Introduction
A lot of us research life hacks, or productivity hacks, to find ways of doing more with the same amount of time. Most of us realize everyone has the same amount of time but for some reason some people are more successful than others. Hmmm….what could be the reason? Intelligence? Luck? Good genetics? They all play a role for sure. Some truly smart people ended up with lucrative jobs like being a neurosurgeon. Some people have amazing genetics and became a professional athlete despite training at 16 years old. Some people just got lucky on social media and make lots of money from views. However, these people are the anomalies. For the average person, I would argue there are two main things that separate more successful people from less successful people. Taking action, and prioritization. In this article, we will talk about the prioritization piece.
Prioritizing is about doing what’s most important, it is the pareto principle that states 80% of output comes from 20% of input. It is big leverage activities, where one swing cuts 10 pieces of wood instead of one piece. It is the difference between walking and driving a car. In order to understand just how powerful it is, we will use some examples.
Fitness
In fitness, the prioritizing the most important exercises for strength and muscle would be doing compound lifts. Dips, Pull Ups, Chin Ups, Squat, Bench Press. It works many muscle groups all at the same time and can be overloaded. Doing isolation exercises like tricep extensions, calf raises, leg extensions, bicep curls won’t build nearly the same type of strength and it will take much longer to build muscle because each exercise only works 1 particular muscle group.
Health
In health, prioritizing the high leverage actions would mean eating clean whole foods. You don’t need supplements (Acai, Matcha, Spirulina, Morgina, liver, lion’s mane, Ashwagandha, Rhodiola Rosea), or superfoods (green tea) or any other longevity science based hack (cold plunge, sauna, hypnosis for sleep, timing your protein intake, HIIT workouts, getting sunlight at the exact moments during the day). Look at the blue zones. The Blue Zones are regions around the world that have exceptionally long-lived populations, where people live longer and healthier lives than in most other areas, often over 100 years of age. What do they do? Simple basic things that anyone can do, but they do it over and over again. No money, no tech, no science. They have a sense of purpose, great social connection, eat mostly plant based food, and move naturally.
Finance
In finance, prioritizing means saving a lot of money and just auto-invest a portion of that money into index funds so it grows over time. Investing for dummies is basically just invest once, and leave it alone so compound interest takes effect. The more meddling you do, the worse the investment returns get. If all you did was save your income, you would remove 90% of your financial problems right out the gate. Just one simple action leads to financial security and safety
Relationships
One more example here is relationships. A lot of relationship problems can be fixed if you just removed entitlement and arrogance. A person who is more humble, and accepting will have 90% less problems than a person who expects everything from their spouse and demands only perfection and good results all the time. Life happens, people make mistakes, many things are outside your control and having negative experiences are just a part of life. Humble accepting people will remain unbothered and handle the situation well, arrogant entitled people will lose their mind, get angry and hostile towards others and create drama.
Final Thoughts
Prioritization isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters most. The right actions — done consistently — solve most problems in life, from fitness to finance to relationships.
I hope this helped.
Thanks for reading.
