Leverage: The Power To Move Worlds by Daniel Turner & Marc Lindsay

R. Buckminster Fuller ("Bucky") has probably the best definition of leverage that I've ever heard, and he defines it as this: "Ever more, with ever less".

Leverage is all about taking things beyond your physical, mental, monetary, and time limits, and being able to expand those exponentially.

For the purpose of this principle, we're going to be discussing leverage as it is related to bringing about success, but modern-day society most relates the principle of leverage to Archimedes who said, "give me a lever long enough, and prop strong enough, and I can move the world".

There are 3 main aspects to leverage, the leverage of time, the leverage of money, and the leverage of applied knowledge.

1. The Leverage Of Time

We spoke about this in "The Principle Of Time Consciousness", being aware of time, and that when you reach level 4 you are literally at your limit.

The leverage of time can set you free.

Essentially you are leveraging your time by utilizing other peoples' time to accomplish what you need to do. By employing people to work with you, hiring outsourcing agents, or out-tasking the grunt work to data entry workers across the world.

2. The Leverage Of Money

Investment circles and educators call this OPM—Other Peoples' Money, and say that it is the best way to invest. This isn't ALWAYS true, and particularly when we talk about online, because of the minimal barriers to entry ($9 for a domain, $30 for hosting and the rest can be done by you), you may not need to employ the leverage of money.

3. The Leverage of Applied Knowledge

Can you imagine if you had to learn everything for yourself? As in you couldn't read books, talk to people about their experiences, but had to actually learn for yourself and experience everything yourself? How long would it take for you to figure out what needed to be done and how to do it properly?

The idea is ludicrous, but there are also methods for speeding up your acquisition of knowledge, things like speed and photo-reading, having mentors, utilizing your available wasted time to listen to CDs/MP3s etc.

Now, you'll notice that I put 'applied' in front of knowledge.

Knowledge by itself is wasteful, it is the application of that knowledge that helps you to move forward.

Sometimes to apply knowledge though, you'll need several pieces, so you may learn one thing, and it may take 6 months, 3 years or more to actually put that knowledge into application, and for all the pieces to fall into place.

A simple method for getting around this however, is that you learn about what you need to learn about, when you need to learn it. If you are having cashflow problems in your business, learn how to bring more customers on or get your existing customers to spend more, don't read and learn about how to find the best deals on eBay.

This last paragraph should be setting alarm bells. The Leverage of Applied Knowledge with Focus can have powerful effects. It means you are doing that which needs to be done, with the knowledge to get it done correctly the first time around.