Imagine two selves: one is the 50-year-old career man, making good money, but working just as hard as he did when he was 30; the second, also a 50-year-old career man, but work is easy for him, he understands exactly what to get done and how to do it. And when he’s not working on it, he can completely relax. What is the core difference? How can we make life easier as we go? Tiago Forte says leverage.

Your leverage is directly proportional to the percentage of your thinking that takes place outside your brain - Tiago Forte

The first man still has to do all the thinking as if he’s starting from scratch every time. He sits down, he needs to figure out what to work on, he needs to dig around for information on that, then he needs to create something from scratch. While the second man already has every he needs, he just sits down and executes.

There are all kinds of leverage. Money is leverage. The more money you have, the less thinking you do about making money, thus the more thinking you can do on more important matters. A network of friends or colleagues is leverage. Who can you call on for feedback? Who can you get advice from or support from? This is all thinking that happens outside yourself. Or maybe you’re looking for a job. With the right leverage, this is an effortless process, because you already have the network that can get your name out. Then, the type of leverage that Tiago stresses is information leverage. It’s the difference between sitting down with a blank page and sitting down and already written down a bunch of collected ideas and information. The later the thinking has previously been done. All you have to do is string the pieces together.

Just imagine how easy life could become if you start today, a habit to build leverage in your life.