Polarity: For Exceptional Results, Operate in Extremes
Polarity: exceptional results come from operating in extremes.
Balance doesn't work for me.
I believe that my actions, decisions, efforts, and attention are best placed at the extremes. Think: black or white, fully on or fully off, very safe or very risky, sprinting or resting.
I call this concept Polarity. It's one of my personal operating values: a broad concept I use to guide my actions and decisions. And it's one I use everywhere.
The opposite of Polarity is the Greyscale. The Greyscale is balanced between black and white, the messy middle, half-way on and half-way off, neither hot or cold.
Some people can thrive in the Greyscale. They can balance many things at once, consume in moderation, and work with moderate intensity for long periods of time.
But I don't work well this way. I like to operate in extremes. And in my experience, the more time I spend in these extremes, the better and more satisfying my results.
Polarity Prescriptions
The following examples describe the polar approach and the greyscale approach to many decisions and actions.
Before diving in, a quick disclaimer. These are what Charlie Munger calls iron prescriptions. In true polar fashion, Munger believes the best advice is given in its ideal, most extreme format. This way, living up to 80% of it gets the job done.
These prescriptions are broken up into Health, Wealth, Relationships, and Work. Feel free to skip around and read the sections you think are most relevant to you.
Relationships
Who to spend time with
Polar approach: Foster deep relationships with a vetted, select few. Trust people fully or not at all. Ruthlessly remove negative people. Build relationships that never feel like work.
Greyscale approach: Try and be best friends with everyone. Trust most people most of the time. Give many second chances. Let negative people linger if they mean well. Spread yourself evenly between multiple groups of friends.
The depth and quality of one's relationships is a top indicator of long-term happiness. But the people you form deep, meaningful relationships should be carefully vetted and selected. 10 deep relationships trumps 50 shallow ones.
As for negative people, you should ruthlessly remove them from your life. Cut ties with anyone where the relationship feels like work. Leave no room for these energy vampires. This frees up time and energy to spend with the most worthwhile people.
How to spend time with people
Polar approach: Give others 100% of your attention or 0% of your attention. When with others, drop everything else and focus completely on them. If you can't do this, find a better time where you can.
Greyscale approach: When with others, give them as much of your attention as you can, but don't drop everything else. Spread yourself thin trying to keep everyone satisfied. Agree to spend time with others even if it means multi-tasking.
Attention is a power law. Giving someone 100% of your attention is 10x more effective than giving them 90%.
This means making the other person full screen on Zoom calls. Or leaving your phone in the car when going into a restaurant.
Start giving full, undivided attention and watch the depth of your relationships compound exponentially.
Whose opinion to consider
Polar approach: Carefully consider the people whose opinion and feedback you value. Ensure it's a mix of people who both agree and disagree with you. Take their feedback and opinion seriously. Pay zero attention to the feedback and opinion of everyone else.
Greyscale approach: Seek feedback from everyone and value their opinions equally. Get most of your feedback from people that agree with you. Value the opinion of no one person more than anyone else.
The tighter your feedback loops, the better your results. To create tight feedback loops, you need consistent, relevant feedback. By carefully vetting whose feedback and opinion you seek, you can ignore the outside noise.
There's a bit of arbitrage here too. Most people are afraid to look foolish or have people judge them in public. Which means if you're unaffected by the public's opinion, you can do things others can't, which is where most opportunities lie.
Health
Diet
Polar approach: Use binary constraints - having none of something or as much of something as you want. Be either fasting or feeding, never grazing. Follow a structured, disciplined diet for all but one meal per week. During that one meal, no rules.
Greyscale approach: Eat a balanced diet with everything in moderation. Have a little bit of anything whenever you want. Eat constantly throughout the day. Give little thought or design to your diet in general.
Humans work better with binary rules. There's a reason everyone speeds a little bit, but nobody runs red lights. The Ketogenic and Whole30 diets work because they set clear and crisp guidelines. They're restrictive - certain foods aren't allowed at all. By eliminating the option to indulge a little bit, it's impossible to slip into indulging a lot.
Humans aren't good with moderation. Diets that encourage it become difficult to deal with. When drinking alcohol, it should be no drinks all the time and plenty of drinks on rare occasions. When it comes to sugar, it should be no sugar all the time and unlimited sugar on rare occasions.
Exercise
Polar approach: Alternate between intense work and intense rest. Short, high intensity exercises in short bursts of time. Alternating days around intense work and full recovery.
Greyscale approach: Monotonous, extended workouts. Low-intensity exercises for long periods of time.
If given 30-minutes for a workout, most people would go for a jog. But a more effective workout would be 20 minutes of alternating between one minute of sprinting and one minute of resting, then walking for 10 minutes. It's more effective to go all out, recover, and repeat than to put out moderate effort for an extended period of time.
Sleep
Polar approach: Treat your sleep hygiene as sacred. No phone or TV in the bedroom. No screens for 60 minutes before bed. Fully blacked out curtains. Invest heavily in the best mattress, sheets, and sleep trackers. Fall asleep and rise at the same times every day.
Greyscale approach: Be agnostic to your sleep hygiene. Scroll your phone in bed. Watch TV before falling asleep. Cut corners on the quality of your mattress and sheets. Go to bed and wake up at inconsistent times.
If you're going to sprint the rest of the day, your sleep should be sacred. It's the ultimate performance enhancer.
Quality sleep comes down to consistency. If anything is worth your time and money, it's intentional sleep hygiene design and investment.
Mental health
Polar approach: The Stoic locus of control. Take extreme ownership of things you have control over. Dismiss all concerns with anything you don't have control over. With any concern, give it your full attention or none of it.
Greyscale approach: The opposite of the Stoic locus of control. Concern yourself with many things, including those you have no control over.
The biggest modern-day problems come from concerning yourself with things you can't control. Since you can't control them, a helpless feeling washes over you. This helpless feeling causes more worry, which starts a spiraling loop.
By dismissing concern with things you can't control, you can divert more attention and effort to the things you can. By only dealing with things you have control over, you'll always feel empowered.
Work
What to work on
Polar approach: Say no to almost every opportunity. Carefully vet the projects you take on, then give those projects all of your attention and effort. Work on projects with limited downside and unlimited upside.
Greyscale approach: Say yes to almost every opportunity. Spread yourself thin across projects. Work on safe projects with predictable results.
Warren Buffet likes to say you have 20 slots on your punch card of life. There's only about 20 things you can go all in on before you die. It's up to you to choose those opportunities.
In choosing those opportunities, focus on the upside and downside. Think of your 20 punch card slots as 20 chips at the casino. If you want an extreme outcome, you won't get it risking 1 to win 1. You need to find the bets where you can risk 1 to win 10,000. These projects will be harder to execute, and everyone will be gunning for them. It’s best to find the projects that you have some unique, personal advantage in taking on. Then, go all in.
How to work
Polar approach: Deep, long chunks of singly-focused, distraction-free deep work. No notifications, no pings, no multi-tasking.
Greyscale approach: Quick, shallow chunks of multi-tasking and interrupted work.
The pomodoro technique is the single worst piece of productivity advice. By definition, it limits your ability to focus deeply on something. The best work comes from a state of flow. You'll never reach flow state in 25 minutes.
Flow state comes from long, uninterrupted chunks of deep work, focused on one complex task. These sessions are more productive, more satisfying, and more euphoric.
When to work
Polar approach: Work in bursts of extreme effort or be fully at rest and unplugged. Set clear boundaries between work time and relaxation time. Be fully working or fully relaxing.
Greyscale approach: Work for the same number of hours every day, even if there's nothing to work on. Blur the lines between work and relaxation, being always half-way on.
Working from home has made this challenging. As many have found out, when your bed is steps from your desk, the line between work and rest is blurry. Which is why it's even more important now to set these clear boundaries.
Set structured times when you are engaged fully with whatever you're working on. Work with relentless focus during this time. But when it's time to wrap up, close all of your open loops, get ready for the next day, and then unplug fully.
Making decisions
Polar approach: With every new opportunity, if it's not a "Hell Yeah!", it a No. By saying no to almost every opportunity, you keep yourself free to take advantage of the best ones.
Greyscale approach: Say yes to lots of things, even those you aren't thrilled about.
By only doing the things you really want to do, life is more enjoyable. This lens makes it cut and dry. If there's any uncertainty, there's no uncertainty. If it's not a Hell Yeah, then it's a No.
Wealth
What to spend money on
Polar approach: Spend lavishly on things you love to spend money on. Cut your spending ruthlessly on everything else.
Greyscale approach: Spend money haphazardly with little awareness.
This follows Ramit Sethi's concept of Money Dials. He recommends auditing your spending to find the areas you love to spend money on. Then, find the areas you hate to spend money on. Ruthlessly cut that spending you hate, transferring it to the area you love.
What to invest in
Polar approach: Keep 80% of your assets in safe, reliable investments. Place the other 20% in high-risk, high reward bets that can 100x.
Greyscale approach: Invest all of your assets in "safe" investments or hold everything in cash.
This idea deserves a whole post in itself. The idea is to hold most of your assets in cash. This allows you seize new opportunities faster than others who aren't as liquid. The rest of your assets should be placed in high-risk bets you feel strongly about. Worst case, they go to zero. But then you're still left with 90% of your assets. Best case, that 10% allocation is a home run, turning 100x.
Final Thoughts
As I said in the beginning, these are iron prescriptions. It isn't reasonable to think you could operate in extremes in every single area. But it can be useful to think about which areas you're spending too much time in the greyscale. I've found that the areas I'm in the deepest greyscale are the areas I'm least satisfied with. Ticking closer to the extremes helps to clear things up.
To get started, try the following exercise:
- Pick one of the areas above: health, wealth, relationships, or work.
- Ask yourself: where are my efforts, energy, time, and attention focused in this area? Are they in the extremes? Or in the greyscale?
- For that area, write down everything you could do or stop doing that would push your actions incrementally towards the extremes.
- Implement those actions for a week and gauge whether or your results improved. Then, repeat this exercise.
Thank you to the Compound Writing members who reviewed this post: Kyla Scanlon and Joel Christiansen.
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