You Can’t Skip Levels (2375)

Self-improvement, personal development, it's all amazing. I love it. It has changed my life,

but I think a lot of people unfortunately over-complicated and they try to learn things that is just beyond their current scope, and I think it holds them back, unfortunately.

If you try to skip levels, you're probably going to end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, Kevin Paul Mary, and I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.

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Next level nation today for episode number 2,375. You can't skip levels.

I was talking Alan the other day and I'm going to start going on podcasts again. I'm super excited.

And I said, dude, you know who I think I am? I am like the regular man's self-improvement, personal development, not coach.

But like, I'm, I said, Alan, I said, I have a client and he's a very successful client. You know him. You work with this client as well.

And I asked him recently, I said, hey, have you ever heard of the Pareto principle? And he said, no, I've never heard of it. What is it?

And I said, well, it's blah, blah, blah. You can explain it if you want. But Alan has this thing where he, well, you should explain it. Explain it. And then I'll go deeper.

Do you want to give it a shot? Yes. There was a gentleman back in the olden days. His name was Vilfredo Pareto.

Early 20th century, early 1915 or so back in the day. I could hear. He planted a bunch of pea plants. And he found in time that 20% of the plants produced 80% of the crop.

Yeah. And then I haven't researched this. So I'm trusting you. I know you have researched it. But essentially 20% of the people in the United States make 80% of the money, 20% of the people drink 80% of the beer or alcohol.

It works on the macro to 20% of countries. There's 195 countries, 20% of countries control 80% of the wealth. This is 20% of sports teams have 80% of the wins.

Okay. 20% of roads are traveled 80% of the time. So you wear 80% of your clothing. No, you wear 20% of your clothing, 80% of the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wear the same, I wear the same stuff. I probably wear 5% of my clothing, 95% of the time. There you go. Probably. Okay. So the goal and the understanding when it comes to success is you want to find the 20% of things that bring 80% of the results.

For us, this podcast is in that 20%. If we stop this, everything would die overnight, essentially. Not overnight, but yeah. I mean, it would definitely be a huge momentum hit. So everything we've built.

That is level level one is understanding. Prado principle. No. Sorry. Good. Good. Level one is understanding that not every task you do is of equal value. That's okay. It's part one. Perfect. Okay.

What level is leverage, which is 20% of your time and effort is producing 80% of the results. Okay.

You have something where you say parade owing, parade o. Explain that. And real quick, as an exercise, whether you're watching or listening, let me know or let yourself know when you opt out of what is being said.

Because that's a really good test. Good. All right. So if 20% of effort produces 80% of results.

That is a one to four ratio, meaning if I put $1 in, I get $4 back. Metaphorically, it's not. Okay. Fair. There. $1 in $4 back. Good. There. Leverage. Awesome. Okay. If you take 20% of 20%, you get 4%.

Okay. If you take 20% of 4%, you get 0.8%. Okay. If you take 20% of 0.8%, you get 0.16%. And if you take 20% of 0.16%, you get 0.032%. I'm rounding. Okay.

The idea there, if you crunch the numbers, is the one to four ratio becomes $1 in for $1,024 back. Because it's one fourth times one fourth, which is 1.16. And then it's 1.16 times four, which is 1.64. And it keeps going.

Okay. Now, the idea here, and people say this all the time in the personal development space, they say if you could go to Vegas and put $1 in a slot machine and make $1,024 back, how often would you play? And the answer is I would play forever. But what they don't tell you is you put $1 in, get punched in the face for 10 years, and then you get your $1,024. And you have to find the machine that actually gives that. That's the other thing to get really good at slots.

Like, right, which is a metaphor that's dumb because you can't get good at slots. But how many people do you think need to know that everyone?

Everyone.

All of it, yeah, you don't need to know anything, but benefit from, okay, so that no one needs to know anything, right, right, right. But everyone would benefit from learning and understanding that principle and then putting it to work.

So you put that in principle to work naturally, you just don't say it. Like, you hate the quote of how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Hate it. And the reason why is because you're good at Pareto, you're really good at doing the really important shit and neglecting everything else. And sometimes you neglect important shit too.

Rarely, hopefully, is the goal less less often and less often is always the goal. But the reason I wanted to do the episode in the way that we're doing it, you can't skip levels is because you can't learn how to Pareto Pareto until you first understand to your point that there is a best use of time.

There is a way to create more leverage and then you have to understand what that is to start.

Well, this is the most important piece. There is a best use of time if you have a goal.

Okay, if my goal is to, this is the best metaphor, 10 pound and 10 week challenge, 25 days out, baby.

If your goal, so my client, Cole, shout out to your brother, is trying to gain weight.

So eating 3000 calories a day is a leverage. He parade, that's Pareto.

But if my goal is to lose weight, which it is, 3000 calories a day is a negative habit for me.

Every habit, everything you do and don't do, everything you say and don't say everything that you say, think, do, feel and believe is either constructive towards your goal or destructive towards your goal.

If my goal is to be liked, a lot of what I say is very destructive.

If my goal is to be successful and actually help other people be successful and to be respected, then a lot of what I say is constructive.

And so it all depends on the goal. That's why I had to get rid of the being liked thing because it was destroying my ability to achieve my goals.

I think my goal is to be the every man's personal development guy.

That's great. Every person. Every man's, you know what I mean?

Yeah, just because I know, like if I heard Pareto Pareto, Pareto, I would be like, yo, you need to fucking take it easy when yesterday.

No, just kidding.

When you first, that's fair. That's true. No, no, it's not.

I was hoping to get a little bit of a laugh. Tough crowd tonight.

The crowd is fucking stiff tonight. My goodness.

I know. I know. I know.

If you, if you started with that, when you first taught me Pareto principle, if you're like, have I know 20% gets you 80% but here, listen, listen, listen, listen.

Divide this, I can move the integer over, move the decimal.

There you go. 0.16. I would have been like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about because I don't know what my 20% is yet.

Yeah. So I often love you have to figure out what your goal is under each.

It is. I do understand now. It's fascinating. You and I are crossing paths. I get why success is so challenging.

I think one of the reasons it's so challenging is because nobody teaches the fundamentals.

No, no, sorry. That's wrong because Pareto principle is a fundamental.

Where did we teach that though? I don't know if we ever really taught that. I didn't learn that in school.

We didn't even do productivity course in school. It bothers me to my core.

I would say, where did you learn it? Because I learned it from it.

I learned it from there's a book called 80 20 personal development, personal development books.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There is no time. Oh, I don't want to say none.

But time management courses, productivity courses, they tend to talk about Pareto.

Now, they don't talk about Pareto in Pareto. That is very rare. Most people don't.

Steve Jobs was big on this. Like him, love him, hate him. That's not what I'm talking about.

He was like the best in the world at Pareto. That's why Apple only sells certain shit.

Yeah. Yeah.

They like they are very discerning with what they do less so now, you know, Apple TV and all this shit.

But back in the day when Apple was about to go bankrupt, Steve was like we're canning everything.

All the skews gone. We're just going to do these four things.

What is skew stand for?

Oh, dude. No.

Oh, cereal.

It's a product number for an internal for a company.

It'll be like something unit I'm guessing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Serial something unit.

I've always wondered.

Serial Kevin unit.

Nice.

I just think that most people start at a level.

Like I think they start teaching stuff beyond certain levels.

Yeah, because because I think this is what I think is happening.

And you did this to several of my clients that I've been coaching for many, many years.

It's been very clear now.

The person who is the student is afraid to look dumb.

The person who's the teacher is probably

bad at building a bridge.

Fair.

So if you, we'll use you and I because the listeners know us.

Nine years ago, you acted like you knew more than you did.

Definitely.

So how the fuck was I supposed to know that you didn't know Pareto?

I'm not, I think you did a great job.

No, no, back, I think you did a great job.

I just think today, if I was learning it, you would overwhelm the shit out of me with Pareto and Pareto.

Maybe.

Well, there was many times where I feel like I talked way over your head

because you acted smarter than you were.

For sure.

And I didn't understand how far behind you were in your knowledge.

And, and God, that's not so mean.

At the end of the day, like, I actually do this with my clients now.

I say, stop me when you don't understand.

And I go through, because I need to know where they're at with mathematics.

So I'll do, I'll say, okay.

Pre-Algebra, algebra one, algebra two, geometry, trigonometry,

pre-calc, calc one, calc two, integral calculus, linear equations, differential equations,

discrete mathematics.

And I'll just keep going.

And they'll be like, stop.

And it's like, okay, I need to know what of that you don't understand.

And here's the thing that people don't like about me.

And or don't like in general.

Like, if you don't know any of what I just said, you can't win at the level I can.

I remember these people at these companies know this.

I remember we were, I was in Vermont.

We, Terence Family has a cabin up there on the water.

It's beautiful.

And we had a team meeting.

And you sent over the map of mathematics.

And you're like, hey, I just, like, just let me know you said this to the team.

Like, let me know what you, what you don't understand.

No, no, you said let me know what you do understand, I think.

No, I said what you don't understand on this map.

And then everyone else said, I said, I should point to what you did.

I said, I said, honestly, everybody just point to what you do understand.

Because most of my self, especially not even included, especially, I know like,

even when you were saying that, it's like, dude, how far did I get in high school?

I don't know.

Brother, I'm a dream.

And they don't know.

How far does the average person go?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe geometry sad.

Trick?

I don't know.

I was playing Mario on my graphic calculator.

What was that?

What did I want?

What did I need?

I mean, I did too, right?

So it's like, I know, but you also passed the tests, probably.

For sure.

I was doing that at the edge.

Never got less than an A in any math course in my entire life.

I don't think I ever got any signal analysis.

It's not a math test engineering, but I have a engineering too.

But the point that we should make here is, please, please.

On one hand, I had no idea.

Like I didn't know that other people don't understand that.

Because I was, ever since I was a kid, I've always

saw and thought of numbers and all that stuff.

And Emilia has really helped me understand.

Like, she reads really fast, super fast.

She listens to audiobooks on like 4x.

And it's like, no.

No.

No.

I'm trying to do dishes and listen.

No.

It's like, but I do that with math.

You know, one of the most beneficial things ever

is I was a personal trainer who taught people who had never

squatted how to squat.

And I almost got fired because somebody came in, brand new client.

And I love this personally.

We got along really well.

And I put her through a, what I thought was extremely sustainable.

It was literally body weight.

It was push ups.

It was air squats.

It was, she called and had to miss her next session because she was so sore.

And I got my ass chewed out by the owners.

They're like, Kev, what the hell are you doing?

I was like, we just, it was just like body weight stuff.

Like, you better.

It's like, yeah, no.

That's fair.

Okay.

So I know we got to go here.

There's levels to everything.

And you cannot be a good guide or teacher or student if you don't know what level you're at.

But you don't, it's very hard to know what level you're at because people aren't honest about that.

And they don't really know is a good, you know what level you're at in math.

You don't even remember.

I know it's not high.

Okay.

What does that even mean?

And I also have a 10.

If 10 is, you know, an MIT student, where are you?

What's five?

The average person.

It's the thing.

You don't hang, you, I remember you said, I don't even know engineers.

So you've never even been aligned.

Yeah, but I know it's not that.

What's, what's, naturally, I ask what is average?

Because I'm closer average than I am to 10 probably.

I figure it depends where you live.

Right.

It depends where you live.

And this is something I learned in book club.

Staff showed up to you.

She's from Connecticut and she grew up in Connecticut.

We grew up in Massachusetts.

Dude, class rank was a big deal for us.

In Canada, people in book club were like, oh, class rank.

We didn't even think about it.

It's like, yo, that was like, we were hunger games style like to get to the top.

Me, Tara, you remember all the people like that?

Yeah, we were like going to kill each other to get to the top.

I mean, it was, I'm being playful obviously.

But like, it was, it was a bloodbath for sure.

And that's a Massachusetts thing.

Nobody gives a shit about that in other places.

It depends where, right?

I'm not saying no more.

Like, there's 195 countries.

Massachusetts is like education.

It matters.

It matters like deeply.

So it'll, an MCAS and all that shit.

Like SATs, you know, ACTs.

I remember I did my GMATs for my business to apply to business school.

Like, I don't even know.

You don't really know because you're not, you're not,

no one is honest or understands their own inadequacies

and or their own strengths.

Like, if you're a great at running, you kind of don't know

because you're comparing to Olympic athletes.

And if you're bad at running, you kind of don't know

because you're hanging out with a bunch of people that suck at running.

And even if you have a friend who's really good at running,

you're certainly not going to run with them, right?

So we're all in sort of a, you have to really take yourself out of an echo chamber

and then try your best to contemplate where you fit on every bell curve.

Well, I think if you want to be a good student,

you have to admit when you lose the plot for lack of better phrasing.

Like, when do you, when does it go away?

So how do you do that?

I know we got to go.

But like, you, you have to have a ton of courage to do that, don't you?

Because you don't want people to think less of you.

Yeah, I mean, you have to have a ton of courage, but you also have to understand

you're selling yourself short if you don't.

Like, yeah, your coach or mentor might like you, but they're not.

It's not going to matter.

You're not going to be successful.

They might like you, but you're not going to be successful

because you're not going to be able to do what they say.

If it's guilty, this is anybody more than you want perception.

For sure.

In that instance.

Yeah.

Cool. I'm glad we did this because I told Alan.

I said, I'm excited to do this because anytime I have like an experience,

I want to bring it to the podcast because I think those are the best episodes.

All right.

Cool. If you're looking for somebody who can help you with this, Alan is the guy.

Right.

I know we talked about how he would overwhelm me, but he's gotten way, way, way, way, way,

way infinitely better at building bridges.

Thank you.

You're very welcome, brother.

He is your guy.

As always, we love you.

We appreciate you.

If you are as committed as you say you are to getting to the next level,

make sure you tune in tomorrow because we'll be your every single day to help you get there.

Keep leveling up to reach your full potential.

Next level nation.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university.

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We mean it when we say family.

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Thank you again, and we will talk to you tomorrow.

Thank you.