You make faster progress by picking one goal, committing to one proven playbook, doubling your daily effort, planning the day before it starts and cutting the noise, while getting help from people who are already ahead. It opens with a blunt observation: some people seem a million years ahead while you sit in the slow lane. Others have the same 24 hours but get substantially more out of them, because they know something you do not yet.
The promise is to show how to make five years of progress in one year. Below are the 15 rules in order, plus a bonus about the biggest obstacle to speed.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 15 rules at a glance
- Pick only one goal and brainwash yourself into believing it is achievable (0:47)
- Find one source of truth, research it and commit to it fully (2:27)
- Double the daily effort for 8 times the outcome (3:26)
- Remind yourself what you run from and what you run toward (4:38)
- Win the day before the day starts (6:26)
- Have an action bias and a speed bias (10:18)
- Stop looking at others or after others (12:03)
- Do not quit things at 60% (13:04)
- Get off the platforms (14:14)
- Someone else knows how to get there faster, so pay them to show you (14:55)
- Remove your expectations of instant achievement and trust the process (16:38)
- Build and constantly optimize the machine that gets you what you want (17:51)
- Twice as long but done by others beats doing it yourself (20:09)
- Surround yourself with faster runners (21:18)
- Learn to surf instead of swimming against the current (22:14)
- Bonus: The biggest obstacle to speed is thinking you have more time (22:34)
1. Pick only one goal and brainwash yourself into believing it is achievable
At the core of achievement is belief. Many people hold dreams they know deep down will not happen, so they fall back on luck, and luck is not a strategy. It does not have to be believable to everyone else, only to you.
Define the goal clearly, write it down and look at it daily. Humans are good at getting what they want if they know what it is, and every choice should then line up with it. The path may not be linear, but each decision should move you closer.
Most people get stuck by picking two goals that point in opposite directions. A step toward one moves you away from the other, you step back to fix it, and on the map you are where you started.
Speed comes from focus, not force.
2. Find one source of truth, research it and commit to it fully
You can tell what has a higher probability of success from what is clearly nonsense. Find a voice, a mentor or an example of someone who did what you are about to do, deconstruct their actions and follow their playbook.
Do not change plans midway and do not chase shortcuts. Trust the process and put the hours in. Most plans are good enough if you stick with them long enough, and people slow down because they start a plan and then swap it.
The team says it got rich because it was naive enough to believe everything it read in business books, committed fully, and found those authors were right.
3. Double the daily effort for 8 times the outcome
However unmotivated or poor you are, doubling your daily effort should at least give you around 50% more results. Add smarts, excitement and the right tools, and the outcome does not double, it grows 4 to 8 times in the medium term.
The reason is that you have less time for distractions and wasteful spending. Effort compounds: reinvest the extra income into tools and you get the same output in half the time. Double the output on top of double the time and you are moving 4 times faster.
With that volume you also meet more situations, so you learn twice as fast as everyone else.
4. Remind yourself what you run from and what you run toward
The first three rules alone can bring real progress, which shows in your bank account. But progress slows you down, and temptation and shiny objects creep in. Getting back on the horse is harder than never leaving it.
So you need a self-motivation method. Start with what you are running toward: picture the life you will have and its impact on those you love. That gives a push but not lift-off.
Then dig into what you are running from. A picture is painted of a life with the regret of never becoming who you could have been, peers moving on, bitterness and excuses, and children who grow up with your failure as a lesson in what not to do. That difference, it says, separates getting back to work from not acting.
5. Win the day before the day starts
There are two kinds of people: those who wing the day and those who plan it. Planners outperform on every metric, from productivity to long-term success, emotional stability, lower odds of feeling lost and better work-life balance.
Planning removes friction. Put your running shoes and outfit by the door the night before and you are less likely to find excuses. Once you are out the door you might as well run, and once you are working you might as well keep going.
Do the hardest thing early. Win before 11 AM and everything else is extra progress. Know what actually moves the needle (uploading a new product to your store) versus what only maintains (checking numbers, answering emails), and block your time for it.
The team’s own routine is coffee and a daily session, then straight into the top priority chosen the day before. By 1 PM it has shipped what most people call a day’s work, 1 to 6 PM is a bonus, and 6 to 8 is family time. A gratitude journal and learning from experts add to this, and the whole setup takes 15 minutes in the morning.
6. Have an action bias and a speed bias
Action beats intellect when the clock is ticking. You learn more by doing than thinking, and speed amplifies learning. Done beats perfect, since done builds momentum and perfectionism keeps you in place.
Successful people operate with urgency, even manufactured urgency. Believe your life depends on getting things done and your output changes.
A billionaire mentor once heard the team’s 3-year roadmap and asked what it would take to do all of it in only 6 months. That forced radically different thinking: more people, more money and faster learning through failing faster. Speed can be expensive, but it is worth it when the opportunity might not exist two years from now. That is why Silicon Valley companies raise money, to make 10 years of progress in 18 months.
7. Stop looking at others or after others
As long as you live, you are in a race of one against the failure you would become if you stopped running. Other people do not matter here, and you do not need the approval of peers because they are not your peers.
Build a sense for distractions. Most opportunities are distractions in disguise. Once you stop comparing yourself, you need the bandwidth to focus on yourself, which means taking it back from the people who took it.
A sinking ship cannot save anyone. Fix your own ship first, let others carry their own weight for a while, and save them when you are ready. Otherwise they will drown you.
8. Do not quit things at 60%
You start something, put in a couple of weeks, and reach 50 to 60 percent of something that might change the game. Then you quit. All the effort is lost and the return on time, effort and money is zero. Telling yourself you learned a lot does not change that unless you ship it, go live or stick with it.
A hiring example makes the point: a promising candidate passes interview after interview, then a red flag appears just as things get serious and the process ends, wasting everything put in.
Make quitting at 60% a habit and you will always be where you are now.
9. Get off the platforms
There is nothing for you on the feeds, the news or television. Your life will be measurably better without being tapped into the news cycle. The secret to speed is less noise, not more effort.
Cutting doomscrolling shows you how much time you waste. You will realize you have been monetizing or enjoying less than 20% of your available time, and idling through the rest.
10. Someone else knows how to get there faster, so pay them to show you
You speed up when you move from hiring people you can grow to hiring people who are already grown, and from hiring cheaply to hiring for expertise. Per unit of time you get substantially more. They do not need to be employees, only to see what you are missing, since they have already made the mistakes you are about to make.
The team once paid $5,000 a month to a mentor who acted as a second set of eyes on its decisions, to raise its hit rate. It noticed that most people cannot afford that, which is why it pays experts to share such insights with subscribers of its app.
11. Remove your expectations of instant achievement and trust the process
In your first week at the gym you see no results, only tiredness and soreness. But if you keep going, 6 to 12 months later things look different. The consistency also spills into the rest of your life: you eat better, sleep better, feel better and think more sharply.
Once you see results you get hooked, optimize your workouts and know when you have had a great day. The same happens in business and life.
Do not dismiss something as not working because you went once and still have no six-pack. Put your head down, do it daily and check in after 6 months.
12. Build and constantly optimize the machine that gets you what you want
There are two ways from point A to B: walk, which is what a job usually is, or build a machine. If your goals are beyond the horizon, you need to build. Think of it as vehicles: a bike is a bakery where you are the main chef, a car is a small business with a handful of employees, a train is a big regional business, a plane is an international business and a rocket is a unicorn that changes the world.
Early on, the people walking will be ahead of you. Once the wheels are on and the engine runs, you pass them in a blink. In the long term, the worst car still gets you further than the best walk.
Then small tweaks matter. The team raised its funnel conversion from 5% to 6% by adjusting onboarding. That is a 20% jump in people trying the product, and was much easier than getting 20% more people to hear about it. Optimizing first also makes returns stack on all future effort.
13. Twice as long but done by others beats doing it yourself
Amateurs think progress is linear, a straight line from A to B. In reality it is three-dimensional, measured in volume, and volume can be layered. A Gantt chart is the tool for this, the tool used to track ongoing efforts in a company.
Amateurs say you cannot juggle more tasks at once. Pros hire people for the boring parts while working on what cannot be outsourced.
You do not need to be a genius to move fast, only to outsource wisely. Progress you do not have to create yourself is described as the holy grail of growth.
14. Surround yourself with faster runners
Your circle sets the pace. A slow pace may mean you are surrounded by slow runners, and even if you are faster than your circle, you leave ability on the table.
The fastest way to level up is to join a group of faster runners. In business, that means people who make substantially more money than you. Just being in their circle improves your pace, as you see how they operate, what systems they built and how they move.
The script adds that it is better to be the poorest house in a rich neighborhood than the richest house in a poor one: you work harder, your kids have better friends and life is objectively better.
15. Learn to surf instead of swimming against the current
Waves are inevitable. Some people never enter the water because of them, while others learn to surf. Swimming against the current takes huge effort for little progress and is unsustainable even in the medium term.
Choose entry points carefully. You would not go all in on selling newspapers or black and white televisions today, because the old way is an elevator going down. Be where the puck is headed.
A great sailor reads the sky and the water and uses modern tools to predict the weather. When the wind blows, adjust the sails, but never rely on wind alone. When there is no wind, start rowing.
Bonus: The biggest obstacle to speed is thinking you have more time
The sense of later is a mirage. As time passes, the amount of time you have shrinks, both because you are closer to the end and because life fills up with small obligations, tasks and commitments that take slices of time away from your goal.
The time will never be right, and waiting for the right time is the biggest trap. You will never have more time than you have right now, and that is the only resource you have to build a better tomorrow.
Start with the rule that costs you the most
Many of these rules overlap: fewer goals, fewer distractions, more volume, better help. The video asks which one you think will have an immediate impact on your life.
If you are unsure where to begin, begin with rule five. Choosing tomorrow’s top priority tonight costs nothing and removes friction right away.
FAQ
How can I make progress faster in life?
The video gives 15 rules, including picking one goal, following one proven playbook, doubling daily effort, planning the day before it starts, acting fast, cutting distractions and paying experts to show you the way.
Why does doubling effort lead to 8 times the results?
The script says effort compounds. You waste less time on distractions, reinvest extra income into tools that halve the time per task, and meet twice as many situations, so you learn twice as fast.
What does winning the day before the day starts mean?
It means planning the day the night before and doing the hardest task early. The video says planners are more productive and that winning before 11 AM makes everything after that extra progress.
Why shouldn’t you quit at 60%?
Because the return on all the time, effort and money invested drops to zero if you do not ship or stick with it. The script says making a habit of quitting at 60% keeps you stuck where you are.
Why does the video say to get off social platforms?
It argues that cutting the news and doomscrolling reveals how much time you waste, and that most people monetize or enjoy less than 20% of their available time.
Keep reading
- 15 Rules That Make You Rich & Life Easier
- 50 Rules for a Simple Life
- 15 Most Expensive Mistakes You Can Make in Life
