From: alexhormozi
Achieving success in any area of life, particularly in business, hinges on a powerful combination of prioritization and unwavering commitment. The path to making 2025 the best year of your life can be broken down into four essential steps: eliminate distractions, get started, get better, and never stop [00:00:04].
Eliminating Distractions and Setting Priorities
True priorities are revealed not by what one says, but by where one invests their time and money [00:00:24]. Rich individuals acquire time, while poor individuals purchase material possessions [00:00:13]. Ambitious individuals invest in skills, whereas lazy individuals are drawn to distractions [00:00:16]. If you wish to become a different person, your actions, calendar, and budget must align with that desired identity [02:22:00].
Redefining Commitment
Commitment is defined as the elimination of alternatives [03:07:00]. To truly commit to a goal, one must eliminate anything that is not the main objective [03:29:00].
Cutting Ties with Detrimental Influences
A common impediment to rapid progress is associating with “bad friends” [03:46:00]. It is important to ask critical questions about friendships:
- Would you consider it a compliment if someone said you were like your friend? [04:17:00]
- Are you truly fulfilled by the friendship, or is it merely a way to avoid loneliness? [04:25:00]
- Can you be unapologetically yourself, or do you feel compelled to act differently? [04:32:00]
- Do you like who this friend is today, or only the idea of who they could be? [04:42:00]
- Would you want your future child to be friends with someone like this person? [04:50:00]
Exceptional people are rare, and it is normal to have fewer such friends [05:07:00]. When choosing friends, consider if they have the same scale of goals and the same level of dedication and commitment to those goals [05:31:00]. Ambitious individuals must often become comfortable with periods of solitude as they outpace their existing social circles [06:21:00]. Being exceptional means being the exception, and it is normal for others to perceive you as abnormal if you pursue abnormal goals [07:00:00].
“Don’t let people who have mediocre goals deter you from taking actions that make you great because it makes you different.” [07:15:00]
The ability to delay gratification is a sign of intelligence [08:14:00]. Your “reference group”—the people you compare yourself to or seek to impress—profoundly influences your long-term material success [09:24:00]. When making significant life decisions, one should listen to those closest to their goals, even if they are not physically nearby [10:04:00]. Winners concentrate on winning, whereas losers focus on winners [11:05:00].
Minimizing Environmental Distractions
Your environment affects your efficiency [15:35:00]. To build anything great, one must be able to sit still, ignore notifications, and focus on one task for extended periods [15:42:00]. The price tag for success is often not what you want to pay, but what is required [16:40:00]. Focus isn’t achieved by pushing harder amidst disruptions, but by removing everything else [19:17:00].
Tactical ways to reduce phone distractions:
- Switch to grayscale (reduces consumption by 30%) [19:28:00].
- Turn off all notifications across all apps [19:39:00].
- Utilize a “Do Not Disturb” mode to control when others can reach you [20:01:00].
Overcoming the Identity of “Isms”
One must eliminate self-limiting “isms” such as “I’m not good at math” or “I’m not techy” [25:15:00]. The fundamental question to ask is: “Does this thing, person, or belief make it more or less likely that I hit my goals?” [25:42:00]. Your identity is fundamentally under your control because you control your actions, and “doing is being” [28:11:00].
Getting Started
To win, one needs three things: the courage to start, the intellect to learn, and the heart to never give up [28:40:00]. Do not wait for a special occasion to begin improving your life; today is the only day you have control over [29:30:00].
“Nothing is going to be easy. Get over it. It takes time to get good, and the sooner you start, the sooner you act, and the sooner you act, the sooner you get. And don’t stop until you do.” [30:24:00]
It only takes about 20 hours of focused effort to become decent at anything [30:39:00]. Most people dislike surprises, even good ones, because they fear the unknown [31:17:00].
Getting Better
To get better, cultivate an insatiable desire to improve, regardless of your starting point [45:10:00]. Ambitious people buy skills, paying for them with time and money, which requires reallocating resources from other areas [45:25:00]. Most people do not have a resource issue, but rather a priorities problem [45:48:00].
The Value of Skill Acquisition
Working more hours not only increases income but also decreases spending opportunities [46:20:00]. Investing in oneself by acquiring skills is the highest return investment, consistently outperforming traditional investments [50:15:00]. Every skill compounds, stacking upon others [57:24:00]. Investing in education can accelerate progress, pulling years of learning into the present [55:52:00].
“The cost of you not being able to achieve your dreams the price is ignorance and the debt that you pay is the distance between where you are and how much you’d be making if you knew how to do it.” [48:41:00]
Consider changing your geographical location if it offers an opportunity to be around people who are better than you [49:03:00].
Embracing Failure for Growth
The likelihood of success increases after experiencing failure [40:32:00]. Failure provides feedback, leading to improvement, which in turn increases the chances of winning [41:02:00]. Losers remain losers by never being willing to lose [41:09:00]. Every successful individual experiences failure before achieving victory [41:14:00]. Your second attempt after a failure, though emotionally harder, often requires half the actual effort [42:15:00]. The best entrepreneurs have the most extensive failure resumés [42:48:00].
“You only need to win once.” [43:23:00] — Jeff Bezos: “Big Winners pay for so many experiments.” [43:58:00]
Never Stop
Staying focused is an ongoing battle, akin to beating an addiction, requiring daily effort [01:01:44]. To win in business, you must be able to say no without remorse and hear no without a loss of enthusiasm [01:02:28]. The quality and quantity of opportunities one rejects are a measure of their focus [01:03:18].
“Big things don’t happen on small timelines because you have to start from zero over and over again. And if you actually stick with it, it’s actually the shortest way to get to where you want to go. It just takes longer than you think.” [01:05:45]
There are two types of knowledge: declarative (knowing about something) and procedural (knowing how to do something) [01:07:25]. Real learning happens through doing [01:08:11].
Perseverance and The End of Hardship
Nothing hard lasts forever [01:08:26]. Only three things can happen: you quit, it gets easier, or you get better [01:08:29]. You only lose when you quit before seeing it through [01:08:37]. When things are easy, do more; when things are hard, do different [01:09:50].
Consider the “996” work standard in China (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week) as a benchmark for effort [01:12:27]. Working 30 days straight, 10-12 hours a day, can reveal your true capacity and build resilience [01:12:55]. Purpose and drive often come from long days of hard work and earning one’s efforts, more than from pleasure-seeking activities [01:14:26].
A truly liberated individual operates from first principles: “What do I want? What does it take to get it? What holds me back?” [01:16:47]. These “hindrances” can be physical or mental, and rest should be used to increase total net output over the longest period of time [01:17:25].
Speed and Aggressive Timeline Questioning
Cultivate an obsession with speed (micro speed, macro patience) [01:18:57]. Aggressively question and eliminate arbitrary timelines for tasks [01:21:06]. Continuously ask, “How can I make this take less time? How can I automate this? How can I give away chunks of this? How can I deem some of this unnecessary?” [01:29:00].
“Behind mountains are more mountains. Goals aren’t finish lines; they’re mile markers.” [01:25:06]
Do not try to apply logic to those who are illogical; ignore it if it doesn’t make sense [01:26:00].
“The lazy don’t know how to start, the losers don’t know how to finish, and the legends don’t know how to stop.” [01:26:30]
To win in any game worth playing, you must simply stay alive long enough to outlast everyone else [01:27:03]. The pain of repetition forces you to seek improvement [01:28:52]. Complaining achieves nothing and costs respect [01:29:43]. Remember that thousands of people have already succeeded; you are not special [01:30:26]. If something “doesn’t work,” reframe it as “I don’t know how to make it work,” or “I am not good enough to know how to make it work” [01:31:00].