How To Use Leverage In Life Using First Principles - An illustration showing a see-saw, where a child-like stick figure appears sad and raised on the left. A bigger adult-like stick figure is seated lowered on the right and seems to be smiling.

In today’s hyper-efficient society, every savvy individual aspires to use leverage in life to achieve more with less effort. Let me repeat that phrase again: “achieve more with less effort”. Doesn’t that sound attractive? It sounds like some sort of cheat-code to life, right?

Well, leverage is indeed a game-changing abstraction in our modern efficiency-driven society. However, it is by no means a free lunch.

That’s right; even leverage involves costs. If one is not careful, it is very easy to miscalculate one’s capabilities with leverage, or worse, to over-lever oneself.

Luckily, there is an easy fix for such problems. We need to approach the notion of leverage using first principles.

First principles thinking involves solving a problem (in our case, a concept) by breaking it down into its most fundamental concepts/principles.

This is my goal with this essay. I will begin by covering the first principles involving the concept of leverage. Following this, I will derive its effective application to real-life situations.

By the end of this essay, you would not only have a first principles based understanding of leverage, but also be knowledgeable about the traps and pitfalls of using leverage. Without any further ado, let us begin.

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The First Principles of Leverage

A typical lever-setup involves three components:

1. A load with a load arm,

2. An effort with an effort arm, and

3. A fulcrum.

You push down the effort arm with an effort to lift the load at the end of the load arm.

How To Use Leverage In Life Using First Principles — An illustration showing the components of a lever-system. On the left, an effort is applied, while on the right, a load is placed. At the centre, a triangular fulcrum is placed. The distance between the fulcrum and the effort is labelled as the effort arm. The distance between the load and the fulcrum is labelled as the load arm.
Components of a lever-system — Illustration created by the author

The idea with a lever is that you put in lesser effort than if you had tried to lift the load directly/conventionally.

This reduced effort is possible because of the following equation:

Effort (Force) * Effort Arm = Load (Force) * Load Arm

The ideal lever-system has to fulfil this equation. As a result, to be able to lift a heavier load, all you need to do is to combine one or more of the following actions:

1. Reduce the load arm.

2. Increase the lever arm.

3. Increase the effort.

When someone says “achieve more with less effort”, they probably mean increasing the lever arm. Reducing the load arm almost never gets a mention. And increasing the effort is the last thing we wish to do.

With the basics laid out, it certainly does seem possible that we could be able to lift theoretically any load with a long enough lever. Why don’t we see the scale of leverage by plugging in some numbers?

Leverage in Life Using Numbers

Let us go back to our childhood days when we played see-saw. Remember when a heavier/bigger kid sat at the far end? You instinctively moved back to counter the load to make the see-saw more even.

What you were instinctively doing there is to increase the lever arm. But how far can you push this leverage?

Let us say that you turned back into a kid and a kid four times your weight was a the far end. Then, using the same equation as before, we could arrive at the length of the lever arm to be able to lift the heavier kid.

Effort (Force) * Effort Arm = Load (Force) * Load Arm

(Your Weight) * (Effort Arm) = (4 * Your Weight) * (Load Arm)

For a load arm of 1 metre (m):

Effort Arm = 4m.

So, if you are just one-fourth the weight as someone, you would need to sit four times as far as the person from the fulcrum. Why don’t we raise the stakes a little bit?

What if someone wishes to lift a load of 10,000 Kilograms (10 tonnes)? Then, the following calculation holds:

For a load arm of 1 metre (m) and assuming the person’s weight to be 80 Kilograms:

(Person’s Weight) * (Effort Arm) = (125 * Person’s Weight) * (1m)

Effort Arm = 125m

Here’s the best part about leverage. If you halve the load arm (change it from 1m to 0.5m), you can either halve the load required or halve the length of the effort arm:

(Your weight) * (Effort Arm) = (125 * Your weight) * (0.5m)

Effort Arm = 62.5m.

These examples clearly illustrate the power of leverage. So, what gives? Why can’t leverage be free lunch? Well, there are certain holes in our first principles as it is. Let us explore further.

Why is Leverage No Free Lunch?

The model of the ideal lever-system we have been using so far is not practical. This is often the issue with textbook knowledge.

You see, we have been treating the lever beam (that contributes to the load arm and the effort arm) as a rigid body. But in reality, no such rigid body exists.

Imagine a steel beam that is 125 metres long for instance. If we use thicknesses in the range of human sizes, the beam is going to sag under its own weight; it might even fail!

This is what I meant by cost; leverage involves costs. Increasing the length of your lever arm costs you. In this case, it costs in terms of material as well as performance. Well, what about reducing the length of the load arm then?

Well, it could help, but only up to a certain point. If the load arm is short enough, it would eventually break at the fulcrum. If you think about it, we have used this property to break thin tree branches as children.

It seems, then, that real life imposes material limitations on us. But I’m afraid that is not all. We have yet to take into account real-life inefficiencies such as friction, fatigue, etc. So, where do all of these factors and limitations leave us with in life?

How to Use Leverage in Life Using First Principles

In modern real-life situations, we often try to use leverage (either explicitly or implicitly) to achieve more with less. But we seldom carry out first principles analysis/calculations.

How To Use Leverage In Life Using First Principles — An illustration showing a see-saw, where a child-like stick figure appears sad and raised on the left. A bigger adult-like stick figure is seated lowered on the right and seems to be smiling.
A See-Saw — Illustrative art created by the author

I used to work in a small team of 2. My manager back then suggested that we add 8 more people to complete the task in one-fifth of the due time. To this, a funny and smart colleague of mine responded as follows:

“Our manager is the type who believes that ten pregnant women can deliver one baby in one month.”

Don’t get me wrong. Leverage is a great tool to achieve more with less, especially in digital environments. Such environments often feature virtual levers that overcome frictional losses and materialistic constraints.

This is also one of the reasons why software-based companies are some of the most successful in the world right now. Having said that, it still holds that leverage is no free lunch. To properly utilise leverage, one has to:

1. Carry out first principles analysis.

2. Dynamically assess the situation to see if the lever variables have to be dynamically adjusted.

3. Design factors of safety (margin to failure) and backup plans.

As the old saying goes:

“To the monkey with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Don’t be that monkey. Leverage is indeed a great tool to achieve more with less effort. But using leverage without first principles analysis also increases the risk of failing much faster than without using leverage in the first place.

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