The 10x Principle: To make a success of anything worthwhile, is 10x harder than you think!
Pause… read that again… and again… until you know exactly what it is saying.
This seems so silly, but this simple principle has really impacted me over the last year and I have experienced the principle myself. Anything worthwhile has always been much harder than I thought! For example, what I thought I could achieve in Elroi’s first year, has almost taken 10 years to accomplish!
The worthwhile thing is hard enough
I had the incredible privilege of addressing homeschooling parents at a seminar a while ago in a type of on-the-stage interview. One of the questions was: “how much time will my child have to put in to be successful with the NSC curriculum?” My answer was:
“10 times more than you think and 20 times more than the student thinks. Your high-school education is not just a stepping stone or a gate to a better place, its a chapter in the book of your life – do you really just want to scan through it and get it over with to get to the ‘fun-stuff’? Or can you milk it for all it is worth? To do the second means you have to engage with the content and take every opportunity to learn, even if it takes hard work.”
The same is true for everything else in life, your education, career, parenting and even faith. If something is NOT really worth it – don’t do it: the stuff that is worthwhile is hard enough! If something is not worth giving 10x more than you anticipate, then avoid it. If something is, then make yourself ready to give it your all – it might just take that much!
Some Practical Questions
So answer the next few practical questions to help you decide what in your life is worth it:
- What are you hoping to make a success of?
- What do you need to do to make it a success?
Did you really think of something or are you just rushing through this post to get to the next thing that sounds interesting? Well, here are two questions worth spending a little bit of extra time on answering:
- What are you hoping to make a success of?
- What do you need to do to make it a success?
Now multiply that by 10!
Is it worth it?
Yes? Then go for it!
