A few weeks ago, I packed my suitcase and moved onto my brother Jake's couch.

You know Jake, he runs Irrational Optimism.​

The purpose of the move was twofold:

1) To hyperscale IO to where it needs to be. My marketing brains lights up whenever I find a truly bulletproof offer that I know could crush it. I've never come across something better than what's inside IO.

2) To get over my biggest fear.

My biggest fear was not working hard enough.

No matter how many times I read Deep Work cover-to-cover, I cannot help but equate actual hours sat my desk to output.

It was this virus in my brain that told me to not hit the gym, not to have a social life – but to "use my early 20s to build as much as I can."

It was a lie I kept telling myself because I was scared of what else was out there.

It's easy to work. You won't convince me otherwise.

When you find something you love, that you can put the hours into and know it will pay dividends in the future...

It's really easy to trick yourself into cutting everything else out.

Last week I played Padel (super fun, highly recommend).

It was the first hobby I picked up since I was in high school.

I'll do you a favour and keep this one short:

I 3x'd by output this month by 1/2ing my work input.

This is something I've known to be true for years, but covered up every morning.

A lot of us were catapulted into this world of chronic fear-mongering, "if you don't lock in in your 20s you'll regret it GenZ will never be able to afford a house" bullshit.

Life is hard and we make it harder for ourselves because we're conditioned to feel bad for enjoying things we don't feel we "earned"...

And we were taught that "earning" is assigned an hourly rate conditional on how hard you worked.

"Working hard" for the sake of working hard is unbelievably selfish. Hoarding all your time and resources for a "one day" that only you care about.

The goal is output.

How many resources, connections, businesses, memories, stories, friends, can you possibly acquire over the next 5 years?

How much change can you affect on your environment and the people around you?

How can you best SERVE the thing that got you here in the first place?

What are you even working for?

1 unit of input does not = 1 unit of output.

You know that. We all know that.

I will never be one of these "lifestyle design" guys. I am here to work and build. I will rarely not put in 10 hour days.

But those 10 hours do NOT have to be behind my desk.

YOU have unique gifts. We all do. God gave us a fair distribution system.

What can you get done in an hour that take other people 5?

How many TRULY effective hours a day can you get doing that thing?

And how many days in a row can you do it?

THAT is more important than any single productivity hack out there.

Go be useful. You owe it to someone.

"Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world"

– Archimedes

– RL

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P.S. Sorry for disappearing again. It's been chaos behind the scenes. Expect to see a lot more. Thank you for sticking around