Review of Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule

Hi folks!

As promised, today's post will be a review of Grant Cardone's business (actually 'life') advice book The 10X Rule.

You might wonder why an author would read a book that's so much geared towards success in your business. That's a valid question. But let me just tell you: The 10X Rule isn't only valid for business. It can actually applied in every area of your life and work. It's one of those concepts that can be used to improve yourself in every possible way.

Let's get started on how.

The 10X Rule is actually quite a short book. I read it in two days after buying it. I bought it primarily because I was intrigued by the title. The 10X Rule and success strategies (sounds corny, yes)? I had to know what this was about.

And I found out quite quickly after the (somewhat annoying because I wanted to KNOW THE RULE!) introduction.

The 10X Rule in a nutshell is that with everything you do/plan/start you are supposed to plan 10 times as much work. This means that if you for example you plan to write one book per year, you're instead asked to plan 10. If you have it in mind to write ten short stories a year, then plan to write 100. If you plan to make 1.000.000 dollars/euros/monies with your company this year plan to make 10.000.000 instead.

This is the most important piece of information in this book. To plan 10 times as much as you initially intended. To put in 10 times as much effort as you believed would be required. To do 10 times more work when others are already relaxing in front of their PCs/TVs.

Why?

I think Cardone sums it up quite eloquently when he says: (paraphrased) 'I would rather fall short of a TOO BIG goal than too little'.

As well as: If you plan big your mind starts to think in different pathways. If you plan too little there's always the chance that you will a) put off the work (e.g. if you have a whole day spare and you tell yourself you'll write 1000 words... well there are always other things you could be doing!) or b) your mind simply won't commit fully to the work that needs to be done.

This made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I had to backtrack a bit to my own work and was then able through examination of my working style to determine that the 10X Rules is very accurate indeed. Take for examples all those failed drafts in that hidden folder on my PC. They failed because I had very little goals when I started writing them. There is one story called 'Leshen!' (working title obviously) that deals with a police officer's slightly paranormal case of a creature called leshen (Witcher 3 players will know that creepy lvl7 forest where the creepy lvl20 leshen jumps onto you out of nowhere) being sighted. As she tries to figure out what's going on things quickly get darker and darker... and then they just end because I had no idea what to do with the concept.

I thought Leshen! would be an easy book quickly written and edited. It wasn't. I thought it would top at 60k words max. It didn't. It's barely 40k words at this point (and probably won't get any longer). You could say that's because I did not plan it through (I admit I didn't). Or because the topic isn't really my thing (although I used to enjoy NCIS a lot on the TV I find crime novels boring). But there's more evidence of the 10X Rule in my life.

Leshen! isn't the only book wasting away in my hidden folder. There are plenty others. And do you know what they all have in common? They're unfinished. They topped at 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k words, and the just sizzled out, because most of the time I wasn't prepared to write as much as would have been required.

Yes, most of these books are also not really about topics I LOVE, but that only proves the point. I was not excited about the concept. I did not want to spend the 10 times time that was required to finish them. I had it in my mind to finish them quickly, rush, rush, rush, and write something else instead. This lead me to underestimate the amount of work necessary. I did not heed the 10X Rule.

If I had - perhaps I wouldn't have started them in the first place. Or perhaps I would have been able to get to 60k words (a perfect word count for a short crime novel) and finished Leshen! anyway. But I didn't. I didn't prepare to put in 10X as much work as I thought was needed. I wasn't able to reset my brain to the point where I could.

The same goes for diets. If your goal is to eat 1200 (the usual intake goal when trying to lose weight) calories, then set it to 900 (which is admittedly not 10 times lower but you can still see how the rule works in this case) or 1000. If you limit yourself to 900, 1200 will be much easier to achieve.

Don't set your sights too low. Set them too high. Create BIG GOALS to fall short of instead of small ones. That's basically all Cardone's book is about.

Of course, there are plenty more tips and tricks in the book, but I'm focusing on the most important part in this post. That being said, The 10X Rule is well worth the read. It's short, concise, and with Cardone's writing style you're not at risk of falling asleep either.

WriteBot thinks this is a good book if you're trying to be more productive!

Have a good evening/day!