Your life doesn’t make sense
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland
Some people are happy with how they live life right now.
Right in this moment everything is fine and you enjoy it.
Good don’t read this article :).
If you aren’t willing to live the rest of your life as is,
if you have vague ambitions but don’t know how to achieve them,
if you aren’t fully satisfied with life right now,
then keep on reading my friend.
I’ll try to do this as concisely as humanly possible.
Here’s what I want you to do.
1. Identify what you want and articulate it well.
This is probably the hardest part.
And with this part no-one can really help you.
You need to journal, do some introspective work.
And if you still don’t know, just pick anything.
Doesn’t matter what.
Most of the time your course will change anyway.
2. Plan backwards NOT forwards
Now you know where you’re headed.
So just like in a maze puzzle, trace back from where you want to be to where you are now.
During this process you might find out that the conventional path isn’t the best path to achieve your goal.
Then don’t follow the conventional path.
Follow your traced path.
Answer these two simple question when figuring out your path at every step.
- What do you need?
- How do you get it?
Here’s are 2 examples.
You want to be a website developer.
- You need clients to be a website developer.
How do I get clients?
- You need proof of experience
How?
- Do they look at your degree? No. They look at your portfolio.
So start coding / building your portfolio.
That’s your simplified path.
If your goal is being a doctor.
Then you need a medical licence.
You get it by finishing school with good grades.
So start studying.
That’s your simplified path.
Now you have made your map for life
Life never goes the way you expect.
So you still need one more thing to guarantee the achievement of your goal.
There will be times when you have to improvise since your map didn’t prepare you for this step.
In that moment.
You have to make the right decision.
In general you should learn from investors on how to make decisions.
They have a quantifiable track record of good decisions.
But to get you started, I’ve compiled a couple below.
Here are the three most important tactics I’ve learnt.
- Two way doors
- Make fewer decisions each day
- Don’t work for the weekend
1. Two way doors
Imagine the options as doors.
You can go through them and explore the other room.
If you don’t like the room, you can go back the where you came from and pick another door to go through.
Usually you can retreat back to where you started after you made a big decision.
So you really didn’t lose much.
Which means, if you don’t know which decision to pick, just pick one, doesn’t matter.
2. Make fewer decisions each day
Decision fatigue is a real thing.
Jeff Bezos only makes 3 decisions a day and does them usually before lunch.
You can only make a set amount of good decisions each day.
So minimise the amount of decisions drastically.
What are you going to eat?
What are you going to wear?
What will you do in the morning?
What will you do after work?
What will I watch when eating dinner?
All useless decisions you can eliminate.
You eliminate them by either not doing useless stuff, or by planning them out.
Plan out your day step by step.
Be specific.
Of course no day will be like the one you planned out.
But it’ll make sure you stay on course for the most part.
3. Don’t work for the weekend
It’s like having a cheat meal every weekend.
You will not make good progress on your weight goals if you cheat every week.
You have to be consistent.
Do something a bit less hard.
But do it consistently.
And I’ll prove this to you with math.
Scenario A: 1% improvement everyday for a year.
(MATH: (1.01)³⁶⁵-1=3678.34%)
You’d be 3678.34% better.
Scenario B: 5% improvement on weekdays and 0% on weekends.
(MATH: weekly compounded improvement: (1.05)⁵-1 = 27% Do that for a year and you get: 52*0.27=1436.66%)
You’d be 1436.66% better.
That’s 40% of your potential improvement you just lost in 1 year if you chose scenario B.
