Levels - Why Thinking In Levels Is The Secret To Success

How Levels impact your life vs the time you need to spend on them

TLDR Summary

Billionaires and successful CEOs spend the majority of their time focusing on high-level activities such as goals and strategies, leaving the tactics and actions to be implemented by their employees. Understanding and leveraging the concept of "levels" can significantly improve your chances of achieving your goals, whether in business or personal life. By focusing not only on daily actions but also on higher-level planning (goals, strategies, and tactics), you can ensure that your efforts are aligned and impactful.

1. What are Levels?

Levels is a concept that describes the level you are working on. It could be for your business or your life. The top level are your goals. They give you direction and should shape the efforts of all of the levels below. I say should because they don’t always do that, but more on that later. The main levels are:

1. Goals: Your ultimate aims, providing direction.
2. Strategies: Long-term plans to achieve your goals.
3. Tactics: Short-term plans focused on execution.
4. Actions: Daily tasks that implement your tactics and strategies.

The best way to get where you want to go in life is to follow a top-down approach and start by defining your goals. It does not matter if you’re the fastest person on the planet. If you move in the wrong direction, you will never reach your goal. While, even if you’re moving slowly, as long as you’re going in the right direction, you will eventually get there.

Example

• Goals: Build my personal brand to reach 1 million followers
• Strategies: Create valuable content through articles and videos.
• Tactics: Publish two articles weekly on a blog and promote them on social media.
• Actions: Writing the article and publishing it on X.

2. Why are Levels important?

Importance of Higher Levels: It is very easy for us to spend 99% of our time on the action level, while weeks, months, and years fly by. But if you want to achieve extraordinary results in your life and become a billionaire you need to develop the habit of spending more time working on the higher levels. Because they have a much higher leverage and impact on your ability to reach your goals. (More on leverage in a separate article).

Example: Consider Bryan, an employee with a goal of getting rich and a strategy of climbing the corporate ladder. By working hard every day (action level), Bryan might see moderate success and gradual salary increases. However, if Bryan also pursued job changes to increase his salary and position (tactics level), he could achieve greater financial gains over time.

Personal Experience: Similarly, entrepreneurs like myself must transition from doing everything themselves to focusing on growth-oriented strategies. In one of my businesses, my co-founders and I did customer support ourselves for three years. This was valuable for learning, but to grow, we needed to hire support staff and focus on setting goals, strategies, and tactics.

3. How

The levels mentioned under the “What” section are main levels. However, it’s also possible to break these down further. When performing an action such as writing this article, I often find myself spending way too much time on a sub-action. Such as writing this very long why section with multiple examples. When I probably could have made my point in a single section. Before moving on to the how section. However, it does illustrate my point. It probably took me 45-60 min to write this section. Which is only a sub part of an action. And this article is unlikely in itself to singlehandedly fuel me to success. To improve my results, I’d have been better off spending 60 min focusing on distributing this article or following a different tactic, such as contacting potential partners on X, that can help me get more readers.

The Main Levels

Goals

Set Clear Goals: Goals provide direction. To ensure that the actions you are taking are moving you in the right direction, so that over time you get closer to your goals. Use frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to define and track your progress.

Strategies

Develop High-Level Plans: Strategies are long-term plans that outline the steps needed to reach your goals.

Tactics

Create Short-Term Plans: Tactics are actionable plans detailing the specific actions required to execute your strategy.

Actions

Perform Daily Tasks: Actions are performed to execute your strategy and tactics in order to achieve your goals. These can be executed by you or delegated to someone else. Make sure you are spending your time on high-value actions that move you closer to your goals. Repetitive tasks should be eliminated, automated or delegated.

Key Principles

1. Leverage and Impact: Higher levels provide more leverage and impact on the lower levels.
   • This is why it is so important to spend sufficient time in getting the higher levels right. Remember, no matter how many actions you take, if you are moving in the wrong direction, you will never reach your goals.
2. Velocity: Ensure you're moving quickly, but in the right direction.
   • Velocity is a term from physics and essentially means your speed moving in a particular direction.
3. Acceptable Progress: Regularly evaluate if you're progressing towards your goals at an acceptable rate.
   • To paraphrase Ray Dalio, you should not only measure whether you’re moving in the right direction, but if you’re doing so at an acceptable rate. If not, one needs to make changes.

Best Practices

1. Set Clear Goals: Without clear goals, you can't effectively strategize or execute.
   • If you don’t have clear goals, you won’t know the best strategy to reach your goals. If you don’t have a clear strategy, you won’t know the best tactics and actions to take to make progress towards your goal.
2. Determine Strategy, Tactics, and Actions: Plan your approach to achieve your goals.
3. Allocate Time Wisely: Decide how much time to spend on each level.
4. Stay Aware of Your Current Level: Recognize when you're stuck on low-impact tasks.
   • Question: How can I finish what I’m doing fast and return to the appropriate level?
5. Iterative Process: Continuously refine your goals, strategies, and actions based on feedback and progress.
6. Regular Reviews: Periodically assess your progress and make necessary adjustments.
   • Ask yourself if you are moving towards your goals at an acceptable rate. If not, ask yourself which parts of your goals, strategy, tactics, and actions you need to change.

Key Takeaways

1. Prioritize Higher Levels: Spend more time on goals, strategies, and tactics for greater impact.
2. Clear Goals: Essential for effective planning and execution.
3. Strategic Time Management: Allocate time to high-leverage activities.
4. Iterative Refinement: Continuously improve your approach based on results.
5. Regular Assessment: Ensure you are on track and adjust as needed.

By understanding and applying the concept of levels, you can enhance your ability to achieve significant results in both your personal and professional life. The most important part is knowing which level you are on. And that it is a conscious decision that you are spending time on that level , because it is what is going to bring you the best results. If not, you should change your focus to a higher level.