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The Greg McKeown Podcast
133. Why 10X Is Easier Than 2X with Dr. Benjamin Hardy (Part 2)
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- [00:04]
Greg McKeown
Welcome. I'm Your host, Greg McEwen, and I have written two New York Times bestsellers, Effortless and Essentialism, and created this podcast and An Essentialism Academy. And all because I want you to be able to achieve significantly higher contribution in your life, even 10x contribution, but without burning out. Have you ever wanted to make a higher contribution but just felt like you've run out of time, effort, energy, even hope to be able to do it? Have you found that in your current busyness you have under invested in your personal growth? If you have, then you're in the right place and this is the right episode for you. Today I have invited back my friend Dr. Ben Hardy onto the podcast I had him on recently. But we ended up talking about inflection points and tipping points and the power of that kind of thinking to achieve limitless results. So we said, okay, that's episode one. Then we talked about Rob Dyrdek. And so we had an episode where I interviewed Rob Dyrdek. Thank you, Rob, for being a case study of what it looks like to achieve that kind of limitless, endless growth and continual improvement. And so now, as promised, we're getting back to the episode originally planned, which is to have Dr. Ben Hardy tell us about why it is easier to do 10x than 2x. By the end of this episode, you will be able to shift your mindset from the limits of 2x thinking to the freedom of 10x thinking. Let's begin. Remember to teach the ideas in this podcast to someone else within 24 to 48 hours of listening. Ben Hardy, welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:18]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Thank you. Happy to be with you, Greg.
- [02:21]
Greg McKeown
So for context, for everybody who's listening to this, who doesn't know what's just happened, I had a whole conversation with you. It was supposed to be about this new book that you're working on, but we ended up talking about the power of inflection points in our lives, how those can lead to tipping point changes where our sense of who we are has changed and we're evolving and going forward. And it just ended up crescendoing into a conversation about Rob Dyrdek. And so now we're back to talk about what we originally planned to, which is this new, marvelous manuscript that you're writing and working on. We're getting a sneak peek at those thoughts before they're finalized. The book is called 10x is easier than 2x. And really, I want to start this conversation with you telling the opening story. It's a momentous story. Can you do that? For us.
- [03:29]
Dr. Ben Hardy
So the reason I think Michelangelo is an interesting character in the context of this book is a few reasons. One, his famous quote about how when he was talking to the Pope, you know, the Pope asked, what's the, what's the genius that allows you to do what you do? And he base in talking about the statue that David specifically, he said, I just take away everything that's not David. That's an interesting idea because every time you want to go for 10x, like you do it by taking away everything that's not the 10x. So like that, that was interesting. But like, just looking at Michelangelo's life, he did that over and over and over again. So like he had multiple, what I'll call 10x jumps, which for me are like he, he, he, he jumps into a completely new potential for himself. So the first was probably defying his father. And you know, not in a negative way, but he got an amazing apprenticeship, which was probably really hard to get and really rare, and got to live in the Medici palace. Like that, I would say was a 10x jump. Because within that new situation, he now had access to all new learning. He could get like parchments and he could actually get marbles to work with. And so in that new context, he had a lot of options. His past self didn. And so within that, there was a lot of learning. But then Lorenzo Medici died. And so Michelangelo had to go back home. But he was at that point really committed to going into sculpture and getting really good at this. And so he found a way to get a big piece of nine foot marble and he wanted to do a big Hercules. And so I looked at that Hercules kind of as his next 10x jump because in order for him to do the Hercules at the level he wanted to, he had to get right really, really good at understanding human anatomy. And so like, he didn't believe he could actually sculpt a big 3D, like life size sculpture of a person without really understanding physical bodies. And so that led him to ultimately sneaking into one of the churches and dissecting bodies late at night, like the night before they got buried. Like, he'd go in, dissect the body, like study it, study its features, study the movements of the body, handle it like. And he did that for a really long time because he wanted to develop the mastery of understanding how to, how the body worked, how to make it look like his sculptures were alive and like actual vibrant.
- [05:50]
Greg McKeown
And we take all of this for granted now. I mean, we just understand that the body works a certain way and that it has been studied and the way that muscles work and, and all that precision and no one understood it then this is sort of the, this is the Rene.
- [06:05]
Dr. Ben Hardy
There weren't really a lot of pictures of it.
- [06:07]
Greg McKeown
There's. There's no photos. Almost nobody has even studied this question. And so suddenly the Renaissance painters and sculptors were amongst the first to take this seriously and to try to understand layer after layer what was really happening in the human body. So he has this tremendous goal and he's being almost obsessive about trying to be better at it than anyone before him. And carry on.
- [06:33]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Yeah, I mean, what I love about it is that the goal was so big or his ambition for his project, which was to form this Hercules and memorial for Lorenzo, his old sponsor mentor. The goal was so big that he just realized that his current capability was just, it wouldn't get there. And so that led him down the path of mastery, of understanding the body and things like that. And then obviously he spent months and months and months carving it, analyzing and studying. But in the end he did make the best he could make. And in going through that process and then selling it because it was good enough that someone did buy it, now he's got like this, this capability, this knowledge, this confidence that his past self didn't have. And then he starts getting other commissions. He did get a commission to make like a St. John the Baptist, but he ended up making a small Cupid and it was really good. And one of the cardinals down in Rome bought it. Loved it, loved it so much, saw his skill that he asked Michelangelo to come down and live in his palace so that Michelangelo could make more and more sculptures for him. So Michelangelo goes down there at 21 and he's really only there. I think he was there for three years and he did two very important projects while he was there, which really reflect a massive 10x jump. And by 10x jump, he's now in a totally different atmosphere than he was before. He's gotten higher skills, knowledge, potential and also access to money to, to opportunity. But yeah, while he was there he, the main thing he did was, is he made what was called like the Bacchus, which was the, the Greek wine God. He made that. And a guy who loved it, bought it. But it was a guy who was very connected. And so the guy who bought it was like a banker. And the banker was so impressed by the Bacchus statue, which was just this, you know, statue of a big wine God, again, full size image. But the banker who bought it connected him with an opportunity because a church wanted to have this big pieta, which is like a. Like a symbol of the Virgin Mary and, you know, Jesus and, you know, weeping over Jesus dying. Well, because Michelangelo had made this sculpture so well and started to have more and more connections and more kind of, I guess you could say, reputation, he ended up getting connected to this opportunity to do this pieta, and he spent two years doing that. And if anyone kind of knows about this, this is like literally one of the biggest masterpieces of all time, even to this day. But it's interesting because one other just really important, interesting, I think nugget is, is that he was always looking at it from the different angle. Like, he studied all the pietas at the time, and he's like, all of them make Mary look old. Like Christ is a centerpiece. He thought Mary should be the centerpiece. Right. And. But anyways, he spent two years making that, and it was like his best work. It was beyond his best work. But then it opened up new doors for him, like now, because he had done that, that opened up his confidence and his potential, which, you know, pushed him to the David. And that David took him to a full new level. You know, and there's just level after level after the David. You know, the Pope wanted him to come down and start doing things, which ultimately led him to doing the Sistine Chapel. So it's just like one thing after the other. But it was him always going, you know, pushing or striving for something way beyond what he had done and then going really deep into that. And he's just such an amazing example of someone who never stopped making 10x jumps in terms of who he was and what he could do.
- [10:12]
Greg McKeown
Yes. And I think that that gets to the very heart of what it is that you're saying here, that 10x means, in the way that you're framing it, an aspiration that is so much bigger than a person's current capability, that in order to achieve that new vision for themselves and of themselves, they will have to transform as a person. It's not just, hey, I got 10 times I used to earn X, now I earn 10X, it's. I am now a fundamentally more competent, more valuable, more finished person and version of myself. And that's what I think you see in this Michelangelo story is a person who, at 17, the greatest vision he can see is this Hercules statue. At 19, then he can see the next opportunity. Eventually it leads to him creating the David, you know, one of the spectacular wonders of the world. Unbelievable. Sculpture. I mean, when you see it, when you walk into the museum where it's preserved, it's first of all much larger than I'd ever understood before I saw it. And it is breathtaking. And there's an emotion to it that is undeniable. And bringing that forth somehow brought something forth in him that he. He was something now that he wasn't before. And it kept on happening. So he didn't just go. And that's the end. Then the Sistine Chapel, which took him four years to do. And frankly, as far as I understand it, he didn't even want to do.
- [12:09]
Dr. Ben Hardy
It at the beginning. He didn't want to do it, but at some point it gets pointed to that tipping. He did run away.
- [12:14]
Greg McKeown
He did, but he runs away. He has some kind of vision in some experience. And I think that's really the 10x experience he has, because he suddenly comes back, is completely ready to do it, and he consumes himself. You know, prior to that, he'd been more. More working on the sculpture work. So the idea of painting, and he comes in and that's when he does the, you know, that classic, you know, the part of the Sistine Chapel that the whole world has seen and is familiar with, where God's finger is touching Adam's finger and that idea of genius and. And where genius comes from and the possibility he achieves that. And these are works of art now that have lasted and will last for generations more. It's a series of 10x transformations. Anyway, that's my sense as I was reading the story and as I was listening to you now. Where am I getting it wrong?
- [13:09]
Dr. Ben Hardy
You're not getting it wrong. No, I think that that's a big, big part of it is that 10x is transformation seeking. It's transformational. You pursue something that is so big and almost even seemingly impossible. You know, it reminds me of the quote from Victor Frankl where he said that what man needs is not attentionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. I actually believe in. In thinking about Viktor Frankl. He. He's pretty expressive about this himself, that the reason he survived the Holocaust was because he had a really strong purpose to survive and rewrite the book that was confiscated from him when he got taken. It would have been his first book, the Doctrine the Soul. But, you know, he. He was able to literally survive a concentration camp because he had a reason to do so. And then he got transformed, you know, to. That was a very transformational experience. Which then led to the writing of, you know, man's search for meaning. But, you know, back to Michelangelo and just the idea of 10x versus 2x, that if you're going for something 2x, what that means is it's more of a continuance of who you are. Whereas if you're going for something so big in even going for it and then ultimately becoming it, everything in your life is different, you know, And I know you could use yourself as an example and I could use myself as an example where it literally is a. There are quantitative changes indeed, but it's a massive quality of life change. Like you're now different and everything around you is different and who you're doing it with now is different. And it's just a totally. You've gone through a massive transformation. And the question then is, do you want to do that again? Because to do it, you would then have to strip away and let go of almost everything that got you here.
- [15:03]
Greg McKeown
So 2x is a symbolic measurement, so symbolic metric for what a lot of people are trying to do, which is do the same things I've been doing before for the same people in the same place with the same competence, but just try to do enough more of it that you get more of the results that you want in your life. So the risk of 2x thinking is that really you strain yourself because you're already busy and you're already committed and you already have a full life, so you're just trying to do more of it, you know. So my first job was washing cars in Leeds, England, as an entrepreneur, 10 years old. So 2x of that is okay, I'm going to wash more cars and I'm going to do it more efficiently. And I'm not kidding when I say that. Like, I remember thinking at a certain point, like, oh, how could I scale this and have more impact? And there's nothing wrong with that. But it took someone else saying to me, yeah, I don't think, you know, I don't think that's the final strategy for you, you know, like, I don't think you have to always be thinking within increments of a car washing business. And so 2x is wash more cars, you know, symbolically.
- [16:30]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Yeah, no, it's very linear and it's based on your present and even the past, it's linear, meaning it's a continuance of what you're now doing. Maybe you find some tweaks here and there. It's working a little harder. It's certainly not inspiring. It's not energizing enough.
- [16:44]
Greg McKeown
So 10x is different than wash more cars. 10x is.
- [16:50]
Dr. Ben Hardy
10X might be own the car shop, right?
- [16:55]
Greg McKeown
It's got to be something that's so materially different that you, you go, okay, none of the things I'm doing or most of the things I'm doing are now irrelevant. You know, 80% of the things I'm doing I will no longer do because they're not relevant to this new aspiration, this new vision and version of myself. And you know this, you know my language would be an essential intent, right? Something that's so significant, it's really important. It's way beyond what you already know. And the advantage is that it's one decision that makes a thousand. It's. The advantage is you. You make a decision to pursue that. And now all of these other activities that used to seem important, you can see now don't actually help you achieve this new vision. So that's the contrast. Help us just be clear. Why is 10x easier than 2x? Because that's a bold claim. And it's the part that's most counterintuitive because you assume if 2x is hard, then 10x must be 5 times harder. So help me understand.
- [18:03]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Still thinking in linear terms. So I agree it is very counterintuitive. And I'm actually sure you even have so many insights into this that I would love your thoughts. I'm sure your audience would love this too. I'll share just a quick story to highlight this even more. So there's a guy named Dr. Alan Bernard, very interesting guy. He's the world's leading expert now at this point on what's called constraint theory, which I believe you're quite aware of. I think you even referenced the goal, if I remember properly in Essentialism, I remember the Herbie story. That's right. He is the leading expert on that subject. The only reason I bring him up is I was in a meeting with him and we were kind of in a quote unquote, like mastermind of sorts, and we were all brainstorming on a particular question, a prompt. The prompt was, if you wanted to increase Your revenue by 10%, what would you do? And it was just a prompt to just get you thinking. And this is different than if you wanted to raise your revenue by a hundred percent, which would be 2x. But Dr. Alan Bernard actually stopped everyone. And he just said, I just want to stop everyone. Because this is actually a really, really bad question. And I'll tell you why. From a constraint Theory perspective. He said if you wanted to grow by 10% or even by 100%, the problem is is that it's not a constraining enough question. He said there's literally an infinite number of things I could do to grow by 10%. And so it has, it forces absolutely zero clarity and it also highlights to in it, in its and it doesn't and it fails to separate the signal from the noise. It's not a strong enough question to show me what's actually useful in what I'm now doing. He said if you were to change the question to if you wanted to grow Your revenue by 10 times, what would you do? He said that that's a lot more useful question because the truth is almost nothing that I'm right now doing would help me go to 10 times because it's that like there's very few things that would work to grow at that level. And so one of the reasons why it's useful in terms of thinking ten times bigger versus two is because it forces much harder constraints. Like a lot of things could help you go to two times. Most of what you're currently doing may work actually, but to go 10 times, almost nothing you're doing right now would get you there anytime soon. And so it forces a lot more honesty. And you and I, in our last conversation we talked about pathways thinking it forces a lot more direct pathways and also more non typical pathways. So it allows for straighter paths or clear paths. It eliminates almost all other possibilities and it really gets you thinking. That's, that's one of the reasons, one.
- [20:59]
Greg McKeown
Of the things that gets my attention from what you just said is it's not a big enough question. And I just think that's a helpful way to think about constraint theory when I'm talking about living by the 90% rule. One of those 90% questions is is it essential?
- [21:18]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Right?
- [21:18]
Greg McKeown
It's an inherently constraint based question. Not is it good, not is it interesting, not is it important even is it essential, is it very important so that you can start to discern and detect the difference between those things that matter enormously, the vital few and the trivial many. So helpful constraint questions, big questions I think are themselves transformative and, and I wonder actually what is something actionable I can do, people listening to this can do to take advantage of that big.
- [22:00]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Question to make it very actionable, to make it very useful. It's helpful to look at it in terms of the 8020 concept, which is how me and Dan look at it, that if you're going for 2x, you can, you don't have to eliminate the 80% of things that are a distraction. So like using the 8020 principle, 80% of results comes from 20% of what you're doing. And so if you're going for 2x, you don't need to change much, maybe just 20% of what you're doing. You can keep 80% because you're not really changing that much. But if you're going for 10x, you can only keep the best 20%. And 80% of it's going to have to go because 80% of what you're doing right now wouldn't scale up to, to 10x. It's just irrelevant. Those could be like literally, those could be the clients you're working with, it could be the activities you're doing. Only a very few amount of things are going to be relevant at 10x in what you're doing right now in your work. And so one really beautiful question, I guess this is a 10x question, is what is the 20% that would scale to 10x? What's the 80% that's holding me back? That may have gotten me there, but most certainly wouldn't get me there. I spend a lot of time thinking about the 80, 80%. So for me, if I'm spending time on that 80% of things, I know I'm playing 2X, I know that what I'm doing right now is still kind of just maintenance of what I'm doing, either out of convenience, out of fear, and just distracting myself. And so I think a big thing to identify first, what is the 10x you want to make? What are the. What is. What is valuable and useful enough that you want to go in that direction? But an additional question would be, what is. What is the core 20% that I'm doing right now that I'm going to go enormously deeper into by eliminating the 80%?
- [23:58]
Greg McKeown
What you're saying makes me think of something. People listening to this can simply brainstorm the question, what would 10x look like for you? What would 10x look like for you in your career or in your business? What would 10x look like for you in your relationships with your customers, your relationships with your family members? You know, to try to be as vivid about that as possible. Something I found really helpful is to draw it D R A W right? To actually sit down and draw out what that 10x life would be like. I did this a couple of years ago when I was going through a process of reflection and there were Moments through the year that the exact moment that I had drawn out came into existence. Like I have a photograph of the precise moment happening that I had drawn out when I had first been imagining. And I thought that is just what a thing that is. And so I think if people will just draw it out, don't worry about whether it's realistic or not. Of course it's not. Don't worry about.
- [25:23]
Dr. Ben Hardy
The point is. That's the whole point. Yeah, that is the point.
- [25:27]
Greg McKeown
I think a lot of people, when they first encounter an idea of something exceptional, run away from it because they. The fear. I don't know how to do that. So of course I'm going to fail if I don't know how to do it. And so the second the idea has been born, it's immediately put aside as unrealistic. The whole point is that it's unrealistic. That's why I think drawing it is helpful. Like that's another visualization process. And then you look at it every day until that idea goes from being absurd, impossible, unimaginable, terrifying to that seems really unlikely to okay, you know, right. Things would have to come into place to make that work. To okay, maybe, you know, it's possible and then eventually probable and then likely and then done. And that to me is the 10x process. And by the end of it, as that thing is done, you're a different person than you were before. Your thoughts.
- [26:37]
Dr. Ben Hardy
So I look at 10x not purely in numbers. I think that's the challenge for people, is that they often. And I think that that's a more linear way of looking at it is, you know. And so this is what stumps people a lot of times in thinking about this concept. I think the biggest form of a 10x is a qualitative change, meaning it's a change. And that's why it's transformation based, is that now something has a different quality about it. Michelangelo was different as a, as a sculptor after the Hercules because now he understood the human body at a fundamentally different level than he did before. So as an example, like a big qualitative 10x jump for me, meaning the quality of my life is totally different. And it actually changed my entire routine. So like, as an author, as someone who spends most of my time like thinking, writing and you know, even like talking with people like you. I have a second house. I had a second house. I live in Orlando. I had a second house, which I used in my office about 15 minutes away. That in and of itself, by the way, was a 10x jump. For a long time I worked at my house with my six kids. And then I actually finally was like, no, I'm going to get a shared office space. And so by just getting out my house, that, that was a qualitative jump where it's like, no, I'm leaving and I've got a space. But there was like, the doors were like, the walls were thin and I could hear people beside me. So I ended up buying a house and could control my environment. But anyways, like six or eight months, like about six months ago, it dawned on me that I just didn't want to make the 15 minute commute anymore and I just wanted a second house in my neighborhood. And I started imagining it, started thinking about it, and I ended up, you know, selling my other house and getting a second house literally in my neighborhood. The only reason I bring this example up is that qualitatively just having the second house in my neighborhood, like where I live right here, versus a 15 minute drive literally changed my whole schedule. It changed my morning routine, it changed where I go to the gym. It changed everything about my life. And in terms of quality of life, quality of environment, like it's fundamentally different. And so like a 10x change doesn't always have to be the way you think about it. Like I would argue the quality of my environment and just how I live, it's different than even what it was earlier this year. But one other just quick thought, just to help people get their brains going, it's really useful to look back on your own 10x jumps and to start to kind of delineate them. One of the things I would love what you were saying, Greg, is that the whole purpose of 10x in a lot of ways is to go for something that honestly, to your current self is impossible, but to your future self it will be totally normal. Like my life right now would be impossible for the 25 year old version of me to believe in, but I can look back. And so in that way 10x is very normal. It's normal because you normalize it and it's normal because you've done it before. A child going from crawling to walking is a fundamental transformation from not being able to speak to speaking like we take these things for granted. But at some point a person goes from these fundamental transformations where they can do things they couldn't do before to just kind of coasting and that's where they've shifted to 2x. And so I think a useful thing to do is look back and say what are the 10x jumps that I've made that opened up fundamentally different doors and opened up opportunities. You can do it quantitatively as well if you really want to. You can look back on when was I 1/10 the revenue that I was. You can do that. But you can also look at more of like the actual, like true scale qualitative jumps that you made.
- [30:31]
Greg McKeown
I think that's a really encouraging hopeful suggestion. To be able to look back and to think of any time that you have grown as a person significantly in a way that your lifestyle was better afterwards than before and to be able to learn from that success and to be able to try to recapture the learning orientation you had at that time and to be able to recreate it now. And the moment you start to feel that that sense of growth is slowing down or you've plateaued for a while or you have something tough happen in your life so that you start to just not hope anymore is to recapture that feeling of possibility, that idea. You're not done yet. It doesn't matter what's happened to you. It doesn't matter what mistakes you've made. What's ahead of you is bigger and better and more important than anything that lies behind you. Give us the final word.
- [31:35]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Dan believes that 2x is bad for your brain. And I use Dan as an example. No, he does. I like it. It's bad for your brain for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons it's really bad for your brain is because if you're going for 2x number one, there's a lot of things you're spending your time doing that you're not excited about. That's that 80% where like you're still actually allowing yourself to do things. First off, you're doing too many things. That's back to the constraint theory thing. If you go for 10x, it forces you to go down to using your language, the essential and going very, very deep. As Dan would say, you have to simplify before you multiply. You multiply the simplification. You can't multiply 20 things. You have to go down to like the one or two that matter. And those are the things you scale to 10x. You actually have to simplify before you.
- [32:24]
Greg McKeown
Multiply, simplify before you multiply. Because if you try to multiply too many even good but non essential things, you won't be able to scale it. I love that. Carry on.
- [32:36]
Dr. Ben Hardy
So back to just the idea that 2x is bad for your brain. It's bad for your brain for a lot of reasons. One is you're doing too many things, which means that you're split, focused. And by the way, one thing that's really interesting about all this, every time you go 10x, the same process exists, you know, you are now living your dreams. You've gone 10x, but now you have a new 80% that is now your new life, which is now kind of getting duller. It's a distraction. And so every time you go 10x, you've got to eliminate that 80% and often start over and simplify and then multiply again and back to the David. You strip away more and more and more of who you thought you were and you go deeper and deeper into your core self, and it ultimately extends your purpose. But 2x is also bad for your brain, not only because you're doing too many things mediocrely at this point, but you're just not. You're just not excited. You're not. You're not forcing, you know, you're not being forced to learn a lot of new things to develop those new skills to go really deep. So, yeah, 10x is much, much more exciting. It's much simpler. It's just very transformational. It's just a beautiful way to live, you know, and if you're not going for it, then you've probably lost that purpose and you're in a maintenance mode.
- [33:54]
Greg McKeown
I love this idea that 2x is bad for your brain. That's a great note. That's a great note to end on. Dr. Ben Benjamin Hardy, thank you for being on again on this podcast. I look forward to the next time.
- [34:09]
Dr. Ben Hardy
Oh, Greg, it's always fun.
- [34:14]
Greg McKeown
And that brings us to this point that if you have found value in this episode and how could you not have the great Ben Hardy, I would ask you to write a review of this episode on Apple Podcasts Us. And as a thank you to the first five people who do that, you'll get access to the Essentialism Academy for a whole year. Just send a photo to infoegmcewan.com if you haven't invested in yourself recently, invest in yourself by reading Effortless and having people on your team do the same so that we can start a conversation that becomes a movement to help people go from acting like a linearist to becoming a residualist. That changes everything. That just changes everything. Remember to make this easy on yourself by subscribing to the podcast so that you can get new insight and interviews coming out Tuesdays and Thursdays for free. Just delivered to you Easy. Thank you for allowing me to join you today as you. As you're driving, as you're walking the dog, as you're tidying up. To be a part of your life is a very beautiful thing for me, and I don't take that for granted at all. So thank you for not just spending this time, but investing your time in a way that hopefully can help you achieve the next level, but without burning out.