Stoicism for solopreneurs

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.

You can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything you want

No-one who is totally well seeks to harm or belittle others.
Look for the thorns that sting them,
help them remove it.

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.

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.

“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.

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

I spend all day manipulating myself

“do x1 press up then you can stop

“work fo 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 I get a little better
Or a little worse

I can default to the latter
Or I can choose consciously.

Good (or bad) habits
=
A good (or bad) life

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Today I sat back and noticed we have a lot 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.

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 consuming.
1% are influencing, the other 99% being influecned.
Which side do you want to be on?

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.

Be a creator not a consumer

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 time and less effort whilst still getting the same result?

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 man.

The least amount of effort, compounds into the same result as “giving it your all” if you keep it up long enough.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Children seek pleasure and avoid responsibility

Adults make the hard choices

There are always tradeoffs. Focus on the positives

“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.

Each time you make a choice you are reinforcing a habit.

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 DH about 24 hrs a week.
Design Hero funds my lifestyle just fine.
Eventually LBD 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 LBD is more scalable in terms of my time via digital products and courses.
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 stuff for free 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.
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 for 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 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.

Balance in all things

Purpose in my vision.
Consistency in my actions
Time on my side

Most 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

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,
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 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.
• hey 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

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 consistent 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, or skilful 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 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.

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.

Work your mind, then work your body. Then reverse.

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 them.
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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 carrying 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

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 value or your perceived 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.

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 our whole life.
It’s possible to focus on a specific objective, for a defined period of time,
then rebalance 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.
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

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.

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.

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.

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 our environment.

Throw away your phone. At least for a few hours a day.

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

“do or do not, there is no try”
– Yoda

“only a Sith deals in absolutes”
– also Yoda

Don’t always listen to the gurus…

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.

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!

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

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.

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…

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

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

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.

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….

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