The Regret You Don’t See Coming In Your 20's & 30's - Alex Hormozi

Duration: 14:16 2729 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Alex Hormozi argues that there is no perfect way to navigate one's twenties, presenting a binary choice between living them up and becoming an under-skilled thirty-year-old or working them up and becoming an under-paid thirty-year-old; he explicitly chooses the latter path. He acknowledges that this stance has ruffled feathers because many people look back at their youth with regret over missed opportunities for fun, yet Hormozi contends that most individuals are more dissatisfied by a "live it up" approach than one focused on work and skill accumulation. Drawing from his own experience of spending thousands of hours standing outside nightclubs during university to secure entry, he reflects that while the grass appears greener in hindsight, those years were actually dedicated to accumulating valuable insights and skills rather than just partying. He notes that people often overestimate how much they value their past leisure activities once they reach thirty, realizing that chasing friends' or parents' dreams can lead to a wasted life where one has neither developed professionally nor enjoyed personal freedom later on. Hormozi introduces the concept of periodizing work-life balance rather than obsessing over daily splits between career and play. He suggests extending this perspective from days to years or decades, allowing for intense periods of focus followed by more relaxed seasons. This approach mirrors how one might handle fitness goals; instead of blowing a diet because of a single indulgent meal at Christmas, individuals should view their health in weekly terms where occasional deviations can be compensated for later in the week. By extending the time horizon, people gain flexibility and avoid the cognitive strain of trying to switch identities rapidly between being a "gym guy" or a "work guy." This extended frame helps manage hyperbolic discounting, reminding individuals that current struggles are temporary and not permanent states, which prevents excessive disheartenment during losses. A critical distinction Hormozi makes is between sadness and anxiety, defining them as fundamentally different conditions rooted in perception rather than reality. Sadness arises from a perceived lack of options, creating a sense of hopelessness where one feels there is no way out, whereas anxiety stems from having too many options but lacking priorities, leading to scattered energy and an inability to decide. He explains that specific ambition provides direction by breaking down vague desires into actionable steps, thereby eliminating the paralysis caused by general ambition like simply wanting "to be better." When faced with sadness, he advises focusing on figuring out what needs to be done next, as identifying a single action restores clarity and options. Conversely, addressing anxiety requires prioritizing one thing above all others, such as deciding that maintaining weight is sufficient for now rather than trying to get fit immediately while also managing other life stressors. The core mechanism for overcoming these mental states and achieving progress lies in the principle of effort arbitrage and avoiding multitasking. Hormozi illustrates that it takes significantly less effort to maintain a skill than to grow one, noting that spreading limited energy across ten tasks results in zero progress on any of them compared to focusing intensely on just one or two. He advocates for aggressive periodization where an individual dedicates specific chunks of time to narrow focuses before achieving a "Big W" or significant win, which builds confidence and momentum over the long term. This strategy prevents regression while allowing for substantial growth in key areas without burning out from trying to do everything simultaneously. Ultimately, he concludes that by accepting trade-offs, embracing periodization, and distinguishing between specific goals and vague ambitions, individuals can navigate their twenties effectively to build a foundation for success rather than regretting the choices they made or failed to make during those formative years.

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there's no perfect way to live your 20s you either live them up and become an unders skilled 30-year-old or you work them up and become an underlied 30-year-old you just have to figure out which you'd rather be accept the trade-offs and know that there are no doovers and door three if you consider work life then you get to do both that one ruffled a lot of feathers well it's because people look back on the 20s and realize that they are one or the other all right I'm going to lean into this I I am okay I had a conversation with my team about this and I said I am okay being a beacon of Relentless hard work I'm okay being the guy who says [ __ ] your mental health I'm okay with it because I've given it a lot of thought I think that there is the other side is wildly over represented and I'm willing to sit on the logical extreme because I think it will help more people and there are more people that I have met in my life who are dissatisfied by their Live It Up 20s than dissatisfied by their work it up 20s because most of the time in your 20s you have no idea what you want but knowing what you need to do to work and move ahead is fairly straightforward and so you can take the known and make progress on the one that you have high confidence that you can make progress on and then along the way gain perspective on what are the things that are actually important to you in your life and you may find out often that they far fewer of those things than you really originally thought because what you thought live them up in your 20s was was actually your mom and your two homies who are both mediocre and you don't care about their opinion now when you're 30 anyways but what a waste of a life it would have been to quote live up your mom's dream or or your friends dreams to then only get to your 30s and realize you didn't live it up and you also didn't work it up and now you have neither I think a lot about you know the first day that I sat down at University my first ever seminar I sat next to my what would be future business partner for 15 years so I'm skinn I say to him I've spent all of my partying during Fresh's week the first week I'd spent my entire maintenance loan which was supposed to be food and everything else for the rest of the term until [ __ ] Christmas and it's September the 29th it's a big week it it was a good week um which I could not survive now and I think uh I think back to sort of the the time that I spent and the endless hours I'm not kidding and I don't talk I I don't reflect that much on the the club promo stuff maybe to my detriment I should do it more uh I've spent between 5 and 10,000 hours stood on the front door of nightclubs I've spent at least 3,000 hours stood on the front door of the same nightclub only on Saturdays right I didn't miss 202 Saturdays in a row I took 4 day holidays from Sunday to Thursday so that I could come back to come and do this thing and look back at my 20s and I think you know was that how much was living how much was accumulating skills and The Grass Is Always Greener with this because in hindsight you think well you know you imagine that you could have gone back and still accumulated all of the insights and the skills that you really value in yourself that would have still happened but that you would have got to maybe have more variety or you would have maybe the fun or the whatever the thing and uh when I look for me with my Constitution at what I value most in myself almost all of those things have been accumulated by having a 20s and now a 30s that has been dedicated to work it up not to live it up to 4-day holidays in between those things now remembering that now is not forever I think is really important again you're on the outlier right hand end of the distribution for work most people are going to pull themselves back across in terms of balance between work and play but you can periodize what you're doing right now you can accumulate all of that work all of that experience all of that explore time to work out actually I don't like doing admin stuff it turns out I'm really great at creative or I really don't like traveling it turns out I'm really great at routine all of those things there's like a buyin you remember CrossFit you do the you do a buyin thing you go it's a one mile run and then it's this workout you have to do that buyin let's say everyone has to do that buyin doing that buy in when you're 25 is way easier than doing that buy in when you're 40 right I finally work out who I am in the world because you start to accumulate all of these better directional assistances you're moving in a more directionally accurate way earlier which means that you make more progress over the long term so in retrospect I'm glad that I did work it up 20s and I'm glad that I did work it up 30s as well so I'll say two two things that might be helpful um one is you obviously know my stance if you're listening to this on work life balance but maybe as a as a concession for you your work life balance Obsession may just be too narrowly focused on the present and not extended into seasons and so you can have work life balance where I work for three years and then I have a more chill year and I think that most people think about work life in terms of their split of the day rather than their split of the year or the decade and I think that you can have a much better outcome on both sides if you were to split it up on a longer time Horizon so good I mean everybody knows what it's like to go through it every January intense period of diet I [ __ ] it at Christmas again too much chocolate too much too much dinner and you go okay well what are you going to do I'm going to work hard I'm going to focus on my diet and my training for and then I'm going to hold those gains for a period or I'm going to build a business okay my Health's probably going to take a hit for a little while or I just got out of a relationship I need to go dating all right well I'm probably not going to be able to spend so much time at work or maybe I'm going to be sleeping later so my my fitness is going to knock off a little bit all of these things happen for periods of time and yeah remembering that now isn't forever is and that's such a great frame like a hyperbolic discounting and inability to be able to imagine that this is not the way that it's always going to be and that's good for good things and for bad things this isn't the way it's always going to be so I better enjoy this win this isn't the way it's always going to be so I better not get too disheartened by this loss you will come back that's the the beautiful thing about the sort of uh honic renormalizing they go good things aren't as good as you think they are bad things aren't as bad as you think they are so if you if you use that extended frame as a way to approach different types of goals I I'll break a a very standard one which is that people measure the amount of calories that they need to eat per day but very few people measure the amount of calories they need to eat per week and so people will blow the day and say well screw it I messed up today I might as well have a pizza on top of it because I had chocolate and I went off my diet or whatever but if you have a weekly Outlook even then all of a sudden you're like oh well I can have a pizza tonight I'll just like skip most of my food tomorrow besides protein or I'll have a wedding weekend and know that this whole week I'm going to be light and so I have you know 13,000 calories for the next 7 days that I can work my way through which gives me a tremendous amount of flexibility and the thing is is that the further you extend the time Horizon the more flexible you can be with your achievement of it as long as you only get the few things that matter most and so it allows you to focus and prioritize on those few things that move the needle rather than be overly obsessive on such a small narrow window of time that is irrelevant anyways so there's a there's a coordination problem that happens when you try to balance too quickly when you try to have a little bit of fun and a little bit of play and a little bit of fun and a little bit of play whether it's task switching whether it's just sort of the cognitive effort of uh your personality like your identity is I'm gym guy for three months hooray I'm work guy for three months hooray but when it's I'm gym guy this morning I'm work guy this afternoon it's tough it's tough to do that so yeah kind of the same as you get dis economies of scale as a business grows because there's more interconnectedness and communication between each person person the more use there are going on inside so this is an argument for sort of aggressive periodizing I'm a hyper proponent of one single narrow Focus I'll Define two more terms since the audience didn't ask for it sadness is a perceived lack of options it's why it feels like hopelessness because you don't know what to do you don't know what options are available you see none which is why it feels like there's no way out anxiety is many options but no priorities which is why you feel scattered but you can't decide they feel very different but fundamentally those are the difference in the conditions that make people feel like they're anxious or they feel like they're sad and so when we're working through what you were just talking about with okay I want to be gym guy and I also want to be work guy we have many options but a lack of priorities and so we have anxiety over the fact that we're not making progress on any of them because we have not been able to say this comes first so if we think about what priority means it means prior it comes before everything else and what I think a lot of people have a hard time doing is being okay with saying no and saying okay I will allow myself to just not get fatter rather than get fitter during this period and what's interesting about most skills is that the amount of effort that it takes to maintain a skill versus the amount of effort it takes to grow a skill is like on10th the amount of effort and so this is where the effort Arbitrage is so important in terms of allocation and so if you do a four out of 10 on 10 things you will make progress on none you will make the same amount of progress that you could have made if you just did one out of 10 which is none you just don't regress but the extra three points that you save on the nine you could put on one other item and have a 10 out of 10 or a 13 out of 10 in effort and then after every periodized chunk of time have a Big W or win that you can look back on and say I did that and therefore I am and so I think that that's how you step up the mountain of progress when you're trying to work on many different skills quote at the same time it's just that the at the same time is over a year not over a day George told me told me this while we were on mushrooms in Nashville [ __ ] brilliant so I'm there watching hook got got to get people in the door yeah I'm there Fourth of July George turned to me and he said General ambition gives you anxiety specific ambition gives you Direction there is nothing more anxiety inducing than I want to be better and I don't know what at and I don't know how like just think about that for a second sort of embodied that I I it it's sort of a chasing it's a lean in and it's it's tight and sort of your shoulders are up and there's a ringing in your ears and you have no idea it's like a threat you've heard a noise in the forest you have no idea where it's come from specific ambition gives you Direction and I think the concept of specific versus General ambition ladds up to bundled terms I want this big thing but I haven't broken that thing down into what I can actually do once you get specific into the actions you don't have a lot of anxiety because you can see what is required in order to get it and so to circle the loop back on sadness which is because some people who are listening to this may be sad so this is for you to get out of sadness and I've been sad many times in my life the thing that's helped me get out of it is realizing that a perceived lack of options is what causes sadness not a lack of options a perceived lack of options which means that all I have to do is figure out what I need to do and figuring it out becomes the option and so then I have Clarity on the one thing that I need to do to pull myself out of this moment of sadness which is oh I just have to figure out what to do and that is how I get at least for me have gotten out of my Sater periods and other news this episode is brought to you by Shopify Shopify Powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States they are the global force behind gym shock old birds and neonic Shopify is the Commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business you can think of Shopify as your business sidekick the robin to your Batman you come up with genius 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