Since my early teenage years, I’ve read books looking for ‘secrets of success’. Those elusive ideas that nobody in real life would tell me about.

I estimate over the course of the past 25 years, I must have read close to 1000 books from the business, self-help, psychology, and biography genres. From this, I’ve learned a lot of life hacks, and some pithy philosophical truths.

But one thing always eluded me: the glue that held it all together.

I figured there must be one element, one factor, one keystone that ties all the great ideas and concepts I’ve learned together, that would make it all hum like a finely tuned machine.

Ironically, I finally found it recently, not in books, but in real life.

The thing that ties together all the other ‘secrets of success’ is:

Effort.

And I don’t mean just a small amount. I mean heroic, stupidly intense, obsessively focused, somewhat dangerous quantities of it.

Every person I know who achieves anything significant in their lives has expended a horrendous amount of effort to break through.

This is just the reality.

Effort is attractive. 

Effort is omnipotent. 

Effort is your secret power.



And guess what? Right now, you are putting in nowhere near enough effort to achieve what you want.

Thus, I have a formula for you… call it the result of 20+ years of self-help, but I feel like I need to simplify the process of how to put in more effort.

I call this formula ‘Double Down’.

Here’s how it works: whatever efforts you are now making towards your goals, double your efforts. Do twice as much exercise, saving, speaking, running, reading, asking, selling, etc as you do now. You probably don’t think you can double your efforts, but believe me you can.

This will do two things for you:

– You will see results in about half the time you’re used to
– You will realize that you can do a hell of a lot more than you think you can

Eventually your newly doubled efforts will become your norm. You will increase your tolerance for hustle and your energy levels will increase. That’s when you double down again.

In life, it is easy to convince yourself that you are already working hard and doing what you can to succeed. But the truth is that doubling your efforts will show you how much more you can be, do and have.

So, that’s it.
Get to work.

– DMS