This video is going to be very interactive and incredibly useful, so feel free to pause
it, take notes, and rewatch sections whenever you need to.
Have you ever achieved something without knowing how you did it?
Or have you ever seen someone else achieve something and wondered how they did it?
In this video, based on the wisdom of Aristotle, I’m going to give you a step-by-step technique
for understanding how to achieve anything.
I’ll start with simple examples and build up to more complicated ones.
This technique is called Cause and Effect Equations.
And we’re going to start with a simple example.
I recommend taking out a pen and paper and following along, because this knowledge truly
will change your life.
Start by writing an equals sign.
To the left of the equals sign, write “Causes”.
To the right of equals sign, write “Effect”.
Causes = Effect
The Effect is the thing we want to achieve.
For example, making a cake.
So let’s erase “Effect” and write “Cake” on the right side instead.
And according to Aristotle, there are four types of causes that can explain any effect:
an efficient cause, a material cause, a formal cause, and a final cause.
So let’s erase “Causes” on the left side and write out all four causes.
The efficient cause is the thing or person responsible for producing the effect.
In our case, that would be the baker.
So let’s erase “Efficient Cause” and write “Baker”.
The material cause is the list of ingredients required to produce the effect.
So let’s erase “Material Cause” and write “Ingredients”.
The formal cause is how you are supposed to combine the ingredients to produce the effect.
So in our case, that’s the recipe.
So we can erase “Formal Cause” and replace it with “Recipe”.
And the final cause explains the purpose of the effect or why it happened in the first
place.
It explains why the cake was made.
In our case, that would be to satisfy our hunger.
So we can erase “Final Cause” and write “Hunger”.
So by breaking the effect down into its four causes—the efficient cause, the material
cause, the formal cause, and the final cause—which are the baker, the ingredients, the recipe,
and hunger respectively, we understand how the effect of making a cake is achieved.
Breaking any effect down into its four causes allows us to understand how it can be achieved.
Now let’s step it up one level of complexity.
This technique can also be applied to more complicated dreams, such as building a business.
Let’s write out the four causes again with “Successful Business” on the right side
as an effect.
The efficient cause is the person or thing responsible for creating the successful busines.
In our example, that’s the entrepreneur.
The material cause is the list of ingredients required to create a successful business.
For now, we can write an in-demand product or service.
The formal cause is the recipe that describes how the ingredients are put together to create
the successful business.
In our case, we can write “easily accessible”, which means that the in-demand service or
product is put together in a way that is easy for the customer to access.
And the final cause describes the purpose the business was created for in the first
place.
In our example, we can write to “serve customers”.
So when you get an entrepreneur who wants to serve customers, with an in-demand product
or service that is easily accessible, you get a successful business.
Those are some decent insights, but we can take this to the next level by going even
deeper.
Each of the four causes in the equation can be broken down further to get more insight.
Let’s get more specific and choose an industry, such as filmmaking.
We can put together a list of successful films and their makers and determine how they were
made.
Let’s start by erasing “entrepreneur” on the left side and writing “filmmaker”,
and let’s erase “successful business” on the right side and write “successful
movie”.
Now let’s take a look at our efficient cause: the filmmaker.
We can gather a list of filmmakers who have made a successful movie and see what qualities
they have in common.
For example, maybe they all work more than forty hours a week, have college degrees,
and are willing to fail multiple times before giving up.
We can boil those down to three traits: hardworking, educated, and resilient.
Now, let’s erase filmmaker from our formula and sub those three qualities into the brackets:
Now let’s look at our material cause: an in-demand service or product.
We can gather a list of all of the best performing movies of the last few years and see what
they have in common.
For example, maybe they’re mostly superhero movies.
So let’s erase “in-demand service or product” on the left-side and write “superhero movie”.
Now let’s look at the formal cause: easily accessible.
Again, we can gather a list of successful superhero movies and see how they combine
all of their ingredients—to see if there are any similarities.
Maybe they all use the hero’s journey.
That’s a recipe that’s known to work.
So we can erase “easily accessible” and write “hero’s journey”.
And finally, let’s look at the final cause: serve customers.
By looking at our list of successful superhero movies, we can see similarities in how they
serve their customers.
Maybe they all finish with a final battle between the hero and the villain, where the
hero just barely wins.
So we can erase serve customers and write, “journey to a battle where the hero eventually
wins”.
So putting that all together, we get: if you take a filmmaker who is hardworking, educated,
and resilient, who makes a superhero movie that follows the hero’s journey, where the
ultimate purpose is build up to a battle between the hero and the villain, where the hero barely
wins, you get a successful movie.
That would be a pretty powerful insight for less than ten minutes of work.
And there are infinite levels of depth that you can go through here.
For example, we can take the material cause, superhero movie, and break it down further.
We can analyze our list of successful superhero movies and study how many characters they
have, how many plotlines, how many heroes, how many villains, and so on.
You can literally spend a lifetime putting together detailed equations on how to achieve
anything.
So by gathering evidence and studying it using Aristotle’s four causes—the efficient
cause, the material cause, the formal cause, and the final cause—we can form complex
Cause and Effect equations that help us determine how to achieve anything.