How To Use 10X Principles For Massive Success In Your Writing
These business principles can increase your writing output
Grant Cardone coined the 10X principles after publishing his massively successful book “The 10X Rule”. 10X became a signature phrase many marketers and business people used over the last decade after Grant started making noise across the world.
Grant’s principles provide insight for anyone in business or even writers to reach their goal. After reading the “10X Rule”, you may have to increase your current goals 10 times. Usually, we have goals but we don’t challenge ourselves to reach them. Other times the goals are not high enough and we can accomplish them in less than a year.
I started reading Grant’s book a few years ago and wanted to reread the 10X Rule recently. He outlined several tips that could help change your future as a writer.
Who is Grant Cardone?
After the last financial crash in 2008, Grant Cardone wrote and published “Selling the Secret to Success” over a weekend. He admits there were some grammatical errors but the book sold and did well. The crash hurt a lot of people and Grant wanted to share his thoughts and recreate himself during these dismal times.
Grant went on to publish several more books and one became a bestseller. His book was “If You’re Not First, You’re Last” was on the New York Times Best Sellers list in 2010.
Grant was a car salesman as he started to master the art of selling. He currently sells a course based on the 10X principles, he is a speaker and a real estate investor with millions in assets.
As an expert contributor on CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Huffington Post, and Entrepreneur, Grant is frequently found on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media channels. Grant maximizes his time marketing and running his business while still spending time with his wife and two daughters. His family is seen in some of Grant’s events and social media posts.
Four degrees of action you can use a writer
Grant outlines the very basic principles into four areas. As a writer, you can see what stage you are currently in and how to take yourself to the next level.
- Do Nothing
- Retreat
- Take normal levels of action
- Take massive action
Taking concepts from Grant’s book, this is how to apply it to your writing. If you desire to become a top writer, you may get some ideas on what you need to do.
One of the top if not top writers on Medium, Tim Demming, probably read the 10X Rule. I would imagine he uses this concept to be a top writer as you see two or three of his articles every day.
The first degree of action
People who do nothing in their career, relationships, or whatever they want have probably given up on their dreams and are now willing to accept pretty much whatever comes their way.
“Doing nothing” is exactly as it sounds. People who do nothing have given up on their dreams, career, or relationships and accept whatever comes their way.
Even though you think this doesn’t require any action, in fact, this actually does. To not do anything, requires action not to do anything. You have to use some energy to avoid taking any action or effort.
As a writer, you may have big dreams but when your alarm goes off in the morning, you do nothing. You snooze the alarm a few times and then you’re behind when you should be up writing your first article.
You may give excuses why you’re not a top writer when you spend your free time surfing the internet instead of writing. This comes back to how you spend your time. You may think you’re writing but are you? Maybe you complain to your friends or online about how the system is rigged against you and that’s why you’re not successful.
The second degree of action
He or she has experienced results that were not fruitful (or that he or she did not perceive as fruitful) and has therefore decided to avoid taking further actions that might prompt this to occur again.
The next action is about retreaters, those who take actions in reverse. This is probably to avoid negative experiences that you imagine will result because you took action. You may have received some results that were not what you expected. Maybe you thought you wrote your best article, but the feedback was not great or the publisher rejected it. Then you decide to avoid rewriting the article or resubmitting the work.
You do this to avoid more rejection or failure. This action also requires effort and work. Mentally you tell yourself that you’re better off not writing or even writing less.
Maybe someone left you a negative comment about your writing and you take it too seriously. You let their words affect you as well as you’re writing and that could spell trouble for you.
Other ideas may cause you to listen to unsuccessful writers and suddenly believe their idea is true.
- They may say X publication doesn’t like new writers.
- You’ll never be a top writer because there are plenty of other top writers.
Those who retreat spend a lot of time justifying why they aren’t going to succeed as a writer. They have this idea ingrained in their head. Others try to help them, but they won’t change their mind. Their mind is already made up.
You can give these writers all of your effort to help but they are stuck in their ways.
Arguing with them will not change their mind no matter how many reasons you give them.
If you run into this phase as a writer, you’ll expend energy. Why not switch the energy and use it effectively to write more?
The third degree of action
This is the group that appears on the surface to be taking the necessary amounts of action and to be “normal”.
The third level of action is fine for many people who want to be average. This is the majority of people in the world. You can compare this group to the middle class or someone who is an average student in school.
Grant believes this is the most dangerous group because it is considered acceptable. People in this group do enough to get by in life. They have an average life, marriage, or career. Occasionally people will generate an exceptional quality but they will never create things of exceptional quantities. As long as their work is average, they won’t rock the boat and keep everyone content.
As a writer, many people fall into this category. There are many average writers. They may make a couple of dollars every month. Writers may write one to three articles a week and they’re content.
If you want to be an average writer, then great. Nothing is wrong with that. No one is forcing you to write more. Some writers are content to write their poems or articles every week.
Grant gives a few examples you should understand. Do you go out to eat for an average meal? Do you buy an average product from the store? Do you watch average movies?
Taking normal actions can be dangerous. As a writer, maybe you’re limiting yourself. Could you find time in your schedule to write more?
The fourth degree
Until adults started telling me otherwise, I didn’t know anything else other than massive action. Even the most basic elements of the universe in which we live support massive amounts of action.
We all have possessed this degree at one time or another. As children, they go all out and have the energy that many of us wish we had. Children are in constant action until they do something wrong. Many times we tell our children to slow down, take your time, don’t be in a rush. Have you done that with your children?
The fourth degree is taking massive action. You direct your energy to going all out and giving your best effort.
As a writer, you may place a lot of time to your day job, family commitments, watching Netflix, or television shows. What if you took this time and redirected it to writing more? Could you take the 30 minus to an hour on these other activities and switch it to writing? That may be a possibility.
Your way ahead
With a few more ideas, you could spend this time to market your work, research for your next article, or read the work of other writers. Each one of these could help as you use your energy to you write more.
These tips from businessman Grant Cardone may give you some ideas to consider on your journey as a writer. Life throws you in different directions, but it comes down to maximizing your time. Get the most out of your 24 hours seven days a week.
Where can you find more time in your schedule to write more?
Tom Handy is a top Writing, Finance, Investment, and Bitcoin writer on Medium, and the father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. You can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1.