Leveraged Thinking

What should I work on next?

This was the question I asked myself the other day. I’m sure you’ve been in a similar spot, wondering what your focus should be. Books, articles, podcasts, and the like will tell you to “focus on the one thing”. But how do you find that one thing?

How do you decide what’s most important to focus on right now?

So there I was, staring at my screen after a string of meetings. I was now in a long “Focus Time” block on my calendar, but what should I focus on?

Humans crave comfort. And this is evolutionarily useful. Seeking comfort is how you conserve energy, avoid danger, and stay safe.

The catch? Growth lives in discomfort.

We don’t live in an environment where those instincts are as useful. To grow, we have to actively seek discomfort (Issue #20) and live in it. Comfort comes from dopamine hits, scrolling, and quick wins. Discomfort comes from writing the hard thing, having the hard conversation, sitting in ambiguity.

Biology seeks comfort. Growth requires discomfort.

That’s the catch, the challenge, and the opportunity. So how does this help you determine the right thing to work on? And what does comfort have to do with it?

Let’s discuss the process required to identify the right thing to work on, to push through the discomfort and identify the area of opportunity—to become our Leveraged Self. And to avoid devolving into the Dopamine Self that craves comfort and complacency.

I call it Leveraged Thinking, the process of slowing down to think clearly so you can act with intention—even when your brain wants to escape into comfort.

The three steps of Leveraged Thinking:

1. Collect: Gather and prioritize what’s pulling you.
2. Clarify: Define the one thing that truly matters.
3. Commit: Frame the work with context, constraints, and a clear outcome.

Collect

Good decisions come from good context. Without the variables, you’re guessing.

Context is the soil in which a decision grows.

That’s why we start with gathering and prioritizing—collecting all the things. Think of it like a chain-of-thought exercise.

I’ll give you an example. It may seem off-topic, but it’ll make sense.

I love the play Hamilton. I think it’s a masterpiece. I won’t wax philosophical on the why, but it is. And I’m obsessed with how knowledge is created, cultivated, and spread, particularly in creative endeavors. So I wanted to learn all about the inception of Hamilton—how the idea was conceived, cultivated, and, ultimately, grown into the full Broadway smash hit.

I used Perplexity’s Deep Research feature. I gave it a task to research the creation of Hamilton. During the process, it wrote a bulleted list of what it was doing, detailing the steps it was taking. It was reading websites, looking at podcast transcripts, and “thinking out loud”.

This is what the Collect step is. It’s your personal “chain of thought” in written form. Use bullet points to write out everything you’re thinking through.

What is everything you could work on, big or small?

Detail it in individual bullet points. No editing. Just writing. Keep going, calling special attention to areas where you’re seeking comfort (dopamine), and areas where you’re avoiding discomfort (growth). I call this the Discomfort Radar. Writing it all down draws attention to what you’re gravitating to, and what your avoiding. This is a conversation with yourself.

Thinking through writing will force you to articulate your thoughts—to challenge what you’re thinking because there are written words you must defend. It’s simple, but powerful.

And it worked for me.

I wrote out everything in bullet points, talking through what I could focus on. I found a connection between two problem areas that could be solved by spending focused effort on a single task.

That’s leverage.

Doing the hard work is worth it because it unlocks the next thing. And the next. That’s momentum. That’s growth. And that compounds with each new step.

The first step is to collect everything.

Clarify

With all of the collection done, it’s time to move towards a decision. The soil is rich with the right nutrients (context), and now we add sunlight and water.

This is really about language, framing the work with full clarity. When you’re collecting, you’re creating the draft of your thoughts. When you’re clarifying, you’re creating the final version of the work.

I think about this step as the Alignment Filter.

You need to align your efforts and focus against a well-articulated task. And language matters. The articulation creates clarity of intention.

Through this process, I identified two problem areas that could be solved (or at least progressed) with concerted effort on one task. Massage and refine the language until it creates the clarity you need to progress.

What’s the one-sentence description of the work that anchors your focus?

That’s what you need to clarify.

Commit

Multitasking has and always will be a lie. You can only do one thing at a time. You can view this as a limitation, or as a constraint that creates focus, an opportunity to do one thing really well—a commitment to see the task through and make real progress.

That’s why you have to commit. And all the cognitive work preceding this step positions you to do the right work. Time to focus.

There are three parts to this step:

1. Context
2. Constraints
3. Commitment

Context

List out all the pertinent information for the given task you’ve defined.

The context is all the necessary information—the inputs—to preload the task with. This is how you prime your work for success.

Better context equals better decisions.

Constraints

Constraints breed creativity. A limitation in scope, time, or other variables can unlock new unforeseen pathways.

For my task, I chose 60 minutes of deep thinking as the constraint. This forced me to buckle down and be diligent. No matter what, I’d make progress on the work.

Commitment

The final part is the commitment. Framing the task is the first step, but now you need to phrase it with a clear outcome in mind.

What do you want to be true at the end of your work on this task?

That’s the outcome—your commitment.

Your Leveraged Self

You can either give into the easy comfort of dopamine that mindlessly sets you on a hamster wheel of emptiness, or you can engage in your work, think critically, and put focused effort into high-leverage activities.

Doing so is the only path forward, a path to growth.

Engage your Leveraged Self, fight your Dopamine Self, and achieve more as a leveraged thinker who is able to control outcomes and achieve more with less.