I’m sure you’ve heard from people who “just get it” that the best way to accomplish what you want each day is to schedule it. Where that falls flat for most people is they haven’t learned other skills that are necessary to have before being able to competently schedule a day full of tasks and events that they can actually pull off consistently. I’m a firm believer of starting with your end goal in mind and then figuring out how to reverse engineer the steps required to reach it. It is an exercise of creativity on your part and gives you the freedom to determine how, when, and what to do.

For example, say you want to be able to spend 4-6 hours a day in focused work on your big goals, but you currently spend 6-8 hours a day on your phone doing things that don’t contribute to your ideal life. You don’t necessarily have to take baby steps, but unless you have mastered discipline and the art of following through with what you say you are going to do then baby steps will likely be easier as they aren’t such a big shock. Sometimes you need the big shock though to wake you up and focus in on how backwards your ways have been.

The broad meta skills I see that are necessary to achieve your goals are focus, discipline, and integrity. Focus requires practice to achieve for long bouts until becoming a lifestyle you use to orient yourself towards your goals. Discipline requires repetition and a mindset adjustment. Integrity requires you to become the kind of person who says what they mean and does what they say.

When crafting your ideal day, make use of every available minute and remember you are a human, not a robot. There is much more to living a fulfilling life than just grinding away with work. The smartest people of our time have learned how to leverage technology to create more time for themselves, away from work but we will speak about automation in another newsletter. Make time to relax, to move your body, to speak with others, to be outside, and to spend in thought/reflection.

Something I’ve noticed that really helps when the days get overwhelming is to create transitions between one thing and another. In between all of these tasks and events you schedule for yourself, you can schedule a little break to truly take a break and reset/prepare yourself fully for your next phase of the day.

Take a moment to be still, cut off stimulation, meditate, think the thoughts you need to think and prepare for the next thing you need to focus your attention and energy on. Whether that is transitioning from family time to work/vice versa or work to rest/vice versa. You’ll find much more energy to tap into and more focused thinking where you allow yourself to be present in the current moment knowing you will get to the other things when it is time to.

The last thing you want to do is spend more time on social media, endlessly stealing your mental energy before allowing yourself to replenish.

Until next week,

Ian