Whenever my mom calls me she asks:
“Did you do anything fun this weekend?”
For the past few years, my answer was almost always:
“Nope, just the same old stuff.”
Of course, I’d have the occasional trip or event that she wants to hear all about, but most of the time, the answer just involved working, writing, walking, lifting, and eating. The things I do every day.
Her response was always:
“Oh, you should go out more! You’re young Daniel!”
I always thought there was something wrong with me.
She was right, I thought.
I should go out more.
Am I wasting the years that matter the most?
Will I look back and regret doing the same old thing, day after day?
So, I pushed myself to go out more.
What I discovered was that I only started to feel more lost and dissatisfied with life.
As mom continued to call and ask that question, it started to click.
“So, did you do anything fun this weekend?”
Nope, just the same old stuff.
“Why don’t you go out and have some fun?”
Well…
Nothing is as fun as what I do every single day.
That question assumes that doing anything is more enjoyable than the same old stuff, but the same old stuff is what leads to meaning, presence, and flow. Operating at your peak capacity is so much more enjoyable than constantly tapping pleasurable distractions to fill the void in your soul.
Why would I go out and conform to what society says is fun just to fit in and seem like I am doing something fun?
- Late nights that throw off your sleep schedule and slowly destroy your mental and physical health.
- Hangovers that rot your brain, ruin your focus, and make it difficult to perform in the things that are enjoyable, not pleasurable.
- Pigging out on food bombed with grease and sugar and whatever else they put in it to make you addicted to it.
Now, I didn’t exactly say this to my mom. I’m not that rude.
I also don’t think that those things should be eradicated from your life as a whole.
The occasional night out can be a great tactical reset. It can force you to feel like shit so you crave feeling better. It can open you up to conversations you wouldn’t have normally had, leading to breakthroughs in your work. It can expose you to lower states of consciousness so you can navigate their contents and use them to your benefit.
The lady and I went out for her birthday last night and had a great time. I’m a bit fuzzy while writing this, but I wouldn’t trade nights like that for anything else.
This entire idea is a conversation I had with a business friend of mine.
He commented that people feel lost because they haven’t created a lifestyle they don’t want to escape from.
That comment shot me down a rabbit hole of how the modern world has set people up for failure.
So that’s what we’re here to discuss:
- The problem with modernity and why people – especially young people – feel so lost, confused, and uncertain about their future.
- The opportunity that technology and the information age provides and how few people have taken advantage of it.
- How setting standards will change your life (and 7 standards you must set for yourself if you want to live with purpose).
- How to create your ideal day so you can stop hating Mondays and feeling like you need to fill a hole in your identity.
For those struggling right now:
There is a way out.
There is a way to navigate the chaos.
There is a way to have a sense of control over where you end up.
You live in a time where you can create a life you love waking up to every single morning.
The first step to getting out is understanding what got you there in the first place.
The Uncertainty Crisis: A Holistic Problem
The problem of uncertainty starts with the fact that you outsourced your sense of certainty.
This is how it goes:
You’re born into a culture with specific beliefs, values, and standards.
As you learn to walk, run, and speak your mind is molded to match those around you. You can’t control this. It’s how you survive.
Before you know it, the only goals on your mind are to go to school, get a job, marry someone, go on some fun vacations, and retire someday. These goals vary from family to family. Some families force moral success and religious beliefs, others force academic success, and others encourage entrepreneurial success.
If you understand the mind and human behavior, you can spot the problem with this.
The unconscious programmed goals sitting deep in your psyche shape how you act, who you are, and what opportunities are available for your awareness to register.
You have the same mind as your parents, who have the same mind as theirs, who have the same mind as theirs.
Unless… someone in that family tree questioned their beliefs and sought a better way of doing things.
The world has changed.
Technological advancement came fast.
The world is much, much different than it was just 10 years ago. And if you’re operating from a set of 100-year-old beliefs, it’s no wonder you feel so lost.
You lack purpose because the modern world is drowning in information.
You don’t know how to make sense of it all.
Your beliefs don’t match the environment.
You outsourced your certainty to society, your parents, your teachers, the government, and religious ideologies.
Now that there’s an abundance of information that challenges what you believe, your focus is split, and your mind is in a constant state of disorder until you decide to reprogram your own mind.
What served your survival in your local environment is not going to help you survive and thrive in a world that is rapidly changing. Your parents probably didn’t push you out of the nest so you could learn to fly, so you have to take the leap on your own.
Not to mention, most workers fear replacement within the next 10 to 20 years. Another distraction that could be easily resolved by taking matters into your own hands and starting a business. I discussed this last week in The Future Of Work.
If you want to learn a skill that hasn’t and won’t go out of style (and allows you to be a deep generalist, making you irreplaceable), learn high-impact writing.
The question is, how does one change the code their mind operates on?
How can you write the code in a way that allows for meaningful progress in your life?
How do you find clarity in a society that benefits from you being a cog in the machine?
We’ll get to that.
Because it gets much worse before it gets better.
The Modern Environment
Let’s paint a brutal picture of modern life.
Most people are dopamine-depleted from unnecessary Adderal prescriptions, phones, and distractions that lead to anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure. Since people are at the point where their “normal” state is feeling like complete shit, they try to feel something, anything, by whatever means possible.
You are in a constant state of survival and stress.
Your mind is narrow and can only notice quick opportunities to get a hit of short-lived pleasure.
From this low state of consciousness, you are robotic and animalistic. You chose to pursue the goals society assigned to you. You didn’t focus on solving the unique set of problems you grew into that make you unique and valuable. You neglected your health, finances, and mind for the sake of conforming to what others wanted for you, and now those problems sit around creating chaos and you don’t know what’s going on.
The average person stuffs themselves with processed food.
They have an emotional reaction every time they see a social media post.
They feel the need to argue and prove their worth any time they can.
Beyond that, they never go out in the sun.
They stare at screens all day.
They sit in fluorescent-lit cubicles.
Their work lacks challenge and meaning.
All of this feeds back into each other and splits off into more problems.
Your sex drive takes a hit because your estrogen and prolactin are sky-high.
Your testosterone levels are tanked.
Your body grows soft and pudgy, you start losing your hair, and the man boobs popping up on your chest make you self-conscious. You start walking with a slouched, unconfident posture and want to hide yourself from the world.
For women, there’s a similar hormonal phenomenon.
Birth control is prescribed like candy.
Anti-depressants are the “normal” option for mental health because they make more money than going through the slight discomfort of simple lifestyle changes. But since you haven’t made a simple lifestyle change before, your mind convinces you that it’s incredibly hard, and you project that excuse at any chance you can rather than just changing.
Men and women alike lack the energy or care to meet new people, exercise, or change their habits.
The masculine/feminine balance on a social scale is getting closer and closer to neutral. There’s no polarity. We are fighting the laws of nature and suffering immensely because of it. I’m not saying the solution is to regress to a time before technology and “return to tradition.” I’m suggesting that you integrate and adapt to the modern environment. Solve your own problems.
Beyond that, subconsciously you know that chaos is increasing exponentially.
Entropy takes hold from your lack of effort, and by doing nothing with your life, you slowly start to drown, but that’s only added pressure to the already terrible situation.
The first step to change is becoming aware of all of this.
You have to sit with it, contemplate it, and get so angry that you have no option but to revolt.
Then, with that new spiritual energy source, you use the abundance of information available to you to self-educate, pursue new goals, and dig yourself out of the rut.
Uncertainty is a holistic issue.
Your environment, your hormones, your mindset, your work, your lifestyle, your culture, your society… it can all serve you or pile drive you into the ground.
The cure is becoming multi-dimensionally jacked.
You must take care of your mind, body, and finances before anything else.
You change the world by changing yourself and letting your decisions ripple through consciousness.
But still…
It gets worse before it gets better.
Young People Are Set Up To Fail
Wealth and prosperity are here.
They’re just not evenly distributed.
It’s not difficult to log on to social media and see people make a few million dollars before they turn 30, or even 21, because they saw the opportunity of the information economy. That wasn’t possible for older generations. They don’t understand it.
So, if you don’t value absolute self-reliance, you will be thrown to the side.
Why?
Because the lawmakers are all from previous generations.
Society is shaped by those at the top of it.
The opportunities to achieve wealth and prosperity the old way – go to school, get a job, buy a house, get married, etc – are influenced by those who make the laws.
Housing has doubled from pre-pandemic to now, so people would rather waste their money going out and “finding themselves” with travel. They give up on investing in their future because it’s near impossible for someone with a decently high-paying job to do so. High-paying jobs are no longer high-paying because the cost of survival continues to increase.
Young people aren’t mating or having kids because they can’t afford it, and they just don’t have the desire to. Their hormonal and psychological health are in the garbage can.
So, the only people we spend time with are our digital friends on social media, our significant other (if you’re developed enough), and our close friends (if you’re lucky enough). Modernity can get extremely lonely if you don’t develop the social aspect of your life.
Back to the point…
The 80-year-old lawmakers have kids who are almost in their 60s.
They still need to call their nephew for tech support to learn how to open their emails on a 20-year-old computer that is flooded with viruses.
I shouldn’t have to explain how the values and beliefs of older generations influence the decisions they make and how that prevents society from seeing progress.
The lawmakers bias themselves and their children.
Meaning, the only path to wealth and prosperity for you is to take a completely different path.
To forget and revolt against what you’ve known as “the only way.”
To open your mind, set new standards, and allow yourself to grow into them.
The Opportunity Of The Information Age
This isn’t meant to be the daily dose of nihilism you use to convince yourself to stay the same.
It’s the opposite.
It’s meant to make you angry, upset, and mad at yourself so you finally have the clarity to make a change. Like a slingshot, you use that negative energy to start and let momentum take over. You cultivate a positive philosophy through action and effort.
What you need is an opportunity.
And there are more than plenty around you.
The solution to your problems is technology, information, and efficiency.
Going to school and getting a job is an outdated path.
Self-education, improvement, and starting a business are the only paths to full control over one’s mind, body, and finances.
You are living through the second renaissance for Christ’s sake.
Can’t you see it?
Individuals are using the internet to remove the limitations of previous generations.
You no longer need to go to a prestigious school to make connections that lead to an incredible job. All you need is to publish a piece of valuable content on the internet for someone across the world to see it. Or, you can use that DM feature – with a bit of social skills and persuasion of course – that you thought was just for sending memes to your friends.
You no longer need to have a resume and spam applications to mediocre jobs you don’t actually want. Your personal brand is your public resume that lets an audience follow you based on the value you provide.
You no longer need to perform a specialized role in a company you don’t care about. You no longer need to be a cog in the machine that sells a product for someone else. Thanks to technology, you can build a product or service with close to zero dollars, attract an audience, and acquire skills fast that allows you to run a one-person business.
But, some people still ignore the opportunity.
They don’t realize that this is modern survival.
Yes, right now, it’s the internet, social media, and information that allows you to create your ideal lifestyle.
Times change. You won’t win if you are operating from 10-50 year old beliefs that you refuse to shed. The ones that take control of your mind and call anything new a “scam.”
All great ideas are seen as scams until they solidify their roots in society. But by then, the next great “scam” is on the horizon, and only the intelligent people take advantage (without scamming or being scammed).
Yes, actual scams are a very real thing. I don’t doubt that. But a bit of critical thinking goes a long way.
If you want to enroll in my scam that has allowed individuals to pursue their life’s work, check out Digital Economics to learn the skills they won’t teach you in school.
In other words, they take risks on the future and create it in the process.
The risk-takers of the world create society by fueling new ideas they deem worthy of their effort. They don’t sit around waiting until it gets diluted and becomes accepted by the masses. Because by then, it isn’t an opportunity, it’s an assignment. You do it because everyone else is.
The question now is:
Because your standards are non-existent.
Setting Standards Will Change Your Life
Your life sucks because of the thousands of tiny choices you made over the past year.
You didn’t make the choices that led to a purposeful career.
You didn’t make the choices that led to fulfilling relationships.
You didn’t make the choices that led to a healthy and aesthetic body.
“But Dan, what about genetics and where I was born and working a job that doesn’t allow me enough time blah blah blah”
Yeah, those things play a role.
But you just made another tiny choice to close your mind off to what you can do in your situation. You just relinquished your ability to solve problems… the only ability that will set you free.
The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away—it can only be forgotten. – Greg McKeown
It’s not difficult to see that you aren’t a special case. Thousands like you have turned their situation around. I bet you could take someone in a terrible position and give them steps to achieving something, but you can’t do the same for yourself because your mind is in the way.
The quality of your life one year from now will depend on the tiny choices that compound into that life.
You don’t have to make perfect choices.
It’s actually better if you make mistakes.
The greatest risk is no risk at all, because how else would you fail?
Without failure, improvement is literally impossible.
Without improvement, you don’t have an aim for your life.
Without an aim for your life, everything becomes meaningless.
Becoming a better person is how you live with purpose.
Broke people are okay with being broke until something catastrophic happens.
And it is much more likely for a catastrophic event to happen to them.
Their car blows up because it’s old and unmaintained.
Someone breaks into their house in a bad neighborhood.
Their parents get sick and they can’t help because of their low income.
Of course, they have some motivation to make money at this point, but they think it’s too late when the catastrophic event happens. They didn’t prepare.
So they get trapped in an endless cycle of “I should’ve started sooner.”
Eventually, things equalize. The stress in their life lowers. They start to enjoy their mindless comforts again. Waiting for another catastrophe to break them down.
Successful people use these events to change who they are.
Who they are determines their standards and values.
Their standards and values determine the tiny choices they make.
If you’re okay with having $5 in your bank account, you won’t see that as a problem.
If you’re okay with having $100,000 in your bank account, you will see anything less than that as a problem that needs to be fixed.
Problems frame your perception – I talk about this in my book.
You begin to notice more money-making opportunities.
Your Google searches change to things like “how to make an extra $1,000/month.”
You start having conversations about money with your friends.
All of these tiny choices begin to compound into results.
You rewire your thinking patterns based on your intentional search for specific information relating to the problem you are facing.
The information you consume highly impacts your identity and thus your standards.
If you surround yourself with people – physical or digital – that make it seem like it’s “okay” to be 100 pounds overweight, have zero money, work a job you hate, stay with a partner you despise, get drunk every night, and the rest… how do you think your life will end up?
If your standards require you to eat from Whole Foods, you will look at McDonald’s meals in disgust.
If your standards require you to work like a CEO, you will look at low-level grunt work as a problem that must be fixed through skill acquisition, education, prioritization, and outsourcing.
You obviously can’t solve all of the problems in your life immediately.
You can’t escape your situation right now.
You need a plan. An aim. A way out.
And by sticking to this plan, I promise that the journey will be more enjoyable than the outcome of that thing.
As Nietzsche would say:
“Happiness is the feeling that power increases – that resistance is being overcome.”
The Standards Of Who You Want To Become
Most people take the bare minimum approach to life.
Quick money, quick sex, quick pleasure, no commitment, no depth, no failure.
The easier you try to make your life the harder it’s going to be.
The way out of mindless living is to adopt the standards of who you want to become.
How much money do you want to make?
What kind of work will bring you fulfillment?
What is your ideal relationship, for friends or a partner?
How do you want to look and feel?
You must go beyond the bare minimum of survival.
Commit to having a reason behind your actions.
If you don’t know why you are doing something, why are you doing it? And if you know why, why are you ignoring it?
Are you advancing humanity by handing out 40 triple-pumped mocha cappuccinos working at Starbucks? Or are you making humanity sick and overweight?
What about your “innocent” receptionist job for the military-industrial complex that bombs innocent people on the other side of the world?
Are you aware of what you are unconsciously contributing to?
Why haven’t you begun pursuing a more purposeful career or starting a business?
Do you know why you are shoveling food down your throat? Do you understand how each nutrient interacts with your biology and creates a healthy state?
Why haven’t you begun educating yourself on health and training?
You live in your body. It should be considered your full-time job to learn about it.
Do you know why you are going through the motions with a partner that was easy to get with? Do you see yourself with them for 40 more years?
Why haven’t you improved your social skills to the point of being able to attract a better partner?
It’s cliche, but you have one shot at this life thing.
The only person that can stop you from living a meaningless existence is yourself.
7 Standards To Set For Yourself
Let’s rapid-fire 7 standards that will lead to a fulfilling future:
- 1 hour of deep work – if you can spend 8 hours building someone else’s dreams, you can spend 1 hour building your own.
- $100,000 in your bank – anything less is considered a problem to be solved. This standard provides financial direction and clarity in your choices.
- 10,000 steps a day –for physical and mental health. Burn calories, get sunlight, open your mind to new ideas. All major discoveries, like the creation of the atomic bomb, were discovered on a walk.
- 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight – this satiates you, builds muscle, and makes it easier to hit macro and micronutrients. Even if you aren’t building muscle, the thermic effect and micronutrient density of protein-rich foods should be prioritized. Most of your fat loss / diet in general falls into place when you do this.
- Training 3+ times a week – run, bike, olympic lift, bodybuild, CrossFit, I don’t care. Do something that increases circulation, longevity, and acts as a meditative habit to rest your mind from work.
- 1 self-investment per month – those who pay, pay attention. Swap wasting your money on quick pleasure for investing in education, business growth, and experiences that lead to the person you want to become.
- 30 minutes of self-education – if you aren’t learning something new every day you are dying. Self-education reprograms your mind. Without it, you can’t spot new life-changing opportunities.
These are standards that you grow into. They don’t happen overnight.
You change what you consume to rewire your mind in alignment with these standards, then, you will feel the stress response when you don’t live up to them. That’s your new identity trying to survive.
You use that stress to act, solve problems, and create.
How To Create Your Ideal Lifestyle
Let’s break down what creates better choices:
Learning is the fundamental human drive.
At birth, you are an information sponge.
Your parents, friends, society, teachers, and bosses all project their worldview on you.
Where did they get their worldview? From the same people, unless they questioned it.
This is all that you know.
If we could put a number on it, you know less than 1% of the information available in the world. Probably closer to less than 0.001%.
This information creates reference points in reality.
It is how you distinguish yourself from others.
It creates your identity.
Your identity limits what information you notice, because you’ve only learned so much. You won’t notice certain things if you haven’t learned the information that bridges what it is with what you know. You won’t understand intermediate information if you haven’t learned beginner information. You can’t advance from level 1 to 3. You are missing out on 99% of life for this reason.
If I was exposed to the information and environment that made me goth, I would notice certain likes and dislikes in music, people, clothing, work opportunities, outlooks on the future, and emotional states.
As a goth, I won’t notice or even care about profitable business opportunities to experiment with (assuming that I am the stereotypical loner goth who hates the world).
If I drowned myself in information to reprogram my identity over time, I would spot opportunities related to that identity.
This brings up the power of the internet.
You can tend a digital garden or be thrust into a digital swamp.
We’ve never had access to so much information, and I find it hard to believe that it isn’t shaping identities rapidly and for the worse.
When you log on to social media, the default action is to follow entertaining accounts and meme pages.
Almost all of them subject your mind to unwanted tenants that party like it’s a frat house. When the parents come home, they’re devastated by what they see.
Your awareness is the parents coming home after mindless ideas turn your mind into a swamp.
Become aware of this now.
Unfollow anyone who does not serve the conditioning of better standards in your life. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, and no matter how much you justify it, the people you follow subtly influence your actions. Slowly, then all at once you become someone you may hate.
Take your time to follow valuable accounts. Valuable accounts challenge your worldview, make you think outside the box, and educate you on the skills necessary to reach a higher quality of life.
This is not an overnight process.
You may not find the information useful at first.
It takes time to bridge specific ideas that lead to understanding.
You will probably find it boring… until it’s one of the most interesting things in the world.
Follow one account.
Let the algorithm do its work.
Follow accounts that reply to the first account’s posts.
With time, you will create an environment that is conducive to your growth.
The only difference between you and the person more successful than you is the consistent intention behind the information they consume.
“But what about taking action???”
You are acting every day.
Why?
Because your mind is programmed with the information conducive to those actions.
Your identity is forged by the information you’ve been fed, and that alone determines what you perceive as an opportunity to act.
Surround yourself with the right people and you can achieve anything you want.
The Path Of The Value Creator
Why do people keep doing things they hate?
I’ve always wondered this.
Not like I’m a special little flower that never got stuck in the trap, but one who feels like he’s escaped and can view the situation from higher up on the mountain until he inevitably falls back down.
Praying for the weekend.
Dreading Monday morning.
Hiding who you are to make conversation with people you don’t like working with.
Using the internet as an escape.
Scrolling, clicking, shutting your mind off for just a bit longer, because when it’s on, you don’t like what it’s doing.
This is the life of the consumer.
The person who is used by the internet, rather than the one who uses it.
There’s no escaping this new world.
You can fight it or flow with it.
And while the internet is the problem, it’s also the solution.
You do not have to use the internet to do this, but there is no reason not to.
The last reason your life sucks is because you don’t contribute to humanity.
You lack purpose. You aren’t a part of something greater than yourself that you chose.
You don’t contribute to humanity because you don’t have something so valuable that you can’t help but share it.
You don’t have something valuable to offer because you are ignoring the problems in your life that beg a solution to be created.
You are ignoring the problems in your life because you don’t have clarity on how to achieve the goal that will solve them.
You don’t have clarity on how to achieve a goal because you have nothing to build. Nothing to frame and guide your learning.
A value creator is someone who has intention behind their inputs and outputs.
They treat their life like a science project.
They identify their own problems.
They educate themselves with the infinite resources available to them on the internet.
They test the solution on themselves and distribute their experiences with writing.
They package up the most helpful and streamlined solutions in the form of a product or service.
That is how they make a living by living with purpose
Becoming a creator is the cure for overconsumption.
Writing is the vessel for distributing value.
I write on all platforms. I don’t care to compete with images of my fancy car or lifestyle. I gain a deep sense of fulfillment by using the internet as not only a place to curate good thoughts, but to organize them and share them with others with the ultimate upside of doing what I enjoy for a living. Something that’s in my control.
This isn’t about becoming famous.
This isn’t about building a massive following.
This is about distributing the value you have to offer in a place that can reach anyone with the opportunities that will change your life and career.
You don’t need a step-by-step course to join the online party.
Write what you want to write.
Talk to who you want to talk to.
Get your name in front of people by not being a ghost.
Get eyes on your writing so it can spread more and more with time.
If you really need an extra push, just observe the people you are following for long enough.
Observe what they write about.
Observe how they write it.
Observe who they interact with.
Observe what they sell to make a living.
Piece the dots together and begin emulating them.
If you don’t have an answer, look it up.
You won’t get all of your answers in an instant.
Be okay with that.
If you know you are meant for more, start acting like it.
You don’t have to write, but I’ve tried it all.
With writing being the fundamental mode of communication that has survived throughout human existence, it’s a great starting point to discover what you truly want to do.
How To Look Forward To Monday Morning
You don’t look forward to waking up because you don’t have something to look forward to.
Pretty obvious, but still a widespread problem.
People don’t see it as a problem, so they become a victim to their situation and blame everyone but themselves for their inability to create a new path.
Here’s a process you can try to find that one thing that makes it impossible to sleep in:
1) Map Out A Holistic Future
You need a vision and anti-vision.
Pull out a notebook and start writing.
Brain dump everything you don’t want in your future. Pull from past experiences, current situations, and continue writing as you become aware of more things to add to the page. This is a living breathing document. You don’t just write for 10 minutes and then forget about it.
Your anti-vision should be potent. So much so that you become disgusted with your current situation. You should want nothing to do with it. Your only option is to launch in the opposite direction.
From there, write out the opposite.
Start creating clarity about what you want in the future. As you experience life over the next month, add to this.
Next, write out a few more things:
- Exactly what you need to do over the next year, month, and week to start making progress.
- Exactly what skills you need to learn in order to get there.
- What is currently holding you back and your plan to replace those habits (or people).
- Who you need to become in order to reach your vision for the future.
That should at least give you a starting point.
2) Start A Business
“But Dan, I don’t want to start a business!!!!”
You don’t get it yet, do you?
Unless your vision isn’t authentic – meaning you aren’t conforming to what you parents or society wants for your future – then the only way to have full control over all domains of your life is to start a business.
Don’t want to get replaced? Become the replacer.
Don’t have energy and can’t focus? Start a business so you can control how much time you work and focus on health.
Don’t make enough? Start a business that has a high earning ceiling (or infinite learning ceiling) that will almost always start as an online business that requires $0 to start.
Lack meaning and fulfillment? It’s because you work a job where the challenge in your work has stopped. You work for people you don’t care about selling a product you don’t care about that drains your energy creating a life you don’t care about.
Your psychology, physiology, and spirituality are in the gutter simply because you don’t take matters into your own hands.
And yes, it’s unfortunate that “starting a business” carries so many old connotations with it.
A business, for all I’m concerned, is just giving yourself permission to do what you want.
If you want to create your ideal day, then you need full control over it.
Yes, it takes time, but that journey will be more fulfilling than anything you do.
3) Self Educate Daily
This is obvious, but how else are you going to learn how to do the things you want to do?
Make it make sense.
You can’t have all of these dreams and aspirations and act like you don’t need to learn anything.
Invest in seminars.
Invest in courses.
Invest in experiences.
Invest in business growth.
Invest everything you have into creating the life you want. Otherwise, it’s not investing; it’s wasting.
Block out a 30-60 minute section of your day specifically for self-education.
You can pair this with other standards in your life like walking 10,000 steps a day.
Go on a walk, throw on a podcast, lecture, or audiobook that exposes you to what you don’t know, and capture potent ideas so you have fuel to build during your focused work blocks. Use Kortex capture for this.
4) Systemize Your Weeks & Days
If you aren’t making progress, you are making regress.
I’m not sure if that’s even correct grammar, but you get the point.
Entropy isn’t friendly.
You never stand still, you either move forward or you move backward without knowing it.
So, if you aren’t making progress, you must be able to identify that as a problem and start digging deeper into it.
Start with a weekly audit.
Write down everything you do in a day and start to label everything as unnecessary or parasitic.
Then, pull out a blank page, draw a weekly calendar, and write down every single thing you are going to do that week. It should align with making progress toward your goals.
Then, start doing it.
And if something doesn’t flow, cross it out on the page and exchange it for something else.
If you aren’t making progress, experiment with something else.
5) Self-Experiment
The only way to solve your problems for good is through self-experimentation. – The Art Of Focus
There’s a massive problem.
If you were to only focus on solving the problems in your life through experimentation, you would become successful.
But nobody does that.
They are marketed schooling, a job, a house, a car, and retirement. So people pursue that as a bandaid to their deep-rooted problems.
Then, they are given food and drugs and advice that add another bandaid on top. So people slowly become more neurotic and dumb because they fail to actually solve problems in their life. The things that make you valuable, irreplaceable, intelligent, aware, and any other good trait you can acquire.
As you go on this new path, away from your anti-vision and toward your vision, the determinant of your success is agency:
The ability to identify and solve problems without permission from someone else.
When you encounter a problem:
- Become aware of it
- Start self-educating to solve it
- Try different processes and teachings
- Don’t attach to any given one (like the carnivore diet that may serve you for about a year, making you healthier, until it tips in the opposite direction and wreaks havoc on your health).
Solutions change and evolve depending on your situation.
You will probably never find a permanent solution.
Meaning, if you ever take focus off of improvement, you will start to regress.
This doesn’t mean you stop having fun. Creation and destruction happens in cycles. Self-improvement can tip into destructive territory when done too much, but at that point, it’s not self-improvement. So self-improvement would then be letting loose and doing what most people would label as “destructive,” when from this perspective, it’s creative.
That’s it for this one.
Thank you for reading.
– Dan
