This Book Changed How I See Productivity

TITLE: This book changed how I see productivity CHANNEL: Nic Munoz DATE: ---TRANSCRIPT--- John D. Rockefeller was one of the richest people to ever live. At his peak, he was worth $1.4 billion and owned a complete monopoly on the most important industry in the world. When you really think about how much wealth that is, it is just completely mind-blowing. But what’s so interesting about Rockefeller isn’t just what he did, but it’s how he was able to do what he did. I just finished reading this 800-page biography on John D. Rockefeller, and inside of it are some of the greatest work principles and habits that I’ve ever read about. I mean, this entire book is practically a productivity masterclass. And what’s crazy is that Rockefeller’s work style is completely different than what we would assume today to be productive. He wasn’t very fast, he wasn’t the smartest guy, but instead he was very slow, intentional, and focused. And he managed to win in a way that allowed him to win in the long term. So, what I decided to do was take this book and break it down into nine principles that define Rockefeller’s work philosophy so that you can use those same principles in your own work. With that said, let’s just get right into the first principle. So, the first thing about how Rockefeller works is that he had an extremely strict schedule. In the book, it says, “There was a clockwork regularity about Rockefeller’s life that made it seem mechanical to outsiders, but that he found soothing. He didn’t seem to require time to indulge normal human idleness, much less illicit passion. In his rigidly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted whether for business, religion, family, or exercise. Perhaps these daily rituals helped him to deal with underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable. For although he tried to project an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain in creating his oil empire.” I wanted to start off with that because that is the perfect way to describe Rockefeller’s work ethic. There was a clockwork regularity to how he did things, and he never rushed anything. One biography I read on him described him as a farmer tilling the soil. He was just a guy who focused on one task and then moved on to the next task and the next task and the next task all in specific blocks throughout the day. Rockefeller adhered to a fixed schedule moving through the day in a frictionless manner. He never wasted time on frivolities. Even in his daily breaks, the mid-morning snack of crackers and milk and the postprandial nap were designed to conserve energy and help him strike an ideal balance between his physical and mental forces. As he remarked, it is not good to keep all the forces at tension all the time. Rockefeller was a very simple person. He ate the same things every day, he walked the same routes every day, he worked the same schedule every day, and this is part of what made Rockefeller so productive. He was able to craft a schedule that was fit to him and he was able to stick to that schedule rigidly for not days or weeks or months, but for literal years. Charlie Munger has this great quote that says, “Take a simple basic idea and take it very seriously.” And this is the beauty of how Rockefeller works. He was able to take these very basic principles and he was able to take these principles and apply them to the extreme including his schedule. And he took his schedule extremely seriously. And when I say seriously, I mean really seriously. He always arrived to work on time, he worked hard when it was time to work hard, he went home when it was time to go home. And on top of everything, he was extremely punctual. He was never late for meetings. There are an unbelievable amount of people today that can’t stick to a schedule. And if they do stick to a schedule, it’ll be for a couple days or a couple weeks or a couple months. But that’s the beauty of Rockefeller. Rockefeller was able to craft an ideal schedule and stick to it for years so he can really get the compound interest on every action that he takes. Once again, I will repeat that he was extremely serious about his schedule. The point here is is that Rockefeller wasn’t optimizing his schedule to make the most amount of progress happen in the smallest amount of time, but he was dead set on winning in the long term. And so he crafted a schedule that he could stick to for a whole lifetime. And so the key lesson here is that if you want to be able to work like Rockefeller, then you have to craft a schedule that fits you and that you can follow for the long term. So, in the book, there’s this great description of Rockefeller playing chess as a kid with the other kids, and I think it’s so great because the way he played chess with the other kids is literally the exact same way that he conducted himself in business. The book says, “With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that there was something extraordinary about the way the solid boy pinpointed goals and doggedly pursued them without any trace of childish impulsiveness. When playing checkers or chess, he showed exceptional caution, studying each move at length, working out every possible countermove in his head. “I’ll move as soon as I get it figured out,” he told opponents who tried to rush him. “You don’t think I’m playing to get beaten, do you?” To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules. Despite his slow, ponderous style, once he had thoroughly mulled over his plan of action, he had the power of quick decision. So many of the greatest conquerors and leaders and entrepreneurs in history were relentless planners, but as soon as their plan was executed, they would not stop until the entire plan was completed. After execution, there is no going back. You have to follow through. When Rockefeller was playing chess, even as a child, he was planning several moves ahead. And in the book, it says, “This part was vintage Rockefeller. He slowly and secretly laid the groundwork, then moved with electrifying speed to throw his adversaries off balance.” At one point in the book, Rockefeller is trying to split up with two of his business partners, James and Maurice Clark, and he plans everything before he does this. He secured money from a financier so he could buy their shares. He planned the speech that he was going to give them. He planned the bidding war that was going to take place. He literally planned everything in his head. And so, when it came time to actually split up with his partners, he was already prepared for everything. The book describes this philosophy. In the last analysis, Rockefeller prevailed at Standard Oil because he had mastered a method for solving problems that carried him far beyond his native endowment. He believed there was a time to think and then a time to act. He brooded over problems and quietly matured plans over extended periods. Once he had made up his mind, however, he was no longer troubled by doubts and pursued his vision with undeviating faith. Unfortunately, once in that state of mind, he was all but deaf to criticism. He was like a projectile that, once launched, could never be stopped, never recalled, never diverted. So many of the greatest conquerors in history operated in this exact same way. Napoleon, before campaigns, he would take these note cards and he would write down every possible scenario that could play out, and then on the back of the note cards, he would write down how he would respond to that scenario. But, there’s one more similarity between John D. Rockefeller and Napoleon, and that’s that after they began executing their plan, there was no looking back. And this comes down to the brilliance of their planning. So many times when people sit down to work, they have a very strict and rigid plan, and when things don’t go according to plan, which they won’t, it automatically throws them off. What many of the greats in history do instead is that they make these very fluid plans. They literally plan like they’re playing chess, where instead of just thinking one move ahead, they’re thinking for every possible scenario that could play out on the chessboard. They think if the opponent does this, I’ll do this. If the opponent does this, I’ll do that. If the opponent counters here, I’ll counter there. And so, once they begin to execute, they have all these different plans for every possible scenario, and they never have to look backwards. But, once the execution begins, there is no looking back. If you want to work like Rockefeller, plan relentlessly and never look back. Rockefeller might have been the most methodical worker in all of history. He was extremely calm. He always moved a slow and steady, but his focus was truly incredible. One of his neighbors describes him like this. “I have no recollection of John excelling at anything. I do remember he worked hard at everything, not talking much and studying with great industry. There was nothing about him to make anybody pay a special attention to him or speculate about his future. This was in his childhood and the book continues to say this about his childhood. He was a slow learner, but patient and persistent and like J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould exhibited a terrific head for math. I was not an easy student and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons, said Rockefeller who described himself as reliable but not brilliant. He was persistent, he was also extremely slow. As in at school, some people thought him rather a dim-witted dull who would never rise in the world and he had to prove himself to naysayers. I think the best example in the book that shows Rockefeller’s methodicalness is when he was searching for a job where he’s just onto the next task and then the next task and then the next task. It says, “His quest had a touch of callow grandiosity. At each firm he asked to speak to the top man who was usually unavailable, then got straight to the point with an assistant. I understand bookkeeping and I’d like to get to work.” Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning he left his boarding house at 8:00 clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie to make his rounds of appointed firms. This dimly determined trek went on each day six days a week for six consecutive weeks until late in the afternoon. And I think it is because of his methodicalness and his slow and steady way of working that allowed him to never get discouraged because he approached his job hunt devoid of any self-doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. I was working every day at my business, the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day. He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. That is so brilliant. I’m literally mind-blown by the sums of the sentences in this book. And this job hunt is one of my favorite stories of Rockefeller in the book because it’s just like peak Rockefeller. When he is working towards something and he has his mind dead set on the goal, in this case finding a job, he just goes at it and he goes at it and he goes at it and he goes at it until he gets it. It’s not fast and it’s never pretty, but he always manages to break through and he manages to achieve whatever he wants to achieve. For this job hunt, it took 6 weeks and the book says, “For the rest of his life, he would honor September 26th as job day and celebrate it with more genuine brio than his birthday.” And so I love that line because it shows that he loved this day of achievement more than his actual birthday because he just worked so hard at it and he faced so much rejection that the reward just felt that much greater because he went through so much pain to actually get it. Rockefeller keeps up this methodical way of working for his entire life and later in the book when he’s dealing with health issues, it says, “Rockefeller didn’t do this in a purely recreational spirit, but mingled work and rest to pace himself and improve his productivity. In time, he became something of an evangelist on health-related issues. It is remarkable how much we could all do if we avoid hustling and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.” The best example to describe Rockefeller is a story that everyone’s already heard and it’s the tortoise versus the hare. Instead of sprints, Rockefeller was slow and steady, building up these consistent habits and actions that compounded over time and I think that’s because Rockefeller figured out something very simple, that before you build speed, you need to build consistency and consistency comes from being extremely methodical about your work, simply planning it all out and then just execute. So I know we just talked about how Rockefeller was very slow and steady and methodical, but I think on top of that, it’s also worth it to note that he was extremely focused on what he was doing at all times. Whether he is signing documents or going through ledgers, he is always 100% dedicated to his work. It’s kind of crazy how the book describes it and it says that work enchanted him, work liberated him, work supplied him with a new identity. “My duties were vastly more interesting than those of an office boy in a large house today.” he later said. And when the book described how he worked at Hewitt and Tuttle, it said, “When Hewitt Tuttle assigned Rockefeller to pay the bills, he went at this task with an undisguised zeal, a precocious virtuosity, and attended to it with more responsibility than the spending of my own funds.” Besides writing letters, keeping books, and paying bills, young Rockefeller also served as a one-man collection agency for Hewitt’s rental properties. Although patient and polite, he displayed a bulldog tenacity that took people by surprise. Sitting outside in his buggy, pale and patient as an undertaker, he would wait until the debtor capitulated. He dunned people as if his life depended on it. There are so many great lines in there, right? Bulldog tenacity, he dunned people as if his life depended on it. That was how he worked. He worked as if his life depended on it. The person who immediately came to mind when I read this was Michael Jordan. He had extreme tenacity. He showed up earlier at practice, he stayed later, and more importantly, every single time he played, he played with an intense seriousness, even if it was just practice. For the greats of history, there is always an extreme tenacity behind their actions, and this is something that I think the modern world is largely missing. People tend to assume that they have all the time in the world, that they have days and months and years, but the realness of it is that life is incredibly short, and the greats of history went at their work as if their life depended on it, because in a way, it does. And so, the key lesson here is that if you want to work like Rockefeller, then you must be able to work with extreme tenacity. The mature Rockefeller liked to dub himself “just a man of figures,” and he found nothing dry or sporific about tall ledgers. “As I began my life as a bookkeeper, I learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were. I had a passion for detail, which afterward I was forced to strive to modify. Rockefeller was one of the most number obsessed people I have ever studied, and this is really important because a lot of really productive people are the most number obsessed people out there. For Rockefeller specifically, his entire life revolved around metrics. Much of his time he was closeted in his office where he had oil prices chalked on a blackboard. He paced the Spartan office, hands laced behind his back. Periodically, he emerged from his lair, mounted a high stool, and studied ledgers, scribbling calculations on the pad and paper. But Rockefeller wasn’t a numbers guy just for the numbers themselves, but these numbers helped him see what was going on at his company. Numbers gave Rockefeller an objective yardstick to compare his far-flung operations, enabling him to cut through the false claims of subordinates. It was the way that he extended rationality from the top of his organization down to the lowest rung. Every cost in the Standard Oil universe was computed to several decimal places. This is why metrics are so important because you can’t make progress unless you know what you want to make progress in. And the way you do this is by using metrics. Rockefeller didn’t just use this philosophy in his work life, but he also used this philosophy in his personal life. No less than his business life, Rockefeller’s private life was ruled by bookkeeping entries. Since he found numbers so clean and soothing in their simplicity, he applied the business principles of Hewitt and Tuttle to his own personal economy. When he started working in September 1855, he paid a dime for a small red book anointed ledger A in which he minutely recorded his receipts and expenditures. Many of his contemporaries kept such record books, but seldom with such exacting care. “Exacting care.” I mean, oh man, it it does not get much better than that. This is one of Rockefeller’s biggest strengths, just that he was so obsessed and focused on the metrics, and I mean, he kept them for everything. The rings on the barrels of oil, the barrels of oil sold, every tiny expense at his company down to the dollar. And on top of this, the brilliance lies in how he was able to go through ledgers. He was able to go through the ledgers at his company extremely quickly and point out what number needed to go up faster. Like he could literally look through a ledger, point to a little line in the ledger, and say, “This is the bottleneck. We need to focus all our energies on this line.” And so, we’re back to the key lesson. If you want to work like Rockefeller, you must become obsessed with metrics. However overblown the frequent biographical claims about John D. Rockefeller’s impoverished childhood have been, several people testified to the family squalor in Richford. “I do not remember ever to have seen more pitifully neglected children,” one neighbor observed. “Their clothing was old and tattered, and they looked dirty and hungry.” So, this is actually one of the things I most admire about Rockefeller, and that’s that he went through a lot of hardship, and he managed to turn it into the person that he was. Now, although Rockefeller didn’t claim to be driven by trauma, he actually kind of rejects this idea, it’s kind of clear that he did. And a lot of greats in history were actually driven by some sort of trauma. I mean, in the book it talks about how Rockefeller’s mom depended on him to provide for the family, and that’s got to be extremely hard. His mom’s name is Eliza, and the book says, “In this nightmarish situation, Eliza seemed to draw strength from adversity. One Richford native praised her as a most excellent woman, but one who bore too heavy a burden at that time properly to look after her children. Her husband was away for long periods. For a woman Eliza’s intense pride and religiosity, it must have been hard to endure the unaccountable absences of her gallivanting husband, and she drew closer of necessity to her oldest son, who struck her as precocious and prematurely wise. Because she confided in him and gave him adult responsibilities, he matured rapidly and acquired an unusual confidence. It must have flattered his pride that he served as a surrogate father and was so vital to the family’s survival. As he put it, ‘I know that in my own case I have been greatly helped by the confidence imposed me since early boyhood. Of course, this boyhood responsibility took a toll on John D, who experienced little of the spontaneous joy or levity of youth. From Rockefeller’s childhood, he knew that business wasn’t just a game, but it was a literal survival. And this is something that doesn’t leave you. You can see it so many times throughout his life, especially later in his life when he looks back to his childhood and he starts to break a little bit when they hand him the ledger A, that these childhood experiences stuck with him and drove him for a long time. He also actually studied Napoleon and he used a lot of the warfare principles that Napoleon used in war in business. And so this just sort of adds to the survival aspect of business. The point is that all of this hardship Rockefeller used as fuel. He used it as fuel to work harder, to be more motivated, to really focus on the details because he knows that at any point he could go back to the poverty that he was in as a child. And it’s with this mentality that he was able to conquer the oil industry. This is my favorite work concept that I’ve taken from Rockefeller and it has been life-changing both in my work and my personal life. For Rockefeller, work was not just something that he went to from 9:00 to 5:00 and then he stopped right there. But instead, it was a sort of religious and transformative experience. He said, “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor’s talent, the nurse’s, yours to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.” And this wasn’t just his philosophy for money, but it was his philosophy towards all of his work. He thought that hardship was a good thing and that it built character. The tools that he used in his work he thought of as sort of sacred relics. I mean, you should hear how the biography talks about his first ever ledger. For the remainder of his life, Rockefeller treated ledger A as his most sacred relic, producing it before Bible classes. More than 50 years later, he became almost tearful and trembled as he thumbed its pages. So potent were the emotions it evoked. At a Bible class of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in 1897, a deeply moved Rockefeller held the book aloft and intoned, “I haven’t seen this book for 25 years. You couldn’t get it for me for all the modern ledgers in New York and what they all would bring in.” The book rested in a safety deposit vault like some priceless heirloom. I know this sounds really crazy, but it’s also really beautiful because while most people see work as something they have to do, Rockefeller sees work as something he gets to do. It’s a religious experience for him. This was his mentality all the way from the beginning, even when he had nothing, work was a joy for him. What’s even more interesting though is how this tied into his religion. Rockefeller was Baptist and the book says, “Rockefeller never wavered in his belief that his career was divinely favored” and asserted bluntly, “God gave me money.” During the decades that he taught Sunday school classes, he found plenty of scriptural evidence to buttress this claim. When Benjamin Franklin was a boy, his father had pounded into his head the proverb, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” And Rockefeller often presented this text to his class. Martin Luther had exhorted his congregation, “Even though your work seems very trivial and contemptible, make sure you regard it as great and precious, not on account of your worthiness, but because it has its place within that jewel and holy treasure, the word and commandment of God.” As to why God had singled out John D. Rockefeller for such spectacular bounty, Rockefeller always adverted to his own adherence to the doctrine of stewardship, the notion of the wealthy man as a mere instrument of God, a temporary trustee of his money who devoted it to good causes. “It has seemed as if I was favored and got increase because the Lord knew I was going to turn around and give it back.” Rockefeller said this in his late 70s. This philosophy and this work mindset reminds me so much of Warren Buffett and it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from a Warren Buffett biography where the biographer is talking about how his wife sees Warren and his work. Moreover, she and even the children understood that Warren was on a sort of spiritual mission that diverted him from the more routine aspects of family living. They referred to his office only half jokingly as the temple. His work was a canvas, a work of art. This is the perfect description for how Rockefeller saw his work as well. He was not just there to conquer the oil industry, but in his mind he was there on a spiritual mission, a mission given to him by God. He was on a journey that would help society, that would build his character and he believed that he could do all of that in his work and in his business. This in the end, I think is the driving motivator that inspired him to work harder than anyone else around him. This is another principle that comes from Rockefeller’s upbringing and I think it’s one of the most important principles that anyone who is going to be successful needs to keep in mind. From the outset, Rockefeller had to wrestle with the demons of pride and greed. When rebuffed by a bank officer for a loan, he shot back in anger, “Someday I’ll be the richest man in the world.” He went through the week cautioning himself with proverbs taught by Eliza such as pride goeth before a fall and the spiritual self-scrutiny intensified with his growing wealth. When he rested his head on the pillow at night, he warned himself, “Because you have got to start, you think you are quite a merchant. Look out or you will lose your head. Go steady. Are you going to let this money puff you up? Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose your balance. It is so easy for people to have their first bit of success and then let it get to their mind. They start thinking that they’re better than others. They stop working as hard and eventually it leads to their downfall. Rockefeller in his head, he constantly thought about this maxim, “Pride goeth before the fall.” Rockefeller had this sort of fear of laziness, a sort of fear of idleness, and I think it is because of this religious upbringing and because of this maxim. He knew that if he became lazy, he would fall. And so, even though he was extremely competitive and very confident in his abilities, he wasn’t prideful. Even when he was at the top, he continued to work hard, and it all stems from that maxim, pride goeth before the fall. Rockefeller said, “Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration, the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of all else.” This is the final principle, and if success has to come down to one word, that one word has to be focus. Rockefeller was incredibly focused. He wouldn’t let anything distract him. At one point in the book, there are all these critics who are trying to get a quote from Rockefeller, and the book says, “Rockefeller endured abuse with so much equanimity that Flagler once shook his head and said, ‘John, you have a hide like a rhinoceros.’” He had an early Christian’s fierce defiance of critics. His boyhood with Big Bill having also taught him to disregard the malicious gossip of neighbors. He had a great general’s ability to focus on his goals and brush aside obstacles as petty distractions. “You can abuse me, you can strike me,” Rockefeller said, “so long as you let me have my way.” For his entire life, he was able to set everything aside and just focus on the task at hand, the work that needed to be done. And at the end of the day, a lot of his success comes down to just that. If you’re watching this, then you probably know that there are a lot of different opinions about Rockefeller, some good and some bad. And that is true now, but it was also true back then. But Rockefeller, even back then, was too focused to let that affect him. If you want a complete Rockefeller formula for being as productive as humanly possible, it would be this: a clockwork-like schedule, an intentionality to your work, a religious work ethic, and to top it all off, just an insane amount of focus. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this video, you might like this video, which goes over Rockefeller’s actual schedule, like what went into his day-to-day. And if you want a community of people who are obsessed with biographies and studying the greats of history, we do weekly meetings, there are courses, there are live presentations in the biography society. Consider joining. That’s it. See you.