The Two-Word Question Behind Elite Performance

The two words that move things where they've never moved before

There's a two-word phrase that, when I use it, things in my life start happening.

When I expect action from other people and I start using this phrase, they start taking action — even when they don't want to. And when I don't want to take action, this phrase gets momentum going. It drives me out of bed. It drives me to do what I don't want to do. It drives me to accomplish far more in a day than I normally would.

But before I tell you the phrase, I want to talk about how human beings actually live — how the world shows up for us.

Someday, I'll get to it

Notice the phrases we live inside of: Someday. I'll get to it. I can knock out all ten things on my to-do list today — even though, if I'm lucky, I'll get through one or two.

Here's the truth about the human condition: we are exceptionally capable at surviving the day. We can take these bodies and survive the day remarkably well. What we're not great at — what our brains are simply not designed to do — is accurately see what things take to do in time.

This isn't just my opinion. Psychologists have a name for it: the planning fallacy. In one famous study, students estimated their thesis would take about a month. It took nearly two. And here's the kicker — even when researchers asked them for their absolute worst-case estimate, reality still blew past it. Our brains are optimism machines. They were built to get us through today, not to tell us the truth about time.

I want to accomplish a lot out of my day. I've got all sorts of ideas. All sorts of greatness. But if you sat me down and forced me to do the actual looking — the intellectual effort of determining how long each thing will really take — I'd have to tell you: there's no way I'm getting everything I want done today. Truthfully, not this week either. Or this month.

Said plainly: we've got two legs, two arms, and we're not really good at getting stuff done.

Anything big requires coordinated action

If I'm up to creating anything in the world, I have to start doing the work of thinking about when I'm actually going to do what I say I'm going to do.

And if I'm up to anything really big, it's going to require other people doing what they say they're going to do. If we're going to do it in any sort of time, with any sort of efficiency, it's going to take coordinated action.

I spent ten years in special operations. I had the opportunity to work with some truly exceptional human beings — talented, hardworking people. But what made us exceptional wasn't our talent. It was our ability to take coordinated action.

Picture a helicopter hovering on the side of a mountain, about a mile from the Pakistan border, in the middle of the night. The air crew needed coordination to hold that hover safely. My buddy and I needed coordination to hook up to the hoist and get every piece of equipment we needed down to the ground. And we needed coordinated action to link up with the Special Forces team — one of whose members had fallen out the back of an aircraft a few minutes earlier.

We were all strong. We were all smart. We had skills. But honestly, go out into the general public and you'll find plenty of people who are strong, smart, and skilled. What you won't find are many organizations that can work in such a coordinated way that they end up producing miracles.

And here's what made that coordination possible: a helicopter can't hover indefinitely. Everyone on that mountainside knew exactly when their piece had to happen, because everyone else's piece was built on it.

The cornerstone

The phrase I want to give you is about moving things forward. It's about making things happen. And it's about confronting what it's actually going to take.

Coordinated action produces elite performance — and these two words are a cornerstone of it. If you're building a cathedral, you need very sturdy stones in the corners to hold everything else together. The cornerstone isn't the entire building. But nothing stands without it.

The two words

When I have something I want to do — and I wake up to the fact that I'm not doing it — or when I want to make sure someone else does what they said they'd do, I use these two words:

By when

By when will you complete what you said you're going to complete?

By when will I finish this?

By when will I let my business partner know?

By when will I have a plan?

If I'm on the phone with customer service and they tell me they're going to do something — and I'm actually interested in them doing it — I ask them: by when?

Why it works

Remember what I said about the brain — that it's not designed to see what things take in time? Here's the secret of this question: you cannot answer "by when" honestly without doing the looking.

"Will you do it?" lets the brain stay in someday-land. Sure, yeah, I'll get to it. But "by when" forces you to take the thing you said you'd do, hold it up against the calendar, look at everything else already living there, and tell the truth. The question does the work our brains were never built to do on their own. The confrontation with reality comes first. The accountability is the byproduct.

And there's a second thing happening — this is why it works even on people who don't want to take action. A vague assurance costs nothing to break. Nobody ever felt like a liar for missing a someday. But the moment someone states a date out loud — especially to another person — something shifts. Now there's a promise with their name on it. To miss it, they can't just drift past it. They have to actively break their word. Most people, it turns out, would rather do the thing.

Research backs this up too. Psychologists call it an implementation intention — and across hundreds of studies, people who specify when they'll act follow through at dramatically higher rates than people who merely intend to. Intention is cheap. A moment in time is a commitment.

Now, some people hear this and think: deadlines, pressure, stress. But that's not what this is. On the side of that mountain, a "by when" wasn't pressure — it was the thing that made it possible for anyone else to act. Your by-when is what other people build on. Without it, a commitment can't be coordinated, can't be counted on, can't even be renegotiated — because there's nothing there to renegotiate. A commitment without a by when is a wish. A commitment with a by when is a promise that can be managed, honored, or reworked in the open.

If you're stuck

So if you're stuck — or someone you care about is stuck — start using these two words more often in your day.

Things will start moving where they've never moved before.

So — by when will you start using this phrase?