The Importance of Leverage

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 14:32:00 +0000

I first read this in James Clear’s 3-2-1 Newsletter, but thought the idea from Naval Ravikant was so good that I just had to share…

Humans evolved in societies where there was no leverage. If I was chopping wood or carrying water for you, you knew eight hours put in would be equal to about eight hours of output. Now we’ve invented leverage… As a worker, you want to be as leveraged as possible so you have a huge impact without as much time or physical effort.

A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.

For example, a good software engineer, just by writing the right little piece of code and creating the right little application, can literally create half a billion dollars’ worth of value for a company. But ten engineers working ten times as hard, just because they choose the wrong model, the wrong product, wrote it the wrong way, or put it in the wrong viral loop, have basically wasted their time. Inputs don’t match outputs, especially for leveraged workers.

What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your time and you’re tracked on outputs.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

On Being Told “No”

Sat, 11 Jan 2020 03:17:20 +0000

Read this on [James Clear’s blog][1] today and it made me stop and think. It really is good advice.

When someone says no to a request, they usually mean “not right now” or “not in that way.”

Most people want to help others, but there are many priorities competing for our time.

Don’t take it personally. Ask again later. Ask differently.[1]: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/january-9-2020

James-Clear on MarkJacobsen.net

The Importance of Leverage

On Being Told “No”