Increasing Your Intensity Is the Cheat Code to Success
When you chase an obsession it breeds intensity.
Most people lack intensity.
They’re lukewarm about their lives. They’re too patient. They have 10 year timelines for goals that should take less than a year.
So they struggle to ever get any traction with the most basic goals, then they wonder why and get pissed off, while they overthink and procrastinate some more.
The biggest cheat code to success I accidentally figured out was to increase my intensity. Here’s how I did it.
A short story about the subtle power of intensity
Facebook bought Instagram a few years back for $1B.
That’s common knowledge. What’s uncommon about this story is how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg did it.
Kevin Systrom founded Instagram. He worked with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey at another startup. When Instagram gained traction, Jack tried to buy it from Kevin.
He offered $500M for it.
Given Kevin and Jack were friends it was the most obvious and easiest deal in history. The big sum of cash was intense. It was bold. It was the obvious right move.
Mark got word that Instagram might be sold. He texted Kevin and tried to get a meeting. Kevin thought it was a bad idea to meet because it would obviously piss Twitter off.
It’s now Easter. Mark insists on a meeting at his house on Good Friday, while Twitter employees are taking it easy and Jack is distracted. Mark’s at level 100 of intensity in the meeting.
He refuses to leave without a deal being done.
Mark offers to match the $500M. Kevin says no. Mark then doubles down and offers $1B. This was the most money ever offered for a mobile app at the time. It was record-breaking in every way and would obviously make headlines.
For a company with zero revenue and 20 employees that offer seemed stupid.
Kevin and Mark agree to stay together for the rest of the Easter weekend and try to write up a deal. Mark wakes people up from their holidays and gets lawyers to draw up a deal that would normally take a year, and do it over Easter weekend.
By the end of the weekend Instagram sold for $1B to Facebook. Twitter were shocked. An easy deal was taken from them because they lacked intensity. They got comfortable. They had no urgency.
Intensity is a differentiator in life. It makes impossible things happen, faster.
Entrepreneur Shane Puri said this on his podcast:
You don’t need more information or mentors, you need more intensity
When I look at my online journey it’s the same.
I don’t have an information advantage. I’ve never been the best writer. But I’ve written every day for 10 years with a level of intensity that’d rip most people’s faces off.
So the returns I got on my effort were 10x that of everyone else who tried to write online during this boom period.
Intensity is a decision.
But there are some factors that help you validate where to invest your intensity. First, you need the right goal to point your intensity at.
99% of people struggle with this. They have so many passions and ideas that they never decide to go all in on one. So they divide their intensity across 101 different projects and get zero traction.
When you chase an obsession it breeds intensity.I started with a passion for writing. Then it morphed into pure obsession, more hardcore than Arnold Schwarzenegger competing in bodybuilding championships during his prime.
I worked with a company called Stripe during my banking days. I got to meet both the founders, John and Patrick. One story stood out.
When they first started they would approach entrepreneurs 1-1 and ask them if they needed help collecting payments. If someone showed any interest at all, they would ask them to take their laptop out, then they’d install Stripe on their computer.
They didn’t wait. They didn’t send an email pitch. They forced their product into people’s computers one by one.
Intensity creates urgency.
Urgency helps destroy roadblocks and create momentum faster.
“The problem is you think you have time”
10 years ago I met a cancer patient named Peter.
I told him I felt lost. I’d walked away from my startup and no one wanted to hire me. I couldn’t even get a minimum wage job.
“What the freaking hell do I do, Peter?”
His response changed my life forever (RIP, mate).
“The problem is you think you have time.”
I asked him to explain. He told me when you’ve gone through cancer your perception of time changes. You realize a decade isn’t much time. 30 days feels like 30 seconds.
Why? Because he told me your time is running out. There’s an invisible countdown timer that’s now gone off. Death is imminent. So your level of intensity in life gets dialled right up.
A few years later I had a cancer scare myself. Peter’s words now made sense.
Stop thinking you have time. It’s either now or never. You may not make it to retirement. Many people plan to start later because they think their jobs will get less hectic later on. Or they’ll have more time in the future.
But the world is getting busier, not quieter.
The incentive of an employer is to keep overloading you with more work, not less. So why the heck would you think your career would get easier? It won’t.
The time you have is right now. The time you have is found before and after work, on the holidays, and during the weekend. You either brute force your obsession into your calendar or you die with regrets.
There’s no middle ground.
Final Thought
The person who has the most intensity wins.
Stop snowflaking around with passions, hobbies, interests, ‘someday’ goals, and future intentions. Dial up your intensity. Actually want your goal. Actually make decisions.
Once you have level 12 intensity there’s suddenly no competition. You’re in your own lane with the top 1% getting rewards most people dream of. It’s impossible to win big without intensity.
Tell me in the comments section below whether you believe in intensity and why.
P.S. I'm hosting an encore to last week's popular masterclass:
3 Lucrative Social Media Frameworks That Got Me 150M+ Impressions This Year ALONE
If you want to do anything in the online world, you need attention first.
That's what this class teaches: attention on demand.
I believe in intensity and I also believe in healthy breaks. Don’t buy into hustle culture. Execute ideas without putting them off. And when you rest, do something that makes you excited, optimistic and fuels you again to keep at it
Some of my days are filled with intensity like today. It was my morning run that charged me with positivity for the rest of the day. Other times, I need to boost my intensity to keep going. Nothing is free in life.