50 Days Challenge

If you want to change, you need to know where you want to go. You need a very concrete idea of what should be. Merely wishing for change leads to aimless wandering. Aimlessness leads to dissatisfaction, which then reinforces the desire for change.

A process of change can only begin once you have a very concrete vision of your goal.

Here is a simple method: Imagine your life in the future and write it down.

Consider multiple time periods and ask yourself the following questions:

Important point for me. I used to think too much about WHAT I was doing instead of just doing it. I rolled every decision back and forth for too long instead of just getting started.

Wrong, because that way you're doing the fourth step before the third.

Look:

Actually, succeeding is quite simple: just do what you believe needs to be done and everything will be fine. It just doesn't work, and it's definitely not because you don't know what to do. At the start of my productivity challenge, I spent a lot of time on strategic planning. I asked myself how I even know which path to take and how can I be sure it's the right one. I thought all along that I just needed to find the right path and everything would be fine. That's precisely the misconception.

Only a few days are left in my productivity challenge, and I would like to share an insight as a small interim conclusion: Do the work!

You can read hundreds of self-help books, talk to countless coaches, write a journal, try relaxation techniques, tightly schedule your day, and so on. Ultimately, however, you must do the work to make progress. You have to tackle things. You have to become a doer, and the secret here is incredibly simple: Do your work!

One thing has become particularly clear to me on my journey down the rabbit hole of productivity: the fact of how important it is to get things done. Okay, admittedly, this doesn't sound very surprising. What is surprising about it, however, is the why. Of course, things ultimately need to be done to make progress. But above all, it's also about continuously proving to oneself that one is making headway. It's about gaining self-assurance in the certainty that one can complete something.

An observation: One writes differently when thinking that the nonsense will be read by someone else. Okay, any half-talented thinker will come to this realization as well - nothing special.

Right now, the idea of optimizing every aspect of my life fascinates me. For example, I can think of three things that are not optimal and I want to change, and then take concrete steps to improve.

There's one thing that has catapulted my productivity to an entirely new level: radical planning. I have developed my own way of dealing with tasks and planning my day, and here's how I do it:

My approach, which I call "radical planning," is based on 2 important pillars:

• Task capture
• Planning

The first step, task capture, is the most important and simultaneously the most challenging. There is a crucial rule that must be meticulously followed:

Of course, ChatGPT can write anything for me. However, if writing is a way of channeling thoughts, then having texts developed by AI doesn't help. You need to take the stream of thoughts and write them down. That's what it's all about.

It's not about having a polished text. Those are already available at every corner. It's about finding a beautiful thought. And it can also be hidden amidst all sorts of chaos.

Life is full of difficulties. It's a constant struggle against the chaos that threatens to overwhelm everything if not quickly dealt with. Furthermore, chaos masters the art of dressing itself as clarity, leading one astray. The surest way to unmask it is to ask oneself if the path one is on is comfortable. If it is, then one can be fairly certain that it's the wrong one. The right path is almost always arduous. It demands effort. To make progress, we must undertake various endeavors.

I read a beautiful text by Jordan P. Peterson at X yesterday. It goes something like this:

I have no illusions: maintaining the status quo and progressing successfully require hard work. However, this is not just about the daily work invested in projects or business; it's more about working on oneself. Success belongs to those who have control over themselves. And to have control over oneself, one must first understand how one functions.