Heaven is built, not found
The cost of having zero organizational skills is this: you'll become a slave to life as it is, and not what it could be.
You can have anything you want in life.
Become a writer.
Get a black belt in BJJ.
Earn 3k a month from passive income.
You can have what you want in life. It's deadly simple.
But you need two things:
Exactly what it is you want
How to go about getting it
Here's how to do it in 3 steps.
Why does nobody think like this?
The definition of anxiety is a desert. You're wandering around with unlimited options on where you can go. And this is the exact problem.
You have too many options.
Chaos is the price you pay for not having goals, plans, a routine, and a list of things to do.
So, why aren't we taught this properly?
I went through secondary school being told these things. But we were never taught anything practically.
My first year in college was a serious kick up the ass.
I really wanted to do well. I did great in school. It's hard to say it without boasting, but I had just gotten the highest Leaving Certificate in my school's history at that time (and in my entire year).
I don't like saying that to people.
I hate talking about it actually; it doesn't mean a thing to me.
But it showcases a really important point. A point that was to set me up for a lot of unnecessary suffering for many years of my life.
I've always struggled with terrifyingly oppressive and tyrannical self-expectations.
Therefore, I was not going to f*ck up college and I needed to do well.
I didn't want to fail.
So I got a Google calendar. I made a to do list. I wrote down some goals.
Perfect.
The gates of heaven shall be found with ease!
Right?
But it was all too vague.
What type of goals?
How do I use a calendar?
I have so many to-do's that are all over the place; I'm achieving nothing
This shouldn't be complicated.
It's not even common knowledge to most people.
The amount of people I have spoken to who do practically nothing to structure their life is astounding.
We haven't got a clue.
Chaos always ensues when order is not present.
This newsletter will teach you how to create order.
Achieving anything you want is easy.
You just need this framework, and you won't need to spend a dime.
Why exactly I always failed to systemize my life
Have you ever sat down and drawn out a perfect week?
I definitely have, and I've never stuck to a single one.
Not one second of it.
What about writing down a few goals?
Get a first in my first year in college
Get 2 stripes on my white belt
Read and write daily
I had goals, and I did hit variations of them. But it was because I wasn't specific enough with my plans.
It wasn't actionable enough because my goals were never clear.
Living without organization and direction is expensive, unnecessary chaos.
Don't waste years living a directionless life like I did.
It got me nowhere and I was miserable.
Relying purely on memory will leave you cognitively drained and lost. Having no clear areas of your life being defined leads to directionless action.
To prevent all of this, what you need is these 3 things:
A goal
To-dos to help you move towards the goal
Time blocked into your calendar to complete your to-do lists
Goals orientate us in life. Our positive emotion systems work in relation to us moving towards a conceived goal.
Human beings are hardwired to have goals and we have failed as a society to teach people this.
We live in a world where we are literally working against how our brains need to work.
Your Life Is A Series Of Domains
Life is not a game; it's a series of games.
I once listened to a Jordan Peterson lecture (during one of my actual lectures) in which he spoke about life being viewed as a series of domains.
It completely changed how I look at existence in a structural way.
Here are the domains:
Career.
Relationship.
Physical/Mental health.
Drug/Alcohol use.
Creative outlet.
Time outside of work.
This is a terrifyingly good start in solving this complicated problem.
This covers a lot of the basis for most people.
And you don't even need them all. You don't even need this exact list.
You can make your own life domains, and thus, achieve anything THAT YOU WANT IN LIFE.
You don't need to do more. You just need the right systems in place.
How To Organize Your Life In 3 Steps
People who get "everything they've ever wanted" in life aren't special. They just had clarity and did the work. Grinding your ass off for 16 hours a day moves you closer to zero goals when you don't have any clear goals.
This framework won't give you a perfect life.
It will give you an aim.
And having some aim, as a rule, is generally better than having none at all.
Meta-skills are important for this reason.
Everyone should know how to learn, how to read, and how to set goals and achieve them.
These things control everything that we do. So, give these skills their due diligence.
And still so many of us suffer stupidly because we get them wrong.
This changes now.
Step 1 - Define Your Life Domains
Most people try to change everything at once.
Less is always more, especially if you're starting from zero.
You can use Dr Peterson's list. I did this at the start. Once I started to gain my own understanding of how my life seemed to work, I chose my own.
This is my current list of domains (and it will continue to change based on my needs):
Work: my full-time job
Create: creating a product, service, or project for my brand
Write: writing my weekly newsletter and social media content
Wisdom: reading books and learning subjects and skills
Lifting/BJJ: lifting weights and learning the art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu
Personal: relationships, social life, finances, trips, responsibilities and chores
Trial and error will reveal new goals and change your desires, and that's ok.
Don't be vague with your domains. They need to be concrete; these areas are for completing specific actions towards specific goals.
Step 2 - Create One Document Per Domain (That's It)
More tools do not equal more results. They only serve to make you more disorganized and confused.
You need to obsess over less to win more.
So what separates this framework from other planning systems and paid templates?
Firstly, it's free and adaptable to you and your needs
You don't need to learn how to use it; you are the creator.
You don't need to use 8 different apps.
No time wasted with color coding and arbitrary designing.
You definitely don't need a PhD in productivity to work it.
Fuck. That.
This is for anyone.
Nobody on this planet should not know how to make a plan and work towards it. This should be common knowledge, and it isn't.
Give each domain one document. A Google doc, a notes app, a page in a notebook.
At the top of each document, you need 4 headings:
Motivation: a heaven to strive for and a hell to run from
Goals: what outcomes would help you reach heaven and get further from hell
To-dos: actions that will help you achieve your goals
Time Blocking: when/how often will you work on completing your to-dos every week
Step 3 - Fill In Your Framework For Life
I'll give you an example of what these domain documents might look like. Here's my "Write" domain.
Write Domain
Motivation
Heaven: I get to write for 90 minutes a day minimum, everyday. My newsletter has 10k highly engaged and active subscribers on Substack. I've helped educate people with profound and philosophical ideas, improving their lives and reducing their unnecessary suffering; maybe leading to enlightenment in many of my readers. I earn 2k a month from my writing. I read and write in my spare time to work on projects for personal enlightenment.
Hell: I cannot think or reason well. I cannot argue or negotiate. I never write in any shape or form, due to lack of time. I have no writing routine and I consistently miss deadlines. I have no creative outlet. I completely depreciate the arts of reading, writing, thinking, and the desire for enlightenment.
Goals
Finish writing this weeks newsletter
Complete draft
Edit
Create thumbnail
Schedule to post
Create social contents posts (10-15 posts)
Start writing next weeks newsletter
Time Blocking
60-90 minutes daily depending on where I can fit it into my schedule. Complete to-dos during this time; slowly work through them.
If it's a day off: first thing in the morning
12-13 hour work shift: when I come home before bed
This framework works because everything lives and breathes within a single document.
Even better, you can change any part of each document as you become more and more enlightened.
If a problem arises relating to my newsletter, I don't stress. I simply add it in as a to-do and solve it during my next time block.
Because of this, my brain doesn't have to stress about remembering everything I need to do.
Summary
Create 3-5 domains for your life.
One document for each domain.
At the top of each document you have the following headings in this order:
Motivation: what heaven and hell looks like. Why this worth doing.
Goals: what will get you closer to heaven and further away from hell?
To-dos: what actions will help you achieve your goals
Calendar/Time Blocking: give yourself time during your week to work on to do's for each domain respectively.
I cannot stress the importance of this framework.
Every single person who wants to take control of their life needs the following:
List of goals
To-do list
Calendar
Chaos always ensues when order is not present.
This is the antidote to chaos.
Knowing how to set goals and make plans really is a profound idea.
This newsletter fits in nicely with my previous newsletters. I've been writing about the meta-skills of life; learning how to learn, how to read, and now, how to plan.
These skills will set you up for life.
Therefore, their importance cannot be stressed enough, and I found it invaluable in covering them. I also (selfishly) wanted to learn these skills for myself.
Thank you for reading, as always. It means a lot.
Leave a comment if you would change this framework in any way. How could we make it better?
Check out my previous newsletters:
- Profound Ideas
Prompt Library is now live for paid subscribers
I’ll be uploading 1-3 prompts over the next month.
Leave a comment if you have any specific requests.
Here’s the first three prompts:
Prompt: Become an Expert in Anything FAST (this newsletter!)
My eBook Is Now On Amazon/Kindle
I hate self-promotions, so I've left this past the end.
My habit-building eBook is now on Amazon.
It's also on free on Kindle Unlimited.
I'll be doing a free book promotion over the coming weeks.
Subscribe to be the first to hear about it (you’ll only have 5 days to grab it for free).
Don't bother wasting a dollar when you can get the book for free during this time.
If not, you can read it here on my Substack.
Happy reading!
First question you should ask yourselves. do you actually want it or do you want other people to see that you have it ?
What I lack in your story is the necessity of ‘freedom’ and just letting life be life for some people, me, to thrive. To do lists and allocated times for everything feel extremely confining to me. So do I not get what I want? Ah, yes, I want freedom 😎