Convex Effort: Go All In on One Thing
The last slice of focus compounds — concentrate everything on being number one at one thing
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 76%
Lonsdale's focus model, learned from Peter Thiel, is that effort on a project is convex: pushing from 80% to 90% of your attention more than doubles the quality, and reaching the 99th percentile is worth far more than the 90th because it makes you number one, which itself carries outsized value. The corollary is a decomposition discipline: if you list four reasons for a decision, you haven't thought hard enough, because there is usually one dominant reason much bigger than the rest. He treats spreading across many projects, incubators, or advisory roles as a form of cowardice that avoids the fear of going all in. The method is to name a single main thing, concentrate effort past the point of diminishing returns, and say no relentlessly to competing excitements.
Origin
Lonsdale absorbed this from Peter Thiel, whose nine 'main lessons' he wrote up for his team roughly fifteen years ago. Two lessons anchor it: value intelligence extremely highly, and break reasons into core components until one dominates. Thiel framed effort itself as convex.
Core principles
- 01Effort is convex: 90% focus is worth far more than double the output of 80%
- 02Being 99th percentile beats 90th percentile by a wide margin because it makes you number one
- 03Having four reasons for a decision means you haven't found the one dominant reason
- 04Spreading across many projects is a form of cowardice, not diversification
- 05The people changing the world are almost always focused on one thing
How to run it
- 1
Name your one main thing
Choose the single project or goal you will make your dominant commitment, the way a CEO is all-in on one company.
Watch out If you can name several 'main things', you have not actually chosen.
- 2
Find the one dominant reason
Decompose your rationale into core components until a single reason clearly outweighs the others.
Pro tip Four roughly equal reasons is a sign you haven't thought it through enough.
- 3
Push effort into the convex zone
Keep concentrating past 80% and past 'good enough' toward the 99th percentile, where the marginal effort pays off most.
Pro tip Being number one is worth far more than being merely excellent.
- 4
Say no relentlessly
Reject the many exciting opportunities that arrive as you succeed, since each one steals focus from the main thing.
Pro tip Feeling busy is not the same as getting the important thing done.
Watch out Success multiplies tempting distractions faster than you can absorb them.
- 5
Refuse cowardly diversification
Avoid incubators or helping five projects at once as a hedge against committing fully to one.
Watch out Spreading thin often masks a fear of betting everything on being the best.
In the wild
Lonsdale says his most important accomplishments came when he could focus on one thing for a sustained stretch, whether building Palantir, running Addepar, or spending months developing a single investment thesis and framework at his firm. He contrasts this with periods where he failed to say no enough and felt productive without actually moving the important thing forward.
→ Concentrated multi-month focus produced his highest-leverage outputs.
Common mistakes
Mistaking busyness for progress
Saying yes to many exciting things creates a feeling of momentum while the one thing that matters stalls.
Listing many reasons instead of one
Carrying four coequal reasons signals shallow analysis; the real driver is usually one dominant factor.
Is it for you?
Best for
Ambitious founders and operators who could plausibly be world-class at one thing.
Not ideal for
Early-career exploration where you still need breadth to find your main thing.
From the transcript
“Effort on any project is convex. If you spend like 80% of your time focused on something, that's maybe half as good as spending 90%…”
“If you tell me I have four reasons for doing this business thing, it means you haven't really thought about it enough. There's probably like…”
From the episode
How To Win The War Of The Future - Joe Lonsdale - #934
Joe Lonsdale