You Have to Give up Things You Love
You have a finite amount of energy each day, so the real work is not cutting out the people and things you dislike but giving up some of the things you genuinely love in order to invest that energy in what matters most.
Dandapani makes clear he works sixteen hour days for stretches of a year running his own business, and lays out his four step process: purpose, focus, simplify, sacrifice. He explains that energy is a finite daily resource that should be evaluated like money before it is spent, and that the hardest part of the process is giving up things he loves, like gardening, movies and tennis, so the higher priorities get what they need.
What this talk covers
- He does not want people to assume that because he is a former monk and a priest his days are all routine, because he sometimes works sixteen hours a day for a whole year to keep his business alive.
- His four step process is purpose, focus, simplify, sacrifice: purpose defines priorities, you focus on those priorities, simplify your life down to them, and sacrifice everything else.
- Every night he is exhausted, which tells him his energy is finite, so each day he has to choose consciously where that energy goes.
- Out of gardening, carpentry, tennis, soccer, beach walks and photography, he picks two or three to do consistently each week, and the rest happen rarely or not at all, because every yes to one person is a no to someone else.
- He tells entrepreneurs to treat energy the way they treat money: nobody hands over fifty thousand dollars without asking questions, yet people give away their energy to a coffee meeting without evaluating whether it will be invested or squandered, and in a hard business year he watches fewer movies and prunes the garden less so the higher priorities get what they need.
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.Dandapani
Questions
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Purpose, focus, simplify, sacrifice. Your purpose defines your priorities, you focus on those priorities, you simplify your life down to them, and then you sacrifice everything else.
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Because it is easy to give up people and things you do not like. The difficulty is giving up what you love. He loves gardening, carpentry, tennis, photography and movies, and cannot do all of them, so some get dropped or reduced.
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Treat energy the way you treat money. You would ask questions before investing fifty thousand dollars in someone's business, but most people say yes to coffee without evaluating anything. If you give ten percent of your daily energy to someone, you want to know they will invest it rather than squander it.
Transcript
1,200 words · 6:06
I want to make it clear to your entire audience that when they look at me as a former monk and a priest dressed like this, that I don't want them to think that I don't work sometimes 16 hours a day. I do.
And sometimes I go a whole year working 16 hours a day because I have my own business. And you know, sometimes it's doing great. And sometimes it's doing really crappy. And I just have to throw everything at it to make it work and to survive.
Right. And the sacrifice of spending time to family and personal health and doing everything else. So I think sometimes people can look at this picture and go like, you know, he wakes up and he does everything as routine. That's not the case at all. For me, I have a four step process of
purpose, focus, simplify, sacrifice. You know, purpose defines priorities. That's what we focus on. We simplify our life to those priorities, and then we sacrifice everything else. And sometimes Sometimes the things we need to give up are things that we also love doing because for me it is very clear to me I have a finite amount of energy each day because every night
I get exhausted, which means I've spent all my energy. Then if I rest well and I build my energy back up, the next day I have to choose clearly where I'm spending that energy. Now I love to garden.
I've created these beautiful gardens. I also like carpentry. I love playing tennis, you know, love playing soccer, love walking on the beach. I love doing this, this, this, this, and this.
Right. But I love photography. I can't do it all. So sometimes I have to give up the things I love.
There are also people in my life that I love spending time with. But every time I say yes to a call or spending time with this person, I'm saying no to somebody else. So, you know, when my daughter was born almost seven years ago, I simplified even my friend's
circle and how many people I even spent time with. Because there's just not enough time and energy to spread it across many things. And the more things and more people we add to our life, the less everyone gets. So the perspective I take is, okay, between gardening, carpentry, playing tennis, walking
on the beach, photography, what is the most important ones? I picked two or three and those are the things that I do consistently every week. And then maybe once every six months, I might go play tennis with my friend. Because, you know, I enjoy it, but it's not enough that I want to do it every week.
But I love going out in the garden. I love pruning trees, you know. So you're not saying no to stuff forever, but you're, but you're, but you're doing that balance of like, Hey, in a perfect world, I would, I would
golf every morning and I would play tennis every afternoon, but then I wouldn't be able to do any of the stuff that functions in life or takes care of the family. So you described it as purpose one, focus two, simplify, and then sacrifice. Exactly.
And that sacrifice part is probably, well, 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. Yeah. You need to figure out. So that's where that's,
that's why at the beginning you're finding your purpose. Like 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 is a, 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. Uh, 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? 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 you give me a 50 grand without asking any questions?
You wouldn't. You'd want to know details before you invest it 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 going to spend that energy?
Are they going to waste it? Are they going to invest it? So for me, I have a hundred percent of energy each day. If I get 10% of that energy to Joe,
I wanna know that Joe is 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 this year has been a challenging year for business.
Right? So I stopped 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 makes sense.