7 powerful ideas on behavior change, psychology, and productivity that will transform how you approach goals forever.
Most people go about changing their lives in the completely wrong way. They create resolutions because everyone else does – we create superficial meaning out of status games.
I've quit 10x more goals than I've achieved. But the fact that people try to change their lives and utterly fail almost every time holds true.
This isn't something you read and forget. This is something you bookmark, take notes on, and set aside time to think about.
Making progress through discipline and willpower. This is what most people focus on. You hype yourself up, stay disciplined for weeks, then go back to your old ways.
Transforming your identity so behavior naturally follows. The bodybuilder doesn't grind to eat healthy—they can't see themselves living any other way.
If you want a specific outcome in life, you must have the lifestyle that creates that outcome long before you reach it.
When you truly change yourself, all of your habits that don't move the needle toward your goal become disgusting.
Because you have a deep and profound awareness of what kind of life those actions compound into.
You are okay with your current standards because you are not fully aware of what they are or what they lead to.
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
On an unconscious level, you pursue goals that can harm you, but you justify your actions in a way that is socially acceptable.
If you can't stop procrastinating: You may think you "lack discipline," but you're actually protecting yourself from judgment that comes from finishing and sharing your work.
If you won't quit your dead-end job: You're pursuing the goal of safety, predictability, and an excuse to not look like a failure.
Real change requires changing your goals—your point of view, the lens through which you perceive reality.
If you have accepted an idea and are firmly convinced it is true, it has the same power over you as the hypnotist's words have over the hypnotized subject.
Once you fulfill your physical survival needs, you start to survive on the conceptual or ideological level.
You may not try to protect your body, but you absolutely protect and reproduce your mind.
When your body feels threatened, you go into fight or flight.
When your identity feels threatened, the same thing happens.
For most people reading this, you hover between stages 4 and 8—a huge gap.
Those closer to 8 are reading to learn or pass time. Those closer to 4 are really looking for a change. You feel like you are meant for more.
The good thing is, it doesn't matter what stage you're in, because moving through any of them follows a pattern.
The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.
The likelihood that you will act toward a goal. Without agency, you're just a passive observer of your own life.
Access to paths that bear fruit. Many mistake this as "privilege"—but they're missing the other ingredients.
The ability to iterate, persist, and understand the big picture. The mark of low intelligence is inability to learn from mistakes.
Cybernetics comes from the Greek word meaning "to steer." It's the art of getting what you want.
1. Have a goal → 2. Act toward it → 3. Sense where you are → 4. Compare to goal → 5. Act again based on feedback
High intelligence is realizing any problem can be solved on a large enough timescale. Low intelligence is hitting a roadblock and quitting.
For most people, their goals are assigned to them:
Go to school. Get the job. Get offended. Play victim. Retire at 65.
A known path that doesn't work. To become more intelligent: 1. Reject the known path • 2. Dive into the unknown • 3. Set new, higher goals • 4. Embrace the chaos • 5. Study generalized principles • 6. Become a deep generalist
You feel like you don't belong in your current life. You become sufficiently fed up with your lack of progress.
You don't know what comes next. You either experiment or get lost and feel worse.
You discover what you want to pursue and make 6 years of progress in 6 months.
Vision & Anti-Vision. Create a new frame for your mind. It won't feel like it fits at first—that's good.
Breaking Unconscious Patterns. Set random reminders. Force yourself to contemplate.
Enter A Season Of Progress. Make insights known, integrate them, act on them.
First we must create a new frame, or lens of perception, for your mind to operate from.
This is like creating a new shell, leaving your old one, and slowly growing into it. It won't feel like it fits at first. That's a good thing.
Set aside 15-30 minutes. Do not outsource this to AI. I want you to break past the limiter on your mind.
What is the dull and persistent dissatisfaction you've learned to live with? (If you don't hate it, you will tolerate it)
What do you complain about repeatedly but never actually change?
For each complaint: What would someone who watched your behavior conclude that you actually want?
What truth about your current life would be unbearable to admit to someone you deeply respect?
If nothing changes for 5 years, describe an average Tuesday. Where do you wake up? How do you feel at 10pm?
Now do it for 10 years. What have you missed? What opportunities closed? Who gave up on you?
You're at the end of your life. You lived the safe version. What was the cost?
Who in your life is already living this future? What do you feel thinking about becoming them?
What identity would you have to give up to actually change? What would it cost you socially?
What is the most embarrassing reason you haven't changed? The one that makes you sound weak?
If your current behavior is self-protection, what exactly are you protecting? What is it costing you?
If you could snap your fingers and be living a different life in 3 years—what does an average Tuesday look like?
What would you have to believe about yourself for that life to feel natural? Write: "I am the type of person who..."
What is one thing you would do this week if you were already that person?
These journaling exercises are cute, but we want real change.
That's not going to happen if you don't break the unconscious patterns keeping you the same.
You aren't going to change by doing the same thing. You need to consciously force a pattern break.
Schedule during commuting, walking, or lying around:
What would change if I stopped needing people to see me as [the identity you wrote]?
Where in my life am I trading aliveness for safety?
What's the smallest version of the person I want to become that I could be tomorrow?
If you followed that process, I would be surprised if you didn't have at least one profound insight.
Now, we need to make those known, integrate them, and act on them to solidify our journey.
After today, what feels most true about why you've been stuck?
What is the actual enemy? The internal pattern or belief running the show.
Write a sentence that captures what you refuse to let your life become.
Write a sentence that captures what you're building toward. This is your vision MVP.
Think of goals as points of view. Enjoyment is found in progress.
What would have to be true in one year for you to know you've broken the old pattern?
What would have to be true in one month for the one-year lens to remain possible?
What are 2-3 actions you can timeblock tomorrow that the person you're becoming would do?
The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when attention is invested in realistic goals.
These components literally create your own little world.
If you are meant to pursue this hierarchy of goals, you will have no other option but to become obsessed.
All of these act as concentric circles, like a forcefield, that guard your mind from distractions.
The more you play the game, the stronger this force becomes, and soon enough it becomes who you are.
The more you play the game, the stronger this force becomes, and soon enough it becomes who you are, and you wouldn't have it any other way.