PDF Summary:Relentless, by Tim Grover

Relentless defines a mental framework that author Tim Grover claims you’ll need to become the best in your field or discipline—a framework he calls relentlessness. This framework involves committing everything you have to overcoming obstacles and finding success.

In this guide, we’ll explain why a relentless mindset helps you succeed, as well as how you can apply this mindset to your own life. We’ll also provide commentary offering psychological research to contextualize Grover’s arguments, practical advice on applying his recommendations, and expansions on some of his arguments for clarity.

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• Achievement group: Make an achievement group of five or six people and meet with them to discuss how you’ll accomplish your goals.

• Accountability partner: Have one accountability partner, and meet regularly with them to make sure you’re both doing the work necessary to reach your goals.

• Support team: A support team consists of experts dedicated to helping you excel in your field. Meet with members of your support team regularly in a one-on-one setting.

Principle #2: Put Intense Pressure on Yourself

Grover’s second principle for developing the Unstoppable need to succeed is constantly putting intense pressure on yourself. Grover agrees with the commonly observed phenomenon that people perform better under pressure, and that being under pressure forces you to find ways to rise to whatever challenge you’re facing.

(Shortform note: While many psychologists agree that pressure under certain circumstances will improve performance, it’s often in the context of short-term high-stress situations like a basketball game. However, in a longer-term context or in a field that doesn’t require immediate and precise action, psychologists disagree with Grover on the benefits of pressure. For example, one study found that increased pressure correlated with worse performance in math students. This research suggests that the extent to which pressure will benefit you is dependent on what your discipline requires.)

Constant pressure allows you to avoid fear of failure and self-doubt in two ways:

1. Constantly putting yourself under pressure gives you lots of practice managing the fear and stress that comes with it, so you’ll improve at managing these feelings.
2. Internal pressure makes external pressure easier to handle. Others depending on you or having high expectations of you won’t cause fear or panic because the pressure they put on you can’t be any more intense than the pressure you put on yourself.

(Shortform note: Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that using stress as a tool helps you succeed, and suggests that, beyond helping you avoid fear of failure, it also benefits your mental and physical health. One study found that those who think of stress as a positive and motivating force focused less on negative emotions and had less cardiovascular stress.)

How to Productively Pressure Yourself

While pressure can help keep you relentless, Grover warns that you need to recognize the difference between productive and unproductive pressure. Pressure from your drive to succeed will help you stay relentless, while pressure from something like forgetting to do your work comes from a lack of commitment, and therefore doesn’t help you stay relentless. Grover suggests two ways you can pressure yourself productively: leading others and reframing your successes.

1) Leading others: When you’re Unstoppable, others will naturally see you as a leader—this can add productive pressure, since doing everything you can to succeed often requires helping the people around you perform at their best as well. A leadership role also adds the pressure of needing to accept responsibility and blame if things go wrong—being at the top means no one else is capable of picking up your slack if you fall short.

(Shortform note: Marshall Goldsmith (What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) agrees with Grover that leaders should accept responsibility when things go wrong, but his reasons why differ: While Grover argues that you should accept blame to put pressure on yourself, Goldsmith argues you should accept blame because it’ll earn you the trust and respect of your followers. He explains that accepting blame earns trust and respect because it shows your followers that you have integrity, courage, and modesty.)

2) Reframing success: Grover explains that success should increase the pressure you put on yourself instead of being an excuse to relax. The principle of constantly seeking improvement means that each success is merely a step on your path towards Unstoppable dominance in your field—not the destination. After each success, you'll have to set your sights on the next, larger success instead of relaxing.

(Shortform note: Grant Cardone recommends a similar reframing of success in The 10X Rule, but he takes his argument further than Grover by claiming a one-time achievement shouldn’t even be called a success—real success is only gained through many accomplishments over a long period of time. By adopting Cardone’s mindset, you might make it easier to frame one-time accomplishments as single steps on a journey to success, allowing you to keep up pressure on yourself.)

Principle #3: Use Any Means Necessary

To truly push and pressure yourself as hard as you can, Grover argues that you must follow the third principle behind the Unstoppable need to succeed: seeking success by any means necessary. Grover provides two methods for following this principle: making sacrifices and accepting discomfort.

Method #1: Make Sacrifices

Grover insists that you can only be Unstoppable at one thing and that you’ll have to make sacrifices elsewhere in your life by spending less time and energy on everything else. If you split time and energy between multiple disciplines, then you aren’t giving everything you have to any of them and therefore aren’t pursuing success relentlessly. Not only will you have to avoid spending time and energy on other disciplines, but you’ll also have to avoid spending too much time and energy on your family and relationships.

(Shortform note: Gary Keller supports this idea of total commitment to one area of your life in The One Thing. He explains that extraordinary success comes from intentionally focusing your time on actions that carry you toward a specific goal—not from spreading your focus across everything you feel you should be doing and treating every area of your life as equally important.)

Method #2: Accept Discomfort

The sacrifices mentioned above might make you feel uncomfortable, and further suggest that the life of the Unstoppable can be unpleasant. Grover doesn’t argue with this and says that you must experience and accept this discomfort to be Unstoppable. Anyone can follow a clear and painless path toward success. But when success requires confronting fear, uncertainty, or even physical pain, discomfort holds back the Good and Great while the Unstoppable relentlessly push through it.

(Shortform note: Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that accepting discomfort helps you pursue success and goes even further by suggesting that doing so will lessen discomfort in the future. Studies suggest that accepting discomfort without judgment leads to increased peace of mind, increased willpower, and increased emotional management skills. According to this research, accepting discomfort doesn’t just allow you to stay relentless, but will actually reduce your discomfort overall as you continue to pursue relentlessness.)

Part 3: The Unstoppable Direct Their Instincts

We’ve just explored the first main quality of the Unstoppable, the need to succeed, and discussed how you can productively fulfill this need. Now, we’ll explore Grover’s secondUnstoppable quality: the ability to direct your instincts—that is, the ability to use your natural animal instincts to accomplish the complex goals required by your field or discipline.

(Shortform note: You might assume that your animal instincts are so hardwired into your mind that you can’t tell them what to do. However, this isn’t the case—the rational part of your mind can actually train your instincts. After all, memory and experience can inspire instincts—for example, a child touching a hot stove will learn from that experience, and later will have the instinct to check if a stove is hot before touching it.)

In this section, we’ll examine three areas Grover says to direct your instincts—knowledge, emotions, and your primal self as well as how doing so will help you become Unstoppable.

Instinctively Using Knowledge

Acting on instinct, argues Grover, means acting without consciously thinking—this allows you to better use knowledge of your discipline because you can just act on your knowledge without having to think about the best way to use it. Thinking opens you up to self-doubt and fear, damaging your confidence and, as a result, your ability to be relentless. On the other hand, by directing your instinct to use your knowledge automatically, you’ll be able to act immediately with no distractions or self-doubts holding you back.

(Shortform note: Research supports Grover’s argument that you can “train” your instincts to rely on the things you know or believe. A study on people who had performed heroic acts by risking their lives to save others found that the majority of these people hadn’t considered if their action was the right thing to do, but instead acted intuitively on their existing moral beliefs. This suggests that your more “rational” thoughts and beliefs inspire instinctive action.)

To instinctively use your knowledge, you need mastery: an understanding of your field so deep that you can access and use knowledge without taking time to think about it. Mastery allows you to address any situation and to remain calm if circumstances suddenly change. Mastering your field requires a lot of hard work over a long period of time, and Grover says there are no shortcuts or easy ways to get it.

• For example: A Great mechanic repairs a car by researching what the problem may be and how to fix it in the specific model they’re working with. An Unstoppable mechanic with mastery in the field knows his job so well that he can immediately identify the problem and understands the repair approach the specific model needs.

(Shortform note: Anette Karmiloff-Smith explains the brain science behind mastery in Beyond Modularity. She suggests that once you’re skilled enough to perform a task automatically, your brain puts less effort into the task and can use that effort on other things. Your brain can then use this “freed up” power for a more flexible and creative approach.)

Instinctively Controlling Emotions

Grover explains that acting on instinct also helps control your emotions. This is crucial for consistent relentlessness because as we’ve discussed, strong emotions like fear and uncertainty can cause you to freeze up or doubt yourself—preventing you from acting relentlessly.

Grover explains that acting instinctively helps you control your emotions because it activates intense focus: a state of mind where you block out all emotions except for focused, determined anger. Acting instinctively activates intense focus because you’re acting without conscious thought—you don’t have time to let in distractions or emotions other than determined anger.

(Shortform note: While Grover argues that blocking out emotions will help you act decisively and confidently, psychological research contrasts with this idea. In Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio explores the role of emotions in decision making. He researched people unable to experience emotion due to brain damage and found that they have trouble making simple decisions, often taking hours to do so—unlike Grover, Damasio concludes that emotion actually benefits decisiveness.)

Access Your Primal Self

Once you’re able to direct your instincts to properly use your knowledge and control your emotions, Grover declares that you must access your primal self: the person you are when acting entirely through instinct. Directing your instincts productively is the foundation for this step because it ensures you’ll still relentlessly pursue your goals even when acting impulsively.

Grover explains that to access your primal self, you must indulge primal desires: things you impulsively want, but keep secret because society tells you to (like sex, drugs, or gambling). Indulging primal desires allows you to practice accessing your primal self even when relaxing, making it easier to access when seeking success in your field.

(Shortform note: The primal self Grover speaks about is quite similar to what Sigmund Freud called the Id: the part of your mind dedicated to fulfilling impulses, needs, and desires. However, the two have contrasting beliefs about how you harness this animal, instinctual part of yourself: Freud believes that impulsive sexual desires motivate all great achievements, while Grover claims that the desire for success in itself motivates achievement.)

However, Grover also emphasizes that you need to make sure that indulging your primal desires doesn’t take priority over succeeding in your field. If your desires take first priority, you’ll spend too much time and energy on indulgence and won’t be able to relentlessly pursue success in your field.

Calling It Quits

Grover does acknowledge that there will come a time when you have nothing left to prove and are ready to finish up your career or lifelong commitment. He notes that in order for you to do so, your self-control will have to triumph over your primal self, or else you’ll never feel satisfied and won’t stop seeking success until you’re dead and gone.

(Shortform note: Going from relentless to retired is a difficult transition—research shows that highly gifted individuals end up less happy later in life, stuck wondering if they fully lived up to their potential. However, there is a solution to this unhappy decline: helping others. By transitioning into a mentor role, you can continue using the wisdom you’ve developed over the course of your life. Scientists call this collected wisdom “crystallized knowledge,” and believe that it peaks far later in life compared to other mental faculties—meaning that you still have opportunities to “live up to your potential” in various ways, even beyond retirement.)