Before I started my first job, I got a coffee with one of my professors to seek out advice as I entered the real world.

This professor had built and sold several large companies, achieving incredible financial success, and was teaching a course at Stanford during a short break before a seemingly inevitable return to entrepreneurship.

When I asked for advice, he shared the following:

"You have four areas of life: work, family, friends, and health. If you choose two of the four, you can be pretty successful at both. But if you choose one of the four, you can be wildly successful at it."

I didn't know it at the time, but this was a fairly traditional piece of life advice.

The model says:

• Your life has a few distinct areas
• It's impossible to be successful at all of them, so you have to choose the ones you care about
• Pick two and you can be modestly successful at both
• Pick one and you can be wildly successful at it

Well, for the 23-year-old me, deeply insecure and seeking external validation to solve my internal struggle, wildly successful sounded like an attractive path.

So, I mentally chose work. As for my family, friends, and health, I figured I could take care of those later...

The Perils of the On/Off Switch

I think of this traditional wisdom as an On-Off Switch Mentality:

If you want to do well, you can have two areas switched ON, but if you really want to win, you can only have one area switched ON. The other areas are, by default, switched OFF.

The problem with this approach:

If you leave an area OFF for too long, it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to turn it back ON.

These areas of your life do not hold steady when ignored—they atrophy:

• Relationships, when ignored, fall apart.
• Physical health, when ignored, deteriorates.
• Mental health, when ignored, crumbles.
• Purpose and growth, when ignored, fade away.

They experience negative compounding—and the math is damning for what that means in the future. Remember: If you experience a 50% loss (a drop from 100 to 50), you have to achieve a 100% gain to get back to the original baseline (a return from 50 to 100 is 100% growth).

And that 100% gain will be more challenging in the future than it is now.

Time is the ultimate universal constraint. Your life does not exist on an infinite time horizon. An investment today is much better than an investment in a year or five years.

Quoting one of my favorite movie lines, always remember, "You will never be lovelier than you are now."

You see, later is the most dangerous word in the dictionary...

• I'll spend more time with my kids later
• I'll see my family more later
• I'll focus on my health later
• I'll unlock my freedom and purpose later

Sadly, later just becomes another word for never, because those things won't exist in the same way later...

• Your kids won't be 5 years old later
• Your parents won't be around later
• Your partner and friends won't be there for you later
• Your health won't be ok later
• You won't magically wake up with freedom and purpose later

When you consent to the On/Off Switch Mentality, when you say later, when you think that things will just be the same in the future, you're setting yourself up for disaster.

You either need to design these things into your life now, or you'll just end up regretting it later.

Fortunately, I have a solution for how we can do just that...

The Solution: A Dimmer Switch

I call this new approach my Dimmer Switch Mentality:

It says that each area of your life exists on a dimmer switch. If you want to focus on building one area, you turn that switch up, but rather than turning off the others, you just turn them down low.

This simply means you aim to complete low time-intensity investments in these non-focus areas—tiny actions with a high rate of return.

This mentality is grounded in two foundational truths:

1. Your life has seasons. What you focus on or prioritize during any one season will change. You may have a season of career and financial wealth focus to establish your foundation, a season of family focus while your kids are young, a season of health as you embrace new routines, or a season of new pursuits as you find purpose later in life. The point is to respect that you are dynamic, and your core focus will be as well.
2. Low is infinitely better than off. Ambitious people have a tendency to allow optimal to get in the way of beneficial. We say, "I don't have an hour to workout, so I just won't go" or "I don't have two hours for deep work, so I'll just do emails instead." The reality is that anything above zero compounds. Low keeps you in the fight against the natural decay of time. Low allows you to stay in the game. Low is infinitely better than off.

To bring this to life, let's look at a practical example of how the Dimmer Switch Mentality might work in your life:

Let's say you're in your mid-20s and your core focus during the present season is on building a career and financial foundation for life. That switch is turned up high. But rather than turning the other areas off, we turn them to low, designing a few tiny daily actions that will compound positively:

• Relationships: One message or call to a friend or family member daily, to be sent during a commute or otherwise idle time.
• Mental Health: 2-3 minutes of journaling before bed.
• Physical Health: 30 minutes of daily movement of any kind (walking, running, lifting, biking, dancing, etc.).

With these simple actions designed into your life, you can keep the ball moving forward in these areas despite your core focus being elsewhere.

Remember: Anything above zero compounds...

To assist you in creating your plan, here are a few of the "dimmer on low" practices I have found to have the highest rates of return:

• Social: Send the text or make the call as soon as you think of a person. Use the "photo memories" function on most phones as the trigger, send the photo to the people in it. It is a natural way to prompt conversation with people you share memories with.
• Mental: Try my 1-1-1 Method for journaling (1 win from the day, 1 point of tension, 1 point of gratitude). Take 5 minute breaks before or after big meetings and do a simple box breath (4 second inhale, 4 second hold, 4 second exhale).
• Physical: Go on a 15 minute post-lunch walk for improved energy, digestion, and more. When you wake up in the morning, do 5 pushups, 5 squats, 5 lunges, and a 30-second plank for a boost of energy.
• Financial: Automate your monthly investments into a simple, low cost index fund.

Note: I cover these and many more in my New York Times bestselling book, The 5 Types of Wealth. Each section ends with a guide filled with the highest leverage systems that you can use to build your dream life. There are ~50 total systems in the book. Join 100,000+ others and order it today.

Order The 5 Types of Wealth Now!

There Is No Later

Later is the default mindset.

Later is the acceptance of your fate.

Later is the self-limiting word of the broken.

Later is where your dream life goes to die.

There is no later, because later you'll be dead.