Is There a Shortcut to Success?

Short answer: YES.

Hold on. Let me explain.

You often hear the statement, "There is no shortcut to success."

And while I'm sure the people who say that mean well, I would advise you to ignore them.

They are false prophets.

So does that mean that success is easy?

No, it doesn't.

Success is hard. Very hard.

But it IS simple.

Confused yet? Good.

Look, during my evolution, I studied the journey of successful people. While many of them took different paths, the formula remained the same: Self-education + Targeted Hustle * Leveraged Time = Success.

Let's break that formula down.

Self Education

My mentor always says, "If you want to increase your worth, increase your knowledge."

And he's right. While many of us assume that formal education is the key to success, that is far from the truth.

Formal education can only take you as far as the tracks go. No further. And every student who stays on that train will end up at pretty much the same end point.

SELF-education, however, begins where you want it to, and takes you where ever you determine it will.

My 4 year degree in business taught me the same information everyone else I graduated with was taught.

Leveraging that as my base to continue teaching myself is what has taken me on my current journey.

Self education is what sets Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban and countless others apart from those who stop their "education" at the end of the formal process.

And with the entirety of the world's knowledge at your fingertips, self-education is easier to achieve than at any previous point in human history.

Targeted Hustle

Target hustle is the exertion of effort for a narrowly focused aim.

Far too often, many of us have a shotgun approach to success.

A study of successful people reveals that they have a targeted focus that they commit their energy to achieving.

Only once they have mastered that discipline, do they then tackle new ventures.

Elon Musk is cited as one of the most visionary minds of our time.

Electric cars that are commercially viable. Reusable space rockets. Man/machine interfaces. Solar energy farms.

It seems that Musk is at the forefront of almost every cutting edge technological pursuit.

But before he got into juggling multiple ventures at a time, Musk built a software firm that sold to Compaq in 1999. He then followed that up with his participation with PayPal which was sold to eBay for $1.5 in 2002.

It was these early targeted wins that have positioned Musk to have the credibility and capital to pursue his current ambitions.

Short periods of targeted hustle can yield amazing results when combined with the next part of the equation.

Leveraged Time

THIS is where the shortcut to success can be found. While you can be more efficient with your self-education, and there is no substitute for targeted hustle; leveraged time can have a compound effect.

Malcolm Gladwell estimated that it takes 10,000 hours to become "world-class" in any field. That works out to 90 minutes a day for 20 years.

Yet world-class gymnasts are routinely at the top of their game in their early to mid teens. Largely because they leverage more than 90 minutes a day to achieve mastery.

And that is how leveraged time works. The more time you commit to mastering a skill, and the earlier you begin that process, the sooner you achieve expert level.

It is also worth taking into consideration that while 10,000 hours is what is required to be WORLD-CLASS, you can be proficient with significantly less time as you put it in early.

Warren Buffet is widely considered the most successful investor of the modern era. He bought his first stock with a $100 loan from his father at age 11, and was worth over $1 million in his early 20s.

Once you learn and understand the time value of money, you realize that the earlier you begin earning money, the quicker it can grow and accumulate.

Leveraged time is the factor that you can use to shortcut your path to success.

Like I said: It isn't easy.

But it is simple.

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