10x Is Easier Than 2x

Ten times the result, and less work than doubling. I read 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy1 expecting motivational arithmetic but got something of an argument about subtraction. You can reach 2x by doing more of what you already do. More clients, more hours, more of the same. It is a volume problem, and effort solves volume problems. That is why 2x is exhausting rather than difficult. 10x will not yield to volume. Nothing you are currently doing, done harder, gets you there. The only route left is to work out which fifth of your work produces nearly all of the result, and to let the other four fifths go. 10x isn’t about more. It’s about less. That is the whole book. Pareto2, applied over and over. Each jump keeps the 20% and discards the rest, and the 20% you kept becomes the entire field for the next round. The book’s favorite image is Michelangelo in front of a block of marble, removing everything that is not the statue. “How do we grow twenty percent next…