4 Lessons I Learned From Alex Hormozi
4 Lessons I Learned From Alex Hormozi
Takeaways from Hormozi's "How to Win (At ANYTHING)" presentation
Here are 4 lessons from Alex Hormozi’s presentation, "How to Win (At ANYTHING)." All the sentences in bold are direct quotes from Hormozi.
Lesson 1: Inversion (What you need to do to win)
It’s easier for our brains to find problems than solutions. This is because we have evolved to give a disproportionate amount of attention to danger over rewards.
That makes sense, because if your alertness to/fear of threats is too low, you won’t survive in the wild. To borrow an example from scientist Randolph M. Nesse, when an animal hears a rustle in the bushes, it runs away. It can’t be sure that there’s a predator in the bush. It might’ve just been the wind. The animal instinctually flees anyway. That’s because even if it is the wind 90% of the time, the cost of being wrong in that situation is so high that it makes sense for the animal to always flee.1
Hormozi explains that to find out how to improve in life, you should imagine the least successful version of yourself. What does that person do (or not do) to guarantee you won’t win? List those things out and then invert them. Your new list is a list of what to do to be successful.
Lesson 2: Break It Down (How to do what you need to do)
It is easier to do things when you have broken them down into simple and specific steps.
In order to break things down, you need to operationalize them. To operationalize something, explain it using actions or behaviors you can see with your eyes.
For example, Hormozi breaks down be charismatic into these components:
Smile when people walk in
Change emphasis and tonality when speaking
Remember people’s names
Ask people about themselves
Nod multiple times when they respond
Keep eye contact when they talk
Address everyone in the room when you enter and exit
Lesson 3: External/Internal Conditions (Why you will either win or lose)
There are two reasons why you might not be doing what you need to do: external conditions and internal conditions.
When external conditions are bad, you are less likely to succeed. However, if you can win even in bad external conditions, you’ll win so much more when good conditions come.
Hormozi illustrates this with the quote: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”
One internal condition necessary for success is motivation. Motivation comes from deprivation. If you haven’t eaten for two days, you’ll be more motivated to get food than if you’ve just finished eating a huge meal.
Some deprivation—like with money—isn’t physiological but psychological. The desire for money comes from perceiving gaps between you and the people around you. If you want to be more motivated, change who you compare yourself to. The healthy way to do this is to compare yourself to the person you genuinely want to become (i.e. the best version of you).
Identity comes from action. If you want to be a certain type of person, then you need to do what that person does. In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear says that “every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
Lesson 4: Time
Don’t put things off because you’re busy. If you only do things when you’re not busy, you’ll find that you won’t stick with them when you become busy again. This is similar to the “smooth sea never made a skilled sailor” idea. Learn how to make it work in the worst condition, and it’ll stick in the best.
Everyone has the same 24 hours, it’s about how you allocate them. If you think you don’t have time, check how much time you spend on your phone on things that don’t matter.
If you’re not moving as fast as you want, you’re doing the wrong stuff. Figure out how to get more for what you put in.
Nesse, Randolph M. “The Smoke Detector Principle: Natural Selection and the Regulation of Defensive Responses.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 935, no. 1, 25 Jan. 2006, pp. 75–85, https://web.mit.edu/hst527/www/readings/Nesse%20Defensive%20Responses.pdf.