Money Loves Speed
The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
October 9, 2023
Read time: 15 minutes
Too busy to read? Watch the video here.
Here’s a universal truth:
Time kills everything.
And here’s the really fancy way of saying this:
All systems naturally move from a state of low to high entropy. Everything therefore is in a state of constant decay. The only thing that changes is the rate of that decay.
Put another way: Everything is falling apart.
You, me, this chair, your car, that mountain… anything and everything you can see. All of it.
The only thing that changes is how quickly these things are each falling apart.
Which is where things get interesting, because we as humans have the ability to slow and even reverse our decline into decay…and we do this by adding energy into a system.
Time to nerd out:
Formulas for Life
To paraphrase Newton’s First Law of Motion:
An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
And this is important to understand because in the beginning, when you’re first trying to make money or launching your first business, you’re pretty much at rest.
You have no traction, no forward momentum and no inertia on your side.
And so in the beginning, getting the flywheel going is the first battle you MUST win.
To do this, we have to input enough energy into the system to get things into motion.
Alright, time for some more nerd talk:
The energy an object in motion possesses is called kinetic energy, which is important for our purposes because the kinetic energy an object has is directly proportional to the mass of the object and the square of its velocity.
And you can ignore 80% of that.
The thing to understand is just how important velocity (aka SPEED) is in this equation.
The SPEED at which we input energy into a system is practically everything.
Okay, so let’s tie this into the concept of making money or building a business.
And to do that, let’s break down the money making formula which is simply:
Volume x Leverage = Money
Now, volume is a combination of two factors:
- Duration: How long you do the thing
- Iteration: How many times you do the thing
And if we take that second factor to its natural conclusion, the faster we do a thing, then the more times we CAN do that thing.
Are you starting to notice how speed just keeps popping up in all of our equations?
It’s truly a universal constant.
Now, of these two variables, Iteration and Duration, which do you suppose is the most important?
To answer that, let’s break down the Success Formula which goes like this:
Success = ((Skill x Hard Work x Duration) x Iterations) ^ Luck
When we lay out the formula like this, it’s obvious that Luck is THE most important variable.
Most people think Luck is something that’s entirely outside of their control, but it’s not. Here’s a video breaking down how to increase your surface area of luck.
Now, let’s put Luck aside and focus on the SECOND most important variable in the Success Formula: Iterations.
Because as Naval says:
“It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations.”
The trick then, is to increase the speed at which we iterate thus allowing us to cycle through the Success Formula more times (and ultimately increasing our likelihood of achieving success).
Think of it like this:
If you were playing a game of baseball and could take an infinite number of swings, then it would simply be a matter of time and repetition until you hit a home run.
Now, if we could decrease the amount of time between repetitions (let’s say by half), then you’d effectively double the number of home runs you’d hit within the same period of time.
So again and again, we come back to this foundational principle that SPEED is a critical variable of success.
Let’s layer onto this another concept you’ve probably heard before:
Knowledge is power.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true.
Knowledge is simply potential power. It’s completely useless if we don’t apply it.
Then again, if we DO apply it, something interesting happens:
We learn.
See, learning is what occurs when we apply theoretical knowledge in the real world.
And this is important because in almost all scenarios (especially when it comes to making money), whoever learns fastest wins.
It’s only in the doing that you learn about what works and what doesn’t.
There’s a whole word of things that you don’t know what you don’t know until you try to do the thing, which is why Facebook’s motto for so long was: Move fast and break things.
The knowledge acquired in the process of doing is far more valuable than whatever thing you just broke.
And this is important when it comes to making money or building a business, because as I said earlier:
Time kills everything.
But in particular, Time kills one thing faster than anything else:
Motivation.
When it comes to motivation, understand this: Every minute that passes between the moment you have an idea and the moment you start taking meaningful action exponentially increases your likelihood of failure.
I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced this at one time or another.
You have a killer idea or grand ambition. You dive into the research. Watch every YouTube video and read every book on the topic. You gather as much information as you possibly can so you can move to that next phase which is planning out how you’re actually going to execute the thing.
During this period, if you’re like most people, you write your grand idea down as a goal and maybe even start sharing this awesome ambition with the people around you.
But then something happens..
Time slowly ticks away and takes you further and further from the moment you had that first spark of inspiration. And with each second that passes, you notice your excitement and your motivation begin to dwindle.
And this is why 80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail to make it beyond January.
If you’ve ever had a project crash-and-burn roughly three weeks after you were once so damn excited to do the thing, then you have personally experienced one of reality’s harsh truths:
Inspiration is perishable.
The Biology of Motivation
Here’s some basic neurobiology:
Your brain releases dopamine whenever you set a goal.
Now, dopamine is an interesting neurotransmitter that rewards us for moving towards an objective. It’s the Motivation Molecule that gets our asses into motion.
But the problem is we’ve figured out ways to trick our brain into giving us cheap dopamin for SETTING a goal, but not by actually achieving it.
You see the problem with that, right?
Getting rewarded before you do the hard work makes it very hard to stay motivated long enough to actually DO the work.
Typically, after three weeks of exposure, we become acclimated to this cheap dopamine and we start losing interest in that project or goal.
And since nothing has meaningfully changed in our life except this superficial burst of dopamine and maybe some notes written on a whiteboard, we’re not actually any better off or nearer to our goal than when we started.
Personally, I was stuck in this cycle for the first 28 years of my life.
Things didn’t really start changing for the better until I figured out two things:
First, Discipline beats Motivation.
This is such a deep topic that warranted it’s own video, so go check it out here.
Second, I learned how to turn motivation into momentum, which is what I’m going to share with you next.
That is, we’re going to learn how to strike while the iron’s hot to turn massive action into traction that ultimately leads to progress.
But first, we’ve spent a bit of time talking about the importance of speed… but what exactly are we speeding up?
Well, when it comes to making money, there are two things you’ve got to do faster:
- Speed of Decision Making
- Speed of Execution
Increasing Your Speed of Decision Making
“Every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”
To me, that first step is not physical. It’s mental.
It’s a decision.
A decision to move forward, to take action… or to stand still and do nothing.
Now, most of us struggle to make big decisions.
And this makes sense because the root word of decision in Latin means to literally cut off.
It means you cut off all the branching alternatives and options that you could take in any number of directions and instead, you commit fully to a single path.
Which is terrifying for most of us because we live FOMO, or the fear of missing out on the possibility of what could have been.
And so we often hedge… we dip one foot into the water while keeping the other safely on shore.
The result?
You never actually go anywhere because you will never make it to the other shore until you fully commit and jump into the water.
So really, the sooner you jump, the better, if for no other reason then you can get to the other shore and discover that it’s not what you thought it would be and you can go back and try again.
And this is the Iterative Process we spoke about earlier.
Alright, so how do we actually make better decisions with confidence and speed?
Well, one technique I’ve found valuable is to keep a Decision Journal.
I actually did a video on this awhile back called Master the Art of Decision Making, so go check that out if you want to learn more.
But, here’s some Cliff Notes:
There’s really just two questions to answer initially:
- How much does this decision actually matter?
- To what degree is this decision reversible?
For instance, deciding what to eat for lunch is not reversible, but it’s also not very important.
These types of decisions should be made as quickly as possible and then just move on.
The same can be said about decisions that are both reversible AND not very important… like what type of socks to buy.
Seriously, it doesn’t matter. So just make the decision and move on.
Things get trickier when we encounter decisions that are important AND hard to reverse.
This is where we want to measure twice and cut once.
Tools like the Decision Journal are a great way of getting clear in your mind about the ramifications of a decision before pulling the trigger.
But here’s the important part:
Once you make a decision, generally the results matter less about the actual quality of the decision, and more about the Speed and Quality of Execution.
Truly, most decisions can be made to work with the appropriate amount of execution.
In my experience, Speed and Quality of Execution stem from focus and clarity of vision.
If you can clearly see where you’re going and you’ve crafted a good enough plan for getting there, then all that remains is to execute to your best ability.
Now here’s something interesting:
The ability to execute is a skill.
The more you do it, the better you tend to get.
So, if i have one piece of advice, it’s just do more.
Seriously, however you’ve decided to make money or build a business… just do more of it.
Eventually you’ll get really good at it… then you can focus on doing less, but better.
But not until you’ve established a baseline ability through sheer volume of repetition.
To really drive this point home, I want to share with you:
The Pottery Story
Once upon a time, an art teacher split her class into two groups.
She told Group One that their entire grade for the semester would be determined by the quality of a single vase that they had all semester to make.
Group Two, on the other hand, would simply be graded based on the number of vases created over the course of the semester.
So we’ve got one group focused on quality and the other on quantity.
What do you suppose happened?
Well, surprisingly, the group that focused on quantity not only produced MORE vases… but their vases were markedly BETTER than the quality group.
Here’s the takeaway:
Doing more reps will almost always increase your likelihood of success.
Alright, time to rewind;
Earlier I said the more time that passes between having an idea and taking meaningful action in pursuit of that idea increases the likelihood of failure…
But what exactly does meaningful action look like?
Well, my buddy Shaan Puri creates what he calls a Project Kickoff. So let’s break that down.
The Project Kickoff
This is a simple five step process:
1. Define what winning looks like
It’s always surprised me how few people take the time to sit down before launching a project to chalk the field and say: This is what a win looks like.
As a result, most people go through life feeling like they’re failing at practically everything.
And the crazy part is YOU get to set the rules of the game you’re playing, so winning can look however you want it to.
Now, when defining what winning looks like, get crystal clear on what would be a good outcome and what would be a HELL YEAH outcome.
2. Set two clear and measurable goals
One is your ambitious goal and the other is your OVER THE MOON goal.
In both cases, set goals that are measurable and have timelines
For instance: I want to lose 15 pounds by February 15th or I want to make an additional $10,000 by the end of this month.
3. Set your anti-goals
This is simply a way of saying: I don’t want to hit this goal if it means sacrificing this, this, or this.
For instance: I don’t want to lose 15 pounds if it means I can’t go out to dinner once per week with my partner or I don’t want to make an extra $10,000 this month if it means I’ll miss more than three of my kids’ soccer games.
Anti-goals are a way of articulating what price you ARE and ARE NOT willing to pay in pursuit of a goal.
4. Create a Back of the Envelope Roadmap
This is not to be confused with a robust business plan or step by step process.
All you’re trying to do is identify the major milestones and potential roadblocks.
That’s it.
Don’t overthink this.
Just get it good enough and then move on as quickly as possible to:
5. Get one hour of momentum IMMEDIATELY
This is the magical place where rubber meets the road and motivation is transformed into traction.
This is THE most important part of the process.
The goal here is to spend one hour taking massive, meaningful action.
Maybe that’s building out a functional landing page, or outlining a new product and presenting it to a friend for feedback.
Whatever it is, ideally, at the end of this hour, you need to have something physical to show for your effort.
Something that you can hold up and say:
Heck yeah, look what I did. This thing is REAL.
And by doing this, you’ll have accomplished the hardest part.
You’ll have taken an object at rest and completely changed its relationship with the world.
Now it’s moving and if you just keep injecting energy into the system with speed, it’ll keep going faster and faster until it becomes UNSTOPPABLE.
Speaking of the becoming Unstoppable…
A war is being waged daily to separate you from your most valuable asset:
Your Focus.
When they win, they get paid.
When you win, you get paid.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that the world belongs to those who can focus.
But if you’re anything like me, you struggle to cut out distractions long enough to channel your chaotic mind in a productive direction.
Thousands of competing priorities are constantly bouncing around my skull…
And for years, I was getting my ass completely kicked in the game of life ’cause I just couldn’t harness that chaos.
But I was committed to unlocking the potential I felt inside, so I kept trying… kept iterating.. and gradually I zeroed in on some systems, frameworks, and routines that’ve reliably helped me overcome procrastination, cut through distractions, and get shit done.
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned over the years about creating supercharged focus on-command and put it into The Hyperfocus Masterclass.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re losing the war for your attention (like me), then you should definitely check this out.
Learn more about the Hyperfocus Masterclass here.
Until next week,
Stay Hyperfocused,
AV
From YouTube This Week:
Want To Be Rich? DON’T Start a Business.
Want to go even deeper?
1.The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the system I used to turn ADHD into a superpower. It’s worked for me (and 1,800+ other students). Join today.
2. If you’re in relentless pursuit of doing less, but better, than check out my podcast, Amplified Impact, for a quick-hitting daily dose of motivation and inspiration.
