The Truth About High Performance

What’s the difference between winners and losers?

The guy who wins the race, and the guy gets second place both have the exact same goal, to win.

The goal isn't what differentiates competitors. The difference is the activities taken in relation to the goal. Mental and physical work.

Today we'll cover the truth about high performance, the lies, the essence of a high-performer, the why, and how to get there.

Why?

The motivation to be a high-performer in your chosen space is obvious. Human's want their peer's respect, to feel intelligent, and to be fulfilled.

However, most people don't perceive the danger of inaction. The opportunity cost of their current state.

The modern day facilitates comfort and complacency. To scroll social media, read click bait news, drugs, etc. There are companies that leverage the best scientists they can get to steal your time and attention.

If you wish to be a high-performer you need to live an ascetic life.

An army of highly educated scientists trying to leverage your human nature. If you indulge in the facilitated lifestyle of comfort and hedonistic pleasure, then you can't be a high-performer.

One is the price of the other. They are mutually exclusive.

You've been told you can do it all. You've been lied to. There is a massive abundance of opportunity, but you have finite time and energy.

Saying yes to one thing is saying no to another. Saying no to almost everything is saying yes to the one thing that matters most.

It's your choice.

Scroll social media for hours of each day you live. Buy processed foods and load up on carbs. Watch porn as a substitute for romantic interaction. Spend your free time alone watching TV and playing video games.

Life is filled with pleasures.

But it won't make you proud, fulfilled, or satisfied.

On the other hand, you can choose to pursue mastery. Become one of the best in a space. Win in a domain you respect, and thus earn your self-respect.

What?

1. The cat and the cheese

2. Theory of Constraints

3. Dogmatic cacophony

4. Low-information diet

5. Master the middle

6. Progressive overload of responsibility

7. Benefit continuum

How?

For the remainder of this post we'll cover actionable steps and perspectives on becoming a high-performer.

The cat and the cheese

Scientists attached a spring to the tail of a rat so they could measure the pulling force it produces. They wafted the smell of cheese and it pulled on the spring, then they wafted the smell of a cat behind the rat and it pulled even harder. Then with both the smell of cheese in front and cat behind it pulled the hardest.

The cat is more motivating then the cheese. When you are a beginner in a domain it's useful to find the cat. Create an Anti-Vision for your life: write everything you absolutely don't want and describe the worst version of you.

Success is more about running away from something rather that towards, at least in the beginning.

There's a correlation with desirable external success and undesirable internal state. The highest performers are often massively insecure. Often the guys with the most ripped physiques are the most insecure, and because of that it propels their external success.

Think about the heartbroken guy who gets in the gym. He's running away from the cat, and his minimum standard got raised

You aren't successful in any given domain because you meet your current minimum standard. Raise your minimum standard to be successful.

You may not have the big passion to go towards, but most likely you've got something to run away from. Use that. It doesn't have to be your motivation forever, just for right now.

The Theory of Constraints

This theory states that there's always one thing constraining the system, and that solving any other constraint will have little to no effect.

For success in any area; business, school, relationships, etc... there is one of three things:

A skill deficiency, a trait deficiency, or a belief deficiency.

There is one singular constraint on your life that is boiled down into one of those 3 buckets.

If you have a skill deficiency you need iteration, feedback, and education. Traits are actions that you perform repeatedly, it's a skill to improve. Beliefs are tricky because you might not know what you believe or never question your base assumptions. Consider the base assumptions of the questions you ask, statements you make, and thoughts you have.

Dogmatic cacophony

A man who has a watch always knows the time, a man with two watches is never quite sure.

There used to be a singular dogma in society to follow, the modern day is a cacophony of ideologies. The digital age takes ideas from anywhere in the world and gives them the opportunity to become widespread.

The internet trends towards polarization, and creates distinct groups. Left vs. Right, Vegan diet vs. Carnivore diet, Body positivity vs. Gym culture, etc... The internet profits off attention, and is fighting to take yours.

There are too many ideologies being pushed from every direction to handle.

If somebody can successfully extrapolate the rest of your beliefs from one, then you're not a deep thinker. Taking beliefs wholesale is much easier than dissecting them and being able holding contradictory beliefs.

This leads us to the solution:

Low-information diet

With the internet pushing dogmas from every direction it's very important to curate what you consume.

With too much information comes analysis paralysis. You're computing too many variables (many irrelevant) to properly execute good judgement.

Now days it's much better to trust individuals instead of institutions. Institutions can have misaligned incentives, and will fall to the level of the lowest integrity person. While there are definitely bad agents, individuals are much easier to vet for high-integrity.

Choose a small group of creators to consume who you believe have context on where your trying to go, and you trust are high-integrity. It's very easy to say things online without the actions behind your statements (such as virtue signaling). The more content you consume the more low-integrity misleading content you're exposed to.

Short form content such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are the pinnacle of a high-information diet. The winners in those environments are typically the one's who can hijack the limbic system of the masses best. Given this you need to resist paying attention to these areas which are actively fighting for it. Notice that we say "paying attention" because there is an inherent cost.

It's much better to extract the value out of 10 great pieces of content, then to sift through 100 mediocre ones.

Find the select few creators who give you the most value and stick to them. Personally the content creators I trust are Alex Hormozi, Naval Ravikant, and Dan Koe. I like to watch long-form YouTube videos, listen to podcasts + audiobooks, read books, and blog posts/newsletters.

Master the middle

If were to be the best at the beginning, middle, or end of a marathon which would you choose?

Obviously the middle because that's the vast majority of the marathon. It's the same in life. The middle is 99% of the time.

It's like the cliche "It's about the journey, not the destination."

It's a cliche because it's fucking right. The fun part in life is getting something, not having it. It's acceleration, not coasting.

Master the middle, get good at boring. Find every single way to win along the way that you possible can. If you're thinking long term (which you should) then the journey will take a long time. If you can't find ways to enjoy yourself along the way you'll never make it.

Find a love for walking, not for arriving.

The progressive overload of responsibility

As you advance your work capacity does too. More money more problems, people in business talk about how the bigger the business the more fires to put out.

This can seem daunting as a beginner, because when you watch the advanced people they do magnitudes more that you're maximum.

However, this is because as you become more advanced your work capacity increases. As you get success responsibility is progressively overloaded. What was once your one rep max, is now what you do for reps.

The benefit continuum

People are often irrational with how they think about benefits. They think because an action they're doing is beneficial it doesn't need to be changed.

The problem in their judgement is they believe benefits to be a binary, while in reality it's a continuum.

The question is not if something is good or bad. It's: How beneficial is it? or How bad is it?

Humans tend to think linearly when the world is a non-linear place. Even though you are doing something beneficial right now, you could be doing something better. Don't cling to an activity solely on the basis that it's beneficial.

You should be trying to find the highest leverage activities where the inputs are most divorced from the outputs.

Discover the small amount of high leverage tasks for success in a given area then outsource, systematize, or automate the rest.