Work Backwards From What You Actually Want
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Asked what they would tell someone earning 40K a year who aspires to far more, both guests gave the same answer: do the work to understand what you actually want, then work backwards from it. The mechanism is that a specific lifestyle, not a number, constrains the path. If you genuinely want multiple supercars and properties, only a narrow set of jobs and industries can produce that, and you should choose accordingly. If what you want is a nice home, some travel and time with people, the financial requirement is far smaller and the freedom correspondingly larger. Once the target is honest, optimise the next move for learning rate rather than starting salary — chief of staff at a startup, an analyst programme, anything that compresses reps. Patrick's expectation is that most people discover they want less than they assumed.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Do the introspection first
Before setting an income target, work out what you actually want your life to look like and what your purpose is. Patrick says the thing he most wishes he had done was this work in his early twenties.
Watch out Patrick also admits he may not have been capable of doing it at that age — expect this to take real time and possibly outside help.
- 2
Separate genuine wants from nice-to-haves
Some people genuinely want multiple supercars and properties; others just think it would be nice. The distinction matters because only the genuine want justifies the path required to get it.
Pro tip Test it by asking what decision you would make if money were no object — Ali uses this to catch himself taking work for the fee rather than the work.
- 3
Price the lifestyle and work backwards to a number
Translate the described life into a financial requirement. Matt points to the methodical exercises in Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek and Tony Robbins's money book, which make you pick a target and work backwards to it.
Pro tip Include a security baseline: expenses at roughly 4% of invested savings is a sustainable place to stand.
- 4
Map the narrow set of paths that can produce it
If the answer is tens of millions, only a limited number of jobs and industries make that possible. Name them explicitly, then decide whether the trade is worth it before committing years to it.
Watch out Ali's counterpoint: the less money your desired lifestyle requires, the more freedom you have, because you need less time at work.
- 5
Choose the quickest path to learning
Optimise the next role for learning rate, not comfort or immediate pay. Patrick's examples are chief of staff at a startup or an analyst programme at a large finance firm — positions that compress exposure and skill-building.
Pro tip Matt's version: get yourself into a learning environment that develops the specific skills giving you the best shot at your target.
- 6
Build the step-function asset alongside the job
Ali's own step change came from starting a side project while in an entry-level startup job, growing it past roughly $20,000 a month in passive income, and only then leaving to build the business full time.
- 7
Re-test the target as you learn
Patrick's expectation is that doing the work makes many people realise they want less than they thought, or than the version they absorbed from a film. Adjust the plan when that happens instead of defending the old number.
Pro tip The downgrade can be as small as private-health doctor versus public-health doctor rather than an entire career change.
In the wild
Ali describes his own biggest step change as happening while he was working an entry-level startup job. He started a side project and grew it to roughly $20,000 a month in passive income, which was the threshold that let him leave and start his own business. He frames it as a step-function change in freedom rather than in wealth: crossing the line where the income covered his life meant the job was now optional, and the choice of what to work on next was no longer constrained by needing a salary.
→ Crossing a passive-income threshold converted a job dependency into freedom of choice.
Patrick uses the deliberately concrete case of someone who genuinely wants multiple supercars and multiple properties — not as a vague nice-to-have but as a real desire. Working backwards from that, there are specific things they will have to do and specific jobs they will have to hold, because only a narrow set of paths produce that outcome. He contrasts it with someone who wants a nice vacation home, a flat, some fun things and time to hang out. That person can build a very different life and does not have to go for the same things at all.
→ The desired lifestyle, not ambition in the abstract, determines which career paths are even candidates.
Common mistakes
Adopting someone else's number by default
Chasing the next round figure because it is the next round figure is what Patrick warns against: at $10,000 a month you look to $100,000, then to a million, without ever asking why. The number has to come from a described life, not from momentum.
Optimising the next job for pay over learning
Once the target is set, the constraint is skill acquisition, not immediate salary. Choosing the comfortable or better-paid role over the one that compresses learning slows the whole path.
Skipping the introspection and starting the climb
Both guests said the work of understanding what they wanted is what they wish they had done in their early twenties. Starting the climb first means you may spend a decade building toward an outcome you would not have chosen.
From the transcript
“do do the work to understand what you want yeah and work backwards from there”
“once you've worked backwards try to get on the quickest path to learning”
“if you work backwards there's certain things you're going to have to do then there's certain jobs you're going to have to have Etc”
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