How to Achieve Your Goals—The 10/10 Rule

In this episode of Personal Mastery,  Jerry Henderson explores why only 8% of people achieve their goals. He also introduces the "10-10 Rule," a principle that involves dedicating level 10 effort to tasks that have the potential to yield level 10 results. 

Jerry shares how high achievers like Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Tim Ferriss, and Serena Williams exemplify this rule by focusing intensely on high-impact activities and eliminating low-return tasks. 

He also provides a step-by-step guide to applying the 10-10 Rule in your own life to enhance productivity and achieve meaningful goals.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, burned out, or like you’re working hard without getting ahead, this episode will show you the one mindset shift and strategy that the top 8% of achievers use to build sustainable success.

Key Takeaways

• The 10-10 Rule: Allocate maximum effort only to tasks that promise maximum returns.
• Focus Over Busyness: High achievers prioritize impactful activities over being merely busy.
• Cognitive Load Theory: Our brains have limited capacity; overloading with low-impact tasks leads to burnout .
• Goal Dilution Effect: Pursuing too many goals simultaneously can weaken the effectiveness of each .
• Strategic No: Saying no to low-return tasks creates space for high-impact work. 

Chapters:

00:00 Intro – Why 92% of people fail to achieve their goals
01:02 The one habit that shows up in the top 8%
02:36 Buffett, Jobs, and the power of ruthless focus
03:32 The dopamine trap and the illusion of busyness
05:07 Cognitive Load Theory and why your brain is overwhelmed
06:33 Giving level 10 effort to level 3 returns
07:35 Burnout, misaligned effort, and the cost of doing too much
08:08 The Pareto Principle and how to use it with the 10-10 Rule
09:06 Learning to say no: Buffett, Jobs, Oprah, and the mindset shift
13:05 How Tim Ferriss, Serena Williams, and top performers guard their energy
13:57 What all top achievers understand about focus and results
15:28 The 4-step framework for applying the 10-10 Rule
21:54 Bonus Tip: Using the 10-10 Rule to evaluate your relationships

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Jerry

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Transcript

Jerry Henderson: 0:00

92% of people will never achieve their goals. That's not a motivational quote, it's a real stat, and I wanted to know what makes the 8% of people who do achieve their goals different. So I spent months studying them and I found one thing, one habit that showed up every single time, and today, in this episode, I'm going to share exactly what that habit is. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Personal Mastery. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and if you're ready to create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Let's get started Now if you're new here. I'm Jerry. I'm trained in psychology and human behavior at Harvard University and I'm the creator of the Personal Mastery Framework, and every week, I share science-based tools to help people build a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

Jerry Henderson: 1:02

Now, one thing I've always believed is that success isn't just about talent and it's not just about working harder. It's about working smarter. And when I really started looking into what separates the top 8% achievers from everybody else, I kept seeing the same pattern. It's not simply about doing more and more. It's about focusing all of your effort on what actually moves the needle, and I call what I found the 10-10 rule, and today I'm going to show you how to apply it in your own life and what the research shows us on this and there's actually an article on this in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. It clearly shows us that only 8% of people follow through on their goals after a full year, let alone over the long haul. So what do the 8% do differently than the 94%? What does the research show us? And then even a level above that, what do people like Warren Buffett, oprah Winfrey, steve Jobs, serena Williams what do they do differently? So, for example, why did Warren Buffett reportedly advise his pilot to write down his top 25 goals and then to focus only on the top five and intentionally and purposefully ignore the other 20? And why did Steve Jobs, when he returned to Apple, why did he decide to cut the product line from 350 products down to just 10?, which was a key decision that helped completely turn the company around and is a big part of why Apple is what Apple is today.

Jerry Henderson: 2:36

What each one of these individuals were doing, and what the top 8% of people do who actually achieve their goals, is they were intentionally choosing to practice what I call, once again, the 10-10 rule, and this is one of the key things that I found that high performers, high achievers, do intentionally and repeatedly. They eliminate things that don't have the potential to bring the highest return. They narrow their focus, and this is what many people miss. This is what the 92% of people miss. They set a lot of goals and they get really busy and they confuse busyness with progress. I mean, we've all been there, right? Because this is our kind of default mode that we go into. This is our kind of default mode that we go into, and it takes discipline and it takes focus to narrow ourselves down and to not confuse busyness with progress.

Jerry Henderson: 3:32

And this is really a big part of how our brain is wired. We feel productive when we check boxes, but if those tasks aren't connected to high leverage outcomes, they're simply distractions in disguise, and what is the result? Exhaustion, burnout, all of it without any real progress to the life that we actually want to create. Instead of creating and living that life, we get trapped in this dopamine cycle. You see, our brain gets dopamine hits from completing these easy tasks, but what separates the 8% that I researched is that they've learned to delay gratification. They resist that natural urge to just feel like they're being productive and they actually focus in on the things that create exponential returns. And this intentional focus is leveraging what is known as the cognitive load theory, and the core idea behind cognitive load is the concept that the brain has limited bandwidth for processing and making decisions, and people who achieve great things with their life they understand this and they haven't fragmented themselves to a hundred different things and they don't get trapped in the illusion of busyness equaling progress. And here's the important thing to understand about this is that when you give high effort to low return goals, you're depleting your mental bandwidth that could be going to strategic, meaningful action that actually moves the needle.

Jerry Henderson: 5:07

So how do we get out of that trap, out of that loop, and what is the 10-10 rule? Well, it's very simple Only give level 10 effort to things that have the potential to give you a level 10 result or return. Because what's happening for most people is they're giving all of this effort to all of these different things, and sometimes they're giving a level 10 effort to something that only can produce a level three return and they find themselves wondering why am I not making progress? Why am I not being successful? Well, you've got so many things that you're doing that you don't actually have capacity to give level 10 effort to all of those things.

Jerry Henderson: 5:49

So what happens is you give a level six here, a level seven here, and then all of a sudden, you start to feel frustrated and you don't feel like you're productive. You're spinning your wheels and then you'll start giving a level 10 effort to things that only have a level three return because it feels easier. You get this false sense of payoff. That's why you might spend hours cleaning out the closet to avoid some of the harder work that you feel like you need to do, where you get lost in tweaking the website to make it just right, or you're diving into that inbox and you're trying to clear it out. So you have this sense of satisfaction of progress. But the reality is those things are only going to give us a level three return, and when we're giving a level 10 effort to those things, it's no wonder that we're not making progress.

Jerry Henderson: 6:33

And this is exactly what starts to separate the people who are in that 8%, because what they have realized is that they need to give a level 10 effort to the things that have the potential to give them a level 10 result. And that's also how you build sustainable success for the long haul. Right? Because if we're out here giving all of this effort to different things and we're not seeing results, we start to burn out. Because burnout isn't about the amount of work we're doing always right, there's not a direct correlation to that. Always it's about the way that we're doing the work, the energy that we're putting towards the work. And so if we're doing all of this busy work and we have all this activity and we're not getting any rewards from it because we're not seeing a lot of progress happen, we start to get frustrated, we start to get disheartened, we start to lose hope and then we're on the path towards burnout.

Jerry Henderson: 7:35

And what the 8% have done is that they've understood that it's not just about working harder, but it's about choosing wisely where your best effort goes, because, remember, your brain is built for focus, not multitasking. Multitasking is an illusion. And what the 10-10 rule does is it helps you work with your biology, not against it. And what the 10-10 rule also does is it helps you leverage the Pareto principle. What is that? What's the principle that you've probably heard of that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

Jerry Henderson: 8:08

One of the challenge for many people is trying to figure out where do they need to put the 20% of their effort, and this 10-10 rule can help you make those choices, because the truth is not all goals or tasks are created equally. You're going to want to find the few that give you the most exponential return and figure out how to go all in on those. What the 10-10 rule also does is it leverages what is known as opportunity cost, because the truth is, every time you say yes to a low return goal, you're actually saying no to something that could change absolutely everything in your life, and that's the hidden cost. Right, that's the opportunity cost, because what's happening is your best effort is being wasted in the wrong places, and when that's happening, we don't have the energy or the capacity to put our effort towards the things that really matter.

Jerry Henderson: 9:06

So let's talk a little bit more about some of these individuals that I looked at through the research, and we'll start with Warren Buffett. I love this quote from him. He says the difference between successful people and really successful people is that the really successful people say no to almost everything. See, here's one of the misconceptions that people often have about very successful people that they're like constantly frantically busy doing all of these things. It's not true. They've learned to say yes to the right things. Now there's a lot of information out there on the internet about you got to have seven streams of income in order to be a millionaire. That's a fallacy in the beginning for sure, because what the most successful people did is they figured out how to make one thing work really well, to build wealth off of one thing, and then they expanded through investments, etc. But they first started with how do I do one thing extremely well, as Buffett said, how do I say no to almost everything? So I have capacity to say yes to the right things.

Jerry Henderson: 10:11

Now let's circle back to Steve Jobs. He had a ruthless focus at Apple, and here's one of his quotes that he's so famously known for saying. He said I'm as proud of the things we haven't done here at Apple as the things that we have done. And this is a key mind shift that people have to step into right, because for many people, they get more anxiety around the things that they say no to than the things that they say yes to, and their nervous system gets wired to have anxiety around saying no whether it's people pleasing or a lack of clarity, et cetera but they've learned to say yes out of a fear of saying no, and it could be around FOMO and other things like that. But here's the thing that 8% do. It's going to be important for you to do if you want to be a part of that 8% who know how to have success. You're going to have to ride that anxiety wave of saying no. Get through it, rewire your nervous system and allow yourself to focus in on the things that you truly should be saying yes to.

Jerry Henderson: 11:13

Let's talk about Oprah Winfrey and her concept of saying no to misaligned yeses. She has clearly stated that she has learned to live her life in a way that allows her to distinguish between what I want to do and what I feel like I'm obligated to do. You might be thinking to yourself well, that's Oprah Winfrey. She's at that level. She can distinguish between those things I can't. But here's the thing I want to point out what do you think actually got Oprah Winfrey to that place where she could have that type of freedom? It's the exact type of thinking around learning to distinguish what she wanted to do from what she was obligated to do and moved herself towards that. You see, what we can't do is sit around and say to ourselves well, when I get to that level, then I can make those type of decisions and say yes to the things I want and no to the things I don't want. No, it's not about arriving to that place, it's about creating that place, and the way that we create it is by saying no to the things that we're simply doing out of obligation and moving our life more and more towards saying yes to the things that we actually want to do and following a 10-10 rule. That can help us build the life that allows us to have that type of freedom. And Oprah admits that she had to learn how to do this and that she used to say yes to everyone and everything. And what happened was it drained her and what she started to do was intentionally connect with what her deepest sense of purpose was and then begin to align her life with that sense of purpose. And that shift in thinking was actually the catalyst that allowed her to start giving her best to what really matters. And then those decisions started to compound and is what created the life that Oprah has today.

Jerry Henderson: 13:05

Let's talk about Tim Ferriss. In his book the 4-Hour Workweek, he talks about how he intentionally and ruthlessly cut out 80% of his tasks that brought him little return. And what he did was he focused all that energy on only the 20% of things that actually brought him a meaningful return 20% of things that actually brought him a meaningful return. Another example is Serena Williams, who intentionally structured her life to protect and to guard her energy, and she did this so she could give her focus to being an elite performer and she would turn down endorsements. She turned down parties. She even turned down media appearances so that she could focus in on that one thing that she could be the on that one thing that she could be the best at, the most elite at, and she attributes so much of her success and her capacity to be able to say no.

Jerry Henderson: 13:57

Now, all of these individuals that we've been discussing, which are just a handful of the people that I've studied, they were practicing the art and the science of the 10-10 rule. Seen the art and the science of the 10-10 rule, learning to get clear on what could give them a level 10 result, getting rid of things that wouldn't give them that, so that they had the energy to give those level 10 opportunities a level 10 energy to give it their best, because they knew that that had the potential to change their lives. I want to take a moment and I want to share something with you. If you're struggling to get clear on your goals or you feel like you're working hard but you're not getting the results that you want to see, I'd love to come alongside you in that journey and help, and that's exactly why I created the Personal Mastery Coaching Program. It's a one-on-one coaching program that's built for high achievers, high performers who want sustainable success without sacrificing their overall well-being. The program uses six evidence-based pillars that are rooted in psychology and neuroscience that help you align your inner life with your outer results, so that you can create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. To learn more about the program, you can simply check out the show notes in this episode. There'll be a link there. We can set up a free strategy call and we can connect to see if working together is the right fit, or you can simply go to my website at jerryhendersonorg.

Jerry Henderson: 15:28

All right, now let's start talking about how do you apply this 10-10 rule. I'm going to give you four simple steps to make that happen. Number one Audit your goals. How many goals do you have on your list right now? Remember the Pareto principle right, that 80% of your results are going to be coming from 20% of your efforts. And as you look at that list, if you've got a list of like 10, 12, 15 things, can I encourage you to reconsider that, that that might just be too many. You see, the research shows us that we can only effectively focus in on two to three at a time, and this is why people fail at 92%. That's why they fail at achieving their goals because they've got too many. So take a moment and audit your goals and look at them and ask yourself the question which one of those goals would have the biggest leverage point in your life to create change, and focus in on that. You see, when we have too many goals, as I said before, we're going to burn ourselves out and we wind up not accomplishing any of our goals and we're frustrated and we're wondering why am I still in the same place this year as I was last year? One of the key things is you have too many goals Now, another consequence of having too many goals is what is known as the goal dilution effect, and this comes from social psychology that the research shows that when we have too many goals, not only are we ineffectively splitting our time, we're also weakening our power.

Jerry Henderson: 17:00

Well, what do I mean by that? Well, the research shows that when we appear to be spread too thin, it makes other people trust your abilities less. I know it sounds strange, right? We think that if we can take on a lot, that people will trust our capacity to get things done. It's not about the number of things that you're getting done, it's the effectiveness of how you're getting those things done. And when you have too many things on your plate, you're actually weakening your power and people begin to psychologically question your ability to get those things done, and then their overall trust in your abilities begins to diminish.

Jerry Henderson: 17:38

Now the second step of the 10-10 rule is to audit your output. Take a look at where your energy is going daily, weekly, monthly. Where are you spending all of your effort? Take a hard and honest look at your calendar, your to-do list, your mental space. Where's all your energy going? Because, remember, cognitive psychology tells us that your mental bandwidth is limited and if you're spending most of your energy managing emails, managing chaos, doing busy work. Your real goals never get the oxygen they need because it's being sucked up by all of these other things in your life. Here's the thing that's really important about this energy audit, because what we're trying to do is we're trying to find places where we can free up energy so that we can have capacity to give that energy towards the things that really matter.

Jerry Henderson: 18:30

Now, once we've done that, we're going to move into step three, and step three is so important because this is where we start to get laser focused on what we're going to start putting a level 10 effort towards. So look at your list of goals and score it. If you got 10 on here or you got five on there, whatever it is, look at those goals, score them. Some things are going to probably max out at a three or four return for you and, as you did your energy audit, you might be seeing that you're giving a level 10 effort towards that thing, but it only has the potential to give you a level three or four return, and the hope is that there's going to be things on that list that are a level 10 for you, that they have the possibility to be a level 10 return for you. Now, if you can't find anything on that list that's a level 10 return for you, can I invite you to start thinking a little bit bigger about your goals. If everything feels like, eh, it could be a six, it could be a five or maybe it's a seven, can I challenge you to start thinking about what you would put on that list that could be transformational for you, that could give you a level 10 result, because we all need things on our goal list that actually have the power to transform our lives. So take a look at that list, score them. This has the potential for a level three, this has potential for a level five, and some are going to be a level 10. And then, once we identify those level 10s, we start to really see the things that we want to put energy to. We then move into step four, which is we start to reallocate our energy. We start making the hard decision of pulling our energy away from the threes, the fours, the fives, and we start to redirect them towards the 10s.

Jerry Henderson: 20:17

Now, if you've got a bunch of stories that start to kick off in your head as to why you can't get rid of that level three, or why you can't pull your energy back. Can I ask you the question is that true? Is it really true that you can't pull your energy away from that and put it towards the thing that could actually transform your life? Do you feel obligated to it? Have you said yes to it when you should have said no to it? Whatever the story is, it's just a story and you can begin to pull your energy away from it. And if you start to think well, I don't want to hurt the person's feeling, I don't want to Think about Oprah, where she said I had to pull my energy away from the things I didn't want to do that I just simply felt obligated to do and I had to start shifting it towards the things that I truly wanted to do, that aligned with my purpose.

Jerry Henderson: 21:06

You see, our level 10s should be aligned with our purpose. And when you have it aligned with your purpose, you'll start to find passion to give it a level 10 effort and the other things that are those level 3s and 4s. You'll find yourself naturally starting to let go of them because they're not aligned with your purpose. And here's the beautiful thing about this 10-10 rule when you start to practice it and you start to live like that 8% who actually get their goals done, you're going to find yourself doing fewer things but with a much bigger impact, and I don't know about you, but that feels so much like the life that I want to live. That feels like a life that feels as good on the inside, not so frantic, not so stressed, not so anxiety driven and it starts to truly feel like a life that I want to create.

Jerry Henderson: 21:54

Now here's a bonus tip for you on using this 10-10 rule.

Jerry Henderson: 21:58

You can also use it in your relationships.

Jerry Henderson: 22:01

Take a list of your relationships which ones are the most life-giving, where you're getting a level 10 return from, and then put a level 10 effort into those relationships, because what happens for so many of us is we wind up putting a level 10 effort into relationships that are only giving us a level three or a level four return or worse, they're actually a negative return for us.

Jerry Henderson: 22:24

And so take that same type of audit mentality, apply that to your relationships, and that can totally transform your relationships as well by using this 10-10 rule. So here's a mirror moment for you after going through those steps, or thinking about those steps, processing that. Ask yourself, where are you giving a level 10 effort to something that will never give you a level 10 life? And then ask yourself what would happen if you stopped giving a level 10 effort towards that? And then ask yourself the next question what would happen if you gave your best effort towards the things that could give you that level 10 life? Because honestly, on a personal note, applying this 10-10 rule to my life and the things that I have learned from my research has completely changed my life, and I know it'll change your life as well, and I want to remind you that you are worthy of a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.