3 Frameworks That Have Changed My Life
The Amplified Impact Podcast
July 29th, 2023
I’m thrilled to share with you three incredibly impactful frameworks that have been my guiding light in both my personal life and my ventures in business and investing.
I’ve always been fascinated by looking at the world through the lens of frameworks.
It’s like having a set of mental models that allow you to navigate diverse aspects of life with ease.
You know, it’s similar to what the brilliant Charlie Munger calls “mental models”…concepts and analogies that can be applied across different domains.
One of my favorite mental models is borrowed from the laws of thermodynamics.
The law of entropy, for example, teaches us that without injecting energy into a system, it tends to decay into a state of entropy.
Now, while this concept comes from physics, we can apply it metaphorically to various aspects of life.
Relationships, businesses, personal growth…all require a constant injection of energy and effort to avoid decay.
We’ll dive into the three frameworks and hopefully…they resonate with you too.
Remember, we’re all on a journey of growth, and these tools can help you navigate it more intentionally.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Momentum, then is the cure for so much of the things in life that hold us back.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
In this episode, I want to share with you three of the most impactful frameworks that I personally use on a daily basis that have helped me on my journey both in personal life but also in business and investing. And they’re not necessarily connected. I was just thinking of the fact that one of my favorite ways of looking at the world is through the lens of frameworks. I think if we look at Charlie Munger, he talks about mental models, and that’s really just another way of saying frameworks. A mental model is a framework or a scaffolding, a lens through which to view the world that might not be directly related from one discipline to the next, but the concepts, the analogy, the metaphor can carry through and we can take the constants from the one and apply it to another. For instance, if we take the law of entropy or 1st 2nd, 3rd Law of thermodynamics, and we say an object in rest tends to stay at rest, right? That’s one of my favorite ones. Or that a system, if you do not insert energy into the system, tends to decay into a state of entropy. Right? That’s another great one.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:09]:
Now, those aren’t the three that I’m going to talk about, but those systems or those frameworks that we borrow from physics and say a system, if we do not inject energy into it, is going to just decay into a state of entropy. We could take that same concept and we can apply it to the idea of personal development or to our business. If we don’t put effort in and energy in into maintaining this thing, then it will slowly just fall apart into a gelatinous ooze. We could say the same with our relationships. If we do not put energy into our relationships, they will decay into a state of entropy, right? Or an object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest. We can take the same concept and say that, well, if an object at motion tends to stay in motion, then really all we need to do is get into motion. Momentum, then is the cure for so much of the things in life that hold us back, right? So those are some ideas of mental models or frameworks that can be applied across a broad swath of life domains.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:06]:
And so this is just a way that I tend to think about things for whatever reason. These are like little mental hooks, these frameworks that I just kind of collect throughout my life and a lot of other you probably have noticed a lot of the content that I create, whether it’s on YouTube videos, it’s in the newsletter, it’s on this podcast, a lot of it is frameworks that I’ve created for myself. Little mental hooks that I can then take concepts as I’m going through my life and maybe hang a particular situation on that hook at different times and be like, let’s try this one. Another way to look at it is just like different outfits, different hats that you can put on in different scenarios and say, how’s this look? That’s a really weird analogy that might not be one of the frameworks that sticks anyways. We will use this as the lens that we see through things. Okay? So probably the most impactful framework is the plus one decision making framework. And I’ve talked about this one extensively. My boy Maslau, who’s very famous, you probably know about him through his hierarchy of needs.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:05]:
He had another concept that really resonated with me, and I turned it into the plus one framework of decision making. I used to think that I got it from him, but in actuality, I think I just created it. But it was based off this idea that he said that which we can be, we must be. And there’s this recognition, this, AHA, moment of, hey, we all believe we have potential. We all think that we can be great. And when we’re not moving towards that greatness, we all know it like, internally, we know it’s uncomfortable to not be pursuing or making progress towards that which we know we are capable of. And so when he says that which we can be, we must be, this recognition that we must be moving forward. Now, a way to conceptualize this is just imagine that you’re standing in a road and in front of you there’s all these signs that are spaced at equal distance off into the horizon.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:53]:
And they all say, plus one, plus one, plus one, plus one. But if you turn around, the road stretches to the opposite horizon. And the signs on this road all say, negative one, negative one. Now, the way to look at these signs, at our decisions that we have to make in life, is that each decision is an opportunity to either make the plus one decision and move forward, or to make the negative one decision and move back. And what’s powerful about this concept is, one, the recognition that we are human and we’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to make decisions that will move us back on the road. And it’s not just that we move back one, but we’ve also denied ourselves the opportunity to move forward one. So whenever we move back, we actually lose out on two spots.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:42]:
And this is important because our greatest, most beautiful selves would never have done that. Our perfect self would only make the plus one decision and continually move forward in life. And so what that means is that we will never actually catch up to that greatness, and that’s okay. That’s okay, because what matters isn’t where you are on that road, because the scenery doesn’t actually change. You just keep moving forward on the signs. That’s all that’s happening. What matters then is that you make the best decision in any given moment. That you can because it’s either going to move you forward one or it’s going to move you backwards one.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:15]:
And there’s beautiful power in the fact that every decision is equally weighted. So whether or not you choose to drink water or beer, plus one, negative one. It doesn’t matter whether you choose to go for a workout or sit on the couch, it’s plus one, negative one. Whether you invest in this thing or you spend your money on that purse, plus one, negative one. That’s it. Now, obviously in life, some decisions are more important than others, they carry more weight. But for the purposes of this framework, I don’t worry about that. I just say every decision is important.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:44]:
How can I make the plus one decision in this singular moment? And when you go to the granular singular moment of time in which we are currently occupying and we say that what I do in this moment matters, regardless of how important it really is, when you treat every decision as important, then you will ultimately make better important decisions. Does that make sense? And that was something that took me a really long time to unpack and realize. So that’s framework number one. Framework number two is that you are your greatest enemy. And this is an important thing to understand, that there are two yous. There is the biological you which has evolved over centuries or millennia. And then there is the modern you. And these are two sides that are constantly at battle.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:31]:
The biological you is lazy in a lot of ways. It was designed to survive, to pass on the genes and do so in the highest probability way possible. Usually what that means is consuming excess calories whenever possible and conserving energy as much as possible, not taking risks and putting yourself out there, living conservatively and being pessimistic. However, in modern world, in our modern life, we are at ODS because if biological use goal is to survive, modern u’s goal is to thrive. Now, you want to go out there and you want to start working on higher order tasks and consequences of what’s it mean to pursue my greatness right? And those things are hard by definition and they require you to stretch beyond your current capacity to put yourself in situations that you’re not comfortable, that might be risky in some ways to take care of your health, to prioritize putting energy out into the world rather than just trying to conserve it for yourself. And so there’s this constant battle being waged between the biological you, which wants to keep you where you are, keep you safe and sound, and then the modern you which wants to pursue your greatness. And when you start to realize that there are two yous that are waging war inside, you can start to recognize in any given moment what’s the decision that would move me towards my like is in alignment with my modern self and my modern goals versus which are just my biological self trying to win out and be lazy and just survive. When you start looking at life through that lens, I find the decisions start to become very easy to make.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:58]:
All right, the last framework, and this is a very simple one, so we’re not going to belabor it too much. It’s just that you don’t need more time. You need more focus. Simply put, time is a construct of human consciousness that is not actually an objective reality. What is an objective reality is the energy that you can input into a system through your ability to focus. Focus is your most valuable asset. I will pound that drum over and over and over. And yes, energy is the foundational layer of that.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:30]:
So we could say energy is actually your most valuable asset, but regardless of how you want to look at it, time is not that thing. And so when people say you’re paid for your time, time is money, they’re wrong. And if you keep buying into that, then you will continue to live a very poor existence. But once you start to realize your focus is your most valuable currency, then you start to guard it, you start to invest it, you start to spend it very differently as a result. So those are three frameworks that have had a massively positive impact on my life. I hope they bring you a little bit of value. As always, thank you so much for being here. I’ll catch you back around these parts tomorrow.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:03]:
But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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