Thoughts from a Stoic Solopreneur
Stoicism for solopreneurs
Behold!
A mix of life-changing insights,
and utter garbage.
I use braindumping as a way to avoid overwhelm.
Here I record ideas that haven’t made it into a full article yet.
What if AI…?
Add your own in the comments,
if you please…
What if all these companies laying off tens of thousands of employees replace them with AI bots?
What if the government is woefully unprepared to retrain or provide jobs for these people?
What if this leads to depression of wages?
What if the rising cost of living means it no longer pays off to have a fulltime job anymore?
What if this means we no longer have the disposable income to buy consumer goods and all the crap that we don’t need that keeps the economy afloat?
What if we shifted from consumerism to value long lasting products, community, quality and essentialism?
What if people are forced to combat the cost of living with supplementary self-sufficiency and community projects like self-growing, car sharing, offgrid living, self builds?
What if this means that instead of working for huge megacompanies, people start small micro or local businesses for a diversified multi stream “off grid” income?
What if AI bots leads to dead internet theory coming true, a collapse of trust on social media?
What if this meant a shift in digital marketing to focus on serving a small local or digital communities?
What of these businesses served and provided value in a much smaller community?
What if this value was exchanged through trade or cash?
What if this collapse of the consumer goods sector force government to rethink their tax and spending strategies to prioritize citizens instead of corporations?
What if we could use ai to relearn how to mend our own things, make our own things, create our things again?
What if it takes an ai revolution to make us realise that the truly important things happen offline?
Turn hardship into growth
Ice, wind, darkness.
All these stunt growth in nature.
Humans are the only species on earth that can feed on hardship and turn it into growth.
But it can go either way…
Hardship has to be recognised and chosen,
Else it festers into victimhood.
My new metrics for success
I’ve been feeling a little lost lately, not sure what I should be working on next.
I need clarity on what I want,
so I can decide what actions will lead towards my goal.
Just now my goals aren’ttask-related, but perception related.
How am I thinking during the day, and how did I feel about it?
How to measure my success:
- Did I grow 1%?
- How much fun did I have in my work today?
- How much free time did I have to be a Dad?
Be what you admire in your mentors:
- Was I helpful?
- Was I grateful?
- Was I joyful?
- Was I loving?
- Was I resilient?
- Did I grow
Is AI REALLY adding value?
I’ve noticed this addition in my minimalist email app SuperHuman:
automated followups and automated responses.
On the surface: great
In reality: more busiwork.
Emails create more emails.
AI techbros love to say that AI will free us from the admin work and multiply our productivity…
but will it really?
Just what we needed:
Fifty more emails chasing us for something we only talked about yesterday!
We already suffer an excess of information, folks are struggling with information overload already….
In the 1960s when they introduced of electric hoovers, ready-made meals and microwaves,
housewives believed these tools would free them from responsibilities of running a house.
But what happened?
We adjusted our standards
People now expect spotless homes,
shirts need ironed every day,
delicious meals should be available on demand.
It didn’t reduce the burden, it increased expectations.
Women were forced to shoulder more responsibility, not for the first or last time…
Workplace equality may have been source of empowerment
But the net effect on families was not the expected income boost:
Prices are determined by what people are willing and able to pay.
- So houseprices go up,
- Cost of living increases.
- Families have less disposable income, and a greater financial burden, and less free time.
- Nobody got rich,
- but now both parents are required to work to make ends meet,
- plus keep a spotless house,
- plus raise perfect kids.
Unfortunatley we haven’t learned much from this.
Techbros believe AI is going to help us be more productive human robots, producing ever more value for our tax-mongering governments and corporate overlords.
Before self-scan checkouts entered the supermarket, we used to wait in line for a human to scan our shopping.
Now we wait in line for a miserable underpaid human to shamble over with an electric key to override the scanner which malfunctions every 3rd item.
The net effect is the same;
The supermarket has cut it’s workforce spending.
More profit for them, but somehow we ended up doing more of their work for them. 🤔
And worse, they strip the small social interactions that keep people connected as a species.
Remote workers already struggle with lonliness.
Now whole swathes of the workforce can look forward to spending their day interacting with AI bots.
Knowledge workers will become “checkout operators”, reduced to connecting apps with AI output which won’t integrate.
For the solopreneur, AI has immense s benefits in specific niche areas.
But in a lot of areas I feel it’s creating more busiwork, without adding value.
My fear is not about AI. AI is happening. AI is just another tool in the workplace.
My fear is that the SAAS industry is shoehorning in AI features without thinking about whether they add value for customers.
We don’t need more comms, we need less.
We don’t need more information, we need less.
We need to control our information diet.
We need AI tools that removes admin, busiwork, and labour.
P.s If you ARE scared about AI, here’s the strategy I’m using to protect my value against ai
How to make money and help people
If you want to make a little bit of money,
sell things people want.
If you want to make a lot of money,
stop selling things and start selling transformations that make people feel things.
If you want to make the most money,
But actually help people too,
Sell knowledge to help people change their life.
The market is full of creators producing and selling valuable products.
But over production isn’t the problem, over consumption is the problem.
After WW2 between leading physcologists and governments to design culture in favour of consumerism consciously.
They utilized newfound propaganda techniques which are now known as “public relations”.
The goal was well-meaning:
To protect a newly liberated workforce from mass joblessness.
But the long-term effect was rampant consumerism and zero-sum thinking.
The net effect of this social engineering is that…
Our culture says a good citizen is someone working to earn money to buy things we don’t need.
Culture says success looks like all the stuff in your garage you never use and the badge on the car you can afford.
Once people shift back to better values (experiences, people, consciousness) production has less power.
If find it strange that capitalism has changed so little in 50 years.
They are still selling products to satisfy needs on the lower rungs of the pyranid of needs (things, entertainment).
I think once production shifts to sell things at the higher level (safety, community, purpose) society will become a more stable place too
When you focus on doing good work and helping the client first,
the money becomes a side-effect of success.
You don’t have to engage
After getting into an argument on linkedin recently,
I immediately regretted some stuff I said online.
I said I didn’t care much about world events because I don’t watch the news, which promptly earned me the label of “privileged”.
Maybe they were right, it was a poor choice of words and there’s a lot of suffering out there.
It’s not that I don’t care.
It’s that I only have so much attention to give,
and I’m not willing to give it up to a news cycle focussed on negative hyperbole.
So I then learned about a concept I wished I’d known sooner that would have saved me some trouble…
“Hitchens razer”, named for an author, states that:
Anything asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence
This has since saved me from many pointless arguments online.
I don’t need to engage with everything I see.
How many hours have I lost crafting arguments online?
Or wasting my best energy on imagined comebacks to arguments that have already faded into the past?
Or spent all day stressing about news I can do nothing about?
The thing is I should know better!
In fact,I’ve already written about this myself
In life by design ep40 I was talking about cultivating an information diet of selective ignorance,
Which massively improved my wellbeing AND gave me improved ability to focus.
“Good” or “Bad” depends on perspective
After months of endless rain in winter, I prayed the rain would stop for even just one frikking second, so I could go out walks with Ramsey.
Yet after 2 weeks of drought in Summer,
There’s a sudden downpour of rain,
and I’m suddenly excited to go out a walk in the rain,
to listen to the pattering, feel the cold drops on my cheeks, to breathe in that petrichor scent.
The story of the chinese farmer and his luck…
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
Good or bad is what you make it.
Keep an open mind on “good” or “bad”, try to think simply in terms of what is.
In winter, rain is bad.
In Summer a bit of rain is good.
Often what comes just before or after a thing can shift your perspective on it.
Whether something is “good” or “bad” is often just a matter of perspective.
Comparison as a source of joy
They say “comparison is the thief of joy”.
The truth of this came knocking on my door last year:
It had been a tough few years, I’d worked my ass off for decades,
but business was going really well, making steady income and working with clients I enjoyed
But all it took was one short scroll on Instagram to kill my sense of carefully curated wellbeing.
Suddenly I saw all these younger designers who launched their business last month, and now they are earning more,
AND they are guest speaking at Adobe Max,
and they still had enough free time to pose on that jetski in Dubai.
Uuurgh I’m a complete failure
That’s how comparison steals joy:
One moment ago you were content, The next moment you WANT things:
- success
- money
- recognition
…or maybe you’d settle for just a hint of stability and a decent night’s sleep.
But this is because we approach comparison with a negative mindset:
We compare where we want to be with where we are.
The distance between those two states leads to unfulfilled desire,
which is uncomfortable.
But what if we flipped that mechanism?
What if comparison could be a source of joy?
What if we recall our previous desires, which we have now fulfilled,
What if we compare what we wanted with what we now have?
- 10 years ago I’d never have believed that ifnlive in such a nice place.
- 5 years ago I never dreamed I would work for myself
- 3 years ago I never would have dreamed I’d build my own office
- 2 years ago I never would have guessed if have a team of 3
- 1 year ago I’d never have known how much I’d love my beautiful son
That is the source of my happiness, and I try to remind myself when I’m being grumpy, or buried in admin, or coughing my guts out at 4am with a cold.
Happiness also requires a struggle,
it requires the shit bits that we don’t put on Instagram.
Happiness is so elusive because it’s a temporary state.
Once we have achieved something, we move onto the next goal.
So happiness can only ever be realised from moment to moment, not as a permanent state, but in retrospect, as something we feel NOW.
The state of happiness is just a story we tell ourselves, about a condition we were in that we wished to change (discomfort),
The challenges we overcame, (growth)
and the resolution that we have now realised (happiness).
Without the tension between desire state and current state there would be no happiness or unhappiness.
So whilst comparison is often the thief of joy,
Comparison can be the source of joy, if you approach it in the right direction:
With appreciation of what you have, Instead of desire for what you don’t.
New problems, old hardware
It blows my mind that the hardware we used to invent the internet, build ai, travel to the moon and discover the genome
Hasn’t changed since 200,000 years ago,
When we were stabbing at lions with pointy sticks on the savannah.
🧠
Small wonder our modern world is making us unhappy.
We are goldfish in a sandpit.
We have not yet evolved to cope with this accelerating rate of change.
Our hardware is due an update…
Or maybe we just need to get back to things we were built for:
- Socialising
- Cooperation
- Labouring
- Exploring
“Your goal is not my goal”
I’ve been so brainwashed by default cultural values where the only thing of worth is income, job title or business growth.
I find I have to remind myself of this CONSTANTLY.
I keep forgetting my goal is to prioritize free family time.
Ill watch a podcast or chat with a peer running big design agencies,
or chasing ambitious income goals,
And I admire them for it,
and set my own similar goals,
all related to work.
then when I fail them,
because I don’t have the time or I’m battling with ambition or low energy levels to make it happen right now,
I think “I need to do this or that”.
Then I remember,
That’s their goal.
My goal:
I only work 4 hours per day.
The rest goes to family.
I’m right on target, for the only goal that matters
I just keep having to remind myself that that’s my measuring stick for success.
Everyone wants to skip to the end
Everyone wants to skip to the end.
Knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
Knowledge is reading about it, wisdom is failing at it.
The learning and failing are both essential parts of absorbing it.
Hacks are easy, consistency is hard.
Quick wins are for quick quitters.
The only long-term strategy is to learn to enjoy the process
A honed routine is a safeguard against chaos and overwhelm
My entire life has changed after baby.
Once I was a highly optimized solopreneur,
Now, a dishevelled moosh.
I spent years designing a highly optimized routine like an addiction and now I crave all my daily habits.
Instead of crisps and chocolate I crave some quiet time to sit and read, or a slow lone walk to order my thoughts.
But although my routine may have been chipped away, but it survives and adapts.
Micro-versions of my old habits have emerged in the chaos, and I’m using a cut-down version of my routine to make a 4 hour workday (mostly) stick.
Instead of a 30 min workout in the morning I do 5 mins of rowing at 3am when I’m on babywatch.
Instead of daily reading, I’ll listen to an audiobook whilst cleaning bottles.
When I don’t have time to write, I’ll do a braindump instead.
My new mini-routine is keeping me sane, I think without these small nods to normalcy i’d probably go mad.
The thing about routines though?
It’s easy to ditch them when things are good:
You don’t need the dentist while your teeth are good.
But brushing your teeth everyday means you’ll never need the dentist either.
When the unexpected happens, or when things get tough,
A well-built routine makes the difference between stress and chaos on one hand and keeping your shit together on the other.
You see those people that look like insanos,
the power couple who have 2 kids and still somehow find time to go to the gym?
That’s the payoff of maintaining good habits.
And it’s a self fulfilling loop:
- When I’m healthy, I have more energy.
- So it’s easier to resist eating crap,
- So I’m healthier,
- So I have more energy,
- So I get more things done,
- So I have more time to rest or exercise,
- So I have more energy
- And so on and so on…
Like anything great it takes time, and effort,
and I know I slip, and I won’t keep up the routine everyday.
But I also know when you set out to design your lifestyle,
A good routine takes a long time to take root.
Routine,
becomes habit,
becomes a lifestyle,
becomes part of your identity .
So start building up your dam, one day at a time.
Misfits at school often do well in life
It’s funny how the misfits and outcasts at school often do well after school?
It’s almost as if the things that make you successful at school (conforming) set you up for an average life,
And the things that set you up for bullying at school (critical thinking, individualism) prepare you for exceptional life.
This is only my own experience, beware proximity bias,
need to hear other’s thoughts stories on this.
❓ how can I introduce more “flow” into my life?
What activities give me flow?
- Design
- 3d modelling
- Writing
- Gaming
- Building
- Teaching
- Gardening
What is required for flow?
- Use hard-won skills or knowledge I’m proud of
- Immediate and clear feedback loops
- Free from distraction
- Challenging enough to push my skills.
- Easy enough I can complete it.
- Have clear goals and obvious progress
- Increasing difficulty or complexity
The disappointment of things
Buying a new phone used to be a big deal
Your whole life is on there
You’d have to set it all up again to my preferences, install all the apps, set up rhe home screen…
Often I would get a new phone and the barrier of setting it up would mean my new phone would sit there unboxed for months till I finally worked ip rhe courage to take it on.
Now its much easier.
I still love the lead up…
Bought new phone
The anticipation of the texts
Your package is on its way
The excitement of that package arriving
The pristine package design
The excitement of turning it on
I love it
But copying over all my data is so easy
In 10 mins it’s done and I arrive on my new home screen,
All my data perfectly captured and transferred across…
And that’s it
It’s done. Over.
Within 15 mins I’m back to the same level of satisfaction as I had with my old phone.
The pleasure of new things fades so quickly.
Experiences are what give lasting satisfaction
I used to get so excited about tech, gadgets and apps.
I followed all the feeds, and had alerts set up for news.
Now they hold no interest for me.
Often I prefer simple pencil and note pad.
I try to avoid new things as much as possible.
Is it a sign of maturity?
The disappointment of things?
Detaching my satisfaction from mere objects.
They call this the “hedonic treadmill“.
We live in a consumer society which pushes us to value things.
But the exceitment of new things doesn’t last long at all.
We jsut adjust to our new level of satisfaction in seconds.
The only way to be perpetually happy is to learn to enjoy the things we already have
But
Experiences > thingsand
People > experiences > things.
A low-effort method for noticing when to nurture your relationships
From “The book you wish your parents had read”
People make “bids for attention”.
It’s important that we recognise and respond to these bids for attention
we must nurture relationships
“bids for attention” can come in various forms between asking question reaching out be a messenger talking about a book asking for feedback asking for social media
The shit-smeared imaginary mirror of improvement
Having a baby is an invisible mirror
They copy you
Even when you’re not watching
So you have to be your best all the time
Even when you think you are alone
Not just in behaviour but in deeds and mindset
We all make little exceptions and self justify lazy or poor behaviour
Now I can imagine Fin watching and think
“What’s the best thing here…what would I want Fin to do?”
He’ll learn what to do from what I do
So I have to be that better version of myself, even when no-one is watching.
Is the world toxic or joyful?
The world is objectively the same for everyone, we all live in the same reality.
But we all experience it differently:
You only remember the things that you experience
and you can only know what you remember.
So your life is what you pay attention to.
If you spend your time scrolling alarmist news feeds and toxic social posts
You will find the world alarming and toxic.
If you spend your time building things, making meaningful connections, making time for fun,
you will find the world positive and joyful.
Which means it’s more important than ever to have positive discussions.
How to spot fake leisure vs real leisure
How to spot the difference between fake leisure and real leisure
Do you have less energy or more energy after doing it?
Lifting 2 buckets is often easier than 1
Its counterintuitive but sometimes doing MORE of something requires LESS energy.
Allow me to explain this throiugh a gardening anaology, which you can apply to your business, to get twice as much done with LESS effort.
today in the garden, I’d just had a lot of fun chainsawing a whisky barrel in half,
to build large planters which I now need filled with almost a ton of soil.
Normally I’m always on the lookout for the easiest option, the best tool…
The path was too twisty and tight for a wheelbarrow,
and I even tried building a ramp up the edge of the large planters so I could tip the soil right in.
But In the end, the rule of Occam’s razer applied:
The simplest solution was the best.
It proved easier to simply lift buckets full of soil instead.
But here’s where it gets interesting:
What I noticed was that it’s physically easier to carry 2 full buckets of heavy soil,
Than it is to carry 1 bucket at a time.
2 buckets is, of course, more efficient:
I had to walk the distance from the bags of soil to the planters each time.
So it requires the same walking time to deliver X2 the amount of soil.
You’ll see this in business a lot.
Your smaller projects require the same amount of admin as projects which bill for X2 as much.
But I’m not talking about efficiency…
I mean physically easier.
Somehow X2 buckets needs less muscle power. Less energy.
My theory on this…
If you carry one bucket you have to use your abs and muscle power to awkwardly counteract the sideways pull of the bucket, which sites awkwardly outside your centre of balance.
But with 2 buckets the weight counteracts the other,
And the only effort is the vertical weight of the bucket.
And each arm can apply the same upwards power to each bucket with no extra effort.
In other words, the work is balanced.
One bucket balances the other,
and provides better lifting form.
But how is this relevant to running a solo business?
In lots of ways:
Raising your prices simultaneously increases your profit and attracts better clients, who require less admin.
(Low price clients are famously more work).
Which means you typically earn more money for less overall work.
How I’m applying this to my own business?
I’m bulk and batch processing my tasks.
Don’t write one social post at a time
I answer multiple emails in one go.
I focus on doing lots of one similar task at a time
I theme my days.
This is not the 1st time the humble bucket has led me to wisdom.
Here’s one more lesson in using leverage to build the life you want.
P.s here’s the planters:
Core Value Scorecard – Tracking the person I want to be
Scorecard idea from “Chop wood, Carry Water”,
to help you become the person you want to be.
- Think of someone you admire.
- Pick X4 characteristics you want to embody.
- Write them down.
- Check in at midday.
Have I been this person?
Adjust if necessary.
Mine:
- Helpful
- Grateful
- Resilient
- Peaceful / joyful
- Loving
Want more customers?
Want more customers?
Help more people
Stop selling and be helpful.
Even when they can’t afford you
Even when they’re on their way out
Even when they annoy you
Your website should help people
Your lead magnet should help people
Your followup emails should help people
Your sales calls should help people
Help them now, they’ll help you find more clients…
By marketing your business for you
By referring to their friends
By singing your praises
The solopreneur trichotomy
Freedom | purpose | profit
You should revisit each at different times
Balance is impossible.
I originally created the diagram below to represent the 3 pillars of Life by Design,
But I quickly realised it was innacurate, and worse,
misleading.
There is a hidden centre that lives in the middle of this ven diagram:
“impossible utopia”
You will prioritize different areas at different times.
Like stoicism, achieving perfection in any one area impossible,
rather it’s a life-long balancing and progressing little by little.
Profit
If you have unlimited profit with no free time to enjoy it and no purpose to guide your days you’ll become depressed and no amount of money will solve this.
In fact, time and profit can often be inversely related to purpose.
Freedom
If you have as much free time time as you like, but no money to live and no propose, again depression
The devil makes work of idle hands
Purpose
If you are filled with a singular purpose, but have no income to support your purposes, or no free time to work on your purpose you will be frustrated.
Example
Consider Nathan Barry, foudner of ConvertKit.
He built and grew his company to $1M/month in revenue, then stepped back from the company.
Despite the success, he publicly shared that he felt depressed, aimless, and unmotivated.
The problem wasn’t money or freedom—it was lack of purpose. He had hit his big goals, but hadn’t set new ones, leading to a kind of existential drift.
This is a classic example of the “arrival fallacy”—thinking you’ll be happy once you “make it,” only to feel empty when you get there.
He eventually found new meaning by re-engaging with creative work and mentoring others, writing about this experience in acclaimed blog post “enough“
In other words, he had built so much profit that he no longer needed to work, so he then had a surpluss of profit, leading to a lack of purpose.
We must live in the middle
We all must do our best to live on the middle,
To adjust accordingly,
To rebalance regularly.
Adapt…Or die??
The current state of AI and the creative job marketing has me thinking this a lot.
(parts of ) My job may be obsolete in about 5 years
The bottom end of the market will fall out and only the established experts will continue to earn
I know they’ll have a lot of learning to do.
The future will belong to those that can wrangle AI better than others,
and that can combine multiple skills into one package which sells
As someone who spent most of their life playing learning, creating selling and exploring in an online virtual environment,
I’m particularly worried about adaption.
I know I have a lot of cross-transferable skills
I know I can pick up new skills easily.
And I have the skills that I need to sell new skills
The question is not:
“How do I adapt?”
but
“do I even want to adapt?”
For the last 3 years, I’ve been accurately tracking my emotions throughout the day as well as getting more serious about journalling.
Using AI to analyse my journals
And analytics through my emotional tracking
There’s a pretty clear theme emerging…
I’m much happier when I’m building things in the physical world.
I generally find the internet is an exhausting place to be in recently.
Content and the internet in general in a broader sense is becoming more generic.
Short form content that rules on social media is like sweeties for children.
First, the online creator economy has flooded the market with shallow content.
Now AI is supercharging that deluge,
and social algorithms seem to be doubling down, speeding their own eventual demise.
It’s getting harder and harder find good content
And for my own content to get found,
Under an avalanche of over optimized engagement schlopp.
I can see two paths ahead of me:
1
I can permit my skills on my knowledge and authority in the design/ marketing strategy space into something that will still leave give me leverage and profit in the virtual world, probably something related to or aided by AI.
Or 2
I can pivot into some my physical skills, building things designing things, creating things in the real world
The latter is probably less scalable but more satisfying.
I would have to sacrifice the level of free time right now.
And probably a lot of the money that I make right now.
I wouldnt have as much time with Fin and Immy either.
In exchange for alignment, better physical health,
satisfaction
Have to also be aware that the grass is always greener on the other side
I could pivot into something new and end up hating it or getting bored.
This requires some hammock time to figure out…
The source of all pain in human condition
The source of all pain in human condition:
Seeing a state we are able to achieve.
Feeling like we can accomplish more things than we have time for.
Health and wealth are both tied to identity so loss of any one usually leads to a loss of character!
Of course values and integrity are different depending on culture, friend group etc.
This is why it’s so important to build you own sense of self,
Not tie your identity to how much you make,
Or whatever culture deems valuable just now.
50 years ago in the UK culture determined that being a “good” woman was equatable to being a good mother/wife
Being a “father” meant providing.
100 years ago if you were a peasant, that was your lot, and there was no future where you’d become a noble or a wealthy merchant.
Now we have expanded our horizons and we have far more choice in what “integrity” means.
Now we almost have too many choices.
Social would have us believe you can do anything, do any job, live anywhere
This is painful as it’s no longer clear what a “meaningful” life is and we try to pursue 5 different lifesyles at once.
And fear missing out on the ones we don’t pursue.
A happy life comes from being aligned with your daily actions
An unhappy life comes from not being able to align with our values and actions.
The 2 causes of unhappiness
From dan Koe:
The only 2 root causes of unhappiness and social erosion we see in our society:
- Not knowing where to invest our attention and mental energy
- Knowing where to invest our attention, but not having access or opportunity to.
1 Not knowing what is worth to invest our attention and mental energy
When culture shifts too fast we lag behind, draining our energy on activities that are no longer valuable, or valued in the current culture.
It takes time to rewire your brain.
All the skills and knowledge we’ve built up serve a previous generation
2 not being able to invest our attention and energy where we know it matters
In socialist societies people can wait in line for days for simple day to day tasks. Increasingly we see this in democracies and capitalist societies too.
Our government or culture isn’t providing the means or opportunity to invest our time on things that matter.
The system is rigged in such a way that our attention is hijacked serve others.
- We don’t have hobbies we have netflix.
- We don’t have skills we have 9-5s
- We don’t read books we watch tiktok
What is the cure?
Seek to increase the amount of flow in your life
One client leads to another
Charge as much as you can get away with.
But once the prospect becomes a client,
Treat your low budget clients
as if they were a high budget clients.
Deliver the best results you can.
Don’t hold back.
Don’t paygate.
One client leads to another.
P.s Want more customers?
Timecapsule – check this post in 2035
Two extreme paths impacted by AI I dreamt up from the hammock:
A
Prompt engineering is the new omni skill.
Those who can defly use, and have access to, AI, can quit the 9-5, launch a solo businesses pursuing creative or artistic endeavours at a rate never seen before.
The rest will become stagnant and are outcompeted.
Employers become obsolete as people pursue their own creative endeavours and make money for themselves cutting out middlemen in all walks of life,
coupled with the fact that AI giants have replaced vast numbers of small service businesses with specialist trained Ai chatbots.
Since services can be produced cheapy,
Value shifts from objects, status symbols, services to more intellectual properties, training, IP, thoughts, philosophies, connection.
These will be the things that people are selling in x5 years.
B
AI is used to produce a constant deluge of surface level garbage content which floods the Internet.
This compounded with fake news, over-promising, FOMO and aggresive marketing leads to nation-wide fatigue, and lack of trust of online content.
As online content loses meaning, people lose interest in social media platforms, who desperatley try to drum up engagement through divisive AI bots, and bot content, which only drives people away faster.
People now value and trust only face to face connections,
only believe in world events they can see in front of them,
buy local physical products,
triggering a rapid “quiet-quitting” of the Internet
Is tribalism winning?
Is tribalism winning?
sometimes it feels like we’re heading for another dark age,
or like today’s society is one big echo chamber.
There are fewer fact-based opinions left to be found on anything much, political or otherwise.
Everyone seems afraid to voice their opinion,
for fear of being attacked
With both left and right-wing culture trending towards extreme viewpoints.
There’s no room for balanced, or refined viewpoints in the centre,
Only simple narratives with a clear story,
Hero and villain.
I’ve been trying to dive into why….
The online echo chamber
There’s no room for balanced, or refined viewpoints in the centre,
Only simple narratives with a clear story,
Hero and villain.
Extreme personalities like Trump are just artefacts of culture and extreme tribalism fueled by social media creating a biased reality.
The endgame is opposing viewpoints on any matter.
We are in a world of red Vs blue, worse, us Vs them.
But the real world is complex with complex opinions.
The loss of the “middle”, of the ability to reason, question and debate is the slow demise of free speech, which leads to restriction of thought through societal pressure.
In short, people should stop jumping to opinions because they read a 5s clickbait article, and practice saying
“don’t know” or even “don’t care”
My policy is to try not have an opinion unless it’s something I know about.
There’s so much fake news and clickbait out there, it’s easy to form an opinion based on nothing but bias and speculation, then dig yourself in by believing in something you you only see one side of through the prism of a social feed.
For me “I don’t know / care” applies to about 95% of most info I see during the day.
I think it’s because negative news has anymore emotional impact than positive because humans are biased to fear loss more than enjoy gains.
So social algos push negative threads, negative politics etc.
I’m hoping the next generation are more guarded and adjust & learn to modulate online behaviour to counteract the algo.
Otherwise I guess democratic society is doomed to a weird kind of hypercharged tribalism
For me, hearing opposing viewpoints is not about protection,
exposing myself to other opinions is the only way to stay open and aware.
If we view opposing opinions only as an opportunity to defend our own viewpoints then we’re already approaching someone with a closed mind, and lumping them into a “us Vs them” scenario where everything is polarised.
In that scenario attacking instead of discussing is it’s own form of pushing people into silence.
The internet seems to breed this form of “shout each other down” one sided arguments, instead of people actually soaking up new viewpoints or perspectives,
Which may have been possible in a face to face conversation
But we’re not morally obligated to voice those opinions.
I often come under attack for saying I don’t watch the news
I was once labelled as “privileged”
To the right,
your branded “a sympathizer”.
and to left “you’re privileged”.
That’s an easier narrative than considering that maybe,
just maybe,
it’s complicated.
Free speech must be allowed, even the speech we disagree with.
If I came across a racist I would simultaneously argue with them about racism,
Whilst simultaneously supporting their right to voice their distasteful opinions
These two viewpoints are not contradictory.
The issue I have with social fundamentalism (and this happens in both left and right ) is attempts to prevent or shut down open discussion.
Not all discussion about racism is racism
Not all those who disagree on fine points around transgender issues are transphobic
These are complex issues across spectrums of opinion on ethics, morality, politics etc.
But increasingly, to even ask questions around a “hot topic” is is taken as a sign of disagreement, and perceived as a declaration that you are vehemently against that viewpoint,
even if your overall stance is actually in agreement.
It’s the death of free speech.
The death of free speech on the internet
“the rise of the right is the fault of the left” – Stephen Fry
You can watch the full video here
It very much feels like there’s a lot of topics where your just not allowed to have an opinion.
It’s never outwardly stated but there is an orthodox view which must not be challenged in any way.
Not just disagreement, but even discussion will bring a hellfire down on your head.
Do you feel safe to discuss things openly online?
I see a terrifying trend of speech control,
Masquerading as liberalism.
“Safe” means prevention of physical harm
Becomes
“Safe” means I don’t want to hear opinions that offend me
“Aggression” acting violent or threateningly
Becomes
“Aggression” things that offend me
“Privileged” has more than a fair share of advantages
Becomes
“Privileged” doesn’t support views I support
The only route to true liberalism or free speech is to
- stop having an opinion on everything
- listen to people, especially the ones we disagree with
- listen twice as much as we speak
Where does this leave us?
If we can’t discuss the nuances, without being attacked,
Then how can we define what is a reasonable viewpoint, and what is an extreme viewpoint?
Very quickly the more balanced viewpoints stop being heard entirely, because it’s just not worth it to argue with lower rung or extreme opinions.
And pretty soon all you hear are the extreme opinions shouting
So how can we have an adult conversation about it?
I think it’s important to have free and open speech as speech dictates thought.
but when even the most benign topics can lead to a polarised and heated debate in this “us Vs them” culture, It can be exhausting.
Are things getting better or worse?
The world is objectively the same for everyone, we all live in the same reality.
But we all experience it differently:
You only remember the things that you experience
and you can only know what you remember.
So your life is what you pay attention to.
If you spend your time scrolling alarmist news feeds and toxic social posts
You will find the world alarming and toxic.
If you spend your time building things, making meaningful connections, making time for fun,
you will find the world positive and joyful.
Which means it’s more important than ever to have positive discussions.
Do you feel safe voicing your opinion or prefer to keep it to yourself?
I try to share honest opinions,
to be genuine
and to contribute to open debate whenever I can.
But often entering a conversation with a reasoned, nuanced or “middle” opinion
Will only earn you attack from both sides.
So sometimes it’s better just to keep my opinions to myself.
Don’t outsource your thinking
So I’ve been experimenting with a new ai journalling tool.
It’s good.
Really good.
It gives reflections on your entries, in the voice of the worlds greatest thinkers like Marcus Aurelius, Steve jobs, or whomever your heros are.
What’s more,
they mentor you, it remembers past entries and reflects on them with you in a chat, like it’s therapy.
Each week you get a deeper reflection with suggestions and prompts and analysis, plus some quotes.
It really is brilliant, the advice it gives is on point, nuanced and personal.
But one thing I’ve noticed is that
Since I started using it,
Instead of me scanning my week,
Thinking about it,
Reflecting,
And making behavioural adjustments,
I’m just taking it’s reflections as my own
I’ve outsourced my thinking to the app,
I don’t think deeply about my entries at all,
I just read the reflections,
I’m learning the insights, without absorbing them through experience.
Even if the results are good,
Is it really wisdom if it’s gained 3rd hand?
I don’t think so, that’s just knowledge not wisdom.
And it speaks to a larger trend of outsourcing our thinking to ai.
As we outsource more and more of our lives to ai we are in danger of getting out of the practice of actually coming to our own conclusions,
of becoming weak-minded, and not able to even think for ourselves.
If we are no more than our thoughts,
But our thoughts are provided by AI,
Then what the hell are we?
Seasons of Scotland 🏴
Winterish
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️⛅🌧️
Summerish
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️☀️☀️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
Wintery
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
Winter
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️❄️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
🌧️🌧️🎅🌧️
How to reclaim your attention from Big Tech baddies
In the next 10yrs, we’re heading for another dark age…
We’ll regress from capitalism to feudalism,
Yanis Varoufakis suggests in Technofeudalism
Big tech are the new kings
Governments are liege lords
The harvest is our data
Us?
We’re the serfs,
forced to labour in exchange for rent.
Netflix CEO said in this quote I find utterly monstrous:
“Our competition is sleep”
They want your attention 24/7,
glued to their apps every second of the day
producing data for harvest,
so they can sell your own desires back to you
in advertising and products you don’t need
Here’s how to reclaim your attention
Simple strategies won’t solve complex problems
Simple strategies don’t work the way they used to.
Social gurus love talking about focus and strategy
This works if you’re chasing simple goals in a simple system
But the world gets more complex everyday
The path to our goals isn’t clear anymore.
Using simple systems in a complex strategy will lead to frustration and failure
We’re told we should always be moving forward
So failure feels like failure instead of learning
Stop going in circles
Start growing in circles…
…👇
In a complex system, with complex goals
There are only two ingredients that lead to success
Consistent failure and adjustment
is the way to achieve your goals in a complex system
Here’s a consistency system for Solopreneurs I use to start on track over weeks months and years…
Resolutions
Running around shops like a loon.
People bustling and pushing and grabbing,
they don’t even give a pregnant woman priority.
All trapped in their own bubbles of worry,
With their own priorities,
Things to do and things to buy.
It’s hard not to be pessimistic about cultural values being placed on things over people.
Everywhere I see fresh waves of consumerism,
and tribalism on the rise.
In my own social media bubble,
All the new years resolutions I see revolve around achievement and status games.
I’ve been just as guilty of this, of course.
So this year one of my targets is going to be something softer,
Something less tangible.
I’m focussing on improving myself for…
- Kindness
- Patience
- Empathy
The thing about hard targets…
Targets are just something to aim it
It’s target practice that counts
That’s how to aim high, fail most of the time,
And still hold onto your hope
How quickly we adjust and forget
How quickly we adjust and forget
Today my walk. I came across a beautiful meadow of flowers just a few months ago. This meadow was a pond completely submerged in water
When it’s warm in summer, it seems like it will never be cold again
When you have money it seems like you’ll never be poor again
Everything has a season and things change. Don’t take what is normal now for something that will always be normal.
Choose what to do next
You can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything you want
How to deal with people who frustrate or attack you
No-one who is totally well seeks to harm or belittle others.
Look for the thorns that sting them,
help them remove it.
Being “triggered” is a crutch I reject
Of all the crutches people use to excuse bad behaviour, being “triggered” has to be the worst.
This new phrase has arisen during the age of attention economy.But the only thing that triggers me is the idea of being triggered.
🤬You see a social post and you are triggered.
👺 Someone says something you don’t agree with and you’re triggered.
💢 someone has an opinion on something and you’re triggered
The premise of being triggered is that you have an emotional reaction, and that whatever happens next isn’t your responsibility.
Now you can spend the next 15 mins riding a wave of righteous indignation!
Even better, now you can spread your own, far more valid, point of view to others via social media,
triggering them in turn,
igniting a shockwave chain reaction of triggers across the internet.
We call this a “viral post”.
Many social content creators actively try to artificially manufacture this trigger reaction, to get attention.
But I refuse to accept this idea that your reaction is out with your own own control;
That your own behaviour is someone else’s responsibility.
I get it, anger feels good sometimes. it’s addictive.
but are we children, to throw out toys when angry or cry the moment we feel hunger?
No we are adults, with rational brains.
it’s our job to resist our base impulses,
lest we all revert back to tribes of apes hitting each other with sticks and flinging feces at each other 💩
To pretend otherwise is devolving yourself of ownership and blame.
so don’t take the easy route.
it’s time we all grew up and nurtured a more tolerant attitude to people with different opinions.
from a selfish point of view, do you want to spend your whole life and emotional seesaw,
being controlled by the behaviours of others?
You will never be able to control what other people do,
Only your own reaction to it.
If this post triggered you,
feel free to go whinge about it on social media, I’ll be out in garden not giving a F.
Guilty purchases vs minimalism
For me, minimalism is not about mindlessly eliminating as many “things” as possible.
It’s not about quantity at all in fact.
Michael Boorman over at Wisdom Made Easy, and I were chatting about this recently.
For me, minimalism is about reducing things which add surface area, stress or noise.
It’s about only adding things that ADD VALUE to my life.
If a nice pair of sunglasses adds value to your life, then why feel guilty about it?
Of course, there’s a balance…
Buying clothes for the sake of it can become a nasty habit which accumulates clutter in your life.
Many are in the habit of mindless impulse buying for a short-term dopamine hit.
Or worse, buy things to play status games.
“we buy things we don’t need, with money we can’t afford, to impress people we don’t like”
– Dave Ramsey
You have to beware tying your sense of self-worth to what some stranger thinks about your fashion sense…
(Note, I don’t have a fashion sense 😅 most of the time I’m wearing mudstreaked work trousers, welly boots, and a tshirt that used to be white. So I’m not the best person to ask about fashion.)
But on balance, I’m not going to beat myself up over the odd impulse purchase.
An example:
A few years ago I bought a spare car.
I’m not into status games.
I have no interest in Porsches or Lambos.
I would rather drag my balls across a mile of broken glass than be caught in one of those range rovers that seem to come as standard when your a middle aged white dude who owns a business.
But I did go out and buy an old 1997 BMW z3 convertible.
It cost me £1500.
On face value…
It was superfluous to my needs.
I already have a very practical comfy car.
It adds hidden costs in tax, insurance, fuel, repairs.
It takes up valuable surface area in my life in that I have to spend time to clean it and care for it…
But for me, it brings value to my life.
I can afford the small added cost it adds.
I love to see the doggo’s ears flapping happily in the wind.
It makes me very happy it’s a lot of fun.
Sometimes a “thing” can reveal things about yourself you didn’t know,
Or let you experiment with different lifestyles.
And variety is the spice of life after all.
So if it brings value to you,
Then bash on mate.
Know where you’re going…
“When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.
There was a point last year where I checked off all my financial goals, and suddenly realised how it was all taking me somewhere didn’t actually want to go.
It took me a long time to realise I didn’t want to grow or run a big agency.
I started this as a lifestyle business.
If it was going to remain so, and not take over my life, something had to change.
so I had to actively fight a lot of my previous decisions to scale the business back,
which goes against my instinct and ambition and habits.
But sometimes it takes a moment of clarity to see the obvious truth right in front of you…
so I limited the no. of clients I took on.
which meant I earned only half as much.
but I had more time
so I did better work for those few clients
which meant I delivered more value
which meant I got paid more
which meant I didn’t have to take on as many clients
which meant I have more time
which led to me making more money,
which means I don’t need to work as much,
which means I have more time…
and so on and so on.
Once you let go of making more for more’s sake,
you enter a strange self fulfilling loop,
plus you’ll be happier too.
money is not the thing.
time is the thing.
A mutilplier for life
Your daily routine is a multiplier.
Bad habits = chaotic life
A good day = a good life
Your “life” is the foundation you build you business on
So design your routine,
Stick to it every day.
A good routine is how you live a good life
When willpower fails…
I spend all day manipulating myself
“do x1 press up then you can stop
“work for 10mins, then you can play games
“You don’t even like crisps
“You’ll deal with this
Mental gymnastics get you through,
When willpower fails.
Every day you make a choice
Every day I get a little better.
Or a little worse.
I can default to the latter
Or I can choose consciously.
Habits make your life
Good (or bad) habits
=
A good (or bad) life
Quick wins are for quick quitters
Hacks are for hustle bros.
Quick wins are for quick quitters.
Slow growth is the only way to do anything long-term.
And systems are how you stay sane while doing it.
Don’t be happy when…
You don’t be happy WHEN.
most people think they’ll be happy WHEN.
“I’ll be happy WHEN I get that promotion,
“I’ll be happy WHEN I live in a bigger house”
“I’ll be happy WHEN I reach £10k/m”.
Life is problems.
Solve one and you’ll have more problems.
So if you wait until WHEN you’ll die waiting.
We are goal striving machines.
So you be happy WHILE you chase the goal
Stoicism is the answer for Introverts
You never master it, it only really ends when you die.
It’s an adjective not a verb.
Try to practice it everyday.
As an introvert it has an answer for every aspect of life.
For me it’s the only philosophy of life that makes sense.
A lot of people have other philosophies.
Most don’t have any philosophy for their life at all.
By default they fall into the “hedonism” category, though they are unaware of this:
“endlessly seeking pleasure with no higher purpose in life”
Stoicism helps me find my purpose,
how to deal with challenges,
how to treat others,
how to set boundaries
how to manage my emotions and impluses
how to find happiness between the cracks
When you hit the hump, seek clarity.
This week I hit a major crisis of clarity.
I’ve made some quick wins, but my momentum has halted as I hit the hump.
I was feeling like I’d lost my way.
All week I sat at my computer, distracting myself with busiwork,
but not knowing what to work on.
Listening to a chapter of Dan Koe’s Art of Focus brought me clarity.
I opened it at random and just so happened to land on a chapter specifically about hitting the hump in any endeavour.
I realised the problem I was struggling with was not having too many tasks, the problem was I had no clarity.
I didn’t have anything to guide my focus and so my efforts all felt random.
Without clarity, I was trying to work on everything that came my way.
I was struggling mentally because my skills hadn’t yet developed to the point where I’m ready.
Which means I’m not getting the results I want.
Which is normal.
My anxiety was coming from the fact I was resorting to seeking new activities,
cramming my day with admin and busiwork,
Instead of just recommitting to the things that work.
I just need to stay the course and keep doing the right things every day.
As soon as I realised this I felt a wave of relief and joy washing over me.
I was already in the right place doing the right things.
I just need to keep doing it for a few more years haha.
Most stress is not caused by a lack of time or lack of skills, stress is caused by lack of clarity.
Now the path was clear.
I had moved away from my schedule so I was opening myself to choices.
Which was allowing lots of random non-needle moving tasks into my day.
So I set aside an hour,
I sat down and redesigned my schedule a bit as I have to get back to doing the same things every day.
My schedule gives me clarity on what I *should* be doing instead of what I *could* be doing. Follow the process.
When things get tough…
Life is very beautiful.
But it can be hard to see when you’re living it
Like looking at a mole under a microscope instead of seeing the beautiful body.
Your too close
Zoom out
You don’t have to go far to get a new perspective
I find often just a short 5 minute walk up the hill is enough,
Then I can turn and lol back down on my life with appropriate perspective to see the beauty therein.
When it’s a tough day at the office,
just step outside…
It’s paradise out there.
It’s hard to be stressed when your looking at greenery and flowers and butterflies
Stop wasting your attention
In the course of an average day, your brain processes 11 million bits per second.
That’s 14 billion bits of information over your life.
Your brain is always active. Always processing.
Whether you are solving problems in your business, brushing your teeth, watching TV, having sex or spending time with children.
Your brain is always processing information.
Right up until the moment it’s not and then everything stops for you.
Every time you take any action, you’re spending your bits of information.
The quality of your life is determined by the information your process over the duration of your life.
Learning to walk takes 5 years.
But then you spend the rest of your life doing it with almost zero effort.
We call this “muscle memory” but the label is false.
Rather, we reinforce pathways in our brain to make it more efficient to process information.
We carve grooves in our mind that allow information to flow like water in a channel.
This makes it easy to perform complex tasks on autopilot conserving our energy for other more important tasks
( Link to power of routines and habits article)
Stack your information into skills that help you flow or grow.
The unintended side effect is that we also reinforce biases that we hold.
This is the origin of the phrase
“you can’t reach an old dog new tricks”
We become more fixed into our habits and behaviours
Forging new habits, experiencing new things, keeping an open minds, learning new skills…
This is how you stay young forever.
I think of these X2 reinforcements every time I spend my attention watching a subpar Netflix show that doesn’t relax me,
Or waste my energy worrying about problems I can’t solve.
Or allow information that doesn’t help me and I can’t control into my life.
Or worry about things that have yet to pass.
Only spend energy doing things in front of you, or on planning so the right things come to be in front of you.
You asked for problems
Last year I said to myself more big projects.
Yet I here am again taking on too big ambitious projects with the garden
I feel stressed to the eyeballs trying to take on this massive task.
I’ve pushed my body past the limits of endurance,
and my mind is juggling like a mofo.
Why do I always push myself so hard?
On the other hand…
I keep saying I want to free up time from work,
so can work on the garden and other personal projects.
Then when I work on personal projects I worry about not having enough time to work on DH!
When I have too little to do I crave a big project.
When I have a big project I crave stability.
These projects are hard,
they push you past breaking point.
But this is where the personal growth happens.
I have realised one of the main reasons I started my own business
was that I got bored with my day job.
I’d reached the cap on my growth in those roles, and needed a new challenge.
People seeking Entrepreneurship often don’t realise they are just bored and seeking new challenges.
They forget this as soon as they hit all the challenges of entrepreneurship.
Keep this in mind when you face problems:
You need this.
You wanted this.
You asked for this.
Lessons for life from pine trees
Ice, wind, darkness.
All these stunt growth in nature.
Humans are the only species on earth that can feed on hardship and turn it into growth.
But it can go either way…
Hardship has to be recognised and chosen,
Else it festers into victimhood.
Today I sat at the side of a still reservoir and watched the wind russle through a grove of tall Scot’s pine,
I thought about how much we have to learn from pine trees.
Many have been around longer than us.
With minimal effort, they grow a pinecone
from a tiny nub into a perfectly symmetrical design,
In just a few months
With nothing but sunlight and water.
The tree grows hundreds of pine cones, cultivating many “small bets”
which they then drop over decades.
They let the world do the heavy lifting.
They may lose branches, sometimes whole limbs
But it doesn’t matter.
They have more.
They can grow more.
So long as the roots are solid.
When the weather turns,
Pine trees lose curb growth to conserve energy
More than half the battle is just placement and environment.
A tree that starts in sandy soil
May pay the price,
Even decades later
And collapse under one strong wind
But even then,
a fallen tree can make a U-turn and keep growing up towards the light
Inch by inch
Great things take time, I just need the patience of the pine tree.
Slow ain’t sexy
Solve one problem,
the reward is a new set of problems to solve.
Move too fast,
and you have x2 sets of problems you don’t know how to solve lol
It’s a recipe for burnout.
Slow growth isn’t as sexy.
You can’t post about it on social.
But slow growth is much more sustainable long-term
Don’t consume, create
Building in public changes you:
Society wants you to be a consumer:
Consumer goods and consume content.
Only 1% of internet users are creating content. The rest are consumers.
1% are influencing, the other 99% being influenced.
Which side do you want to be on?
Take control of your attention.
When you start adding value instead of taking away,
it changes your mindset
it changes who you are
it moves you from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.
Instead of hoarding and paygating your skills,
You want to share your creations because they can help people.
Be a creator not a consumer
“showing up” vs “giving it your all”
Everyday I wake up, stretch and row 1km.
I’ve been doing it about a year.
I do it even when I don’t feel like it. Which is most days.
Here’s something interesting I noticed:
It takes me almost exactly 5 minutes.
On some days I give it everything I have.
I strain
I push
I practically poo myself.
⌚It takes me almost exactly 5 minutes (give or take 10 seconds)
On some days I don’t feel it.
When I feel I’m in danger of not doing it, I allow myself a “cheat” day,
where I put in the minimum amount of effort.
⌚It takes me almost exactly 5 minutes (give or take 10 seconds)
Sometimes putting in maximum effort makes so little difference, that you may as well show up and put in just what’s needed.
This is known as the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule:
The exact ratio doesn’t always hold,
But the law applies across almost all of life and business:
80% of your leads will come from one source
One client will be the source of all your woes.
Spending 20% of the budget will achieve 80% of the results.
Where else can we apply this principle in your life and business?
Where can we put in less energy for more results?
The answer seems easy.
Just do more of the 20% and less of the 80%.
Telling them apart is the tricky bit.
Concentrate on the vital few vs the irrelevant many.
The least amount of effort, compounds into the same result as “giving it your all” if you keep it up long enough.
Effort vs expertise
I’m just back from the trip of a lifetime, skiing in France.
3 years ago this type of holiday would not have been possible for us.
I count my blessings every day.
It was truly a fairy-tale place.
Cosy cabins, epic mountain scapes, misty godrays split through hazy treelines stretched across jagged whitecapped peaks stretching off impossibly tall into soft pink skies at sunset.
Everywhere Skiers slalomed their way gracefully down the slopes…
I was not one of these elegant figures.
It turns out “easy” routes in the Alps are equivalent of “difficult” in the UK and I haven’t skied in 15 years. 😅
Nevertheless, after about a day of faceplants and cartwheels, and impressive pirouettes, I found my ski legs and mustered what might even be called grace.
After the first day my legs were jelly!
I was expending all my effort trying to stop. to slow down my mass,
and I bludgeoned my way down the slope, mostly on my ass, sometimes on my face.
Whereas the experts spent a fraction of the effort, they simply leaned in, turned their ankles just a few degrees to redirect their angle down the slope….
flawless elegance and speed!
Not only did they spend a fraction of the energy but they got to the destination more quickly.
Plus they didn’t look like a fool.
They had a serene look of intense focus and joy.
Its the classic scalpel vs the sledgehammer. The sniper instead of the shotgun
Just another example of how a tiny bit of effort applied the right way,
has a much bigger impact than brute force and effort.
Where else can we apply this principle in your life and business?
Where can we apply expertise instead of brute force to build leverage?
Nothing happens. Then all at once.
This morning I watched the geese flying over.
Spring is here.
Once you’ve noticed it you see it everywhere.
I could swear yesterday in my morning lap of the field the trees were bare
Today there’s a wash of green as new leaves have suddenly unfurled at the first sight of sun.
Nothing happens at first, then all at once. Keep at it. Build momentum
Being busy vs feeling busy
Feeling busy is not the same as being busy.
Feeling productive is not the same as being productive.
My hours are the same.
my workload is much the same.
So why am I feeling burnt out?
I keep saying
“I’m too busy I have too much on” I moan.
but then I imagine how the stoic sage on my shoulder might respond:
“But Nick aren’t you forgetting that you’ve been for a nice walk today,
You also had enough time to spend an hour in the garden”
I’m focusing on the negative.
I forget that I do have time.
The issue is not that I’m physically busy,
the issue is that I’m mentally busy.
The problem is not volume,
it’s intensity.
Even in my downtime my brain is still processing problems in the background.
So my brain is too cluttered to enjoy even my leisure time.
This is the problem with burnout, it starts to seep into your leisure time too,
and makes it harder to dewind and enjoy life.
I have too many plates spinning and too many complex projects running at a time.
I need to balance mental vs physical work.
I need to set aside more thinking time
I need to reduce the no of complex projects I take on at a time by saying NO to others and to myself.
The more projects I have on, the more I need to make spare time as breakout space to process, for my mental health.
Animals are unburdened by ambition
Animals avoid discomfort
Humans can push through it or even seek discomfort for ambition
Children seek pleasure and avoid responsibility
Adults make the hard choices
There are always tradeoffs
Spring is finally here.
My poor pale pasty Scottish skin has not seen sun in 6 months.
It’s easy to bemoan winter
But warmer weather also brings midges,
And spiky thornbushes,
And cutting the grass
There are always tradeoffs. Focus on the positives
You either get better or you get worse
- “I shouldn’t have to do this, this is Xs fault”
- “If X hadn’t happened I’d have more money”
- “If I had only done Y then I’d have more time right now”
We all have thoughts like these.
But every obstacle is an opportunity to take responsibility, to learn, to harden yourself, to expand your mind, to create a good story for later.
Your behaviours are a series of habits.
carving a familiar groove into your brain,
like water running downhill.
You either become better at tackling your problems…
or better at procrastinating on important tasks.
Each time you make a choice you are reinforcing a habit.
Where my head’s at – public accountability statement
Here’s a snapshot of where my head’s at right now…
I’m making a public commitment to hold myself accountable.
I want to look back at this in 5 years and know that I was true to my self and my vision.
For now I’m still running Design Hero about 24 hrs a week.
Design Hero funds my lifestyle just fine.
Eventually Life by Design may be my primary income and primary work
For now it doesn’t make much money, except for some coaching which I enjoy.
But the goal isn’t money just now.
I know Life by Design is more scalable in terms of my time via digital products and freelance coaching.
It’s more rewarding than my client work.
I get to see the direct benefit on people I get to know as friends.
Everyone is selling something at the end of the day.
I’m giving away free resources for freelancers.
I hope that helps someone.
If I can sell something too I’m ok with that.
But if I ever use the high pressure sales tactics that some preach,
and that I’ve experienced myself,
then I have lost my way.
Life By Design, I haven’t 100% figured it out yet as it’s still a passion project that gives me purpose in my life.
I made a commitment to write every day for a year, sharing what I know about growing a solo business.
So that’s what I’m doing. Writing like a mofo. It helps me figure stuff out.
Whatever results from that will happen.
But I’m not setting any fixed targets around money, or followers or no of students.
What will be will be.
My goal would be to help freelancers get past that hump where they are working like mad and earning less than a 9-5.
I want to help them design their lifestyle first and build a business around that, without all the burnout and pressure.
Over past few years I paid over £10k for courses and coaching about courses and coaching 🤣
I learned a lot.
But they all focus on selling courses and coaching, or social growth.
No-one is telling you how to actually get better at teaching people.
And I just don’t agree with a lot of the high pressure sales tactics promoted in a lot of these courses.
So I’ll need to learn how to be a better coach, and deliver better courses on my own.
The high-ticket coaches promoting high pressure sales?
Sure, they are all making huge £.
But now I see a rash of “high ticket” coaches and freelancers are burning out, quitting, miserable.
I’m glad I didn’t listen 😂
It reaffirms that my content about lifestyle is more important than content about growth and sales.
Even if it’s less attractive or harder to sell.
You can’t just keep handing out candy like crack.
Sometimes the people need to be forced to eat their veg.
I’d rather grow slower, and learn as I go, than sell out for a quick buck.
Purpose in my vision.
Consistency in my actions
Time on my side
Your revenue means nothing to me
Most freelancerrs measure success by revenue.
Revenue means nothing
Tell me about your profit ÷ time
Still meaningless.
Tell me what you do with your spare time.
Now you have a picture of your success.
If you want lifestyle business, don’t use the wrong measuring stick
Money vs Wealth
Q What does Wealth mean to you?
freedom. Freedom from constraint. Freedom to make better wealth decisions and investments. Freedom from the raterace
Q What does money mean to you?
If you’d asked me this question first, I’d have responded as above.
However in the context of “wealth vs money” it changes how I think about it.
When you ask people about success, normally they equate it to career and monetary success.
It’s the same with wealth.
Wealth can mean more than just pointless endless accumulation of monetary assets.
I have a hunch most folk would be just as happy with stability and £60k as they would earning £100k.
After a certain point there’s not much difference so long as you have enough to live comfortably and afford some luxuries.
“Most people spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” – Dave Ramsey
I’d add most people squander their time their time on things with no value,
glued to their lightboxes and dopamine hits.
So in this context, money is something I spend to buy time;
Time to spend on the things I enjoy.
Immediate (Design Hero funds my lifestyle (240k/yr)
Short-term (5 years) Building a scaleable business to sell digital products.
Long term (5 years+) Diversified wealth. Book sales. Content. Property. semi-passive businesses
I invest my money to buy time. I invest my wealth to buy stability and freedom.
If you want a simple life, seek competence
If you want a simple life,
spend extra to work with competent people.
Here’s what happens when you work with people who aren’t competent.
- They expect you to solve all their problems
- They don’t follow up
- You have to take on responsibility for the project
- They aren’t able to run through a repeatable process
- They aren’t able to respond succinctly to questions
- They aren’t able to deal with unexpected situations
- You need to explain the same thing several times
Sometimes this seems to be 80% of people.
This is fine.
But occasionally you will meet people who ooze competence. When you work with competent people, your life is easier, smoother, less stressful.
- Here’s how to spot them.
- they don’t use lingo or jargon.
- they don’t waste time.
- they can summarize succinctly.
- they are organised.
- things happen correctly.
- things happen with polish.
- they assume responsibility
- things get finished.
- things happen seemingly by themselves
- you don’t need to spend time hand holding
- you don’t need to tell them the next step
seek out and spend extra to work with competent people.
Hacks are easy, consistency is hard
Hacks are easy, consistency is hard
It’s why supplements and diet pills always outsell the gym.
The latter takes effort and time.
Hacks are easy, Wisdom is hard.
Speed sells, so social media blasts us with content promoting speedy success.
You can see this reflected in the content we consume.
Attention economy would have you believe you can change your whole life in a few weeks.
No wonder people turn to hacks!
Hacks are usually just knowledge without wisdom.
“hacks” suggest cheating, the easy route, or taking a shortcut.
But there is no shortcut.
It’s a harmful myth that makes people feel crap about where they are.
We all have different starting points, different responsibilities and advantages/disadvantages.
The truth is if you want you grow your own business, if you want true freedom, if you want to escape the ratrace…
then it takes many years, often working hard for little reward.
It takes persistence, effectiveness and consistency.
So how do we make consistently good decisions?
Wisdom.
Wisdom is the route to putting your life on easy mode.
Wisdom is the way to do things.
Wisdom is how you become disciplined & skillful or happy.
Wisdom is how you achieve 6 pack abs, or business growth, or lasting happiness.
It’s never too early or too late to start getting wiser. Read every day.
Read like a mofo.
Read like your life depends on it.
Then read some more.
Put your newfound knowledge into action
In 6 months time, you won’t even recognise yourself.
So if wisdom = knowledge + action
then success = wisdom + consistency + time
Ignore shiny new objects and hacks. Focus on the long-term. Think in years, act daily.
As your success increases, so must your ability to say NO.
As you get better at your job you will be offered more opportunities.
Which means the better you get, the busier you get.
You must learn to get better at taking on less.
You must learn to do only the tasks that match the level of your abilities.
You must improve your focus to match the level of your abilities.
Otherwise you will spend your valuable time doing less valuable work.
Otherwise the trailing result will be overwhelm and the only reward for your success will be stress.
It’s easy to turn down busiwork and bad ideas.
It’s hard to turn down good opportunities
Try saying “good idea…but not now.
Store the ideas for later
Refocus
You must improve your focus to match the level of your abilities.
Rest isn’t always sedentary
Everyone has different forms of rest.
My wife likes to unwind by watching something familiar like The Office or Friends on repeat.
This saps my energy & leaves me feeling lethargic and antsy.
The background laughter track grates and makes my head fizz.
I’ve found over time my tolerance for tv degrading to the point where I struggle to watch anything longer than 30mins without wanting to do something else instead.
I don’t think this is a bad thing.
If I had to define rest as downtime, then my form of rest would be walking or reading.
But this weekend we had a rare spot of sun in Scotland.
I got my pasty white arms out and got stuck in with the garden.
I spent the weekend caked in mud,
digging drainage trenches,
we reroofed the shed,
laid some paving,
Cut up some timber to build a new plant bed.
I should have been exhausted.
And yet this was the most wholesome and restorative weekend I’ve had in ages.
Building things, letting my brain switch off and my body work is a form of rest for me.
I entered the new week stiff and sore, but energised.
My brain felt like it was functioning at a higher level of creativity and output.
I like to repeat this pattern at a micro scale too;
I try to theme my days with mental tasks, follwoed by physical tasks, alternating to rest both respectivley.
Everyone has different forms of rest.
It doesn’t have to be watching tv or vegging out.
My ideal form of rest is hard work.
Work your mind, then work your body. Then reverse.
It was never meant to be easy
Want to become the hero in your own story instead of the victim?
Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my todos, this mental shift helps me:
Life is just a series of problems
Fixing this immediate problem won’t mean smooth sailing from here on in.
I will just come across yet another problem.
↘️ I haven’t got enough leads
↘️ Solve the problem…
↘️ Now I’m too busy with sales calls.
↘️ Solve the problem…
↘️ Now I haven’t enough time to fulfil all the work…
Some problems are better to have than others, for sure.
But all of life is just a series of problems one after the other.
Many spend all their energy avoiding problems.
- Avoid the promotion, it’s too much responsibility
- Avoid the workout it’s too hard after a day at work
- Avoid the awkward conversation, let people walk on you
- Avoid the hard choices,
- Then complain bitterly and look jealously on other people who have more, can do more, Or be more.
This is a victim mindset and it can become a way of life.
I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you are not in this group.
But you probably can think of someone who is.
We all need reminding of this sometimes:
We get frustrated by situations because we wish they were a different way.
- “I shouldn’t have to do this, this is Xs fault”
- “If X hadn’t happened I’d have more money”
- “If I had only done Y then I’d have more time right now”
We see obstacles as problems, because we hold an insane idea that things in your life SHOULD be a certain way.
And our idea of how things should be is always “easier”.
Events in life aren’t meant to be anything, they just are!
If we can let go of this,
And accept that life is not easy or hard, instead it simply is the way it is,
Then we can start to deal with obstacles and enjoy the process.
A straight, easy path builds no resilience.
Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn, to harden yourself, to expand your mind, to tell a story.
Each time we get stronger, and the next obstacle gets easier.
There will ALWAYS be another obstacle…
So I can choose hard paths now, or easy paths later.
Not only that, but the struggle is the most interesting point in a story.
Every good story follows the same broad arc:
- The call to adventure
- Enter the unknown
- A series of tests, trials
- The final battle
- The reward
- The resurrection
After following this journey, the hero achieves freedom and enlightenment,
become stronger, happier more enlightened from the ordeal.
Our greatest struggles are often the best scene in the movie. They are the climactic scene, the boss battle.
These stories are cyclical too:
Good stories always have sequels!
There will be more realisations, more trials, more rewards.
So I use the phrase “zoom out” as a keyword to remind myself to look at the bigger picture and realise this isn’t the end of all things, it’s just one scene in a much longer movie.
So next time you feel like life’s getting on top of you,
Remember you’re facing this problem because you’ve completed the step that comes before this problem.
This is just the next step on the path.
Enjoy putting your energy and attention into solving problems.
The alternative is give up and fall into apathy.
Recommended reading:
📕 The Obstacle is the Way
📕 The Daily Stoic
Zoom out. look at the bigger picture and realise this is just one bad day in a grander life.
Time travel
It’s about a 5 hour drive to Skye.
Yet I wasn’t bored once.
A 1hr motorway drive seems to take forever.
but a 4 hour drive in the right setting flashes by quickly.
Why? They say “time flies when you’re having fun”.
But shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Time isn’t equal.
Novelty and variety is what gives our lives weight and density.
Commit time to think, hike and do new things at least once a week.
Be more water
On Consistency
It seems impossible that water could carve such smooth flutes and marbled channels through solid rock.
It would take me years of hard labour, powerful pneumatic tools, and then agonising hand polishing to mould rock like that.
Yet just water passing by every day has done that.
I think of that every time I see waterfalls.
It’s a reminder not to burn myself out smashing rocks.
All I need to do is just pour a little bit of water every day.
Success = consistency + time
A fastlane to the end of life?
Whenever I hit roadblocks, I think about “The Obstacle is the Way“.
The best walks aren’t just a straight line to the summit.
The real adventure starts when the bridge has collapsed and you have to cross the stream,
or the path is blocked and you make your own way.
We don’t rage at these detours on a hike.
The point of the hike is not to get to the end of the path, the point of the hike is to hike.
So why do we get so frustrated when these things happen in our business or life pursuits?
Do you want a shortcut straight to the end of your life?
No, you want a rich, varied life well lived and full of experiences.
This ties in nicely with my first thought regarding the perception of time passing.
Do you really want to join a fastlane straight to the end of your life?
A straight motorway to your death would be a very short and boring life indeed.
I must learn to enjoy the obstacles, the detours, the problems which make up the rich variety of life.
Obstacles might seem like a negative at the time, but they add up to the rich experience of life as a whole. Learn to embrace them.
Most people give up too early
I like to notice where people decide to turn back on a hike.
It’s amazing how many people turn back 20 mins from the carpark!
Then there are those that follow the trail, visit the signposted landmark on Google maps, snap and obligatory photo and assume that’s all there is to see.
Keep going.
Go further until it gets quiet and no-one is ahead or behind,
That’s the sweet spot where you have room to breathe.
The truly magic places aren’t on the path.
They are always just a bit further.
I don’t want to call people actively lazy.
Many simply reach a natural resistance point where their desire to rest outweighs their curiosity drive.
They’ve seen enough and turned back.
“The mountain looks fine from here.”
But what if they were just a bit more curious and kept going?
There’s so much more to see, and the last 10% of the hike is where the most dramatic views lie.
1 Most people give up too early. Go 10% further.
2 Being unfit means you miss out on so much good stuff.
3 Stay curious
The best opportunities don’t have paths
On the way up the fairy pools there was a giant volcano with a huge crack down the middle.
The “crack of God” as I’m calling it.
It wasn’t on the map.
The path stops at the top of the fairy pools.
Of course, I wanted to get up close to that crack and poke my head in.
The best spots don’t have paths.
So just point yourself in the right direction and start walking.
It’s not obvious, but you can just wild hike up to the crack then walk right in to the mountain.
a 1m slice right though the mountain.
Keep going until there is no clear path. There’s less people here, so that’s where the hidden opportunities are.
Change is constant
That waterfall has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. probably since before the men were smashing each other with rocks on the prairies of Africa. Since forever.
But at some point in time, unfathomably long ago, that waterfall was just a stream. and before that it was a flat rocky plain.
beside the waterfalls are other falls carved in the rock, but now dry.
At some point in history the water followed that channel, then changed course and the rock was left behind.
Eventually that waterfall will carve another channel in the rock until it reaches a tipping point, then the river will suddenly change course again
ou think things are permanent, but they change. You might think your team, your job, your lifestyle is forever, but it’s not, it changes all the time!
Appreciating what I have
You can put sheep in a plain grass field surrounded by concrete, or drop them in the most stunning vista on the isle of Skye.
It makes no difference to them. where you put them, sheep are sheep.
There are 2 ways to look at this.
1 Some are just as happy with the basics are they are with luxury.
2 Luxuries are wasted on those that become blind to them.
Risk of death
We visited The Brother’s cave, and saw a genuine dinosaur footprint captured in the frozen rock. Awesome.
Immy was napping on a grass knoll with a view over the beach and lava fields,
so I set out to explore the rest of the beach and found a narrow ledge leading round to the cave with a sheer drop to water and rocks below.
I started along the ledge,
got further and further,
slime built up until it was slippy underfoot,
But when the handholds also started getting too slippy to hang onto I turned back.
I probably would be fine.
I thought about shimmying along the ledge even further.
Then I thought about the possibility of slipping off and ashing myself on the rocks. a slim possibility…
But why risk it!
I circled back round, went along the top of the cliff and peered down into the cave from above instead.
At the top of the cliff was a plaque for a tourist who’d died 2 years ago doing the same thing I did.
Plus it turns out I never would have had a view into the cave anyway, the ledge petered out just around the corner.
Yikes.
We all have different attitudes to risk.
It’s easy to assume if a risk has slim chance of coming true it won’t happen to us.
But it happened to someone.
If a risk is low-chance but high-impact, I usually avoid it.
Risk attitude: low likelihood with a low payoff, but big negative impact = not worth it.
3 people on same path never take quite the same route.
On the same rocky path, we come across a deep puddle…
Immy goes left , I go right, and doggo goes straight through the deepest bit.
The path was just as easy to the left as to the right.
What made me go one way and Immy another?
I didn’t consciously decide.
We all pick the optimum route without thinking.
Momentum, instinct, my grip, my gate, current trajectory all changed the final route in a split second.
Micro decisions you aren’t even aware of can result in a completely different path.
And we follow the path of least resistance by default without consciously deciding.
Beware micro decisions, and the path of least resistance. It may lead somewhere you don’t want to be.
Use momentum to beat the hump
There is a point in any project or endeavour,
Where you make quick gains at the start,
you feel like you’re winning,
then suddenly you hit the hump.
This is where most people give up.
It’s like driving a car:
easy to get to 30 mph.
just a little bit harder to get to 60mph
much harder to get to 70mph
Success is doing the same things up to the point where you lose momentum, then carry on.
Carrying on until the next paradigm shift or breakthrough
every long term project has multiple humps.
at this point shiny object syndrome normally kicks in and you move onto something else and start again.
Realign with your goals
stay to the path
Use consistency to beat the hump
x3 ways to make more money as a freelancer
There’s a few ways to make more:
1 Do more.
Get more leads, work with more clients.
This will work at first, but there’s a low ceiling to this.
If you work by yourself then there’s a limit to your time.
You don’t want to just burnout chasing more and more money.
2 Charge more.
Raise your prices,
increase your value or percieved value,
Speak to better clients with bigger budgets,
Get better at sales (sales is probably the biggest thing)
3 Achieve the same result with less input
I’m not talking about cutting corners.
I’m talking about building leverage.
Systemize your process, automate your admin.
Half the work for the same money = double the profit.
This means you can double your money (or half your workweek)
Once you have enough money, then you can free up your time.
Once you have enough time you can consider your higher purpose.
Is balance always positive?
People are always chasing balance.
It’s assumed balance = good, extreme = bad.
An ironic truth:
To achieve great things requires imbalance.
- Edison obsessively tested 10,000 failures before he invented the light bulb.
- Van Gogh chopped his own ear off in a fit of artistic delusion
- Abraham Lincoln attributes his own success to his depression.
Focus, by definition, requires ignoring the unimportant.
But these are the extreme of the extremes.
We don’t need to take such an extreme path through life.
It’s possible to focus on a specific objective, for a defined period of time,
then rebalance your life in phases to achieve an overall balance.
I often feel at war between two versions of myself:
- my ambitious self who wants to build something great and lasting
- my self who wants a simple, unfettered life
I have no wish to live an extreme life.
I must balance ambition vs contentment daily.
It’s a spectrum,
and we all must decide for ourselves where we sit on that spectrum,
between greatness and extremity,
or normality and mundane.
🙏🏻 balance in all things.
You can’t have everything. Sometimes focus requires letting other things slide
A formula for success
We all have a different starting point…
But given a long enough timeline, success is inevitable if we just keep making the correct decisions repeatedly.
So how do we make correct decisions?
We can ask the experts.
But the experts are only handing out tactics.
It’s not enough just to gather knowledge from gurus on social media.
You don’t learn anything.
If you want success, you need strategies, not tactics.
You need wisdom, not knowledge
You have to take the HOW and filter this through your own life experience.
You have to gain wisdom and apply it in your life and work.
So If:
Wisdom = knowledge + action
If follows:
Success = wisdom + consistency + time
Ignore fads and hacks. Learn, practice, experiment, keep doing it for a long time. Simples.
Corporate culture makes me sick
Sololpreneurship is hard:
- Stress
- Uncertainty
- Failure
- Fear
But whenever I have dark days I look back.
The thought of going back to office culture makes me feel sick.
– Pop chart music on repeat.
– Manufactured gossip about the latest trending Netflix show.
– Morning commutes staring down someone’s exhaust pipe.
– Actioning crappy ideas for someone less talented than you.
Entrepreneurship isn’t easy, but it sure beats the alternative.
It’s insane what people will do to avoid just a little bit of uncertainty or failure.
Always better to fail building your own thing than win the game for someone else.
Success is just knowing what you want
People want “success” (usually monetary) but haven’t considered what they actually want.
I worry that most people are seduced into wanting the quick win, the silver bullet, the magic pill.
The problem goes deeper:
Speed sells, so social media blasts us with content promoting speedy success.
You can see this reflected in the content we consume.
Most of the content we consume nowadays is short form, surface level snacks on social media.
Even as I write, part of my brain is working on how to segment this newsletter into x4 bit-size social posts.
It’s a harmful myth that makes people feel crap about where they are.
We all have different starting points, different responsibilities and advantages/disadvantages.
The truth is if you want you grow your own business, if you want true freedom, if you want to escape the ratrace…
then it takes many years, often working hard for little reward.
I guess that’s the point I’m getting round to:
Great things take time.
Success means different things to different people.
But most are measuring their success by their revenue.
Don’t use the wrong measuring stick.
Clarity is key.
If you don’t know what you want, you can’t measure your success.
Exhaustion is Endemic.
I ventured out from my mancave today to do a skip run.
Everywhere you see potholes in the road, houses are unkempt, projects started and abandoned.
It’s not just my neighbourhood.
I see the same thing every day online.
People are too numb from life admin.
Too worn down for persistence, resistance or insight.
Glued to Netflix and doom scrolling,
Too tired to resist the lure of addictive dopamine hits.
Blasted by endless onslaught of unhealthy options.
Who can fight that?
No-one has the will or ability to fight for life anymore.
The life is being sucked out of us by weapons of the addictive & seductive attention economy.
Resistance to this is futile.
The best minds in behavioural science are paid obscene amounts to manipulate our attention.
Our only weapon is control your attention.
Throw away your phone. At least for a few hours a day.
Success is an inevitable side effect
Try,
not to try,
to be successful.
being successful is outwith my control.
to want it and not get it will be painful.
Instead, try
to enjoy doing every day
the things which will lead to my success.
- Exercise everyday
- Think everyday
- Write everyday
- Build everyday
- Share everyday
- Sell everyday
- Reflect everyday
These are things that are within my control.
and if I do them well,
I will be happy with the doing.
Success is an inevitable side effect of doing the right things
Contradictory advice from a guru
“do or do not, there is no try”
– Yoda
“only a Sith deals in absolutes”
– also Yoda
Even gurus contradict themselves.
Advice is filtered tghrough whatever challenge they/you are facing at that particular phase in time.
It’s important to take advice and filter it through your own lens.
Take what helps you, discard what doesn’t
Don’t blindly follow the gurus…
The best opportunities don’t have signposts
The best spots on any hike don’t have paths or signposts.
An extension of this thought….
On the way up the Fairy Pools on Isle of Skye there was a giant volcano with a huge crack down the middle.
The “crack of God” as I’m calling it.
It wasn’t on the map.
The path stops at the top of the fairy pools.
Of course, I wanted to get up close to that crack and poke my head in.
Sometimes there isn’t a clear path you just have to point yourself in the right direction and start walking.
It’s not obvious, but you can just wild hike up to the crack then walk right in to the mountain.
The bests kept secret on skye?
1 If there’s no clear path, set a direction and start walking.
2 The best opportunities are where people aren’t.
Nothing is forever, change is constant
That waterfall has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. probably since before the men were smashing each other with rocks on the prairies of Africa. Since forever.
But at some point in time, unfathomably long ago, that waterfall was just a stream. and before that it was a flat rocky plain.
beside the waterfalls are other falls carved in the rock, but now dry.
At some point in history, the water followed that channel, then changed course and the rock was left behind.
Eventually, that waterfall will carve another channel in the rock until it reaches a tipping point, then the river will suddenly change course again.
I’ve had jobs t hat I thought would be forever that now look like prison to me.
I can remember girlfriends I thought I loved but looking back seem nothing more than flings.
There are fixtures of my life right now that I think are forever that could be gone in a few years.
Things you think are permanent can change in a flash. You might think your team, your job, your lifestyle is forever, but it’s not, it changes all the time!
People give up too early
I like to notice where people decide to turn back on a hike.
It’s amazing how many people turn back 20 mins from the carpark!
Then there are those who follow the trail, visit the signposted landmark on Google maps, snap and obligatory photo and assume that’s all there is to see.
Keep going.
Don’t be a tourist.
Go further.
Go until it gets quiet and no-one is ahead or behind,
That’s the sweet spot where you have room to breathe.
The truly magic places aren’t on the path.
They are always just a bit further.
I don’t want to call people actively lazy.
Many simply reach a natural resistance point where their desire to rest outweighs their curiosity drive.
They’ve seen enough and turned back.
“The mountain looks fine from here.”
But what if they were just a bit more curious and kept going?
There’s so much more to see, and the last 10% of the hike is where the most dramatic views lie.
1 Most people give up too early. Go 10% further.
2 Being unfit means you miss out on so much good stuff.
3 Stay curious
Seek the path of most resistance
The path of least resistance, often leads you astray
On a recent hike, I noticed people on same path never take quite the same route.
On a straight rocky path, we come across a deep puddle…
Immy goes left , I go right, and doggo goes straight through the deepest bit (of course 😅)
The path was just as easy to the left as to the right.
What made me go one way and Immy another?
I didn’t consciously decide.
We all pick the optimum route without thinking.
Momentum, instinct, my grip, my gate, current trajectory all changed the final route in a split second.
Micro decisions you aren’t even aware of can result in a completely different path.
And we follow the path of least resistance by default without consciously deciding.
Be more aware of micro decisions, and beware the path of least resistance, as it may lead you somewhere you don’t want to be without realising.
Easy paths = a hard life
The straightest road is never the best path.
In fact, unexpected roadblocks are practically guaranteed.
Whenever I hit roadblocks, I think about The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday
The best walks aren’t just a straight line to the summit.
The real adventure starts when the bridge has collapsed and you have to cross the streamor the path is blocked and you make your own way.
We don’t rage at these detours on a hike.
The point of the hike is not to get to the end of the path, the point of the hike is to hike.
So why do we get so frustrated when these things happen in our business or life pursuits?
Do you want a shortcut straight to the end of your life?
No, you want a rich, varied life well lived and full of experiences.
This ties in nicely with my first thought regarding time.
A long, straight motorway to the end of your life would be a very boring life indeed.
Not only that, a straight, easy path builds no resilience.
Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn, to harden yourself, to expand your mind, to tell a story.
each time we get stronger, and the next obstacle gets easier.
And there will ALWAYS be another obstacle…
So I can choose hard paths now, or easy paths later.
stopping at the roadside to see some wild stag.
Obstacles might seem like a negative at the time, but they add up to the rich experience of life as a whole.
How to carve solid rock with your bare hands…
How to carve solid rock with your bare hands…
It seems impossible that water could carve such smooth flutes and marbled channels through solid rock.
It would take me years of hard labour, powerful pneumatic tools, and then agonising hand polishing to mould rock like that.
Yet just water passing by every day has done that.
I think of that every time I see waterfalls.
It’s a reminder not to burn myself out smashing rocks.
All I need to do is just pour a little bit of water every day.
Then I cannot fail.
Success = consistency + time
How to time travel
Time travels differently…
It’s about a 5 hour drive to Skye.
Yet I wasn’t bored once.
A 1hr motorway drive seems to take forever.
but a 4 hour drive in the right setting flashes by quickly.
Why? They say “time flies when you’re having fun”.
But shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Time isn’t equal.
Novelty and variety is what gives our lives weight and density.
I need to recommit to my Friday hikes and make more time for thinking
Luxuries are for sheep
On appreciation…
You can put sheep in a plain grass field surrounded by concrete, or drop them in the most stunning vista on the isle of Skye.
It makes no difference to them. where you put them, sheep are sheep.
There are 2 ways to look at this.
1 Some are just as happy with the basics as with luxury.
2 Luxuries are wasted on those who become blind to them.
Build a second brain + AI + VR = A sci-fi dystopia?
Second brains + AI +VR = a dystopian sci-fi novel?
I recently read “Build a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte and science-fiction “Neuromancer” by William Gibson.
People like Hormozi have published so much content online that you can use Chat GPT to mimic his writing style, philosophy and thoughts.
The second brain of Hormozi’s thoughts is a collection of his life philosophy, his insights, his systems, his operating methods, his strategies and tactics, even his voice and wording.
So if the AI avatar of Hormozi is indistinguishable from the person Hormozi, then what is real?
does it even matter?
As we publish we are all building a profile of our own thoughts which AI can disseminate into an AI avatar.
It’s not far fetched to imagine that eventually we will have AI avatars of ourselves to do our bidding…
(if you can afford it, of course! 🤣)
Is it unrealistic to think that instead of paid consultations,
Our audience could prompt our online database of wisdom for their own benefit.
eventually we will offer paid access to our second brains?
or even paid access to our AI avatars as chatbots?
Just now access to our second brain would provide little value:
Knowledge by itself is useless.
But knowledge distilled through our own experience and philosophy becomes something far more valuable:
Wisdom!
Then consider further how we use our second brains to work in teams:
Tiago Forte talks about the magic point where your body of works becomes more than the sum of its parts, more than yourself.
We see teams coming together and contributing to the the second brain.
imagine a future where small groups of like-minded people come together and operate from collective second brains to achieve a specific purpose,
or even to build their own collective AI avatar to act as a representative for their collective thoughts and views…
A hive-mind, or “nation of many”.
Within this hive-mind a group could feasibly filter information to share and build their own version of reality
Let’s take that further.
Gibson famously coined the whole “cyberpunk” movement in his “Neuromancer” novels.
He envisioned a dystopian version of the internet, long before the internet was even a concept.
The attention economy, the abuse of big data, and many of his other predictions about the internet age were creepily accurate….
But in Neuromancer people had to “plug in” to use the net, just like in the Matrix.
With emerging tech like VR and AR this is now becoming increasingly recognisable.
So when we combine the possible future trajectories of second brains, VR and AI,
Will we all be living with groups of likeminded people in collective, self-determined realities?
We already live an age of ‘blurred reality’:
come election time, what you see on your feeds does not reflect the same reality that I see.
We are served a subjective reality depending on our own preferences and viewpoints.
People have always organised, and segregated, themselves by arbitrary labels.
Religion, Race, Class, Politics, Personality type etc.
Here we now have a new potential divide, where people draw new borders depending on the reality they choose to immerse themselves in.
I’m going to nip off this thought trail here as it has no practical value to anything I’m doing.
interesting though….
Weapons for knowledge workers
If you are a freelancer, you are a knowledge worker.
Knowledge is the new gold.
Your knowledge = your work.
So gain more knowledge.
Read.
Read like a mofo
Then go read some more.
Reading is the path to a better life
