One Question to Change Your New Year
Ask where you are going to invest your finite energy today, and evaluate every request for it as carefully as you would evaluate a request for fifty thousand dollars.
Dandapani gives entrepreneurs one frame: treat energy the same way you treat money. You would ask questions before investing fifty thousand dollars in someone's business, yet you agree to coffee without evaluating whether that person will invest or squander your energy. He walks through the sequence of purpose, focus, simplify and sacrifice, and says sacrifice is the hardest part.
What this talk covers
- You would not give someone fifty thousand dollars without asking questions, because money is finite, yet we say yes to coffee without ever evaluating whether that person deserves our energy.
- He treats each day as 100 percent of his energy, so if 10 percent goes to someone he wants to know it will not be squandered, or that share is better invested in the people and things that truly matter.
- Whatever we invest our energy in starts to grow, including the negative, so putting energy into a negative relationship only makes it more negative.
- The sequence is purpose first, then focus, then simplify, then sacrifice.
- Sacrifice is the most challenging part, because it is easy to give up what you do not like and hard to give up what you love; during a difficult business year he gardens less and watches fewer movies to put that energy into higher priorities.
We have a finite amount of energy, yet we never evaluate if that person's deserving of that energy.Dandapani
Questions
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Treat energy the way you treat money. Before giving someone your energy, ask what they are going to do with it and whether they will invest it or waste it. If they will squander it, that share is better invested in the people and things that matter.
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Sacrifice. It is easy to sacrifice people and things you do not like. Giving up things you genuinely enjoy so that the energy can go to higher priorities is much harder.
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Purpose, then focus, then simplify, then sacrifice. Purpose is what you are here to do, and the rest is deciding what to say no to today so you can get there.
Transcript
655 words · 2:57
Aaron, the phrase I always say to entrepreneurs is treat energy the same way you treat money. If I came up to you, Aaron, and I said to you, hey, Aaron, I'm starting a new business, if you invested 50 grand into it, you know, that would really be helpful. Would you give me 50 grand without asking any questions? You wouldn't. You'd want to know details before you invested
financially because no matter how wealthy a person is, they have a finite amount of money, right? Fair enough. Yeah. But why is it when someone comes up to us and say, hey, do you want to grab coffee? We say, oh yeah, I can't do today, but tomorrow I'm free.
We have a finite amount of energy, yet we never evaluate if that person's deserving of that energy. How are they gonna spend that energy?
Are they gonna waste it? Are they gonna invest it? So for me, I have 100% of energy each day. If I get 10% of that energy to Joe,
I wanna know that Joe's not gonna squander it. If he's gonna squander it, then I'd rather take that 10% and invest it into the people and things that truly matter to us.
So for me, it's about the management of a finite resource and clearly reallocating it and consciously investing it. Take every principle you know about money
and use it towards energy because at the end of the day, whatever we invest our energy in starts to grow. We put energy into something negative, it will grow. Find a negative relationship you have in your life
and pull energy into it. It'll just become more negative. So I know my energy is finite. Where am I going to invest it in?
And that sacrifice part, Aaron, It's easy to sacrifice people we don't like, things we don't like. So much harder to do it with the things that we like and love. I love watching movies, but you know, this year has been a
challenging year for business. Right. So I start watching movies because I need to put more time at work. So I have to reallocate my time, reallocate my energy and give up
the things that I may enjoy. I prune less. I go out in the garden less. I watch less movies.
I do less things of the things that I love because I want to focus in more on the things that are higher in priority that make sense. Do you describe it as purpose one, focus two, simplify and then sacrifice? Exactly.
And that sacrifice part is probably, you know, the, well, that's the challenging part. That's the most challenging part of all of it, right? That's the people, it's like, Hey, if you want to accomplish your dreams and become the person you want, you need to figure out.
So that's where, that's, that's why at the beginning you're finding your purpose. what is your purpose on this earth? What are you here to do? And if it truly is your purpose, then like you want to get there. And so you have to try to figure it out and then focus on, on like, what does that mean today? What do I need to start saying no to? There could be
activities that sometimes are fun, but you realize like the, you know, staying out late and partying until four in the morning, I think for people's, uh, it can be a lot of fun, but then their next day is ruined. And so it's like starting to realize like, okay, so that's the thing that, that the there's too much of a cost there's too much of a challenge on my energy i like thinking
about your day as you have a finite amount of energy in your day so what are you going to spend your energy on