What if everything you thought about time was wrong—and the key to scaling your company faster isn’t more hustle, but a radical shift in how you relate to time itself?
In this groundbreaking audio original from organizational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy and entrepreneur Blake Erickson, you’ll learn how elite performers, visionary founders, and world-class teams move faster by thinking differently.
Features an exclusive interview with #1 international bestselling author Joseph Nguyen, who shares how he met a seemingly impossible deadline using this exact tool!
Drawing from cutting-edge psychology, business strategy, and real-world experience scaling companies, Dr. Hardy and Erickson deliver a mind-expanding playbook to help you slow time down, filter the noise, and accelerate results. Whether you're a founder, team leader, or high-performer in growth mode, this is the reset your calendar—and your company—has been waiting for.
You’ll Why your future is the ultimate filter for decision-making—and how to build a future so compelling it reshapes your present.How to manipulate the “speed of time” to generate 10, 20, even 30 years of growth in a fraction of the time.The power of extreme deadlines to eliminate inefficiency, boost clarity, and surface the crux that unlocks exponential momentum.Strategies to duplicate your time by leveraging other people’s knowledge, resources, and networks for faster scaling.How to master your past so it fuels your growth rather than holding you back.Real-world examples from Joseph Nguyen and other high-performing entrepreneurs. Let’s Be This isn’t time management. It’s time mastery. And when you learn to use time as a tool, you don’t just get more done—you create a future that pulls you forward with unstoppable force. Get ready to bend time, scale faster, and operate from a whole new level. Your 10x leap starts now.
Title Chapter 1 Your Future is the Tool to Filter Your Present Case How Alicia Ault 1,000x’d Her Clients in 90 Days Chapter 2 The Speed of Your Time Case How Greg Cini 10x’d His Net Worth in 18 Months, at Age 55 Chapter 3 Use Extreme Deadlines As A Tool Case How Xavier Martine Reached His 10-Year Goal in 3-Years Chapter 4 Duplicate Your Time to Scale Faster Case How Joseph Nguyen Free’d Himself from Limitations Chapter 5 Utilize Your Past as a Tool, Not a Trap Conclusion Credits
The book is a combination of framework theory and interviews in the form of case studies. This is a follow-up of the "The Science of Scaling" book, stripping everything out and keeping only the topic of time, and it can be used as a tool to filter your present based on the future.
This framework is a really interesting idea that I'm still experimenting with. 1. Think about a 10x goal: a goal so big that it requires a 'new you'. This will help filter out all the things that won't lead to the goal. In other words, it removes all the distractions. 2. Going even further with setting extreme deadlines: with a big goal, with short deadlines helps us focus on the few paths that lead to the goal, creates urgency, accelerates our growth (because it requires a 'new you')
Both big goals and extreme deadlines help remove 80% of the things that are mere distractions or pure procrastination. They help us focus on what really matters, gain time, and make progress on goals. This is what I call 'productivity'. It's not about doing more or faster. It's about choosing the right pathway and really making progress on the things that matter to us.
Hardy's most useful book yet, and that's saying something after Who Not How, The Gap and the Gain, and 10x Is Easier Than 2x.
The central reframe is simple and strong: this is not time management. Management is what you do with an enemy. Hardy and Erickson argue that time is a tool — and, like any tool, the point is not to have more of it but to use it with ruthless intent. Once you accept that, the conversation stops being about to-do lists and calendar tetris and becomes about what future you're actually building, and whether today is connected to it.
A few chapters genuinely changed how I think:
"Your future is the tool to filter your present." The exercise of deciding the future first and then deleting every commitment that doesn't serve it is brutal and clarifying. I ran my own calendar through it the morning after I finished and cut three standing meetings. "The speed of your time." The idea that different activities move at different speeds — and that elite performers deliberately choose the faster lane — was one of those observations that seems obvious once stated and impossible to un-see. "Extreme deadlines as a tool." Shorter is not more pressure; shorter is more thinking. Compression forces 10x decisions where a relaxed timeline breeds 2x ones. Classic Hardy. "Duplicate your time to scale faster." Essentially the Who-Not-How thesis sharpened into a time-specific weapon. "Utilize your past as a tool, not a trap." This is where the book gets genuinely wise. The Gap-and-Gain muscle applied to how you narrate your own history. The Joseph Nguyen interview is worth the price of admission on its own — the story of how he hit what should have been an impossible deadline is the best applied example of the whole framework in the book.
Erickson's presence is the right editorial choice; he grounds Hardy's bigger claims in operator-level reality. And as an audiobook it moves — tight, paced, not overstretched.
Nearly took a star off because I've heard some of the vocabulary before in Hardy's earlier work, but the application is fresh enough and the framework is coherent enough that five stars is honestly earned. Listen on 1.2x and take notes — there's an implementation idea every fifteen minutes.
If you’re tired of generic “time management” advice, this audiobook is a refreshing upgrade. The central idea—time is something you can master and leverage, not just manage—is explained with a clear mix of psychology, strategy, and radical focus. I also loved the format: short intro/conclusion, structured chapters, and real case studies that make the concepts feel practical instead of theoretical. It’s motivating without being hypey, and I finished each episode feeling like I had something specific to apply immediately.
Time is measured by distance. So the goal becomes how to travel maximum distance in shortest amount of time. Worm holes are what you find when you meet a place or a person that can help you leverage time and distance. Time will either expose or promote you Use extreme deadlines (urgency creates massive movement), not about stress. Use your past as a tool. This should be part of your leverage story. Your present shapes your past. Treat life like game film, where you replay the game to see where you can consistently improve
Dr. Hardy and Mr. Erickson target entrepreneurs in this book, but I enjoyed listening to the case studies of people who have scaled. I found encouragement in their experiences of resistance from those who were jealous or uncomfortable with their success.
I adore his writing, this was not my favorite book of his though. Conceits were good. But it lacked depth in them, had long case studies that weren’t very compelling to me & felt kinda like a sales pitch. Bummer because he almost always gets lots of stars from me.