The Great Bifurcation

I’m hoping this model isn’t too simple, but I’m willing to take the risk.

The world is largely split into those who who are doing the daily behaviors that bring them success, and those who aren’t doing those behaviors.

I call this The Great Bifurcation because technology magnifies the differences between those doing them and those who aren’t.

• We have more access to business knowledge than ever before

• We have more access to health information than ever before

• We can now see exactly what successful people do day-to-day

• We now have AI that can augment our knowledge and capabilities

But none of those matters if you’re not using them. The people at the top of the Bifurcation graphic are using them. Those on the bottom are not. Let’s make up a range and call that the top 10% of people in the US.

1. Disciplined enough to set strict, productive boundaries and goals and routines for themselves that they follow.

2. Reading high-quality books on a regular basis.

3. Controlling their calory intake and working out regularly.

4. Got an education or put in the work to self-teach to an equivalent level.

5. Spending their free-time reading and studying rather than playing video games or watching popular media.

6. Fixated on their output and contributions as their top metric behind family

10% might be generous there, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a small percentage.

What’s most important about this whole model, and the only reason it interests me, is that it has little to do with the person’s past. Their race. Their gender. Their parents’ socio-economic status. Their traumas. The bad things that have happened to them in the past.

This model is an escape hatch from all of that. Or a trapdoor if you take the wrong path.

And to be clear, it’s 100% possible that many of those aspects of a person’s identity and experience could combine to make it harder for a person to see this fact, simply because they’re not exposed to this model and this way of seeing the world.

I’m one of those people, until relativity recently. I grew up in a 800sq/ft house. Didn’t go to college out of high school. Neither of my parents went to college. And while I was spoiled/blessed with a loving family, I was not guided to adopt any of these behaviors growing up in the way commonly seen with wealthy families.

I grew up thinking wealth and success were things you somehow magically had, or didn’t. I mean nobody told me that explicitly, but it’s kind of taught as a universal lesson where I grew up.

“The rich and successful got lucky somehow, or their parents were rich or successful.”, they say.

This is obviously true sometimes, and maybe even a lot of the time. But after a few decades of being a curious person I started noticing something super weird.

• My thin friends didn’t eat that much

• My smart friends read books

• My rich friends were careful with money

I wasn’t too quick to catch on, honestly. I was like, hmm….could there be a link here? How is it that everyone I know who’s buffed goes to the gym all the time?

So like 15 years ago I started reading voraciously. And I started paying close attention to what successful people were doing.

And that’s when it hit me.

That’s when I figured out the ultimately freeing truth: successful people just spend their time differently than unsuccessful people.

If that sounds like victim-shaming then your sensors are not calibrated in a positive way. I’m not saying some people don’t get completely screwed by the system. They do. Everyone knows that.

I’m talking about you. I’m talking about me. Regular people. People who aren’t blessed, who aren’t screwed, but they’re a little blessed and a little screwed. Regular folk.

We’re the ones who have a choice. Most of us have a choice between doing the things at the top of this chart vs. doing the things at the bottom.

• Having self-discipline

• Reading books to better yourself

• Controlling your calories, eating the right foods, and exercising

• Getting an education, even if it’s on your own

• Spending your time bettering yourself, not playing games or watching useless media

• Spending your time creating instead of consuming

That’s it. That’s what successful people do. And what unsuccessful people don’t. They do the opposite. Of course we could tweak the list, but that’s a pretty decent model.

This is incredibly empowering to me.

It removes the power of the past, and the power of my faults, and flaws, and weaknesses. It gives the power back to me.

These things aren’t easy to do (see self-discipline) but they produce results if you do them. We know this because they’re the few things that successful people have in common. Read a million biographies and podcasts and you’ll triangulate on a very similar list.

In short, I have a choice.

1. I can either take the bottom, easy path of not following a routine, not reading, being unhealthy, not bettering myself, wasting my time on shallow fun, and thinking about all the ways I got screwed in life…

2. Or I can follow a routine, read 50 books a year, dial in my diet and exercise, educate myself, avoid excessive TV/video games, and focus on my output.

Completely up to me. My choice.

That’s power. That’s agency. That’s freedom to make my own future.

I am not the Instagram-perfect example of this model. I don’t do everything on this list easily. I still slack on some things sometimes. And when I do I feel like shit.

The magic is that I’ve stopped wondering why.

When I wonder why I’m not feeling good and getting the outcomes I want, I just just do a check in. And within 30 seconds I find the problem.

That didn’t happen to me. I did it to myself. And I know the precise solution.

1. Society is separating more aggressively than ever into the successful and unsucessful

2. There’s a lot of luck involved in that, but a surprising percentage of the time it comes down to behaviors

3. Successful people tend to have very similar habits for what they do every day, every week, every month, etc.—and it reflects in their results

4. Most people don’t know this. They think “those people” have something they don’t, but it’s not true

5. The truth is that you can largely copy their results simply by coping their behaviors

Find the people you want to emulate, and change your habits and behaviors to match theirs.