Ever wondered what Tim Ferriss, Kevin Kelly, Naval Ravikant, and other freedom-focused entrepreneurs did differently to you?
I mean, they’re bright guys, but surely their level of freedom heavily outweighs their IQ.
The answer goes against almost everything culture tells you about entrepreneurial success.
The Ferriss-Hormozi Continuum
If the 4-hour work week crew are on one side of this spectrum, Alex Hormozi, Grant Cordone and Gary Vee are on the other side.
The second category of business owners have amassed huge wealth, but their level of freedom is arguable.
What’s more, in my personal opinion, I would rather shit in my hands and clap than run the kind of burnout gauntlet that got them there.
If you’re building an empire, and don’t mind spending no time with your family, no time on your health, and no time being happy, then go for it.
Oh yeah, and if you don’t mind the exceptionally high chance that you’ll fail in getting there, it’s all yours.
If - on the other hand - you know what ‘enough’ means, and you want sufficiency but never decadence, and freedom not more-always-more, there’s a better option.
It lies on the other end of the Ferriss-Hormozi Continuum
What Kevin Kelly & Naval Ravikant can teach business owners about levelling up their mindset
If you tried to describe the mindset of people like Ferriss, Ravikant, and Kevin Kelly you may come up with words like even-keeled, intentional, effective, deliberate, and precise.
All of these suggest a directional focus - laser-like through a fog of distraction.
It’s tempting to think the mentality needed to create freedom is one of energy. After all, you’re surrounded by a world which seems infatuated with urgency, scarcity, and an Andrew-Tate tinged bullshit version of masculinity.
You’re also surrounded by a ‘hustle and grind’ culture - a toxic overspill from the world inhabited by those insistent on wearing their relentlessness as a badge of honour.
What this kind of hyped-up-Monster-energy-drinking version of mindset does is create blind, or dumb luck: “rush around with enough energy and something may go your way” the idea goes.
You’ll feel like you’re getting shit done too. But realistically, your brain is a TikTok feed of ADHD.
The ones who win with this kind of mentality are the ones who have the greatest work ethic. They outwork everyone around them. Why not choose a simpler path to growth?
I’ve been unlucky enough to see multiple people I know fall into this trap. Indeed, one did create a lot of wealth. The many, many others however, are no further than where they started and hella miserable too.
Rushed, frantic, scatterbrain thinking leads to imprecise, haphazard, and ineffective action.
This hyperactive mentality solves nothing because ineffectiveness is a problem best solved with intentionality.
Why Clarity Is Your Greatest Mental Tool
To become intentional, you must calm the waters of your mind.
To level up, you need to direct your limited resources at the one problem you most need to solve. The better you can focus these resources on a single point, the more progress you can make. Like intensifying the sun through a magnifying glass.
Without learning to still the mind and then focus it in one direction, you end up making 1 millimetre of progress in a thousand directions. Far better to make a thousand millimetres of progress in one direction.
This is how people like Tim Ferriss managed the 4-hour work week - with laser-like focus on their single most important problem.
The number one way to doom your business and yourself to mediocrity is to have a mind you cannot tame; to lack the mental fitness of clarity.
Productivity isn’t doing more, it’s moving forward intentionally.
Instead, we should train the mind to become clear. That way we can identify where our effort is best directed, and create the freedom we seek.
P.s. I created a free Mental Fitness Assessment which shows you how mentally fit you are. It takes 3 minutes to fill out on average. Find it here
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