Hey there,
It is Matthew Larsen, back with my daily newsletter.
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In today’s email, we will talk about why you should do fewer things and spend substantially more time making them better.
One 10/10 thing will change your life more than 100 8/10 things.
Trust me.
Most people dramatically underestimate how much time and effort goes into creating something exceptional.
They see the finished product, assume that the person responsible is unusually gifted, and call it genius.
There is a famous line attributed to Michelangelo:
“If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.”
Exceptional work usually requires far more effort than anyone on the outside will ever see.
You need to become comfortable investing hundreds or even 1,000 hours into one important body of work.
That does not mean everything you create needs to take 1,000 hours.
The point is that you should stop treating a large investment of time as evidence that something is taking too long.
If the thing is important enough and you are continuing to improve it, investing 1,000 hours may be completely reasonable.
When you become completely immersed in something and genuinely care about producing it at an exceptional standard, the time flies by.
You stop thinking about every individual hour.
You become absorbed in the project.
Every improvement reveals another improvement you could make.
The standard keeps rising, and the work becomes more satisfying because you can see it becoming substantially better.
The problem is that raising your standards will require you to do fewer things.
You cannot produce an unlimited number of things while giving each one hundreds or thousands of hours of serious attention.
Instead of spreading your time across dozens of mediocre projects, choose fewer important things and make each one substantially better.
Quality often creates nonlinear returns.
Increasing the quality of something by 10% does not always produce a result that is only 10% better.
Sometimes the final 10% moves the work into a completely different category and produces several times the result.
The MrBeast Example
MrBeast explained this perfectly during an interview with Joe Rogan about making YouTube videos.
He gave the example of a YouTuber he had been mentoring.
Before the mentorship, the creator was generating approximately 4.6 million views and $24,000 per month.
Seven or eight months later, the same creator was generating approximately 45 million views and $400,000 per month.
He did not achieve this by producing substantially more videos.
He actually uploaded fewer videos.
The videos were simply much better.
MrBeast explained that it can be easier to generate five million views from one exceptional video than 100,000 views from 50 mediocre videos.
One great video could receive more total views than 100 average videos combined.
His reasoning is that the results are exponential.
If people are 10% more likely to click a video and watch it for 10% longer, the video does not necessarily receive only 10% more views.
According to MrBeast:
“A ten percent better video is four times the views.”
The stronger video gets clicked more frequently, holds attention for longer, and is recommended to substantially more people.
Each improvement compounds the others.
He even explained that tripling the amount of time and effort invested into one video could produce ten times as many views, not merely three times as many.
More volume would have meant helping this creator produce 50 mediocre videos.
Raising the standard meant producing fewer videos, investing substantially more effort into each one, and making them good enough to generate a disproportionate result.
Your Magnum Opus
Magnum opus is a Latin phrase meaning “great work.”
It is commonly used to describe someone’s greatest and most important achievement.
Two of Michelangelo’s most famous works were the statue of David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
You should have something that you treat this way.
Something important enough that you are willing to invest hundreds or thousands of hours into making it exceptional.
For me, the productivity course I am currently creating is an example.
The course is more than seven hours long, and I have invested more than 130 hours into organizing, writing, and improving the material.
I am doing that because I want it to be the most complete explanation of my productivity system that I can possibly create.
That amount of time does not feel excessive when the standard is high enough and the work matters to you.
The time flies by.
How To Implement
At almost any point in your business or career, there is one project that could help you more than anything else.
There is a 90% chance that you already know what it is.
It may be:
The product you know you need to build.
The offer you know you need to improve.
The sales or acquisition system your business is missing.
The book, course, or body of content you have wanted to create.
The system that would finally allow your company to scale.
The project that would establish you as one of the best people in your industry.
Whatever it is, you probably do not need me to tell you.
You already know.
Ask yourself:
“What is the one project that would help my business or career more than anything else right now?”
Write it down.
Make it the primary focus of your work.
Do not rush through it, mark it complete, and immediately forget about it.
Make it the finest and most important work you are capable of producing right now.
This does not mean it will remain your finest work for the rest of your life.
You may create something even better later.
It means that this is the finest and most important work you are capable of producing right now.
Do fewer things.
Spend substantially more time improving them.
Become comfortable investing hundreds or thousands of hours into something important.
Raise your standards until the final result belongs at an entirely different level.
Talk later,
Matt