The fastest way to ruin your life:
Do what others want for you.
Never question what you’re told.
Take the route that seems safe on the surface, but is the least safe of them all.
Avoid the essence of life – trial and error – and close yourself off to the profound, the deep, and the meaningful.
The greatest mistake of all is not making any mistakes.
This is the life of the masses.
Bouncing around on the surface.
Only learning what they’re taught in school.
Only experiencing the same day over and over again.
Clock in, clock out, and fill the rest of your day numbing your mind from the thought of what will happen between tomorrow.
The path out of meaningless living is already available to you. Deep in your core.
We all have access to Nature’s Compass.
Nature’s Compass
If you don’t know what you want, you will be told what you want, and you will believe it. – The Art of Focus
How to do whatever you want:
Do what you want, but don’t ignore the consequences of your actions.
You have to do what you think you want to realize what you don’t want. You have to remove what you don’t want to do what you really want.
It is impossible to know with absolute certainty what is going to happen in the future.
This is why the masses flock to “secure” jobs and belief systems.
It’s an illusion of certainty to avoid struggle. You can’t skip making mistakes. Mistakes are your light in the dark. Mistakes reveal problems to be solved. Problems are the limits on your mind.
As Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”
Most people skip that part.
They think they want a nice car, cushy job, and to travel the world – but once they do those things, the superficial shine fades fast.
They continue convincing themselves that’s the life they want, never evolve, never pursue anything deeper, and never get what they really want.
That is, they never get what their nature wants, not what their ego wants.
To get what you want out of life:
- Pursue what you think you want
- Realize what you don’t want
- Become aware of that problem
- Sit with it, study it, dissect it
- Expand your mind to see beyond it
- Solve the problem to evolve one level
- Repeat the process until you reach the essence of life itself
There is absolutely no set path that someone can give you to accomplish this.
People can give you direction with advice and tips, but they can’t act, think, or solve problems for you.
You don’t know what you want out of life because you haven’t tried anything.
You’re not getting results because you don’t have the skill required to get those results.
You don’t know what’s possible because you haven’t exposed yourself to the perspective that makes it possible.
What you want right now may be completely different tomorrow, or next month, or next year.
Nothing lasts forever. Meaning is found in endless problem-solving until you drill so deep you find what you are looking for.
This is normal. This is life.
The Macro Cycle Of Life – Why You Always Feel Lost
You feel lost because you don’t know what to do next.
You don’t know what to do next because you don’t have a goal.
You don’t have a goal (that you care about) because you aren’t aware of a problem that demands your focus.
Stop worrying about setting goals until you identify the next problem you want to solve in your life.
Life unfolds in chapters, phases, and cycles.
Your life is a story.
Your year is a story.
Your day is a story.
Each of them have a series of goals, problems, highs, and lows that may repeat themselves as time passes.
There is one macrocycle of life.
Once you understand it, you can identify which part of the story you are in, become aware of its components, and ease your mind until you enter the next phase.
The cycle is composed of 3 phases:
- You feel lost. You don’t know what to pursue next. You’ve solved a problem, achieved a goal, and thought it was the end.
- You become curious. You experiment with different topics, interests, and ideas until you become fully aware of the problem you want to solve.
- You become obsessed. You dive deeper into the crevice of reality of your choice. You can’t stop learning and building toward your goal.
When you feel lost, you must force yourself to experiment in 2 directions:
1) Experiment Inward
Rest. Nap. Journal. Walk. Embrace silence.
Observe and deconstruct your thoughts.
Attempt to catch a signal of opportunity.
Follow your thoughts to a root problem.
2) Experiment Outward
Learn. Read. Scroll. Build. Try new things.
Refocus on the only things that matter in life.
Health, wealth, relationships, happiness.
Experiment with techniques that invest energy into a goal. Any goal.
During the experimentation phase, you are trying to accumulate new experience until your next quest becomes visible.
Like a video game, you are at a point where the quest isn’t unlocked, but you don’t have any other to pursue. You have to fumble around in the dark until you find a candle off in the distance.
Note: avoid labeling this as shiny object syndrome.
My business today is only possible because I tried and “failed” at 7 different business models. In reflection, those failures were periods of skill stacking, problem solving, and increasing my awareness surface area for the right opportunities.
Now, understand that there is no time limit for this phase.
It could last weeks, months, or years.
You must stick it out until you accumulate enough vision to stop going wide and start going deep.
When you find your obsession, experimentation doesn’t stop.
3) Experiment Downward
The secret is to try everything until you find that one thing that you can’t pull yourself away from. Then, once it becomes a normal part of your life, repeat the process.
When you find that one thing, go deep.
Learn everything you can about that domain.
Dissect all perspectives and avoid becoming dogmatic about one.
In nutrition, collect truth from veganism, keto, carnivore, Ray Peat, flexible dieting, and other ideologies until you are confident enough to create your own that is closer to truth. Truth is a process not a commandment.
In business, collect truth from e-commerce, freelancing, software, and other models until you note the principles that bring clarity to your own endeavors.
Self-experimentation is the only way to solve your problems for good.
People can diagnose and prescribe a solution to your problems, but that lacks regard for the difference in perspective, goals, and experience from those prescribing the solutions.
4) Experiment Upward
Persistence and iteration.
I’m assuming that once you’ve found your obsession you want to make it a consistent part of your life.
This means you must earn a creative income from that interest.
In today’s world, that means:
- Building a project to spread to help others solve their problems.
- Teaching in public to attract people with those problems.
- Selling your project so you can continue pursuing your obsession.
- Improving your project as you learn what can only be learned through feedback.
- Evolving to a new project when you’ve reached the level that can only be reached through business.
There are many ways to do this. Experiment.
But I can tell you with confidence, through my experimentation, that the creator economy is the “most true” model to follow considering human nature and the future of work.
The Digital Renaissance
We are living through a second Golden Age and it belongs to those who value:
- Self-education
- Self-experimentation
- Multidisciplinary study
- Digital leverage
- Skill acquisition
- Building your own thing
If you want to thrive, become a digital renaissance man.
Here’s what you do:
Join The New Society
Social media is not just an app on your phone.
It is a decentralized public school, marketplace, and podium but only for those who value personal responsibility. You aren’t forced to be a part of this society, and that’s why it’s important.
You no longer need startup capital to start a business.
You no longer need a job board to find a career.
You no longer need a publisher to launch a book.
You no longer need a record label to make music.
You no longer need formal education to become an expert.
You no longer need religious institutions to feed you meaning.
The centralized authority over learning, meaning, and earning is only a thing for those who are still asleep.
All you need is an internet connection, social media account, and the courage to teach, fail, improve, and persist.
I teach this in 2 Hour Writer & Digital Economics.
Become Valuable
Everyone tells you to become valuable but nobody tells you what value is.
Value is the relationship between what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and who benefits from that equation.
Value is composed of 4 parts.
- Problem – A limitation or challenge that creates pain when unsolved.
- Solution – An impactful end result that allows the recipient to evolve beyond the problem.
- Clarity – A creative system that breeds knowledge, skill, and awareness to bridge the gap between problem and solution.
- People – The amount of people that suffer from the problem, can benefit from the solution, and are ready to receive the clarity to act.
Value is experience exchange.
Value is the impact of your story.
So, to make a creative income, our job is to gain experience by solving the problems that prevent our evolution and pass down the condensed wisdom to those who are ready to receive it.
1) Unveil Problems With An Anti-Vision
It’s easier to know what you don’t want – from experience – than it is to know what you want – from imagination.
So, create an anti-vision for your future.
Keep a running note that you will add to as you observe life:
- What do you not want to look like?
- How do you not want to feel?
- What does your worst day look like?
- What qualities do you not want in your friends, customers, partner, and co-workers?
- How much money isn’t enough to survive?
- How does everything above spread into each area of your life and prevent you from doing what you want?
Hit on the things that matter. Health, wealth, relationships, and happiness. Those are the eternal markets in business. If you build a creative solution for a problem within those domains, you won’t have a problem making a living from your experience.
2) Identify Solutions With A Vision
You now have a plethora of problems to solve to gradually increase your value.
Pick one. Solve it. Move on to the next. Meaning is found not in the achievement of a goal, but in solving the endless string of problems that pull you deeper into the nature of reality.
Now, to increase your desire to solve it, create a vision for your ideal future.
Write out the opposite of everything you listed for your anti-vision.
Treat this as a Minimum Viable Vision. You will add to it with time. What you want will change as you do.
3) Learn & Build For Clarity
Don’t learn to build, build to learn.
You’ve chosen a problem you want to solve in your life. This could be related to fitness, finances, freedom, or anything else that is preventing you from living the life you want.
With that problem in mind, laser in on one big goal.
But remember, goals don’t start out magnetic. You probably don’t care about the goal.
You must invest energy into the goal until you feel as if you are wasting resources for not achieving it. Your goal must frame your perspective for enough time to register reasons to continue pursuing it.
You don’t develop an intrinsic philosophy in a day.
You develop it through conversations, reading, listening, and filtering reality until you stack enough “whys” to hold you accountable.
You will fail. That’s the only way to identify what you need to learn next.
When you do fail, reframe it immediately as a knowledge gap.
Use the failure as a new frame to filter your experiences for answers.
4) Attract People With Your Story
Be a failure.
Launch the project to a crowd of crickets. Publish your thoughts and get called a fool. Start the venture and watch people criticize your first moves.
Everyone else did it. You aren’t a special case.
Invest in your portfolio of failures until you can afford to succeed.
Your portfolio of failures is your story.
Like a movie, people are interested more in the lows than the highs.
You attract people and profit to you when you have the solution to a problem in your life.
Distribute Your Value
The greatest skill is writing because:
- It forces you to articulate your value
- It is the foundation of all media
- It can be repurposed into any other medium
- Any other skill you acquire enhances it
- It brings immense mental clarity
Learn to write.
It takes time to realize that writing is the highest leverage work.
You must synthesize your value into impactful ideas that live in the heads of others rent free and influence their thoughts and behaviors.
You do this by writing emails, content, guides, and products with persistent and iterative effort.
Writing is the foundation of communication.
Communication is how you distribute value.
Distributing value is how you attract people.
If you don’t attract people, you will never have someone else in the value exchange process.
This isn’t a job where someone hands you a paycheck for completing mechanical tasks that will be replaced.
This is a purpose that must be shared by another in order to earn a creative income.
I’ve discussed this in previous letters, please go search for them, or we walk you through it inside Kortex University to become a synthesizer in 16 weeks.
Thank you for reading this letter.
I hope it helped.
Dan
