How To Get Ahead of 99% of People in 2024​

read time 15 minutes

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You, my friend, are being lied to.

Lied to by a world filled with gurus telling you that the reason you aren’t successful is because you’re not disciplined enough…

You’re not focused enough…

You’re not working hard enough…

And listen, sometimes maybe they’re right and you do need to get up and get to work.

But often The problem isn’t that you lack discipline, focus, or work ethic…

It’s that you’re directing them towards the wrong things.

And I see this playing out literally dozens of times every single day all around me…

In fact, it’s one of the very first things I see every morning when my partner, Jamie and I take our dog for a walk. Every morning, as we leave our apartment at 6am, we pass by the woman responsible for cleaning the building.

She’s there busting her ass before the sun has even risen every single day.

And so many people out there who would tell you that this is the key to success, ya got to rise and grind at 5am to get ahead of everybody else, right?

Well, here’s the brutal truth:

Plenty of people are doing this every day and they’re not getting ahead.

Discipline, focus, and hardwork are not enough.

If you want to achieve greatness in this life and get ahead of 99% of people, these are simply the price of admission.

They get you IN the game, but they will not WIN you the game unless you invest them into the right things.

So here’s the million dollar question:

What are the right things to invest your time, energy and resources into so you can get ahead of 99% of people?

Well, most people go looking for the fancy, complicated solution, but the truth is…

Fundamentals applied with excellence wins championships.

And when it comes to the fundamentals of YOU, there’s really four categories you gotta master.

I call them The Four Spheres of Influence:

1. Mindset
2. Health
3. Wealth
4. Skills

Which is what we’re going to break down now:

Here are the investments you need to make into yourself to get ahead of 99% of people.

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 1. Mindset

Your mindset is the lens through which you see the world.

If it’s cracked or scuzzy, then it’s going to impair the speed at which you move forward in life.

Just think about it like this…

Imagine you’re driving down the freeway in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm and you can barely see past your headlights…

Chances are you’re not gonna drive nearly as fast as you would in the middle of the day with perfect visibility, right?

In my experience, so many of modern life’s issues stem from a simple lack of clarity.

Clarity about which problems in life are even worth solving and which ones you should walk away from… Clarity about HOW to go about solving those problems.

If you ever feel overwhelmed or lost, it’s probably because you lack Clarity.

So the single best investment you can make is in cleaning your windshield, because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a supercar engine if you can’t see where you’re going.

Even if Jesus were to take the wheel and you floored it, chances are you’re gonna end up in a ditch.

So here’s 3 investments to make in your Mindset:

THERAPY

Full disclosure:

I haven’t been to a therapist in years but this is something I’m looking to change in 2024 because I think there’s incredible value in talking to somebody professionally trained in helping you unpack your shit.

Now, something you might not know about me is that one of my degrees is in Psychology.

And one of the things I found most interesting about therapy is how often we’re absolutely certain our problem is this thing… when in reality, once you start talking it through, you come to realize it’s actually THAT thing.

And THAT thing is something you never even stopped to consider.

This is the power of therapy and I highly recommend it even if things are going great because you can never have TOO clear a view of yourself and the world.

Alright, the second investment into your Mindset is a:

DECISION JOURNAL

You make on average 30,000 decisions every single day…

Despite this, your power of Judgment probably isn’t significantly better than it was last year.

Which isn’t surprising.

It’s actually the same reason you’re probably not a better typist than you were last year despite the fact that you’ve written way more…

It’s because as Naval says:

“It’s not 10,000 hours. It’s 10,000 iterations.”

And all learning (and therefore mastery) requires three things:

1. Feedback
2. Reflection
3. Iteration

That means, we need Feedback about the result so we can Reflect on what did and didn’t work, and then make tweaks through Iteration that then leads to more Feedback.

Now, this Learning Loop is easy and obvious in something like shooting a basketball.

Not so obvious when it comes to making Decisions, though, because despite all the tens of thousands of decisions we make in a day, we rarely stop to consider:

• What we think is going to happen
• Why we think it’s going to happen
• What else might happen
• Why we think THIS happening would be better than THAT happening
• What the probability that THIS and not THAT will happen

Running every decision through this process would be impractical, but if you want to improve your Judgment, I recommend you run one or two big decisions every week through a system I call the Decision Journal.

Click here if you want the Decision Journal template I use.

Alright, here’s the third investment to make into your Mindset:

EXPANSIVE TRAVEL

Because you and I both see the entire universe through the lens of our own eyes, it’s hard to imagine there’s a world beyond us…

And therefore our problems often feel cosmic and existential in a way that overwhelms our puny little minds.

Nothing has ever put the true size and scope of my problems into proper perspective better than traveling the world, meeting other people, immersing myself in other cultures, and understanding that in the vast expanse of reality, I am nothing more than an insignificant speck of dust.

And I dunno… Maybe this makes me weird, but I find it freeing to realize that my problems in life don’t really matter because in the end, I don’t really matter…

And something about this awareness gives me the permission I need to just… be.

So I encourage you to get out there… to travel and see the world.

Because to travel is to take a journey into yourself and to see things in there that you could never find otherwise.

Nothing will make you feel so small… or so connected… as traveling the world.

Okay, let’s move onto our second Sphere of Influence:

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 2. Health

Your body is the vehicle carrying you through this life.

If you don’t take care of it, then it’s just a matter of time until the wheels fall off…

And when they do, you’re gonna learn a very harsh truth:

If you don’t have your health, you don’t really have anything worth having.

What’s the point of having all the money in the world if you can’t get out of bed to use it?

What’s the point of being famous if you’re in constant agony?

What’s the point of being surrounded by loved ones if you’re in a coma?

Remember this:

The healthy man wants 1,000 things. The sick man wants just one.”

The problem for most of us is that we’re doing the bare minimum to keep this squishy biological machine running…

Which isn’t just putting us at greater risk of future-catastrophic failure, but it’s also degrading the quality of our energy on a daily basis.

And this sucks because the quality of your life is ultimately dictated by the quality of your energy.

If ya got no energy, you’re effectively dead.

If ya got tons of high quality energy, then you’re alive and thriving.

Now, what exactly does it mean to be in the top 1% of Health?

I actually thought this was going to be a hard question to answer, but it turns out the Mayo Clinic already did the heavy lifting for me in a study called Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics.

In it, they looked to see how many adults exhibited four healthy lifestyle characteristics, which they defined as:

1. Sufficiently Active
2. Eating a Healthy Diet
3. Non-Smoker
4. Recommended Body Fat Percentage

Here’s the crazy part…

They found only 2.7% of adults had all four characteristics.

Listen, the bar is set so low here you could literally trip over it and get ahead of the vast majority of people.

And the reward for doing this?

Well, not only will you most likely live longer, but you’ll live better.

What’s not to love about that?

Okay, so let’s break this down as simple as possible into what I call the 3 Levers of Energy:

1. Sleep
2. Exercise
3. Nutrition

Here’s some of my favorite investments you can make in each:

SLEEP: The 8-Sleep Mattress

The single best investment I’ve made in my sleep is something called the 8-Sleep Mattress.

This is a mattress that regulates your body temperature to keep it in the optimal sleeping zone throughout the night.

No more waking up having sweat through the bed… or getting up to find another blanket ‘cause you’re too cold.

Instead, you’ll just stay asleep, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Now, I’m not gonna lie: This thing is expensive. It’s like $3,000 or something.

And because of that, I hemmed-and-hawed for over a year before pulling the trigger.

Here’s how I eventually made the decision…

I just did the math.

Let’s assume you spend 8 hours a night in bed and that the mattress will last you around 5 years.

This means you’re spending 8 hours/night * 365 days in a year * 5 years which is 14,600 hours.

Now, divide the $3,000 cost of the mattress by 14,600 hours and we find that the per use cost is actually only $0.21.

So here’s the question to ask yourself:

Is a great night’s sleep worth $0.21?

For me, that’s a no-brainer.

Alright, here’s the second investment to make in your health:

EXERCISE: Personal Trainer

I was a professional athlete for most of my 20s and thought I had this whole fitness thing figured out.

But what I didn’t realize is that staying fit is really easy when you’re young and have all the time in the world to hang out in the gym…

Now, as I’m on the cusp of 40 and juggling all of life’s competing priorities, I’m finding it easier and easier to skip the occasional workout…

And as a result, last year I looked up one day to the sobering realization that I was a solid 20 pounds over my ideal weight.

So I did something for the first time in my life:

I hired a Personal Trainer.

Not because I needed to be told what to do, but because I needed some form of external accountability.

And guess what?

It worked.

Three months later I was back down to my goal weight and I felt awesome.

Now, I know this is gonna sound stupid, but:

Feeling good feels good.

So go on, get yourself that gym membership… hire that personal trainer.

You’re worth it.

NUTRITION: Meal Prep Service

I am a human garbage disposal.

When I was young, this wasn’t really much of a problem.

But what I didn’t realize is that the most profound effects of nutrition (especially for the ADHD-mind like mine) are invisible.

Which was proven to me when my personal trainer had me cut Gluten, Sugar, and Alcohol out of my diet.

Within two weeks I swear I could see through the goddamn Matrix.

It was like stepping out of a perpetual brain fog. I’ve never felt so mentally clear, focused, and razor sharp.

It was incredible.

Now, here’s the thing about Nutrition:

You probably already know it’s important and would like to eat better…

But it’s also a TON of work and very time consuming.

Well, the easiest solution I’ve found is to get a meal prep service that cooks and delivers a whole week’s worth of meals.

And the crazy thing is, this is WAY more affordable than most people even realize. The plan we use breaks down to only $11/meal. So I can get two meals per day for only $700/month.

Now, I’m not gonna pretend like that isn’t a lot of money for most people. And you certainly can save money by doing your own grocery shopping and cooking at home, but is that really the highest and best use of your time?

Let’s assume you spend 1 hour per week grocery shopping and another 1.5 hours per day cooking and cleaning. That’s around 11 hours/week.

If your hourly rate at work is let’s say $25, then that means this option of doing everything yourself is costing you about $262/month. From what I just found doing a quick Google search, one person typically spends about $300/month on groceries.

So all told, doing it yourself costs about $562, which is only marginally less than having somebody else do it all for you.

Not to mention, these pre-cooked meals are WAY tastier than anything I could personally make.

For me, this is just about as easy as decisions get for me these days.

But hey, for you, if you love cooking, more power to you!

Alright, let’s move onto our third Sphere of Influence, your:

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 3. Wealth

Over the years, this Sphere of Influence has caused me more stress than all the others combined.

And I’m not alone on that.

According to the American Psychological Association, money is the leading cause of stress in the United States.

Now, my strategy back in the day when money (or rather, my lack of money) was the biggest problem in my life, was to just put my head in the sand and pretend like it didn’t matter.

This ultimately led me to accumulating over $80,000 of debt, so not really all that great of a strategy.

Listen, this is the most trite, cliche thing anybody has ever said, but it’s true:

Money won’t solve all your problems, but it will solve all your money problems.

And the thing is: A lot of problems in life are nothing more than money problems.

Now, people like to say money can’t buy happiness, but I’ll tell ya what… I’m way happier and less stressed out because I never really have to worry about money anymore.

If that sounds like something you’d like to achieve for yourself, then here’s the single BEST investment you can make:

DAILY FINANCIAL AUDIT

If money is a game (which is how most wealthy people think about it) then how much you’ve got in the bank account is the score. And I can’t think of a single game where you don’t always know the score at any given moment.

It is one of the most important pieces of information in any game because it’s immediate feedback as to how you’re doing. Without this, you can’t really know if your gameplan (or budget) is actually working.

Now, there was a time in my life where the idea of looking at my bank account caused me extreme anxiety because I didn’t know what I’d find there/

Would it be positive or negative? Who knows? But if I never looked, then it wasn’t really a problem, right?

Wrong.

You can’t slay the dragons you refuse to look at.

So, regardless of what your accounts currently show, you need to start a daily financial audit.

Use an aggregating software like Monarch or Mint so you can see all your accounts in one place and then spend ten minutes every morning just reviewing the previous day’s transactions.

It’s not gonna change much most days and this is gonna start to feel like a waste of time, but trust me, money goes to the person who pays it the most attention.

Alright, let’s get to my favorite of the four spheres of influence:

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 4. Skills

Skills are my favorite investment because they can’t be taken from you, they can’t be taxed, and best of all, they pay compounding dividends regardless of economic conditions every single day until you die.

And the beauty of skills is that once acquired, you can use them over and over again to duplicate whatever result you’re after.

For instance, if you want to make another million dollars, and you have the skills of a millionaire, then it’s simply a matter of going out and reapplying the skills you already have.

But if you don’t have those skills, then you’ll just have to do what 99% of people do and hope you get lucky.

Hope is a terrible investment strategy.

Better is to view yourself as an investment vehicle and then every single day make deposits into the Bank of You by continually refining the skills that will help you achieve your goals.

Here are three skills that will serve you well on the path to becoming your best-self:

STORYTELLING

Victor Hugo said:

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

But this is only partially true.

Because an idea is only ever as powerful as our ability to effectively communicate it.

And the way that humans communicate ideas is through Story.

This is why Steve Jobs said:

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”

Why?

Because:

Story is the source code of the human experience.

It is how we interpret the past, define the present, and create the future.

Those who understand how to use this tool can use it to transform the world.

Truly, learning to tell compelling stories is a cheat-code in business, life, and everything in-between.

If you want to learn how to tell amazing stories, download the Seven Figur Story Blueprint here for free.

The next skill worth investing in is:

WRITING

Listen, I get it… writing sucks.

Though I’ve written 13 bestselling books, I always say that I hate writing, but I love having written.

And the reason is, writing is really hard. It is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

It’s slow and hard and tedious… not to mention most of us suck at it.

Now, I blame the education system for a lot of this. If anything, the process of writing overly formal essays just reinforced how hard writing actually is without actually making anybody a better writer.

And this is a shame because:

Writing is the physical manifestation of your ephemeral thoughts.

Think of it like this:

If you’ve ever meditated, you’ve probably been frustrated by how frequently your monkey-mind leaps from thought to thought.

It can be a chaotic, frustrating experience as all your thoughts sort of smash into one another like Adderall fueled toddlers in a Chucky Cheese ball pit.

Now the beauty of writing is that it is the process by which we take that spastic monkey by the hand and walk it from point A to point Z.

But here’s the problem:

That monkey is fighting you the entire way.

Our monkey-brain hates sitting still for the length of time required to force a thought out through the choke-point of your pen or keyboard.

But, if you persist, you will arrive at the end of this process with something incredible.

Clarity of Thought

Clarity of Thought is powerful because it leads to improved Judgment…

Which leads to better decisions…

Which ultimately leads to better results.

Writing is simultaneously the process by which we cage and free our chaotic minds…

It is no coincidence that all of the most influential people and clearest thinkers in the world are also great writers.

I encourage you to take this to heart and start writing daily.

Alright, here’s our third and final skill:

VISION CASTING

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m a big fan of goal setting (especially as we enter into a brand new year).

Goals, if used correctly, are the means by which we direct our efforts, but here’s the thing:

Most people are setting goals all wrong.

There’s two statistics I want to share with you that prove this:

First, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you actually write them down.

That’s a massive increase in your likelihood of success so then why is it that only 3% of people actually take the time to write out their goals.

Yeah, you heard that right…

Only 3% of people actually write out their goals.

So, if you want to immediately put yourself ahead of 97% of people when it comes to your New Year’s Resolutions, all ya gotta do is actually write out your goals.

Now, if you want to catapult yourself into the top 1% of successful people, I’ve actually got something even better for you than goal setting.

Because goals are simply the destination.

And in my experience, just doing a thing isn’t what matters… it’s HOW you do the thing.

For instance, it’s now about making money… it’s about HOW you make money.

It’s not about losing weight… it’s about HOW you lose weight.

You could easily make money and lose weight by cutting all sorts of corners that aren’t in alignment with the type of person you want to be in life.

This type of action leads to achievement without fulfillment, which is the ultimate form of failure because it comes at the expense of the most important thing:

Your Values.

So here’s a better way to VisionCast your future:

Don’t set goals without first setting your values.

Goals are the WHAT, Values are the HOW.

And they are the most important part of the equation because your values are the fundamental beliefs about who you are and the type of person you want to be in this world…

They guide everything you do.

For instance, three of my values are Creativity, Curiosity, and Discipline.

So at the end of each day I can look back and ask myself:

Did I create something today?
Did I learn something today?
Did I show up and do the work today?

When I can answer these questions in the affirmative, it means I was living in alignment with my values.

And here’s the reason I love value-setting more than goal-setting:

You have an infinite number of opportunities every single day to live in alignment with your values, whereas you can only ever achieve your goals once.

Your values are the compass guiding your actions. Do not set off on your journey to find your greatness without them.

And I guarantee, if you do that along with everything else we’ve discussed in this week’s letter, you’ll easily get ahead of 99% of people.

Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend.

AV

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