The Power of Just One Leveraged Year
This article is for the owner, entrepreneur, or leader who wants leveraged growth next year. It doesn’t matter if your have an offer, you own/run a business, or you lead an organization.
What we are about to share with you has the potential to spark a 180 degree turnaround in your growth and impact in the next 365 days.
What if one year — just one, single year— held the power to transform the next ten?
This is supported by data, by the way. It’s not some cheap, motivational gimmick. Small hinges swing big doors, and in our world, aligned effort over a focused timeframe is the most underutilized wealth lever there is.
If you feel stuck, or like there’s a cap on your momentum, it’s likely that you are aiming at something that you actually can’t see. There’s no clarity around your targets. As a result, you’re about as likely to hit none of them as you are to hit ANY of them.
Let’s analyze the makings of a “10-fold impact” year for a second. Because if you can wrap your mind around a few simple concepts, and apply yourself fully to accomplishing CLEAR targets in the next 365 days, you can accomplish nearly anything.
Mindset Before Metrics
The power of a concentrated, well-designed year is exponential — and (to some extent at least) hackable. More on that idea here if you’re interested.
But, before we design the year, we must clarify the values.
Power is pretty much never built by skipping straight to outputs, right? We want to first anchor identity to intention. Consider these some ground rules.
NUMBER ONE – Write your goals down.
Not in an app. Not in your head. On paper.
Why does this matter? Because of science. Your brain retains up to 42% more when you physically write. Since the body is going to extra effort to catalogue the information, your subconscious elevates its relative value and gives it priority.
The work ahead of you is difficult, and having those goals written down allows them to serve as anchors for you when things get turbulent. As magnificent as your brain is, it will forget things in the heat of battle.
NUMBER TWO – And this is critical: if your unconscious doesn’t believe you deserve what you’re building, it will quietly sabotage you.
It’s actually attempting to protect you. Here’s why.
Regardless of what some visualization gurus might tell you, we don’t get things simply by wanting them. That’s not to say that visualization, rehearsal and “theater of the mind” (a la Maxwell Maltz and Psycho-Cybernetics) practices have no value. On the contrary, they are extremely important for high performers.
But here’s the real key you need to lock into – You will only rise to the level of what you believe you’re allowed to have. This is where alignment comes into play. Living in complete alignment with your values increases belief from your subconscious. (If you’re struggling with this part, check out this article on belief, alignment and trust.)
Now let’s get into the nitty gritty.
Big Goals Create Flow
First thing to tackle when setting up a year of exponential impact is this – your goals should be BIG and uncomfortable.
Creativity is unlocked through a mixture of challenge and deficit. Your brain is complex and metabolically expensive. If you waste its functions on solving “easy” problems, it will get bored and eventually atrophy.
The highest-performing teams in the world consistently operate with slightly more to do than actual time to do it. Why? Because the pressure and tension of constraint produces creativity and innovation,.
You’ve probably heard of “SMART” goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound). This the flaw in that system – it’s designed to protect your ego, but it doesn’t sharpen your edge.
Want flow? Set goals that require a new level of thinking. Ones that make the current version of you just slightly uncomfortable.
There’s a famous story that renowned motivational speaker and teacher Jim Rohn used to tell his audiences. He was young, down-on-his-luck and struggling when he met his mentor, Earl Shoaff. One of the first things Shoaff had him do was write down his goals, but he asked him to add one very specific goal to his list: “Become a millionaire.”
At this point, Rohn barely had enough money to eat and pay his bills. So he asked Shoaff why he would bother adding such a lofty goal. His answer was simple.
“Because of the man it will require you to become in order to achieve it.”
Big goals that challenge your current mode of thinking and REQUIRE you to approach your problems differently. This is the way.
For a deeper look at how this works structurally, revisit Fractals and Goal Setting.
Refine Using Two Levers: Size & Time
We just talked about setting big, hairy, audacious goals. The next step is refinement and prioritization.
Every goal is manipulated by two levers: the size of the target and the time allocated to reach it.
- Too big, too soon? You get overwhelmed.
- Too small, too slow? You get bored.
Strike a balance. Take the biggest goals on your list and break them up into phases, each with their own timelines. Phase 1 might be the next 30-60 days. Phase 2 might be 120 days, etc. Split it into chunks that feel manageable. Then tackle accordingly.
Use time and size as modulation knobs that allow you to find the sweet spot between productivity and overwhelm. But keep your values in mind as you do so.
Pro tip: Any goal that forces you to violate your values is already too expensive.
Create Flow: Where Progress Feels Like Play
Okay, so we have our big goals, we have our size and time knobs dialed in so that we’re not leaning too far in the direction of boredom or overwhelm.
The next item is to create FLOW.
Flow is the most powerful state of productivity available to you — and it’s free.
But it’s not automatic.
To enter flow, you need three things:
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A clear goal that slightly outpaces your skills
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Complete focus on a singular task
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Intrinsic desire to achieve it
That last one is a bit tricky. Note, we said intrinsic – meaning you can’t hack it with external motivation. You won’t slip into flow state if you don’t deeply care whether or not you achieve the goal. If you’re having trouble with this one, zoom out and go UP a level. Who benefits from you achieving this goal? Who suffers if you do not achieve this goal? What are the second, third, and fourth order consequences of achieving/not achieving this?
Allow the answers to those questions to fill you up and fuel you. Then dive back into it.
When you’re in flow, work becomes self-reinforcing. You lose track of time. You forget to doubt yourself. You just move. You want it, so you create it.
The world calls that mystical. Neuroscience calls it flow psychology. We just call it business as it should be.
Vision Mapping: Beyond Linear Growth
You don’t build a 10x year by dividing your 10-year vision by ten.
That’s not how exponential growth works.
The right year — fully aligned, fully leveraged — can catapult you into an entirely new dimension of capacity. It’s not linear. It’s compounding. And it only works when you stop spreading your energy across 19 priorities.
Pick one. Maybe two. Go deep. Everything else is noise.
This year, be intentional about your levers. Stretch your goals beyond what feels safe. Write them down. Install flow. Accept that you’re worthy of what you desire.
The work is worth it. And you’re worth the work.
Get a Full Training on This With Quantum Growth Track
This article was inspired (in part) by Week 2 of the Quantum Growth Track self-paced challenge. This was designed to compress a year’s worth of growth into 4 weeks of study and application. We provide the frameworks, the workbook, and weekly recordings that re-train your mind to shoot for 10X goals, rather than settling for “holding the line” as a leader. Level up with us!
