Everybody want to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights.

— Ronnie Coleman, eight-time Mr. Olympia (video source)

I still remember a job offer I got in college.

I had received a few others, and they broadly followed the same format: a call or email where the CEO or hiring manager told me they’d be thrilled to have me on the team, told me the compensation, and maybe mentioned an exciting project I’d be able to work on.

But in just one case, the CEO reached out to me with a 1022 word email. That’s two full pages of single-spaced text.

It explained, in depth, the compensation offer, the rationale for the numbers, a framework for how the equity could be valued, why he was excited about me specifically, a couple fringe/value-add benefits he thought I would enjoy, details on projects I would work on and why they were important to the company, and how he could help me in the future after my time at the company, if I did a great job.

It blew me away (evidence: I’m writing about it here, more than a decade later). And suddenly, all the other offers paled in comparison.

I felt wanted, and like I had really been listened to. And it made me see the company and the CEO as highly competent.

That email changed how I recruit candidates. When I’m closing someone, odds are they are going to get at least one long, thoughtful email from me, plus a couple meticulously planned and executed calls, plus well-triangulated backchannels that they hear from. And I often hear that those emails and conversations made the difference.

The difference between that one offer and the others is just a single example of a broader phenomenon:

The application of high effort.

With the email, the CEO of that company didn’t do anything brilliant. They just sat down and applied an unusual amount of effort to an ordinary situation — doing something that was obviously a good idea.

This same principle can be applied in business (fundraising, recruiting a key hire, closing a big deal), life (finding a partner, searching for a place to live), health (whether getting that six-pack or simply feeling healthy), and more.

Another example: I’m often surprised by how little early-stage CEOs put into their fundraising processes.

For something that the CEO would unequivocally say is one of their most important jobs — ensuring the business is capitalized — you’d think they would pour their time into their investor relationships, materials, and delivery. But they don’t.

Sure, they put in some effort. They’ll fiddle with a standard-format deck for a week or two when they have time, maybe blocking off a day to get the initial draft together. They’ll do a couple practice runs. But that’s about it, before they dive into the fundraising process, talking to whoever they can easily get set up with.

What might a more effortful process involve?

Perhaps figuring out the most impactful ways to get in touch with the right investors (do they hear about you from five different people in one week? do you sit next to them at a dinner, coordinated by a friend for that purpose?).

Perhaps creating materials that blow them away (does your deck have thirty pages of appendices whose page numbers you’ve memorized, to jump to and address the most common questions live with data? do you write a venture-style investment memo for them?)

Perhaps making your pitch absolutely seamless and natural (do you practice it literally one hundred times — maybe 25 full hours! — across a set of friendlies? do you record yourself and play it back over and over again, tweaking your turns of phrase until they flow?).

I’m not saying they need to do any of those specific things. But this post is about the simple idea that there are absurd returns to putting extra-ordinary effort into what matters.

Why don’t people put more effort into their priorities?

Some people aren’t even aware of their priorities. This is easy enough to fix. Plenty of ink has been spilled about daily or nightly or weekly or quarterly goal/priority-setting rituals. Go do whatever works for you, and make sure you know what’s important.

But I’ve found that most people can answer what their priorities are — and yet still don’t put appropriate effort into them. I tend to see four reasons why:

  1. It’s not obvious what to do
  2. The work to do is repetitive or boring
  3. “Effortless is cool”
  4. The urgent vs. important trap

It’s worth taking a moment, reflecting on your top priorities right now, and asking yourself: could I be putting more effort into these? Am I falling into any of these traps?

It’s not obvious what to do

The most common issue for otherwise-high-performers: the added effort would require time, space, and creativity to come up with.

It would require sitting back with a clear head and asking yourself questions like:

What’s the craziest thing I could do to make this happen? How could I tilt the odds more in my favor? What assumptions am I making that might be wrong? What is nobody else doing to achieve this? What could I do that others would call unreasonable?

Often, the biggest roadblock to putting more effort in is first figuring out what that even means. And the answer is rarely sitting right in front of you.

Maybe you should call a friend and say “if I was willing to devote an entire [day/week/month] to nothing except [my goal], what crazy things could I do to make it happen?”

You don’t always need to take action on these answers. But they are at least worth considering. Because if the priority truly matters, the effort is worth it.

The work to do is repetitive or boring

Sometimes, the answer is in front of us, but we simply don’t feel like such a mundane solution could possibly be important — or we just don’t want to do it.

No leads for your first engineering hire and nothing matters more? Have you tried spending literally ten hours a day cold messaging people with personalized outreach? (Can you even imagine how many people you would hit with that much time? Ten hours??)

Desperate to find an apartment? Have you tried finding and calling every single property management company in the city? (There probably aren’t even that many of them.)

Trying to close a critical sale? Have you tried coming up with a new, interesting email to send them every single day? (They won’t mind it.)

Just go do the work, if the outcome really matters.

“Effortless is cool”

Sometimes people are loath to put effort in because they see people “naturally” being excellent all around them, and it seems much cooler to get the outcome effortlessly. “Who wants to seem like they’re trying?”

Well, first of all: unabashed high effort is cool, in my opinion. If you put the work in and own it, people respect that.

But more importantly: don’t mix up the signaling with the input. Yes, some people make it look easy. And you can too, if you want. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t actually put in the work!

The best way to make it look easy is to practice. You think Bruce Lee just naturally figured out his “one-inch punch?” No! He put in unimaginable hours of effort to make it look simple.

(And who cares what people think, anyway? Just do what gets you the outcome that you want — irrespective of how others view your road to get there.)

The urgent vs. important trap

Most obvious of all: life gets in the way. Again: much has been written about this — you need to dedicate time to your priorities. Go read Matt Mochary’s document on Top Goal, or Shane Parrish on the Eisenhower Matrix, or James Clear on the most important thing, or listen to (the apocryphal, as usual) Mark Twain:

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

No matter how much is going on, if something is actually your top priority, you must find time for it. (We all know this, of course — but still need to put it into action.)

Here’s the recipe for success on your top priorities:

  1. Be thoughtful about what the priorities are
  2. Set aside meaningful time for them, in accordance with their importance (even if you don’t know how you’ll spend it)
  3. Put intentionality and creativity into figuring out what you can do to achieve them (sometimes the answers are easy, sometimes not)
  4. Just Do It — do the work, put in the effort, push as hard as you need to

It sounds simple. Obvious. We all know these things.

And yet… we so rarely put in the time and effort our biggest priorities deserve.

This idea — of applying high effort — touches on a related one that I call “sparkle.” Doing things in a way that feels special to others. Figuring out how to do this is also incredibly high-leverage, and sometimes can be accomplished simply as a byproduct of just putting a lot of effort in.

But there are also other ways to get at sparkle, and I will cover that in another post.

I reference this tweet in my very-related-even-though-it-may-not-seem-so post on Reality Malleability:

And it is exactly right. You can simply ask yourself “what should I do to accomplish this priority” and then just do it. Apply the effort!

Interestingly, this mismatch seems to be less common among professional athletes and musicians. The idea of practice is so deeply ingrained into these disciplines that many (not all!) of them really do put the work in.

Or maybe that’s survivorship bias — but at least we hear about the habits about the true winners.

Kobe Bryant showing up at 4am to do foundational footwork drills.

Yo-Yo Ma doing scales on the cello every day.

Rafael Nadal hitting basic strokes hour after hour.

Tyler Cowen has written about what practice could look like for people outside of those fields.

Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of hours in the day. If used well (with “well” defined as: “in service of a life that you want”), you can accomplish an unbelievable amount each day.

You don’t need to find any “secrets” or “tricks” — in fact, you can just pick whatever the obvious thing is (try pretending you are giving advice to a friend who is in your situation; or ask a friend to give you advice) and then apply an immense amount of effort.

If you’re job hunting, have you tried sending a handwritten note every week to every single person or company you’re trying to get in touch with? Sending them memos and outlines of exactly how you would do the job you’re applying for?

If you’re looking for a partner, have you tried spending huge chunks of time in places where you might find them, and then actually talking to anyone who might fit?

If you’re trying to generate more sales for your company, have you tried 10x’ing your outreach? 100x’ing?

Elon Musk is notable, for, among other things, accomplishing an unbelievable amount of output. And this thread from Marko Jukic is the best explanation I’ve seen of how. Some excerpts:

Elon’s secret is that he just picks the institutional and organizational low-hanging fruit that everyone else is too blind or apathetic to pick. Taking a personal org census of 5 minutes per employee or asking what parts cost to build from first principles—everyone can do this.

…

The other tidbit of Elon wisdom I’ve heard: he actually reads the textbooks to learn how to build things. Like, that’s it. Read the book! Literally just read the textbook and learn it! Just like in college! This isn’t Lovecraftian secrets or witchcraft, man, it makes sense.

…

None of this is to say extremely rare personal qualities aren’t also necessary, but if you just pick some of this low-hanging fruit, which you don’t necessarily need extremely rare personal qualities for, you will also achieve some shocking and exceptional results.

…

I, like almost everyone else, simply do not care hard enough about the same kinds of things Elon cares about. But you should try to be like Elon for the things you do care about, and care as hard as possible.

…

[It] pretty much amounts to “just do things.” The hard part is maintaining focus and clarity to see what the obvious things that need to be done are, for both yourself and your growing organization of fallible human beings.

It turns out there are returns to scale and effort. So next time you’re facing a problem, remember that, and that, yeah:

You Can Just Do Things.

Looking for more to read?

Or, more on effort:

Gwern has a great post “On really trying.”

And for even more...

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