The Little Secret That Top Performers Don't Tell You About
The Little Secret That Top Performers Don't Tell You About
I felt like an idiot when I learned this.
When I was in my early 20s, I loved “the grind”.
5am workouts fueled by nothing but espresso and a burning desire to be the best. 3 Jiu-Jitsu sessions per day because I thought it would make me win. Writing 4000+ words per day because I thought was the best did.
I competed in everything that came up. I took on every writing client that reached out to me. I said yes to every private lesson or seminar that was offered to me.
I was obsessed with being “the best version of myself”, but as a result of my ambition, I really just became the busiest version of myself.
Nowadays, however, my life is different.
I’ve embraced laziness (sort of) — and it’s done incredible things for my learning, my performance, and my happiness.
It’s also taught me what I’ve learned to be the greatest lie among successful people.
By biting off more than you can chew, you’re filling your life with mediocrity.
When I started teaching private lessons in Jiu-Jisu, I charged $50 per lesson.
At the time, I was nervous to even charge this, but rather quickly, my schedule became packed. I was teaching a lot of lessons all over Chicago. I taught privates 5-6 days per week, gi, no-gi, wrestling — whatever people wanted. I was a “yes-man” when it came to teaching Jiu-Jitsu.
Likewise, when I first started teaching seminars, I did something similar. I was very accessible.
What happened was that in the short term, I was very busy, made a decent amount of money, and had a decent amount of success in my endeavors.
As my skills improved, I started to believe that I was worth more than the low rate I was charging. However, I was also too prideful of my reputation as “a hustler” to think about changing my rates to free up more time for myself.
Instead of slowing down and working for better opportunities, I hustled, made a little bit of money, and burned out. The quality of my work began to asymptote toward the rate I was charging due to my fatigue and resentment.
It was also around this time that I got into the ideas of people Dan Koe, Naval Ravikant, and Tim Denning. People who all write about how to control your time.
I learned something that scared me.
Time is far more valuable than money.
I’m only 26, but if you asked me if I’d rather be a millionaire or 22 with the knowledge I have now, I’d choose to be 22.
With the right mind, time is always a better resource than money. You can always make more money, but you can never make more time.
What I’ve learned is that the most successful people that I look up to are all in this same game of freeing up our time so that we can live with more freedom, more creativity, and more opportunities for ways to spend our time.
The secret that most top performers don’t tell you about is that they are always optimizing for maximal time spent on expedient and enjoyable activities. Highly successful people spend so much less time on petty bullshit than you do.
The best grapplers in the world would all prefer to be at home training every day rather than on the road teaching or competing. The best writers would rather have a free afternoon to write than a book signing.
Progress happens when you are maximizing time to work.
We all have to do things that we don’t want to in this life, but the goal should be to construct a life that has as much of what you love as possible. You want to minimize noise and BS and focus on the present.
We work to do more things that allow us to live right here, right now.
But most people get distracted by short-term validation.
This is what happened to me.
I was around 19 when I realized that I wanted to do Jiu-Jitsu full-time. I was also a blue belt with no skills, no opportunities to make money with BJJ, and no idea what I was doing. This caused me a lot of anxiety and depression — I felt useless.
As a result, I did what everyone does. I started working. I swapped my time for money doing stuff that I didn’t love so that I could also have time to do the things that I do love.
Eventually, I reached a point where I was able to start focusing more on the kinds of work that I love.
I no longer teach classes for someone else except on an occasion here or there. Instead, I teach seminars, which are big mega classes that bring me a great deal of enjoyment (and more money). They’re fun experiences that I have worked hard to generate for myself.
I also no longer write articles about trucking or software integration or for random company blogs that no one reads. I write fun things, like this newsletter or content for my clients that is interesting. My hourly rate went up in all my things and I get to play a better game on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
But I’m only able to do that because I decided to say no to other things. I am only able to do what I do now because I took a risk and endured a period where I did “nothing”.
Where I was “lazy”.
You can’t get what’s coming next unless you get rid of what you have now.
Closing Thoughts
Not everyone can be world-class.
I’m lucky that I’m decent at 2 things — writing and grappling.
But regardless of skill level, everyone can climb the ladder to a certain point.
The way that you climb that ladder is by working on skills — not the petty bullshit that saps your energy — and the only way that you get to do that is to devote time to work.
What most high-level performers don’t tell you is that they’re not really working much harder than you. They’re lazy, and because of that, they’re (usually naturally) optimizing their time so that they have more time to work on more important problems, meaning that they have a higher hourly rate.
What most people don’t understand is that this hourly rate is not directly connected to their skills. It’s constructed so that you create more time to do deep work on your skills, to then make your time more valuable.
You don’t work to free up time, you free up time to work.
To put it in layman’s terms before we call it a day:
I started optimizing my life for better pay, fewer hours, and specialized gigs because nothing is more to me important than my time and the quality of the level at which I spend my time.
High-performers are aware of how valuable their time is and live their lives accordingly, while the rest of the population is helplessly trying to convince themselves that they’re worth investing in.
That’s the difference. That’s the secret.
This edition of The Grappler’s Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models — the world’s #1 Jiu-Jitsu education podcast.
This week’s episode of BJJ Mental Models features Josh McKinney!
Josh is a coach at HeadnodHQ in Illinois and a black belt under Kyle Watson.
In this episode, Josh breaks down his "Champions Stay Present" coaching strategy: a mindfulness-based method to help athletes achieve their best performance and mental state.
To listen, look up BJJ Mental Models wherever you listen to your podcasts or hit this link here.
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