only eight outperformed the S& P 500 market average; the other nine didn’t even keep up.

An analysis of Good To Great companies after the book came out had similar results.

We fall for the Halo Effect in our professional lives when we buy books or get mentors and don’t discount that what worked in their industry, in the past, at their size company, in one specific department many not work for us too.

We also fall for the Halo Effect when we have a success and generalize it too far like I did earlier in my career when I attributed our success to personal genius rather than an economic cycle.

Lesson Learned: As a result of reading The Halo Effect, I’ve become much more suspicious of listening to celebrity experts in any field. Instead, now whenever I look at who to emulate, I specifically look for people who have experienced success over and over not because of luck or celebrity, but because of skill. In my experience, many of these individuals are not celebrities. Then, I carefully experiment with their advice to see if it will transfer to my context.

Junk Learning Source #5. Over-specialization limits our ability to learn across disciplines

In other articles, I’ve written about learning transfer. This is our ability to learn a concept in one domain and then apply it to another.

In learning science, positive transfer is when learning something makes it more likely that we will transfer our knowledge. Learning addition and subtraction, for example, help children then learning multiplication and division. Learning to play one racket sport like tennis can help others learn to play other racket sports like badminton and table tennis.

Negative transfer, on the other hand, is when learning something hinders learning transfer.If you’ve ever switched from driving an automatic transmission to a manual one, you’ve had to unlearn the habit of simply pressing the gas, and get used to engaging the clutch and shifting gears before accelerating. If your first language is a European one like Spanish, French, or German, you’ve had to get over the fact that in English, nouns have no gender. Or consider the all-too-familiar case of a software password. Just when you finally memorize one, you get asked to create a new one. Do this a few times, and it’s hard to remember which password to key in because you keep getting them confused.

Scarily, research in the field of expert performance shows that these negative transfer effects can:

“…get worse as higher levels of expertise are reached, as the acquired knowledge becomes increasingly specialized. This is because the perceptual chunks, which act as the condition part of productions, become more selective…

Interestingly, the author’s suggestions to this challenge parallel our approach of using the trunk technique:

If this analysis is correct, and keeping in mind that it is difficult to predict what skills will be required two or three decades from now, the best option seems to supplement the teaching of specific knowledge with the teaching of metaheuristics that are transferable (Grotzer & Perkins, 2000; Simon, 1980). These may include strategies about how to learn, how to direct one’s attention in novel domains, and how to monitor and regulate one’s limited resources, such as small STM [short-term memory] capacity and slow learning rates.”

Lesson Learned: Being too specialized can hurt future learning if done alone. Supplement by spending more of your time learning fundamental knowledge that doesn’t change. This is why we created the Mental Model Club.

Take Action: Strengthen Your Brain Instead of Damaging It

Just as learning what junk food is can help us eat healthier, learning how NOT to learn can help us learn faster and better. Remember these junk learning sources, and their solutions, so you can recognize and avoid them.

1. Our “facts” are expiring and we don’t even know it.

Look for information that actually increases in value over time. When it comes to knowledge, think like an investor, not a consumer.

2. A little knowledge is dangerous.

Realize you only know a little bit. Assume ignorance to avoid developing false beliefs that can lead to irrational decisions.

3. Our confirmation bias makes us progressively more dumb.

Identify and stress-test your most fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality — and learn how to handle the strong emotions that will come up when you do.

4. We too often trust the wrong ideas and the wrong people.

Remember that celebrities are often not experts at anything except their specific field of celebrity (music, acting, a sport, etc.). Be super careful about whom and what you choose to emulate.

5. Over-specialization limits our ability to learn across disciplines

Specialized knowledge can hurt future learning. Instead, spend most of your time learning fundamental knowledge that doesn’t change such as mental models.

Knowledge doesn’t innately compound to make us smarter. In fact, as we learned in this article, it is possible for people to actually become dumber as they put in more learning time.

Here’s How to Master Mental Models

In our Mental Model Club, we help you learn the most fundamental mental models and principles that will last forever and that you can apply in ever area of your life. Each month, you receive a 15,000-word Mastery Manual that condenses dozens of books into a how-to guide with workbook and resource list. By joining now, you will get our best Mastery Manual.

Why Constant Learners All Embrace the 5-Hour Rule

Nov 23, 2018 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

Credit: Getty Images

Benjamin Franklin did this 1 hour a day, 5 hours a week. Why you should do it too.

At the age of 10, Benjamin Franklin left formal schooling to become an apprentice to his father. As a teenager, he showed no particular talent or aptitude aside from his love of books.

When he died a little over half a century later, he was America’s most respected statesman, its most famous inventor, a prolific author, and a successful entrepreneur.

What happened between these two points to cause such a meteoric rise?

The answer to this question is a success strategy that we can all use, and increasingly must use for our career, business and life.

The five-hour rule

Throughout Ben Franklin’s adult life, he consistently invested roughly an hour a day in deliberate learning. I call this Franklin’s five-hour rule: one hour a day on every weekday.

Franklin’s learning time consisted of:

Waking up early to read and write
Setting personal-growth goals (i.e., virtues list) and tracking the results
Creating a club for “like-minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community”
Turning his ideas into experiments
Having morning and evening reflection questions

Every time that Franklin took time out of his busy day to follow his five-hour rule and spend at least an hour learning, he accomplished less on that day. However, in the long run, it was arguably the best investment of his time he could have made.

Franklin’s five-hour rule reflects the very simple idea that, over time, the smartest and most successful people are the ones who are constant and deliberate learners. And at the core of their learning is reading:

Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports.
Bill Gates reads 50 books per year.
Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks.
Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother.
Oprah Winfrey credits books with much of her success: “Books were my pass to personal freedom.”
Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, reads two hours a day.
Dan Gilbert, self-made billionaire and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, reads one to two hours a day.

So what would it look like to make the five-hour rule part of our lifestyle?

First, make time for learning

To find out, we need look no further than chess grandmaster and world-champion martial artist Josh Waitzkin. Instead of squeezing his days for the maximum productivity, he’s actually done the opposite. Waitzkin, who also authored The Art of Learning, purposely creates slack in his day so he has“empty space” for learning, creativity, and doing things at a higher quality.Here’s his explanation of this approach from a recent Tim Ferriss podcast episode:

“I have built a life around having empty space for the development of my ideas for the creative process. And for the cultivation of a physiological state which is receptive enough to tune in very, very deeply to people I work with … In the creative process, it’s so easy to drive for efficiency and take for granted the really subtle internal work that it takes to play on that razor’s edge.”

Adding slack to our day allows us to:

1. Plan out the learning. This allows us to think carefully about what we want to learn. We shouldn’t just have goals for what we want to accomplish. We should also have goals for what we want to learn.
2. Deliberately practice. Rather than doing things automatically and not improving, we can apply the proven principles of deliberate practice so we keep improving. This means doing things like taking time to get honest feedback on our work and practicing specific skills we want to improve.
3. Ruminate. This helps us get more perspective on our lessons learned and assimilate new ideas. It can also help us develop slow hunches in order to have creative breakthroughs. Walking is a great way to process these insights, as shown by many greats who were or are walking fanatics, from Beethoven and Charles Darwin to Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey. Another powerful way is through conversation partners.
5. Set aside time just for learning. This includes activities like reading, having conversations, participating in a mastermind, taking classes, observing others, etc.
6. Solve problems as they arise. When most people experience problems during the day, they sweep them under the rug so that they can continue their to-do list. Having slack creates the space to address small problems before they turn into big problems.
7. Do small experiments with big potential payoffs. Whether or not an experiment works, it’s an opportunity to learn and test your ideas.

Next, read the best books in the world

Want to read the most-recommended books by top leaders like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Elon Musk?

My team and I went through 460+ book recommendations of top CEOs and entrepreneurs, crunched the data, and found the six most recommended books.

To help you follow the 5-hour rule, you can access the most recommended books here for free.

Finally, read faster

The final problem now is that it could take you years of focused reading just to get through these hundreds of book recommendations.

There is a solution though.

Imagine if you could read one book a day?

And…get the best ideas from each book immediately?

This is possible.

The reality is that the value of a book is not evenly distributed. It is likely that you will get 80% of the true value from only a few pages.

That often means that a lot of reading time is wasted.

This is where book summaries come in.

But, as much as I love most book summaries out there, they typically have two problems:

They just aren’t designed to help you apply your knowledge into real life situations, so that you can get results.
They don’t show how the books’ ideas connects to other books.

So, after reading thousands of books, and talking with the best learning experts in the world, I developed my own unique learning system that is essentially book summaries on steroids.

Here’s how I developed this learning system, step-by-step:

I pick the best books in the world to read. (I pull from the great thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs of all time — from self-made billionaires Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, and Ray Dalio — to leading academics and thinkers like Nassim Taleb and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman.)
Then, I take detailed notes of the best ideas
Next, I connect those ideas to all of the other best ideas I’ve learned
Finally, I create simple exercises to help apply these ideas.

In other words, instead of just summarizing books, I extract their most valuable gems, put them in context, and make them actionable.

That is how you can read one book in one day!

If you want to read the consume the best ideas in the world, let me save you time.

Access my book summaries (what I call Mastery Manuals) >>

Self-Made Billionaire: There Are Three Levels Of Reality, And Most People Are Stuck In Level One, But They Have No Idea

Nov 22, 2018 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

The brutal truth is that most people aren’t even aware of Level 2 or 3

One commonality of great thinkers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs throughout history is that they see reality on a deeper level. This helps them figuratively play chess while everyone else plays checkers.

This realization slowly came to me as I spent thousands of hours over the last few years reading, watching, and listening to everything from many of history’s wisest business leaders, from Charlie Munger, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos to Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin (all of whom I have written about).

Over and over, I thought I understood their words, and then later, when I revisited them, I realized there was a whole other layer I had missed. The experience was like looking at this image below, seeing only one thing and then realizing it is both a picture of a duck and a bunny.

See it?

This all brings me to self-made billionaire, entrepreneur, investor, and polymath Ray Dalio. Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, and his approach to and results from uncovering and using deep principles and mental models is unparalleled. Over the last 40 years, Dalio has meticulously identified and stress-tested a set of universal, success principles, and then created detailed step-by-step systems that his 1,500-person team uses to make management and investment decisions. This year, he effectively open-sourced everything with the release of his book, Principles: Life and Work.

This chart below from Dalio’s book is like the duck/bunny image. On one level, it’s a simple chart like any other chart. On another level, it’s profound and speaks to the three levels of reality that Dalio sees.

Source: Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Understanding these three levels of reality is critical because the better you build a map of how reality works, and the more you’re open to improving that map, the more successful you’ll be.

Let’s dive into Dalio’s three levels of reality…

Reality Level 1: Getting Stuff Done

Most people operate in this realm. The output of a good sales call is a closed sale. The outcome of a good meeting is the resolution of a specific problem. Conversely, a bad sales call is one that doesn’t result in a new customer. A bad meeting is one that decides nothing.

This level of reality is essentially about getting stuff done: creating a to-do list from most important to least important and then kicking butt right on down the list. Dalio calls this layer of reality the blizzard because lots of things are constantly coming at you from different directions, and it’s hard to get clarity on what really matters.

Dalio’s book is not written on this level. Most books are.

Reality Level 2: Principles

To people like Dalio, the value of an activity isn’t just its immediate result, but also the underlying principles at play. The principles you learn in any situation are often more valuable than the immediate result, because you can apply them for the rest of your life across all areas to make better decisions.

For example, let’s say you’re a salesperson. At Level 2, each sales call is an opportunity to learn about related principles on multiple levels:

As you move down toward fundamental mental models of what selling is and how it works, you gets closer to principles that are more timeless and universal.

Once you reach the “timeless and universal” level, you can apply a principle or mental model to exponentially more situations. And this is the key here. Once you reach an understanding of a mental model, you have a tool that can apply in many situations now and in the future to help you be more efficient, get more done, make better decisions, have better relationships, become more successful, and become more impactful.

Let’s take Stephen Covey’s fundamental principle of ‘Seek first to understand and then to be understood’ as an example. This principle can help you sell a product, but it can also help you be a better parent, have a happier marriage, enjoy deeper friendships, and get along with people of different cultures, faiths, and political backgrounds. If you’re interested in learning more about the value of fundamental principles and mental models, I wrote about it in How To Tell If Someone Is Truly Smart Or Just Average.

So let’s say you have a sales call where the prospect doesn’t buy from and become a customer. If you operated from Level 1 of reality, this call would be a painful waste of time. To Dalio, at Level 2, it would be a learning opportunity because of his following core principle:

“Pain + Reflection = Progress.”

As he explains:

“There’s so much more that you can learn from mistakes because they give you a loud signal. Rewards keep you doing the same things, and so you don’t grow from successes… Mistakes, if you can deal with them the right way, with reflection is where the growth comes from.”

Dalio’s approach is counterintuitive on two levels. First, society typically judges success by first-order results (i.e., immediate sales), not second-order ones (i.e., improving the system that makes sales). Secondly, our natural reaction to pain is to resist it and react emotionally. Dalio has built systems, tools, and habits that help him move toward pain, react logically and objectively, and engage in thoughtful disagreement rather than arguments, which I’ll explain later in the article. While we all intellectually understand that we can learn from pain, I’ve never come across someone who is as systematic and committed to it as Dalio.

While Level 1 of reality is a blizzard, Level 2 is more like standing on a mountaintop in a clear sky looking down at the blizzard.

And because you have this wider aperture on life, you’re able to see connections more naturally. Dalio explains:

“With time and experience, I came to see each encounter as ‘another one of those’ that I could approach more calmly and analytically, like a biologist might approach an encounter with a threatening creature in the jungle: first identifying its species and then, drawing on his prior knowledge about its expected behaviors, reacting appropriately. When I was faced with types of situations I had encountered before, I drew on the principles I had learned for dealing with them. But when I ran into ones I hadn’t seen before, I would be painfully surprised. Studying all those painful first-time encounters, I learned that even if they hadn’t happened to me, most of them had happened to other people in other times and places, which gave me a healthy respect for history, a hunger to have a universal understanding of how reality works, and the desire to build timeless and universal principles for dealing with it.”

While we all learn from our experiences at some level, what separates Dalio is two things. First, he doesn’t just pull from his own seven decades of personal experience. He attempts to pull from all experiences of recorded history. This approach gives him a tremendous advantage as investor because some financial cycles happen every few months or few years, but other cycles only happen every few decades or every century. With Dalio’s wider lens, he can see those patterns. Our own personal experiences are a drop in the ocean of humanity’s experiences through all time.

Secondly, he doesn’t just learn from his experience reactively and unconsciously. He is extremely deliberate. This is important because of the OK Plateau — most people learn quickly in new situations, but soon plateau after they’re “good enough” and never get better with more experience. This has been heavily studied in the professional world, and it’s evident in our daily lives. Has driving more made you a better driver? Has typing more made you a better typist?

I go into what I mean by “deliberate” in Level 3, as this is where the magic happens.

Reality Level 3: Algorithms

This is the point at which Dalio’s teachings started to blow my mind. It’s also the level which causes the most controversy in the media. Dalio has systematically taken his principles and turned them into algorithms in computers that he uses to make better investing and people decisions.

What does that mean in practice? For one, Dalio’s company, Bridgewater, has developed several apps that employees use to make better decisions. One of them is called the Pain Button. Here’s how it works:

In building these apps and collecting the data from them, Bridgewater may have built the largest database of team interaction ever in the history of mankind.

Bridgewater, of course, doesn’t just focus on employee emotions, but also on their investments. Starting in the 1970s, Dalio created investment algorithms and turned them into code. Over time, he improved the code in two ways:

As he and his team learned more principles, they turned those into algorithms, and then turned those into code.
He and his team stress-tested the algorithms using historical data. In other words, he fed historical data into the program. Then, he let his algorithm run loose to see what decisions it would’ve made in that historical context. With the gift of hindsight, he was able to see the actual amount of money the algorithm would’ve made or lost without risking a penny.
With the results from stress-testing, he and his team refined the principles, algorithms, and code.

As Bridgewater got better and better results, they trusted the system more and more, and started using it to help make real-world investment decisions. Over time, the algorithms have become effective enough for Bridgewater to trust its decisions 98 percent of the time.

In short, at Level 3, Dalio doesn’t just let the general principles of Level 2 remain general principles. He systematically understands how the principles interact with each other to create specific results in the world:

“Visualizing complex systems as machines, figuring out the cause-effect relationships within them, writing down the principles for dealing with them, and feeding them into a computer so the computer could ‘make decisions’ for me all became standard practices.”

Dalio’s approach sparks controversy among many: “What about the chaos and randomness of life? You can’t reduce complex decisions or dynamics between people into engineering problems!” This is where it’s important to understand that Dalio doesn’t claim to have a perfect machine that does everything perfectly without humans. Dalio views his machine as a trusted advisor to human decision-making.

Naturally, Dalio has immense financial and human resources to build his machines. But we can still learn from and emulate his approach. For example, Dalio’s approaches have had a huge impact on me in two ways:

After reading his work, I realized I had a pervasive pattern of ignoring painful problems or only dealing with them once they blew up. So, I started logging problems, doing a weekly root cause analysis conversation with my wife, with myself, and with our team.
Rather than just being a writer, our company created an idea machine where we systematically found principles of how quality ideas are created and how they spread. We stress-tested those principles with lots of experimentation, and then built systems and tools to help the process. Starting with very little profile and no list, my writing has been seen nearly 15 million times across platforms in the last 3 years with just a few dozen articles.

Putting It All Together: Rethinking Productivity

We all just have 24 hours in a day. Yet some people move much closer toward their goals than others. In other words, they get more value from each experience they have. The learning value that Dalio gets from every moment is exponentially greater than the average person.

In order to unlock this value, Dalio focuses on three levels of reality while most people focus on just one. He also thinks about his time differently. Rather than just focusing the day around getting stuff done, throughout his career he has focused on constant and deliberate learning. I call this tendency for many of the busiest, most successful leaders to spend at least 5 hours or more per week learning the 5-hour rule.

Dalio’s approach means he gets less done in a day, but gets drastically more done in his life. This happens because the value of operating on Levels 2 & 3 compound over time. After 40 years of living at all three levels of reality, Dalio has built up an incredibly powerful legacy:

Core principles he has shared in his book Principles, which is reverberating throughout society to millions of people.
An investing machine that can be run without him that has generated tens of billions of dollars so far and likely hundreds of billions in the future.
A management machine that has helped Bridgewater scale to 1,500-plus employees that any company could use.

When most people ask themselves how they can take their life to the next level, they often think about new skills they could start or bad habits they could stop. This is Level 1 thinking. It works, but only so far.

By understanding the different levels of reality, we can all break through the glass ceilings in our life and realize more of our latent potential and leave a legacy.

Want to get started with Dalio’s approach?

In order to use principles and mental models, we must first collect and learn how to use the most valuable ones. I’ve learned from personal experience that it literally takes years to develop true mastery of these. Therefore, I created two resources for you:

Resource #1: Free Mental Model Course (For Newbies)

If you’re just learning about mental models for the first time, my free email course will help you get started. My team and I have spent dozens of hours creating it. Inside, you’ll learn the models that these billionaires use to make business and investing decisions — tools you can apply immediately to your life and business. You’ll also learn how to naturally use these models in your everyday life.

Sign up for the free mini-course here >>

Resource #2: Mental Model Of The Month Club (For Those Who Want Mastery)

If you’re already convinced of the power of mental models and want to deliberately set about mastering them, then this resource is for you. It’s the program I wish I’d had when I was just getting started with mental models.

Here’s how it works:

Every month, you’ll master one new mental model.
We’ll focus on the most powerful and universal models first.
We’ll provide you with a condensed and simple Mastery Manual (think: Cliff’s Notes) to help you deeply understand the model and integrate it into your life.

Each master manual includes:

A 101 Overview of the mental model (why it’s important, how it works, its vocabulary, etc.)
An Advanced Overview that includes a more nuanced explanation.
Hacks you can use immediately to apply that mental model to every area of your life and career. These hacks are based on my personal experience and are crowdsourced as well.
Exercises and templates you can use on a daily basis to integrate the lessons in the manual and achieve maximum results in your life.
A Facebook community where you can meet other mental model collectors and learn from one another.

To learn more about the program or to sign up, visit the Mental Model Of The Month Overview page.

This Is Exactly How You Should Train Yourself To Be Smarter [Infographic]

Nov 20, 2018 // by michaeld // learning // No Comments

View the high resolution version of the infographic by clicking here.

Out of all the interventions we can do to make smarter decisions in our life and career, mastering the most useful and universal mental models is arguably the most important.

Over the last few months, I’ve written about how many of the most successful self-made billionaire entrepreneurs like Ray Dalio, Elon Musk, and Charlie Munger swear by mental models…

“Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do.”
— Charlie Munger

“Those who understand more of them and understand them well [principles / mental models] know how to interact with the world more effectively than those who know fewer of them or know them less well.”
— Ray Dalio

“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.”
— Elon Musk

Each of these luminary entrepreneurs use different words to essentially say the same thing.

I’ve collected the 650+ most useful mental models from the best mental model curators in the world. It is now the most comprehensive list in the world. And I’ve launched a free mental model mini-course to help you understand what a mental model is and how to apply it to your life.

This infographic is the culmination of all these articles. It is my personal list of the 12 most useful & universal mental models that I believe everyone should master first. For each mental model, I share the sub mental models that make it up and one paragraph explaining its significance.

This infographic matters because it would take 6,500 hours to master each of the 650 mental models that others have recommended. That’s a lot of freaking time! You probably aren’t ready to commit that amount of time to mental models… yet. By creating this infographic, I hope to save you dozens of hours determining which models to learn first.

If you’re interested in learning these models so you can use them automatically whenever you need them in order to make better decisions, then keep reading…

What Are Mental Models?

Mental models are descriptions of reality that apply across every area of our life, don’t get outdated, and provide immediate results by helping you make better decisions.

They are like little miniature mental maps of how a particular area of life works.

And when you learn them, it changes everything.

What Is An Example Of A Mental Model?

One of the most famous mental models is called the Pareto Principle. You probably know it as the “80/20 rule.” This mental models says that most of your results are going to come from just a small percentage of your effort or work.

Vilfredo Pareto, the man who discovered this principle noticed that 80% of the land in his area was owned by 20% of the people. He looked in his garden, and saw that 80% of the peas were in 20% of the pea pods. Then he realized that this was something like an organizing principle of life.

This phenomena applies across many domains including productivity, happiness, business, health, etc. Here are a few examples:

20% of relationships lead to 80% of happiness.
20% of exercises lead to 80% of health benefit.
20% of items on your to do list lead to 80% of productivity.

For example, by taking 30–60 minutes per day for prioritization, you can double your productivity. By auditing the relationships in your life, you can identify people you want to spend more time with and people you want to remove from your life. By looking at what experiences give you the most delight, you can begin to engineer your life differently.

The rule can also be inverted:

20% of relationships cause 80% of drama.
20% of clients cause 80% of the problems.
20% of foods you eat cause 80% of your sickness.

This model is much more complex and it can be applied to infinitely more places, but this basic version allows you to quickly get value from it.

Use Mental Models to learn faster, get smarter, make better decisions, be more creative, grow your business & career, and succeed in life…

Have you been feeling information overwhelm lately, a new flood of information, that’s growing every single day? How do you find and learn the most valuable knowledge, especially when you’re busy with your career, business, family?
Have you ever felt like you never have enough time or energy to learn? Do many of the books that you purchase end up never being read? How do you find time to learn when you’re busy with a career and family?
Have you noticed how easy it is to forget what you read (after just a few days)? The question is: How can you apply the knowledge you learn to your life so that it’s there for you automatically, whenever you need it?
Have you noticed that decisions in life are becoming more complex? How do you make better professional and personal decisions (when there is so much change and uncertainty)? How do you identify the 1% of activities that will give you 90% of your results? And how do you make decisions that you won’t regret later and that have the highest chance of success?

On a fundamental level, these questions get at the three keys of becoming a mental powerhouse:

Learning faster
Thinking better
Making smarter decisions

And until now, there hasn’t been an organized tool-kit that you can learn and use for this.

My name is Michael Simmons, and my favorite thing to do in the world is to learn, apply what I learn to get a result, and then teach others so they get the same result. That’s why, throughout my whole career, I’ve read thousands of books and started education companies that have generated millions of dollars in revenue and impacted millions of people.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, I have written dozens of articles on learning for Forbes, Fortune, Time, Inc., Entrepreneur. I’ve built one of the biggest learning how to learn communities in the world (54,000+ people). Finally, I’ve created a Learning Ritual Course with hundreds of happy students who I’ve personally coached.

More recently, I’ve pioneered a learning system for professionals and entrepreneurs — which I have taught to nearly one thousand people around the world, which has helped me generate millions of dollars in business as an entrepreneur, and which has helped me build a Learning Lifestyle where I essentially get paid to spend most of my time learning, and where I get paid for my insights rather than my time.

In a moment, I’ll explain my “thinking tools” that will help you unlock the next level of success in your business and career.

I’ll also invite you to join me in an exclusive group of nearly 1,000 professionals from around the world who are using these tools to learn faster, improve their lives and succeed in business.

Successful entrepreneurs are using these tools to start and grow businesses, get more customers, make more profit. Investors use them to get higher returns. Thought leaders, consultants, and coaches use them to create original ideas, innovations, and valuable knowledge.

How I Discovered The Power Of Learning & Using Mental Models In Business & Life

“Will this article be read by anyone?”

That was the #1 question going through my mind as I pressed ‘Publish’ on my first Forbes article in April of 2013.

As someone with no email list or journalism background, my insecurity felt overwhelming. I feared my words would just be buried in the Internet’s sea of content.

In college, I had written hundreds of blog posts with the dream of becoming a writer, but things fizzled, and I feared the same thing would happen again. I knew what it felt like to be a mediocre writer.

So, I made a crucial decision…

Rather than just jumping in and making the same mistakes, I would take a step back and deliberately learn how to be a great writer.

Around that time, I stumbled upon and read Poor Charlie’s Almanack.

This turned out to be the one book that changed my life.

Written by a self-made billionaire and Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner, this was the first book to introduce me to mental models, and I immediately saw their power.

Mental models are descriptions of reality that apply across every area of our life, are always relevant, and provide immediate results by helping you make better decisions. They are like little miniature mental maps of how a particular area of life works. And when you learn them, it changes everything.

Two quotes from Charlie Munger, in particular, inspired me to start learning the best mental models in the world:

You can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back… You’ve got to have models in your head… You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life.

You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework [integrated collection] of models in your head. Fortunately it isn’t that tough because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.” — Charlie Munger

More specifically, these quotes inspired me to search out the world’s most successful article writers, interview them with the goal of uncovering their top mental models, and apply them to my own writing.

BOOM! Suddenly, my entire reality changed.

From the first article, my writing took off. Each article I wrote had over 10,000 people — the equivalent of a small stadium — read it.

As I “installed” more mental models in my brain, I became a better writer, and the audience increased from 10,000 per article to 50,000 to 100,000 to 200,000 today.

Eureka!

One night, I literally jumped on my couch like a little kid, elated that I was finally finding success and impact after so many years of struggle. The feeling of figuring out a secret formula and seeing it work over and over was exhilarating.

And the more I studied and wrote about mental models, the more I naturally started to use them in my life and business outside of writing, and the better results I got. This was a game-changer for me.

Here is one of the mental models that was particularly helpful…

The True Power Of The 80/20 Rule

Here’s another example of the 80/20 Rule: You’ve probably read that top venture capitalists make most of their big returns on just a few of their investments. It only takes one Google, Facebook or Uber investment to make you a billionaire investor.

Top Poker players earn most of their money winning just a few big hands. The key for them is to know which hands to bet big on, and which to walk away from. The key for them is to know which hands to bet big on, and which to walk away from.

This Principle Seemed To Work Everywhere

As I studied the 80/20 Rule, and applied it to my own life, I started to see the places where I could put just a little bit of effort, and get much bigger results.

One big example was how it changed my approach to relationships. Before, I had been going to lots of conferences and networking events, and basically trying to “meet everyone” in the world. I always felt a bit behind, and like I was constantly trying to fit in.

After I understood the 80/20 Rule, it gave me permission to focus on the few people in my life that really mattered. I focused on a handful of people I resonated with the most, and I concentrated on building deeper, more meaningful relationships. This really changed the game for me. By focusing, I not only learned more and got a lot more happiness, I also was able to develop deeper ties to some very influential and successful people. And again, it took me a lot less time!

When I applied the 80/20 principle to learning, this created a real paradigm shift for me. Nowadays, when I decide to study a new skill or area, I’ll buy maybe 10 or so books on the topic. But my mindset is to look for the ONE book that is the best “explainer” — and then to focus most of my effort on that one book. This gives me mental permission to “abandon” the books that aren’t as good, and dedicate my precious attention to only the higher-quality knowledge.

And again, this brings me much better results, in a fraction of the time. The 80/20 Rule provides way more leverage than simply working harder. We are all limited by the number of hours in a day and how much our bodies can handle, but when it comes to applying the 80/20 Rule, there are opportunities for 1,000 times the leverage!

In my work as a writer, the 80/20 Rule installed the mindset to focus on only those few key things that really mattered. In the past, I put all of my effort into writing books and articles. After learning about the 80/20 Rule, I started asking other writers what the 80/20 was for them. Very quickly, I saw that everyone mentioned that titles were a key to success. Previously, I viewed the titles as just an afterthought.

So now I have a system where our team dedicates 5 hours per article creating new innovative words and terms, and also testing the titles of the articles before publishing them. What a big difference this has made!

I wrote one article recently, using my mental models as the framework, and I basically created something that was “designed to win.” The result? A million people read it.

A Powerful Secret Mental Weapon

The more that I learned and used mental models in my thinking, decision making, writing, business… and personal life… the more I realized that I had discovered a secret mental weapon.

I was using thinking tools that most other people hadn’t discovered, and I was getting much better results in life. From bringing in new clients, to generating investment capital, to having a happy family, these new mindsets and mental tools were giving me a huge advantage… and amazing results.

I now had a systematic way to approach business and life. And it worked.

The results I was getting weren’t just a little better. This wasn’t a little 5 or 10% change. It wasn’t even a 100% improvement. This was 10x, and in some cases 100x. It was a big deal.

Then I Put It To The Real Test

After discovering and using mental models in my own life, I started teaching them to friends and clients. I also started using them when doing projects for other companies.

I used it with one client who had almost no audience. No readers, no shares, no viral success. I used my mental models to help them write an article, and they got 30,000 views on the first article, and then it started to go viral. I did the math, and this was 175x better results than they had ever gotten before.

Another article I helped another client in another industry write had 100,000 readers and 20,000 shares.

I helped write something for a client on Quora, and it went crazy and got a million readers.

Another client wanted to use article writing to generate sales leads and customers, and the article we wrote got a half a million views, and made them $100,000 in sales very quickly.

These models were working everywhere I tried them.

Because of my success with articles, I also had people hire me for six-figure consulting contracts. I began charging $250-$500 per hour as a coach and consultant. I even got a five-figure speaking gig from an article.

And today, when I write articles myself, they are read hundreds of thousands of times on average, and they almost always go viral. It’s a system. I have a set of mental models that I use, and they work.

Once I really understood mental models, and how powerful they were, I made a commitment to learning them for the long-term. I knew that I had discovered THE shortcut to getting better at anything in life quickly.

Of course, once I realized this, I wanted to learn everything I could about mental models. So I went online and started researching mental models, reading books about them, and finding experts who understood them.

What I Found Actually Surprised Me…

There were almost no good books about mental models! Charlie Munger’s book got me interested in mental models, but it was a unique gem. Almost no one else was writing about them.

And when I searched online, I found a handful of people who were interested in models. They typically had a big list of mental models that were important to learn — but they didn’t explain the models, how to use them, and how to apply them.

Because mental models were so important, I realized that I was going to need to roll up my sleeves, and figure this out for myself. I couldn’t believe it, but there just wasn’t a systematic way to learn the most important mental models for success in business and life.

So I began reaching out to experts who understood mental models, making friends with people who used them, and generally trying to hack into this domain. I even co-hosted a mastermind with a bunch of PhDs and other experts from different domains who were all experts with mental models.

As I did this, I made lists of hundreds of different mental models from different domains. I wanted to identify the most important mental models, learn them, and then start using them in my life. (And because I knew the 80/20 Rule, I already knew that it was going to be a small number of models that really made the difference — which turned out to be correct.)

Over the past few years, I have now identified what I consider to be the most valuable and useful mental models in business and life. And more importantly, I’ve started teaching them to a serious group of thought leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and other professionals.

Introducing The Mental Model Of The Month Club

If you’re starting to understand the power of mental models, and you’re ready to go to the next level and learn the most important mental models to create success in your life, then I’d like to invite you to join our Mental Model Club.

Inside, every month you’ll learn one of the most important mental models and how to apply it to your life — in just 1–2 hours per month.

The Mental Model Club is an online course, community, and membership that teaches you the most valuable and useful mental models. We have almost 1,000 members from around the world, and we’re growing fast.

Inside the Mental Model Club, you’ll…

Learn key mental models that are most critical for professional success (without feeling overwhelmed by all of the distracting information out there)
Automatically apply mental models in your professional and personal life, without having to remember what you learned
Use the right mental model in the right situation every time, so that you can think faster, smarter, make better decisions, get the results you want
Avoid painful thinking and decision-making mistakes that set us back (most people aren’t even aware of these, because they are so hidden inside their minds)

Here’s What You Get Every Month…

✔ Your Mastery Manual

Every month, you receive one mental model in the form of a high-quality, comprehensive guide. I call it your Mastery Manual.

It’s the most condensed, in-depth explanation of any mental model that exists in the entire world. We take the best of what’s ever been said about the mental model, cut out all of the fluff, and organize it in a way that is easy and fast to learn.

In each Mastery Manual, you learn…

A 101 Overview of the mental model (why it’s important, how it works, vocabulary, etc.)
An advanced overview to give you the high-level summary, then an in-depth report that includes a more nuanced explanation
Examples, tricks, and hacks you can use to apply the mental model to every area of your life and career
Exercises, resources, & templates that you can use on a daily basis to integrate lessons in the manual and get results in your life.

✔ Your Monthly Masterclass

To help you learn your mental model knowledge faster, you also get a high quality, pre-recorded masterclass of the month’s mental model.

The monthly masterclass is deliberately designed as a standalone resource, so that you can get value right away — well, in just one hour of listening to it.

Here’s what you get in each pre-recorded masterclass:

Concise “80/20” overview of the mental model: To help you understand and apply the mental model on a deeper level, I explain the most important ideas.
Walkthrough of mental model exercises: I handpick exercises in the Mastery Manual, and coach you on using them.
My answers to other Mental Model Club members’ questions: These are often common questions that people have about the mental model.

What Mental Model Club Members Are Saying…

“As a self-taught entrepreneur who has built five organizations (which employ over 60 people) on transforming education to include character building and skill development, I am blown away by the content in the Mental Model Club. Having read hundreds of books, without a doubt, it provides the most comprehensive training on mental models in the world. As an educator, I think we should be teaching everyone about mental models and, I’m impressed by Michael’s approach to teaching it.”

— Tijl Koenderink, Entrepreneur

“I’ve been a teacher, trainer, administrator and ultimately am an entrepreneur. I have been learning more from the Mental Models than anything else in my recent memory. The mastery manuals articulate concepts in a way that not only filled in my knowledge but gave me much better language to explain the concepts to others. The Mental Model Club provides actionable insights for a very reasonable price. I am enjoying being the first of my friends to recommend the club as it makes me feel smarter than everyone else who hasn’t found it yet.”

— Juliet Mee, Teacher, Trainer, Administrator, Entrepreneur

“I joined the Mental Model Club, so I could experience faster rates of growth in my personal life and career. The biggest benefit I’ve had from being a member so far is realizing how little of my potential I’m using and how much more I’m capable of. As a result of the 80/20 module I’ve 80/20’d my morning routine, what used to be a stressful anxiety inducing experience is now the cornerstone of me having an excellent day and has become a keystone habit. As a result of the goal setting module, I’m now enjoying a higher quality of life by spending more time in nature and more time with my wife. In a sea of intellectual mediocrity and information overload, the Mental Model Club is my 80/20 cubed of gaining actionable insight I can get to make real traction in my life.”

— David Pita, Project Manager, Digital Agency

“I joined the Mental Model Club just a month ago and not only my clarity has skyrocketed, since I no longer need to read a lot of books and lots of info. Because I know understand the mental models and thought processes behind them. Thanks to this club too, my business decisions are 10X better because I use the mental model checklists provided. As I scale to 7-figures this year this club is a must have for me. It keeps my thinking and mindset straight as I face some of the problems that come with scaling up.”

— Sergio Estevez, Entrepreneur

Try The Club Now For Just $1

As you become more successful in life, you have to do different things to get to the next level.

You can keep using trial & error, building your knowledge on a potentially shaky foundation. Keep risking making mistakes in your career, business and life.

you can get it right the first time, by investing in the Mental Model Club today.

When you register now, you’ll start by learning what we consider to be the most powerful mental model. You get a Mastery Manual and implementation exercises.

In less than an hour, you’ll be making better decisions, understanding the world better, and making better predictions and estimates about what’s going to happen.

Give Mental Model Club a try now:

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett And Oprah All Use The 5-Hour Rule

Nov 16, 2018 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

Article featured: Inc., Time, Observer, Business.com, Life Hacker, & Yahoo.

In the article “Malcolm Gladwell got us wrong”, the researchers behind the 10,000-hour rule set the record straight: different fields require different amounts of deliberate practice in order to become world class.

If 10,000 hours isn’t an absolute rule that applies across fields, what does it really take to become world class in the world of work?

Over the last year, I’ve explored the personal history of many widely-admired business leaders like Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg in order to understand how they apply the principles of deliberate practice.

What I’ve done does not qualify as an academic study, but it does reveal a surprising pattern.

Many of these leaders, despite being extremely busy, set aside at least an hour a day (or five hours a week) over their entire career for activities that could be classified as deliberate practice or learning.

I call this phenomenon the 5-hour rule.

How the best leaders follow the 5-hour rule

For the leaders I tracked, the 5-hour rule often fell into three buckets: reading, reflection, and experimentation.

1. Read

According to an HBR article, “Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow.”

Oprah Winfrey credits books with much of her success: “Books were my pass to personal freedom.” She has shared her reading habit with the world via her book club.

These two are not alone. Consider the extreme reading habits of other billionaire entrepreneurs:

Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports.
Bill Gates reads 50 books per year.
Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks.
Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother.
Mark Cuban reads more than 3 hours every day.
Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, reads two hours a day.
Billionaire entrepreneur David Rubenstein reads six books a week.
Dan Gilbert, self-made billionaire and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, reads one to two hours a day.

Want to find the time to read? Sign up for the free webinar here.

2. Reflect

Other times, the 5-hour rule takes the form of reflection and thinking time.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong makes his senior team spend four hours per week just thinking. Jack Dorsey is a serial wanderer. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner schedules two hours of thinking time per day. Brian Scudamore, the founder of the 250 million-dollar company, O2E Brands, spends 10 hours a week just thinking.

When Reid Hoffman needs help thinking through an idea, he calls one of his pals: Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, or Elon Musk. When billionaire Ray Dalio makes a mistake, he logs it into a system that is public to all employees at his company. Then, he schedules time with his team to find the root cause.Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely is a long-time journaler. In one interview, she shared that she has over 20 notebooks where she logged the terrible things that happened to her and the gifts that have unfolded as a result.

If you want to be in to company of others who reflect on what they’re learning with each other, join this Facebook group.

3. Experiment

Finally, the 5-hour rule takes the form of rapid experimentation.

Throughout his life, Ben Franklin set aside time for experimentation, masterminding with like-minded individuals, and tracking his virtues. Google famously allowed employees to experiment with new projects with 20% of their work time. Facebook encourages experimentation through The largest example of experimentation might be Thomas Edison. Even though he was a genius, Edison approached new inventions with humility. He would identify every possible solution and then systematically test each one of them. According to one of his biographers, “Although he understood the theories of his day, he found them useless in solving unknown problems.”

He took the approach to such an extreme that his competitor, Nikola Tesla, had this to say about the trial-and-error approach: “If [Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, he would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.”

The power of the 5-hour rule: improvement rate

People who apply the 5-hour rule in the world of work have an advantage.The idea of deliberate practice versus just working hard is often confused. Also, most professionals focus on productivity and efficiency, not improvement rate. As a result, just five hours of deliberate learning a week can set you apart.

Billionaire entrepreneur Marc Andreessen poignantly talked about improvement rate in a recent interview. “I think the archetype/myth of the 22-year-old founder has been blown completely out of proportion… I think skill acquisition, literally the acquisition of skills and how to do things, is just dramatically underrated. People are overvaluing the value of just jumping into the deep-end of the pool, because like the reality is that people who jump into the deep end of the pool drown. Like, there’s a reason why there are so many stories about Mark Zuckerberg. There aren’t that many Mark Zuckerbergs. Most of them are still floating face down in the pool. And so, for most of us, it’s a good idea to get skills.”

Later in the interview he adds, “The really great CEOs, if you spend time with them, you would find this to be true of Mark [Zuckerberg] today or of any of the great CEOs of today or the past, they are really encyclopedic of their knowledge of how to run a company, and it’s very hard to just intuit all of that in your early 20s. The path that makes much more sense for most people is to spend 5–10 years getting skills.”

We should look at learning like we look at exercise.

We need to move beyond the cliche, “Life-long learning is good,” and think more deeply about what the minimum amount of learning the average person should do per day in order to have a sustainable and successful career.

Just as we have minimum recommended dosages of vitamins, steps per day, and aerobic exercise for leading a healthy life physically, we should be more rigorous about how we as an information society think about the minimum doses of deliberate learning for leading a healthy life economically.

The long-term effects of NOT learning are just as insidious as the long-term effects of not having a healthy lifestyle. The CEO of AT&T makes this point loud and clear in an interview with the New York Times; he says that those who don’t spend at least 5 to 10 hours a week learning online “will obsolete themselves with technology.”

Interested in applying the 5-hour rule to your life?

Bottom line: the busiest, most successful people in the world find at least an hour to learn EVERYDAY. So can you!

There are just three steps you need to take in order to create your own learning ritual:

Find the time for reading and learning even if you are really busy and overwhelmed.
Stay consistent on using that ‘found’ time without procrastinating or falling prey to distraction.
Increase the results you receive from each hour of learning by using proven hacks that help you remember and apply what you learn.

Over the last three years, I’ve researched how top performers find the time, stay consistent, and get more results. There was too much information to fit in one article, so I spent dozens of hours and created a free masterclass to help you master your learning ritual too!

How To Tell If Someone Is Truly Smart Or Just Average

Nov 8, 2017 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

Photo credit: Heisenberg Media

Have you ever noticed how some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders see reality in a fundamentally different way? When they talk, it’s almost as if they’re speaking a different language.

Just look at this interview where Elon Musk describes how he understands cause and effect:

“I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It’s like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing. I may introduce something new to the probability stream.”

Unusual, right? One writer who interviewed Musk describes his mental process like this:

“Musk sees people as computers, and he sees his brain software as the most important product he owns — and since there aren’t companies out there designing brain software, he designed his own, beta tests it every day, and makes constant updates.”

Musk’s top priority is designing the software in his brain. Have you ever heard anyone else describe their life that way?

Self-made billionaire Ray Dalio is no less “weird.” In his book, Principles, he describes how he sees reality: “Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.” Dalio’s company, the largest hedge fund in the world, records every conversation (meeting or phone call) inside the company and has built several custom apps that allow any employee to rate any other employee in real time. The data is then added to profiles that each employee can see and is subsequently fed into an artificial intelligence system that helps employees make better decisions.

Dalio also describes his day in much different terms than you would expect from a CEO:

“I’m very much stepping back. I’m much more likely to go to what I describe as a higher level. There’s the blizzard that everyone is normally in, and that’s where they’re caught with all of these things coming at them. And I prefer to go above the blizzard and just organize.”

Charlie Munger uses a “cognitive bias checklist” before making investment decisions to ensure he properly applies the correct mental models. Warren Buffett uses decision trees. Jeff Bezos thinks of Amazon as being at Day One even though it’s been around more than 20 years.

What’s going on here? Are these just the idiosyncrasies of geniuses, or do these entrepreneurs employ a way of using their brain that we too could learn from in order to become smarter, more successful, and more impactful ourselves?

How I Learned to Think Like the World’s Best and Brightest

Over the years, as I’ve studied all of the above entrepreneurs, I’ve also aggressively applied their teachings. Even if I didn’t understand what they were saying at first, I took their advice on faith.

I’ve applied Ray Dalio’s root-cause analysis approach to our company. Now, throughout the week, everyone on our team logs any problems they’re facing. Then, we have a weekly phone call to discuss our biggest, recurring problem and its possible root cause.

I’ve applied Charlie Munger’s approach to mental models and collected thousands of pages of notes in order to create in-depth briefs on each model.

I’ve applied Musk’s probabilistic thinking to major decisions by listing out all of the potential decisions I could make and then assigning a cost, potential value, and probability to each one.

I’ve also created an experimentation engine like Bezos and Zuckerberg, and we now perform more than 1,000 experiments each year at our company. Finally, I now follow the 5-hour rule and spend at least two hours a day on deliberate learning.

After five years of emulating the leaders I most admire, I realized something surprising was happening to my thought process. I wasn’t just learning new strategies or hacks. I was learning a deeper and fundamentally different way of understanding reality — like I’ve accessed a hidden, secret level in the game of life. It’s thrilling to uncover deeper layers of understanding that I didn’t even know existed.

When I look back on my former self, I feel like I’m looking at a different person altogether. As previously “unsolvable” problems from my past come up again, I find I can solve many of them now. It is a great feeling to see previously insurmountable problems — both personal and professional — and realize I now have the tools to surmount them.

I’ll give you an example. In my twenties, I invested $100,000 into a business idea that never took off. Now that I understand cognitive biases — thanks to Charlie Munger — I see how the pernicious sunk cost fallacy wreaked havoc upon my decision-making. Today when I consider new business ideas, instead of just imagining how great they’re going to be, I spend just as much time envisioning what could go wrong — another Munger hack. I no longer have to remind myself to think this way anymore. I’ve internalized these concepts and now my mind actually works differently.

I once heard a coach talk about changing a client’s way of seeing the world in a way that would blow their mind. When he looked into his client’ eyes and could see him or her really getting it, he’d say, “Now, you’re in my reality!” That’s how I felt. Reality somehow feels different on an aesthetic level — as if I’m cutting through the levels of illusion and noise we normally see and getting a more direct view. The best example I can think of is that it’s like wearing augmented reality glasses that constantly feed you relevant wisdom about the situation you’re in.

Ultimately, what I’ve learned is that billionaires don’t have odd ways of talking. They, instead, are visionaries who see the world in a deeper way — one that is both incredibly effective and also learnable.

The Difference Between Average and Brilliant: Effective Mental Models

“Mental models are to your brain as apps are to your smartphone.” -Jayme Hoffman

According to Model Theory, we all always use mental models in our thinking. “Mental models are psychological representations of real, hypothetical, or imaginary situations,” according to the formal definition. Less formally, a mental model is a simplified, scaled-down version of some aspect of the world: a schematic of a particular piece of reality. A model can be represented as a blueprint, a symbol, an idea, a formula, and in many other ways. We all unconsciously create models of how the world works, how the economy works, how politics works, how other people work, how we work, how our brains work, how our day is supposed to go, and so on.

The more effective the model, the more effectively we are able to act, predict, innovate, explain, explore, and communicate. The worse the model, the more we fall prey to costly mistakes. The difference between great thinkers and ordinary thinkers is that, for ordinary thinkers, the process of using models is unconscious and reactive. For great thinkers, it is conscious and proactive.

All of the extraordinary people mentioned above collect the most effective models across all disciplines, stress-test them, and creatively apply them to their daily lives. Mental models are so valuable that billionaire Ray Dalio’s only book is full of his best mental models. Charlie Mungers’ only book is packed full of his top mental models too. One of the most common pieces of advice that Elon Musk gives is to think from first principles. Mental models and first principles are similar in that they each model deeper levels of reality.

While most people think about knowledge just horizontally (ie — across fields), these great thinkers also think about knowledge vertically in terms of depth. Musk explains deep knowledge in a Reddit AMA, “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles (Musk calls these ‘first principles’), i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.” In another interview, Musk gives an example, “I tend to approach things from a physics framework. Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.”

Physicist David Deutsch explains it even further, “It’s in the nature of foundations, that the foundations in one field are also the foundations of other fields…The way that we reach many truths is by understanding things more deeply and therefore more broadly. That’s the nature of the concept of a foundation… just as in architecture, all buildings all literally stand on the same foundation; namely the earth. All buildings stand on the same theoretical base.” By understanding verticality and depth, you can see how learning mental models connects things that were previously separate and disconnected. Just as every leaf on a tree is connected by twigs, which are connected by branches, which are connected by a tree trunk, so too are ideas connected by deeper and deeper ideas.

One of the most effective and universal mental models is the 80/20 Rule: the idea that 20 percent of inputs can lead to 80 percent of outputs. This same 80/20 idea can be applied to our personal lives (productivity, diet, relationships, exercise, learning, etc.) and our professional lives (hiring, firing, management, sales, marketing, etc). As such, you can see how the 80/20 Rule connects many disparate fields. This is what all mental models do.

To apply the 80/20 Rule, at the beginning of the day we can ask ourselves, “Of all the things on my to-do list, what are the 20 percent that will create 80 percent of the results?” When we’re searching for what to read next, we can ask ourselves, “Of all the millions of books I could buy, which ones could really change my life?” When considering who to spend time with, we can ask ourselves, “Which handful of people in my life give me the most happiness, the most meaning, and the greatest connection?” In short, consistently using the 80/20 Rule can help us get leverage by focusing on the few things that really matter and ignoring the majority that don’t.

My team and I have spent dozens of hours assembling the largest list of the most useful mental models in the world (that we’re aware of). We’ve done this by curating and combining the most useful models of other mental model collectors. To access this spreadsheet for free, visit the download page.

Mental Models Are the New Alphabet

“You can’t do much carpentry with your bare hands and you can’t do much thinking with your bare brain.” — Bo Dahlbom, philosopher and computer scientist

Evolution is so slow that a child born today is — biologically — indistinguishable from a child born 30,000 years ago. Yet, here I am typing on a MacBook, while my ancestors spent most of their time collecting berries, throwing spears, and chipping rocks. So what’s the difference between someone born 30,000 years ago and me?

Tools.

Between then and now, there has been an unprecedented explosion and evolution of tools that have collectively created modern society.

We all intuitively understand this. We all know that if we didn’t have basic tools like fire or the plow, or more complex ones like a Macbook or car, our lives would be completely different. Watch any post-apocalyptic TV or movie series and you can see how the world quickly falls apart when tools fail.

But there’s a major blindspot people have when it comes to understanding tools. Many people fail to appreciate non-physical tools — tools that they cannot touch, hear, or see. But mental tools are just as powerful and complex as physical tools. For example, consider the alphabet: the Western alphabet is a mental tool that wasn’t invented until around 1100 BC (pictorial writing systems like hieroglyphics were invented much earlier). Now we take it for granted, but at the time, it was a cutting-edge tool. Though it was adopted slowly at first — only 30 percent of the population could read and write before the printing press was invented in 1440 — once it began to spread, literate individuals had a huge leg up. In fact, literacy is now so important that it’s a national priority for all governments. That is the power of an effective mental tool.

It’s by understanding the significance of the alphabet that we can understand the significance of mental models too…

Mental models are also fundamental and critical mental tools.
Mental models represent large chunks of reality that can be combined together to create even more complex and useful “supermodels.” This is similar to how letters can be combined into words, which can be combined into sentences.
Mental models should be taught early in one’s life, because nearly everything else builds on them.
Mental models trigger higher-order thinking. This is similar to how becoming literate triggers a whole slew of higher-order thinking capabilities known as the Alphabet Effect.

As society evolves, it’s becoming more and more complex. There are more people, more tools, and more knowledge, all globally connected in complicated ways. Therefore, people who are able to model how this more complex reality works will be far more successful at navigating it. Or, as Ray Dalio says in his book, “Truth — or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality — is the essential foundation for any good outcome.”

People who are able to model how a complex business works in their minds are more likely to be successful business leaders, because they must understand the complex subtleties of finance (balance sheet, cash flow, and income statements), HR (recruiting and managing A+ players), product development, marketing/sales, and how they all interact with their mental models of their various stakeholders (community, customers, suppliers, employees, investors). Before an architect can build a house, he or she must first design a model of that house. That architect must have an understanding of how the electrical, plumbing, design, materials, pricing, and so on come together to create a safe, beautiful building at the right price that the market will purchase. Someone who architects a skyscraper must have a much more complex latticework of mental models than someone who models a two-bedroom house.

Furthermore, as people progress in their careers, they must evolve the amount, diversity, and quality of their mental models if they want to have higher and higher levels of success and impact:

Why We Should All Become Mental Model Collectors

“You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.” — Charlie Munger (self-made billionaire entrepreneur and investor)

So how do you build complex, accurate mental models? Let’s me explain with a simple example: dogs. Let’s hypothetically imagine for a moment that we have no idea what a dog is. We’ve never seen or heard of one before.

Then, one day, we see a dog that looks like the image below on the left, and someone tells us that this is a dog. “Ah, I get it,” we say. “Now I know what a dog is.”

Credit: AAA Lab At Stanford University

But if we’ve only seen one dog, technically we don’t really know what a dog is. With just this single case example, our definition of a dog would be: a large black and brown animal with pointy ears that sits down, and sticks out its tongue. Bring out a Pomeranian dog and with only this mental model in mind, you are likely to ask ‘What is that?’

The numerous dog models on the right (the contrasting cases example) show us that dogs can come in all different colors, sizes, and shapes. At the same time, we can see the underlying element of “dogness” that they all share. This emergent element of “dogness” is a deeper mental model, and humans created the word “dog” to symbolize this mental model. Using that mental model, you can identify an animal as a dog even if you’ve never seen a particular breed of dog before.

What can we take away from this example that is relevant to our own life?

Many of the world’s problems result from people overgeneralizing from simplistic models just like our hypothetical one-size-fits-all “dog”. Here are three prime examples:

Black/white thinking (you’re either a good person or a bad person with no gray area in between)
Us/Them thinking (people outside your personal religion, nationality, or belief system are the enemy).
All manner of stereotypes — race, gender, politics, ethnicity, etc.

Over-applying models is no different than a carpenter trying to build a house with one single hammer. All models, no matter how brilliant, are imperfect. The beauty of using multiple and diverse models is that many of the imperfections cancel each other out, allowing you to create a new “emergent” model that transcends all of the other models.

Great thinkers improve their thinking by taking in a larger quantity of information and developing a greater diversity of models. For example, a novice chess player might only know the name of each piece and how it moves across the board. But a grandmaster has memorized no less than 50,000 chunks (mental models) of increasing complexity including openings, closings, patterns throughout the game, and how one single move can lead to a particular result 10 moves or more down the line.

Many, diverse models also lead to heightened creativity. Nothing is truly original. Everything is derived by combining existing building blocks. Babies are created when a man and a woman have sex. New tools are created when pre-existing tools have “tool sex.” New ideas are created through “idea sex.” In the same way, we can build more complex mental models by combining simple mental models. For example, by understanding cause-and-effect mental models better, we can more effectively prioritize what’s important for us to do now to cause something we want in the future. The larger our base of mental models, the more creative combinations we can form. The more unique our mental models are compared to other people, the more we can think in ways that they can’t even fathom.

Through constant and diverse learning, we can organically build better and more varied models of reality. And those models will help us navigate the world far more effectively and creatively. Just as a blueprint is necessary for constructing a stable building, mental models of how the world works help us construct a better — and more stable — life.

How To Get Started With Mental Models

“Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think.” -Albert Einstein

Are you convinced of the power of Mental Models? I’ve learned from personal experience that it literally takes years to develop true mastery of these. Therefore, I created two resources for you:

Resource #1: Free Mental Model Course (For Newbies)

If you’re just learning about mental models for the first time, my free email course will help you get started. My team and I have spent dozens of hours creating it. It includes Ray Dalio’s and Charlie Munger’s top mental models, a guide on how to create a checklist based on the best practices from medicine and aviation so that you use your mental models throughout the day, and a guide that more deeply explains what a mental model is and how to get value from one.

Sign up for the free mini-course here >>

Resource #2: Mental Model Of The Month Club (For Those Who Want Mastery)

If you’re already are convinced of the power of mental models and want to deliberately set about mastering them, then this resource is for you. It’s the program I wish I’d had when I was just getting started with mental models.

Here’s how it works:

Every month, you’ll master one new mental model.
We’ll focus on the most powerful and universal models first.
We’ll provide you with a condensed and simple Mastery Manual (think: Cliff’s Notes) to help you deeply understand the model and integrate it into your life.

Each master manual includes:

A 101 Overview of the mental model (why it’s important, how it works, its vocabulary, etc.)
An Advanced Overview that includes a more nuanced explanation.
Examples of hacks you can use immediately to apply that mental model to every area of your life and career. These hacks are based on my personal experience and are crowdsourced as well.
Exercises & templates that you can use on a daily basis to integrate the lessons in the manual and achieve maximum results in your life.
A Facebook community where you can meet other mental model collectors and learn from one another.

To learn more about the program or to sign up, visit the Mental Model Of The Month Overview page.

If You Don’t Want To Regret Your Life 30 Years Later, Make This One Choice Right Now

Nov 1, 2017 // by michaeld // Friends and Family // No Comments

Time well spent. (Reuters/Susana Vera)

Definition Of Hell: “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” — Unknown

By the time you move out of your parents’ home, you’ve already spent 93% of the time that you will ever spend with them (if they live far away).

Conversely, as a parent, you will only see your kids a handful of times per year once they move out.

Our career is just 80,000 hours. There are only one or two things we can become truly world-class at if we go all out.

Tim Urban beautifully captures the shortness of life in this graphic:

Credit: The Tail End By Wait But Why

Each diamond is one year. One winter filled with sledding and building snowmen. One spring full of flowers. One summer for enjoying the beach. One fall’s worth of rainbow-colored leaves. One loop around the sun.

I remember being in high school and trying to fathom what it would be like to have kids. Now, I have a 7-year-old and 9-year-old running around the house. Fast-forward another 18 years, and I will be in the second half of my career and my kids will be out of the house. Maybe they’ll be reflecting on the shortness of life like I am now.

Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every year is precious!

All of this brings us to the one ultimate and timeless question:

How do I live my life NOW so that I have no regrets on my deathbed?

One of the most brilliant and wise answers to this question that I’ve ever seen comes from a TED Talk delivered by world-renowned Harvard Professor called How Will You Measure Your Life?. The talk came after a time of intense personal reflection after Christensen had overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father’s life. It particularly speaks to high achievers.

Here is the most inspiring part:

“I graduated from the MBA program at Harvard in 1979… When we came back for our 5th reunion, man, everyone was happy! Most of my classmates had married people who were much better looking… they were doing well in their career. But as we hit the 10th, and 15th, and 20th and then the 25th anniversaries, oh my gosh, my friends were coming back not happy with their lives. Very many of them had gotten divorced. Their spouses had remarried, and they were raising my classmates’ children on the other side of the country, alienated from them.

“And, I guarantee, that none of my classmates ever planned when they graduated from the business school to get divorced, and have children who hate their guts and are being raised by other [people]. And yet a very large proportion of my classmates implemented a strategy that they had never planned to do.

“And it turns out that the reason why they do that is the very same mechanism; that is the pursuit of achievement. Everyone here is driven to achieve. And when you have an extra ounce of energy or an extra 30 minutes of time, instinctively and unconsciously you’ll allocate it to whatever activities in your life give you the most immediate evidence of achievement. And our careers provide that most immediate evidence of achievement. We close a sale. We ship a product. We finish a presentation. We close a deal. We get promoted. We get paid. And our careers provide very tangible, immediate achievement.

“In contrast, investments in our families don’t pay off for a very long time. In fact, on a day-to-day basis, our children misbehave over and over again. And, it really isn’t until 20 years down the road that you can look at your children and be able to put your hands on your hips and say, “We raised great children!” But on a day-to-day basis, achievement isn’t at hand when we invest in relationships with our families, our children, and our spouses. And, as a consequence, people like you and I, who plan to have a happy life, because our families truly are the deepest source of happiness in our lives, find that though although that’s what we want, the way we invest our time, our energy, and talents causes us to implement a strategy we wouldn’t at all plan to pursue.”

Christensen then goes on to share how maximizing the short-term over the long-term relates to his widely known theory on disruptive innovation:

“The reason why successful companies fail is that they invest in things that provide the most immediate and tangible evidence of achievement. And the reason why they have such a short time horizon is that they are run by people like you and I [people focused on achievement].”

Christensen applies this theory to family and business disruption, and I’d make the case that it applies much more widely. Here are a few examples…

The leading causes of early death in the United States are linked to poor lifestyle. No one plans to die early, yet so many aren’t willing to eat healthy or exercise daily: things that are difficult to do in the short-term.

No one plans to go on unemployment or become obsolete in the workforce, yet so many aren’t willing to make deliberate learning a core part of their daily schedule, because it doesn’t provide an immediate sign of achievement.

No one plans to lead a life of chronic stress, but taking time for play or renewal can feel like a waste of time.

So, how do we change from thinking short-term to thinking long-term and reaping the benefits of the latter as a result?

The solution lies within understanding a key principle, compound time, something that successful people like Warren Buffett, Oprah, Ray Dalio, Einstein, and Thomas Edison use.

The Power Of Compound Time

In my article, Why Successful People Spend 10 Hours A Week On “Compound Time, I call activities that pay off in the long-term, but not always in the short-term compound time activities.

Examples of the compound time activities that I highlight include: reading, experimentation, walking, napping, journaling, and conversation partners. Interestingly, many of the most successful people throughout time have heavily invested in these compound time activities. Warren Buffett has spent 80% of his time throughout his career reading and thinking. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs follow the 5-hour rule and spend at least 5 hours per week learning. Einstein famously went back-and-forth between thinking through difficult physics problems and playing the violin. Einstein’s son described his father’s process: “[w]henever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties.”

Self-made billionaire Ray Dalio, the manager of the largest hedge fund in the world, beautifully explains the power of compound time in his new book, Principles:

By recognizing the higher-level consequences nature optimizes for, I’ve come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order consequences often have opposite desirabilities from second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision making. For example, the first-order consequences of exercise (pain and time spent) are commonly considered undesirable, while the second-order consequences (better health and more attractive appearance) are desirable. Similarly, food that tastes good is often bad for you and vice versa.

Quite often the first-order consequences are the temptations that cost us what we really want, and sometimes they are the barriers that stand in our way. It’s almost as though nature sorts us by throwing us trick choices that have both types of consequences and penalizing those who make their decisions on the basis of the first-order consequences alone.

By contrast, people who choose what they really want, and avoid the temptations and get over the pains that drive them away from what they really want, are much more likely to have successful lives.

Bottom line: by understanding and using the power of compound time, we can increase the odds of living a life without regret.

Start Investing In Compound Time Activities Now

Investing in compound time is difficult because it’s counterintuitive. We humans evolved to think short-term about food and sex. We didn’t evolve to think about the intricacies of how our decisions now could ripple 30 years into the future. Zat Rana captures the feeling: “ How we feel about something in the moment isn’t always the best predictor of how we’ll feel about it over a period. The thing that we’re focused on today and tomorrow may not be the thing that matters most in the [grand] scheme of things.”

In my experience, the best way to make time for compound time is to make it sacred and non-negotiable. Don’t use logic. There is ALWAYS going to be something that feels more urgent and important than deliberate learning, for example. It needs to be put in your calendar and become habitual.

To help you get started, I spent dozens of hours creating a free webinar on how to create a Learning Ritual…

Sign up for the compound time webinar here >>

Forget About The 10,000-Hour Rule. Thomas Edison, Jeff Bezos, And Mark Zuckerberg Follow The 10,000-Experiment Rule

Oct 26, 2017 // by michaeld // learning // No Comments

Most people think that Edison invented the first light bulb.

They’re wrong.

In fact, Edison was spectacularly late to the game.

In 1878, when the 36-year-old inventor decided to focus on building a light bulb, 23 others had already invented early versions called arc lamps, some of which were being used commercially to light streets and large buildings.

So how did Edison win in such a crowded field when he was so far behind?

He and his team spent a year working day and night doing thousands of experiments. On October 21, 1879, they succeeded, creating a light bulb for everyday use in the home.

Edison would go on to pioneer five different multibillion-dollar fields with his invention factory: electricity, motion pictures, telecommunications, batteries, and sound recording. In today’s terms, you can think of Edison as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg all rolled into one.

What was the key to Edison’s incredible success? In two words — deliberate experimentation. For Edison, building a company was synonymous with building an invention factory.

The technique is just as powerful today. “Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day,” Jeff Bezos has claimed. In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg explained, “One of the things I’m most proud of that is really key to our success is this testing framework … At any given point in time, there isn’t just one version of Facebook running. There are probably 10,000.”

Bezos and Zuckerberg aren’t saying that experimentation is one of many strategies. They are saying it is THE strategy. In this article, you’ll see how luminaries across many fields use deliberate experimentation and how you can use it to increase your odds of success in your professional and personal life.

Why 10,000 Experiments Beat 10,000 Hours

Perhaps the most popular current success formula is the 10,000-hour rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. The idea is that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a world-class performer in any field.

Research now tells us, however, that this formula is woefully inadequate to explain success, especially in the professional realm. A 2014 review of 88 previous studies found that “deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.”

This chart summarizing the results should cause any ardent believer in the 10,000-hour rule to pause:

Via Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, & Professions: A Meta-Analysis

This means that deliberate practice may help you in fields that change slowly or not at all, such as music and sports. It helps you succeed when the future looks like the past, but it’s next to useless in areas that change rapidly, such as technology and business.

What Edison and others (see more examples below) teach us is that we should maximize the number of experiments, not hours. Instead of the 10,000-hour rule, we need what I call the 10,000-experiment rule.

Throughout history, the scientific method has arguably produced more human progress than any other philosophy. At the heart of the scientific method is experimentation: develop a hypothesis, perform a test to prove the hypothesis right or wrong, analyze the results, and create a new hypothesis based on what you learned. The 10,000-experiment rule takes this proven power of experimentation out of the lab and into day-to-day life.

Following the 10,000-experiment rule means starting your day with not just a to-do list but a “to-test” list like Leonardo Da Vinci. According to Walter Isaacson, one of Da Vinci’s biographers, “Every morning his life hack was: make a list of what he wants to know. Why do people yawn? What does the tongue of a woodpecker look like?”

As you go through your day, following the 10,000-experiment rule means constantly looking for opportunities to collect data rather than just doing what you need to do. It means adding a deliberate reflection process based on reviewing data before the day ends.

For example, do you want to improve your sales results by asking a new question at the end of sales calls? Now every sales call becomes an opportunity to ask that question and collect data so that you can learn how to make better sales calls in the future. Do you want to sleep better so that you can have more energy during the day? You can research all the best practices for falling asleep, turn the most compelling ones into a routine, use a sleep tracker to get objective data on the quantity and quality of your sleep, and then make adjustments to your routine to improve the results.

To achieve 10,000 hours of deliberate practice requires three hours of deliberate practice per day for 10 years. I argue that the 10,000-experiment rule is just as difficult, yet doable, requiring three experiments per day.

Why 10,000 Experiments Yield Success According To Decades Of Academic Research

If Edison’s approach is universal, you would expect it show up repeatedly among top performers. As it turns out, the academic world has been studying the phenomenon for decades, and that’s exactly what they’ve found.

Researcher Dean Keith Simonton has spent his career studying the world’s preeminent creative achievers and painstakingly dissecting their careers to find patterns. To share his findings, he has published more than 340 academic articles and 13 books, including Greatness: Who Makes History And Why and Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity.

Two fascinating insights have emerged from Simonton’s (and others’) research. The first is that most innovative ideas are generated by a small number of superstars. In any given field, the top 10% of performers produce more than 50% of breakthroughs.

Why are these superstars so much more successful? Is it because their ideas are just superior from the get go? Here’s what is really fascinating: The answer is no. The second lesson to learn from Simonton’s research is that superstars produce just as many bad ideas as everyone else — they just produce more ideas overall. Having many more ideas means they have more failures but also more hits.

“What is especially fascinating is that creative individuals are not apparently capable of improving their success rate with experience or enhanced expertise,” Simonton has written. “Creative persons, even the so-called geniuses, cannot ever foresee which of their intellectual or aesthetic creations will win acclaim.”

In other words, the key to maximizing creative success, according to the theory, is producing more experiments.

Editorial Note: For a more nuanced understanding of the Blind Variation And Selective Retention, you can read Simonton’s 2011 Academic Paper, Creativity and Discovery as Blind Variation: Campbell’s (1960) BVSR Model After the Half-Century Mark.

From Health to Stand-up Comedy: The 10,000-Experiment Rule Applies Across Fields

When you consider many of the most important achievements across different fields, you often see this theory at play.

A Fast Company article written by advertising legends Ben Clarke and Jon Bond points out that thanks to a combination of new technologies and lean business approaches, the world’s most innovative businesses are running thousands of experiments more annually:

In academia, Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published 248 other papers. Paul Erdos coauthored more than 1,500 mathematical research articles during his career. 1,500! As you might expect, Erdos made significant contributions, and although most of his papers have been forgotten, a handful of them made him one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century! Now consider that fewer than 1% of scientists publish a paper every year.

In the world of entertainment, SNL, one of the longest-running TV shows in history, has a grueling weekly experimentation process of brainstorming, researching, and rewriting scripts. Only a tiny percentage of sketch ideas ever air. The iconic cartoons published by The New Yorker are the result of a process in which 50+ freelancers submit up to 10 sketches each for consideration per week:

Pixar, one of the most successful movie studios in history, developed 100,000+ storyboards (i.e., step-by-step plot sequences) for the film Wall-E’s ultimate plot. 100,000!

Source: Pixar Storyboarding Mini Doc

Those who enthusiastically embrace experimentation in their personal lives tend to reap significant benefits as well. Take, for example, Shonda Rhimes, producer and writer of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and other hit shows. She set up an experiment she called The Year of Yes to confront her debilitating social anxiety, limit her workaholism, and accept herself. Instead of continually saying no to social experiences, she committed to saying yes for an entire year. Among the many lessons she learned from the experience was that to know what to focus on you first need to try many things.

Entrepreneur Jia Jang took something most of us fear — rejection — and made it into an experiment with his 100 Days of Rejection project. Every day for 100 days he forced himself to do something socially awkward, where the result was likely to be rejection (i.e., asking to play soccer in someone’s backyard), all while video-recording himself. Journalist Elizabeth Gilbert quit her job and marriage and then spent a year traveling the world to discover herself. She divided the year into three experiments: eat, pray, and love. Her experience turned into a best-selling book and movie. Young entrepreneur Ari Meisel used data and experimentation to cure his Crohn’s disease, which his doctors said could not be cured.

Source: To Become Who You Want To Be, Try These 15 Life Experiments

Understanding The Math: If You Can Do Enough Experiments, Success Is Virtually Guaranteed

If experimentation is so powerful, why don’t more people do it?

I say that there are a few reasons…

First, we live in a culture that is obsessed with productivity: getting more done and less time, systematizing, automating, and even outsourcing. If one has a frame of short-term productivity, then taking time out of your day to nurture a creative process with unpredictable results that don’t pay off immediately is extremely hard. What is productive in the long-term often feels not productive in the short-term.

Also, performing experiments is time intensive. To squeeze out some deliberate learning every day requires at least 15 minutes, but even more challenging is that most experiments fail. While failure is increasingly celebrated in our society, most people still have a visceral feeling of shame and disappointment that comes from it.

It wasn’t until I understood the math behind experimentation that I was able to get past my fear of failure.

1. If you do enough experiments, the odds are in your favor. The quality of each subsequent experiment increases because you will tend to apply the lessons learned from previous experiments. Those lessons make your success curve exponential rather than linear.

2. One big winner pays more than enough for all the losing experiments, as Jeff Bezos explained in a recent SEC filing:

Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in awhile, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs.

Source: Nassim Taleb

3. Today’s tools allow anyone to increase their quantity of experimentation by an order of magnitude. A new breed of affordable apps, services, and trackers help us learn about what works for other people, collect data on ourselves, interpret it, stay accountable, and track our progress in real time. In the health space, for example, these new tools have led to the biohacking and quantified self-movements where people use blood glucose levels, sleep, activity, heart rate, gut biome, and genetics to facilitate their experimentation. Similar experimentation explosions are happening in the world of relationships, sexuality, intelligence, happiness, productivity, and personal finances.If so many people across so many fields can incorporate deliberate experimentation, so can you!

What We Can Learn From Edison About Actually Living the 10,000-Experiment Rule

Edison didn’t intend to just be more inventive. He created an experimentation factory to guarantee that he and his team consistently released new inventions. Edison’s goal, for example, was one minor invention every 10 days and one major invention every six months. When he was on the edge of a major breakthrough, such as the light bulb, he had a unique process called drag hunts in which he would generate and test hundreds, even thousands of possibilities.

So what could the 10,000-experiment lifestyle look like for you?

I recommend taking two steps now that could change everything for you.

First, identify at least one jackpot experiment that could change your life. The road to deliberate experimentation starts with one experiment, but not all experiments are created equal. Some experiments are extremely time and money intensive. Some create incremental changes, while others could be life changing. Some have a 1% chance of success. Others are a sure bet. When picking a first jackpot experiment to pursue, you want to pursue an experiment that is easy to do monetarily and timewise, has the potential to be life changing, and carries a reasonable probability of paying off. I call these Jackpot experiments.

Second, I recommend running three experiment tests each day. When you start the day, identify three tests you want to perform. Collect data throughout the day, and before the day ends, analyze the results.

Try this for one month, or 30 tests, and see the difference it makes!

Interested in really taking action to become a deliberate experimenter? After studying how dozens of the world’s most prolific experimenters work, we spent dozens of hours creating a free mini-course that includes several email lessons and a webinar to help you be successful with the 10,000-experiment rule. It includes case studies of experimenters who improved their health, confidence, and lifestyle, tips on how to perform a valid experiment, details on the nuances of Blind Variation And Selective Retention and much more.

Click here to sign up for the free course >>

Special thanks to Eben Pagan for reviewing the article and coining the phase ‘10,000-experiment rule.’

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