Stop Building Someone Else's Dreams and Start Living Your Own - Here's How

Have you ever thought about investing time in your own dreams instead of someone else's? Imagine if you spend eight hours a day building someone else's dreams, but can't find one hour to build your own. It doesn't make sense to keep putting off what you're already going to do. So why not start now? That's the power of bringing your ideal future into the present.

One of the most powerful concepts I've been thinking about recently is performing the same actions that you would in your ideal lifestyle, but on a smaller scale. For example, if you want to write for two hours every morning for the rest of your life, then start by writing for just five minutes a day, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour a day, and gradually increase it over time. The key is to start small and taper up until you can sustain the two-hour writing lifestyle.

You might be thinking you don't have the time right now to write for 15 minutes every day, but if you want to write for a living, it's crucial to start now. You can't wait until you have more time in the future because it will only get more difficult. The same applies to any task that contributes to your life's work. Start now, and you'll be investing in your future.

It's important to understand that you won't necessarily know what you want right away. You have to try different things and execute on fundamental tasks to figure it out. That's how I discovered my passion for writing. I started by doing social media and freelancing, then tried web design, but eventually outgrew it. Writing is what stuck, and I realized it's the foundation of all media.

Once you find what you love, focus on it and invest your energy in it. The more you do it, the more passionate you'll become because you'll discover things you wouldn't have otherwise. You don't just find passion; you cultivate it by investing your mental energy in your goals.

To sustain a passionate and fulfilling life, it's important to maintain momentum towards your goals. Your body and mind will remind you of this need and warn against distractions that may hinder progress. Conceptual survival is another factor at play, as we strive to survive not only physically but mentally as well, through the ideas, concepts, and beliefs that make up our sense of self. By investing mental energy into a goal or future identity, we slowly build that identity and align our actions accordingly. Viewing daily situations through the lens of our future self or goal can bring a new perspective and allow us to filter conversations and content in a way that benefits our progress. It's crucial to create our own goals and invest energy in our desired identity, rather than blindly follow the identity assigned to us by society. In the next section, we will discuss the importance of a holistic daily routine.

The Holistic Daily Routine

To maximize your productivity and achieve your goals, it's important to follow a daily routine that utilizes your brain in different ways throughout the day. In the afternoon, focus on filling your brain with books, learning, and socialization. Engaging in these activities will give you new ideas and resources to apply towards your goals, leading to intrinsic motivation.

Before bed, take the time to empty your mind through journaling, planning, and meditation. This will help you avoid being trapped in a chaotic bubble of thoughts and ideas that can hinder your progress.

In the morning, use your brain for creation, output, and focus. Dedicate time every single day for creativity, productivity, and experimentation. It's crucial to strike a balance between productivity and experimentation, as executing tasks without refining along the way won't help you achieve your goals.

If you're worried that you don't have enough time to follow this routine, start small. Even just 15 to 30 minutes a day can make a difference. It's essential to block out dedicated time and focus on moving levers towards your ideal future, or you won't create it.

Modern life is not wired for our psyches, which are more suited to hunting and discovery. We need novel dopamine sources and meaningful activities that bring importance and creativity to our lives. If you find yourself trapped in a repetitive routine, you're trapped in the matrix and enslaved to your habits.

To pursue your goals full force, you need three activities: one to fill your mind with education and novel resources, one to empty your mind through organization and planning, and one to use your mind to focus your efforts and execute your plans. This video will focus on the last point, using your mind for deep work. Check out my previous video, the three-step productivity framework, for more information on the fill-empty-use framework.

The Need For Deep Work

If you're interested in who you are and what you think, feel and do, then what you love is the sum of what you focus on, as Cal Newport says. Now, we're going to talk about the need for deep work. Newport is the author of the book Deep Work, and although I haven't read it, I have been doing my own version of deep work for the past six years. Productivity isn't about seeing who can work the longest and then wearing that as a badge of honor, it's about getting the most effective work done in the least amount of time possible. In a world of notifications, ample options and overwhelm, deep work is frankly no longer an option, it's a necessity.

To build your dreams in record time, you need to block out time to work on your future, your business, or just to avoid conversation, notifications, or distractions as a whole. You need to channel the creative firepower that you've gained through your consumption, education, or skill acquisition, and focus that into a vessel, a business, to act and reap the benefits in the form of money, connections, and resources in general. This currency can be traded up towards a better life for yourself.

Deep work is how you build out your dreams in record time, and it is essential to your success.

The Priority Ladder

First, let's talk about the priority ladder. It's a tool that can help you change your life in just six months with just one hour of focused work each day. Yes, one hour is all it takes. You don't need anything more than that, just one meaningful project, one day at a time.

The priority ladder is simple. It's a ladder with four rungs, each with decreasing levels of challenge and increasing levels of potential distraction. Priority one is at the top of the ladder, and it's all about laser-focusing on building your vision through a project.

As you go down the ladder, priorities two and three involve work that's still important, but perhaps not as critical as priority one. And finally, priority four is all about maintenance tasks like answering emails and messages. This is where you're most open to distractions because there's no creative work that needs to be done after that.

By using the priority ladder, you can ensure that you're always working on the most important tasks first and not wasting your time on distractions. With just one hour of focused work each day on priority one, you can make significant progress towards achieving your goals and building the life you want.

Vision Building

Let's talk about priority one, which has been the foundation of my life for as long as I can remember. Every day, as soon as I wake up, I start working on one project that I'm passionate about. Right now, for instance, I'm writing my book. This new project is my top priority because it's something that I'm excited to work on and that can help me achieve my future goals.

If you haven't started on a project yet, and you only have one hour a day to spare, that one hour should be dedicated to your top priority. You need to focus your efforts on the things that will help you create a vision for your future. For beginners, this may be something like starting a social media brand or learning a new skill like writing or digital economics.

Starting a new project can be challenging, but you need to push through the perception threshold, which is where your mind perceives the task to be more difficult than it actually is. You'll need to refine your system with time, but eventually, you'll hit a breakthrough, and things will start to flow much more smoothly.

Don't expect your first hour of focused work to be perfect. It takes time to get into a routine and refine your system. Once you start seeing results from that first hour of work, you can move on to the second priority time blocks and start working on something new. The key is to keep pushing yourself and investing in your future, one hour at a time.

High Leverage Creative Work

Once you have completed priority one, you can move on to priority two which involves your "lever-moving" tasks. For instance, creating content or replying on social media, which are the tasks that feed your system and keep your momentum going. These are creative works that you may not want to outsource.

As you move on to priority two, you should start something new in priority one. This ensures that you keep the meaningful dopamine flowing and maintain momentum along this path until you systemize that and then you bump it up another priority.

After starting a social media brand, and once you begin to see results and it becomes more efficient for you to keep up with that, you can start building a service or a product that you can monetize. Then, you move that up and start reaching out to people and building out a funnel or something else.

All these tasks build on each other slowly over time, and you should remember that moving from priority one to priority two requires focus and discipline to achieve your goals.

Meaningful & Spillover Tasks

The third time block is also dedicated to lever-moving, creative or meaningful tasks that you don't want to outsource. Personally, I don't plan on outsourcing my writing, at least not entirely. This time block is meant to keep the momentum going for whatever you're building. This approach can be applied to any type of work, including corporate jobs. It's important to structure your days using this method to ensure productivity and success.

Maintenance Tasks

And so, the fourth time block or priority is for maintenance tasks. For me, that includes checking messages, responding to emails, and interacting with the Modern Mastery community. It may sound strange, but exposing yourself to notifications too early in the morning can be detrimental to your productivity. Even a seemingly unimportant message can split your focus and lead to mental entropy. So, I push back all maintenance tasks to the fourth priority block.

I like to structure each time block anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes long for priorities one, two, three, and four. In between, I take breaks to make breakfast, have lunch, or go on a walk while listening to something in my ears. The joy of this method comes from experimentation and creating a routine that works best for you.

If you enjoyed this process, I encourage you to implement it and let me know which parts stuck out the most. Also, check out our products and resources, including the Modern Mastery community, my power planner, and more, which can all be found in the description.

In a nutshell, there's no need for me to go over every little hack I use. It's up to you to test different techniques and create a self-made lifestyle. Refine your routine over time and enjoy the benefits of increased productivity. Have a great rest of your day!

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