If You Want to Ruin 2027, Do These 9 Things
3 Min Read
If You Want to Ruin 2027, Do These 9 Things
I learned most of them the expensive way.
It’s October.
Some of us are already planning 2027.
Budgets. Targets. Strategies. New initiatives. Bigger goals.
Before you add another thing to the list, there may be a better question to ask.
I recently went back to one of Charlie Munger’s favorite ways of solving problems: inversion.
Instead of asking:
How do I make 2027 a great year?
Ask:
What am I already doing that could completely screw it up?
That question made me uncomfortable.
Because when I looked back at some of my biggest mistakes, I realized I already had a pretty good playbook.
I’ve spent years believing money would fill something that had been missing since childhood.
I’ve known what I needed to do and waited years before doing it.
I’ve kept people because I believed in who they could become rather than what they were showing me.
I’ve jumped into problems, fixed them myself, then wondered why everyone kept coming back to me.
I’ve filled my calendar with interesting opportunities and wondered why the things that mattered most weren’t moving fast enough.
Some mistakes cost me money.
Some cost me years.
Others probably cost me opportunities I’ll never know I missed.
So if you want to ruin 2027, here are 9 things I can personally recommend.
I’ve tested all of them.
1. Use success to prove that you’re enough
This is a dangerous one because, from the outside, it looks exactly like ambition.
Work harder.
Build something.
Make money.
Get recognition.
Then do it again.
For a long time, I carried a hole from childhood that I genuinely believed money would fill.
So I built businesses. Made money. Sold a company. Invested in ventures.
And yes, money changed my life.
It gave me freedom, security and choices.
But the hole didn’t disappear.
Because money is excellent at solving money problems.
It’s terrible at answering questions about your worth.
If you’re asking achievement to answer that question, there will never be a number big enough.
You’ll reach the finish line.
Celebrate.
Then quietly move it.
I know because I did.
2. Stay too long
This one cost me years.
I once owned a company I knew I wanted to sell.
Not suspected.
Knew.
And then I waited.
For roughly three years.
There were always reasons.
Maybe the timing would improve.
Maybe something would change.
Maybe I should give it a little longer.
Then I finally made the decision.
Within months, the company was sold.
For years, I saw that as a success story:
I built a company and sold it.
Today, I see another story inside it.
The expensive part wasn’t selling the company. It was the years between knowing and deciding.
Persistence has created an enormous amount of value in my life.
It has also kept me in places long after the facts had changed.
Persistence and denial can look remarkably similar when you’re inside them.
Never quit on yourself.
But quit things that no longer deserve another year of your life.
3. Keep the wrong people because you believe in them
I’ve done this more than once.
Someone isn’t delivering.
Deep down, I know it.
But I can see their potential.
So I coach.
Change responsibilities.
Give another chance.
Wait another month.
Then another.
I’ve kept people long after I already knew it wasn’t going to work.
Part of it was loyalty.
Part of it was optimism.
And part of it was probably my ego telling me I could help them become the person I could see.
Sometimes people change.
But I’ve learned something uncomfortable:
You cannot want someone’s success more than they do.
Keeping the wrong person isn’t kindness.
The strong people around them carry more weight.
Standards quietly fall.
Everyone pays.
Believe in people.
But believe their behavior too.
4. Make yourself indispensable
I still do this.
Something important isn’t moving fast enough and my instinct kicks in.
Give it to me.
A client needs attention. I’ll handle it.
A deal is stuck. I’ll call.
The message isn’t strong enough. I’ll rewrite it.
And the annoying thing is:
It works.
Things move.
Which makes this habit incredibly difficult to break.
Every rescue gives me immediate evidence that getting involved was the right decision.
But it also teaches the organization something:
When it really matters, Amir will fix it.
That’s not scale.
That’s dependency.
Solving a problem and building an organization capable of solving that problem are two very different things.
If everything works when you enter the room and stops when you leave, you haven’t built a system.
You’ve built yourself a very demanding job.
5. Surround yourself with people who agree with you
This gets more dangerous as you become more successful.
When you’re young and unproven, people tell you you’re wrong all the time.
Gain experience. Become the CEO. Build companies.
Suddenly, fewer people do.
Add the fact that I’m opinionated, fast and pretty good at arguing my position, and I discovered something dangerous:
I can win an argument and still be wrong.
Today, I actively want people around me who can look me in the eye and say:
“Amir, that’s bullshit.”
And explain why.
One of the worst things that can happen to a leader is to become the smartest person in every room.
Not because you’ve actually become the smartest.
Because everyone else has stopped challenging you.
If nobody disagrees with you anymore, don’t assume you’ve become wiser.
You may have trained them to stay quiet.
6. Fall in love with potential instead of evidence
This is one of my natural tendencies.
Give me a company, an entrepreneur or an idea, and my brain immediately starts building the future around it.
That has served me well.
I’ve built companies, invested in ventures and worked with entrepreneurs for years.
Seeing what something could become is part of what I do.
It has also cost me.
I’ve backed companies because I could see the market they could own.
I’ve believed in people because I could see the leader they could become.
Sometimes I was right.
Sometimes reality had been giving me the answer for months and I preferred the future in my head.
This is particularly dangerous for leaders.
We’re supposed to see things before other people see them.
But vision without evidence eventually becomes self-deception.
People tell you who they are through their behavior.
Companies tell you what they are through their numbers.
Markets tell you what they want by paying.
Reality eventually wins every argument.
The only question is how much you’ll pay before admitting it.
7. Confuse activity with progress
I love movement.
Deals.
Meetings.
New companies.
New ideas.
Problems being solved.
I can have a day packed with meetings, solve ten problems, send twenty important messages and finish exhausted.
It feels productive.
But was it?
Over the years, I’ve become much more ruthless about that question.
A meeting isn’t progress.
Interest isn’t a deal.
Pipeline isn’t revenue.
Being exhausted isn’t evidence that something important happened.
Today I ask myself and my team something simpler:
What actually changed because of what we did today?
Did something sell?
Did a customer move?
Did we make a decision?
Did we create something valuable?
Activity gives you constant feedback.
Progress moves you forward.
Don’t confuse the two.
8. Say yes to everything interesting
This may be one of the most accurate descriptions of me.
I love possibility.
I’ve built businesses, invested in ventures and met extraordinary people around the world.
Put something interesting in front of me and my natural reaction is:
Let’s look at it.
For years, I considered this one of my greatest strengths.
It is.
Until it isn’t.
Success eventually creates a problem nobody warns you about:
There are more interesting opportunities than you have life.
At that point, creating another opportunity has almost no value.
Choosing becomes the skill.
I’ve had periods where I was involved in too many things because each one made perfect sense individually.
Collectively, they made no sense at all.
Every yes looks cheap when you evaluate it alone.
But every yes contains an invisible no.
Yes to another project is no to deeper focus.
Yes to another meeting is no to thinking.
Yes to another opportunity may be no to the exceptional opportunity already in front of you.
I’ve become much more interested in subtraction.
Your calendar is ultimately a record of what you decided to spend your life on.
Treat it accordingly.
9. Spend your life building a great life, and forget to live it
This may be the biggest one.
Ambitious people are very good at postponing life.
After this quarter.
After the deal.
After we hit the target.
After things stabilize.
Then I’ll have more time.
I’ve been waiting for things to “calm down” for a very long time.
They don’t.
There’s always another problem.
Another opportunity.
Another mountain that suddenly seems important.
And I don’t want to lose that hunger.
I’m still ambitious.
I’m still building.
I want to stay relevant.
I want to keep moving forward.
But I’m learning that none of that requires postponing life.
Your children don’t experience your five-year plan.
Your partner doesn’t live in your future success.
Your parents don’t get younger while you’re busy.
And neither do you.
Maybe that’s the lesson underneath all the others:
The years you spend building your life are your life.
Don’t miss them.
Final Thoughts
Charlie Munger’s inversion idea works because it cuts through all the motivational bullshit.
Instead of writing another list of things you’re going to do in 2027, ask yourself a more uncomfortable question:
What am I already doing that could ruin it?
Maybe you’re staying somewhere you already know you should leave.
Maybe you’re keeping someone because you still believe in their potential.
Maybe you’ve made yourself indispensable and called it leadership.
Maybe you’re working harder because you don’t want to admit the strategy isn’t working.
Maybe you’re winning every argument.
Maybe you’re saying yes because saying no feels like losing an opportunity.
Or maybe you’re so busy building your future that you’re barely present for the life you already have.
I’ve done every one of these.
Some lessons I learned quickly.
Others needed to become expensive before I paid attention.
And I’m still learning some of them.
That’s probably the point.
A good life isn’t one where you stop making mistakes.
It’s one where you get better at recognizing them before they take another year from you.
So before you write your goals for 2027, try something different.
Write down the three things you already know you need to stop doing.
The decision you already know you need to make.
The thing you already know you need to leave.
The truth you’ve been negotiating with.
Start there.
Sometimes the best way to build a better year isn’t to add anything.
It’s to stop doing the things that are quietly destroying it.
With Love for Sports and Innovation,
AR
CEO, HYPE Sports Innovation
Comments