How to improve yourself

A 4-step framework to become dangerously competent

You are the curriculum, and you're learning f*cking everything backwards.

Most people don't know how to start improving any part of their themselves.

Living with a silent sense of longing, for something more, thinking that memorizing a book, or completing a college course will solve all their problems; always looking for external learning plans to prepare them for life, only to get battered against the first wave of "reality," as soon as they leave school, college, or the home, to explore what life has to offer.

The best way to improve yourself is to look within, and I’ll show you how to do this in 4 steps:

1. Act, gap, fill, repeat

2. Your curriculum creates your map

3. Specificity is purposeful, generic is redundant

4. Exponential evolution

I have two free prompts to go along with all this (links at the bottom).

I want you to imagine yourself as a jigsaw puzzle being pieced together as you age; manifesting your potential through action, by solving your problems, with your unique solutions.

But you have lots of different pieces missing in your puzzle, and in different areas, compared to your family, friends, colleagues, mentors; all in creating your jigsaw's final image, distinct to you, and only you.

You'll never fully complete your puzzle because potential is limitless. But that's the point. There's no limit to what good you could be doing for the world.

Most people even don't even start, and it's a f*cking tragedy.

So forget about what school taught you.

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You are the curriculum

School doesn't give you an education. It teaches you to be proficient at passing school. And being good at school doesn't mean you'll be good at life. Life is a series of tests that nothing can prepare you for. It all depends on you, and the tests you decide you want to be good at.

I'm gonna tell you a story.

I'm only back home from inter-railing around Europe, but when I was training jiu-jitsu more consistently I was working on foot-sweeps, which is a type of takedown (look at this sh*t man). In a basic sense, the goal of jiu-jitsu is to take your opponent to the ground, so you can get passed their legs, and strangle them, or break one of their limbs.

sounds cool right :)

But whenever I made a foot-sweep attempt in actual rounds, nothing was working. In fact, if I actually wanted improve my jiu-jitsu, in the most efficient manner possible, I shouldn't having been focusing on foot-sweeps at all. I hate dealing with leg-lockers, people trying to break my legs. I always get trapped in front-headlock and darce situations; nasty chokes that f*ck up my neck because I never tap early enough (damn ego).

"Foot-sweeps look cool so I'm practicing that!"

I had all these other much larger, recurring problems; I wasn't thinking about solving them because I was so obsessed with learning this external curriculum, and trying to force it in without consider the big picture. My big picture.

Listen.

I love getting choked and mutilated by sweaty dudes just as much as the next guy; but not when I'm always getting caught in the same sh*t.

Courses, books, and degrees can become invaluable assets when they help fill a specific knowledge or skill gap distinct to you. But you don't read a 320 page book to learn how many planets are in the solar system. You get f*cking specific with what to ask for, what gap needs addressing, and where to look for the solution.

Stop ignoring your obvious problems just because they're lurking where you least want to look.

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The best way to discover "you" is to f*cking live

If you don't know how to improve yourself, you'll wander around life in darkness trying to hit a dartboard you can't see.

This is the first I've told ever this story online, but I started Profound Ideas at the start of this year as an SEO website. My plan was to earn a living from ad-sense, writing about philosophy, literature, and self improvement. No showing my face, no talking about my own ideas; I hated my own ideas; and I didn't think they had a place anywhere to be dead honest.

Regardless, I wanted to make a living reading, writing, and thinking all day; to become a paid-thinker. I didn't want to work a normal 9-5 job, with my Multimedia degree I was supposed to be finishing at that time (I got the degree in the end).

The SEO plan was first mountain I chose to climb as a clueless idiot.

I made some progress; 6k link impressions after a 2-3 weeks, and nearly 1,000 followers on X in 3 months.

But it was only when I had climbed high enough on my first mountain, that I began to see other people, 2-3 mountains away in the distance, climbing routes that looked looked more favorable to me and my vision. I wouldn’t have known this if I never started. I only gained clarity once I had walked a thousand steps.

Thus, I dropped the SEO plan, and started by newsletter on Substack.

My vision was evolving, because action gave me clarity, and revealed new opportunities to me; the mountains I could now see in the distance.

And thank God this happened.

Google is just a f*cking sponsored list now, with an AI to answer all my search queries. I got 60 views in 2-3 months, the same time it took me to get 30,000 views on my Substack newsletter in less than 20 days. With the new learning pieces I gained for my puzzle, I learn from the

All because I leveraged what was working for people I wanted to live like, who were moving in the direction I wanted to be moving in; people smarter and more skilled than me, who could offer to fill some missing pieces in my puzzle if I chose to listen to their stories, and to see why what they were doing, worked.

All wise men were fools once; if you want to stop being a fool, pay attention to the wise.

721 subscribers, 3 of those paid, as of 8:04 am on Tuesday the 19th of August as I'm writing this. 90% of this in the last 3 weeks since I’ve adopted these principles.

These principles work.

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Act or die

If you don't pick any mountain to climb, even if it's the wrong one at first, you won't evolve as a person, and neither will your vision.

You'll never discover yourself unless you:

• f*ck something up

• realize there are more favorable options to choose from, for you, and your vision, as they exist, right now

• promise yourself to never f*ck up the same way twice

Once you start running into problems, your vision becomes clearer. Your puzzle starts to reveal its image, and the gaps that need filling (along with the pieces that cannot be forced).

It's like the Matthew principle.

The more you have, the easier it is to keep gaining more.

That's why starting from zero is f*cking hell.

When I left school I had freedom to sit on my arse for the first time (properly) in 19 years. I loved sitting around playing Minecraft with the boys on our Realm, deep into the AM, munching on chocolate, while drinking countless cups of tea.

But it got boring after a week; the late-night snacking stopped hitting like it once did.

I eventually got my first job, and realized very quickly that working a 9-5 was not for me,

Even though I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, I had found something I did not want to do with my life.

And that's vision clarity.

It's only though action that we come to understand what we like and don't like, our specific pain points, our problems, our passions.

They're all pieces that complete the puzzle.

Once you start filling in your specific gaps, your capabilities increase, along with your capacity to fill in other gaps at a faster rate. It starts to happen automatically. Placing down one piece can make placing 4 surround pieces a complete piss-take.

Less is more, but only when less is purposeful.

And it also makes you aware of the pieces you should avoid giving your attention to at all costs because you know they won't fit into your puzzle.

Here's what I'm trying right now from week to week.

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How to complete your puzzle's picture

1. Act, gap, fill, repeat

If you don't know where to start, reflect on the last 7 days. Write down every problem, obstacle, question you couldn't answer, outcomes you wish were different.

Here's mine for last week:

• Didn't do enough ideation before I started writing. Don't write as you go along,. I keep waffling, drifting off topic, and start feeling stuck

• Start taking notes when I get random ideas

• I don't know marketing at ALL

• Didn't go BJJ

• Only read for 3 nights last week

• Editing YT video should be spread out over 3+ days (outsource?)

• Change logo and banner

These are your gaps. Once you learn to look inwards first, adaptation accelerates at an unprecedented rate. Now you can turn to your resources. You're not picking up a book blindly, or trying to force a course into your life; you're reverse engineering.

Find a solution to every gap and fill it; the cycle never stops. If you still don't have any vision, you'll get deathly clear about what you don't want in life at least. Clarity isn't built with thought alone, but with thoughts about relevant, immediate action. Getting scared of what you don't want your life to look like will make you sprint towards what would be better.

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2. Your curriculum creates your map

Don't copy other people's curriculums. They're for actualizing their jigsaw's image, but not yours. You can't force a square block into a circular hole. Your problems are your syllabus. Nobody else's, just your own, it's your map.

By all means, take people 1-2 mountains ahead of you, moving in a direction you want to be in, as inspiration to see what's working for them. But always keep looking within. Introspective analysis based on outside wisdom.

Your knowledge and skill gaps are data points to help you understand yourself. When you ask people who they are, they usually think of everything sh*t thing they've ever done, or said, or the bad stories they feel about themselves.

We view ourselves and the world in stories, but we only believe the ones we feel, and not the ones we think.

We all have different gaps that come to build our own distinct story. Life is a story about how one person addressed their gaps, and solved some problems doing so (hopefully adding "value" to others). Nobody can your story away from you. Leverage it. Write the f*cking best revival, rebirth, transformation, hero's journey tale you possibly f*cking can. Aristotle said knowing yourself is true wisdom; yeah, because it f*cking is.

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3. Specificity is purposeful, generic is redundant

Never forcefully-inject a generic resource into your life. It won't solve your specific problems because it's generic. This is why people hate learning, forget everything they read, have no idea what to do with their lives; the list could go on.

You need to get deathly specific about the exact problems you want solved, the solutions they would need.

Use your head for this. Do you need to do a Google search, to build your own prompt, read a book (really ask yourself this, it's time costly). A side tip that helped my newsletter grow exponentially in the last 2-3 weeks is this: I've been studying the principles that work for the successful creators I aspire to be like (if I could ever even become a fraction of the amazing creatives they are!)

Again, see what's working for those who've succeeded. You don't just pull a massive, trusting, paying audience out of your bum-hole; it's built.

There will always be people who are 2-3 obstacles ahead of you for a reason. What works, works. Ask them, study them, understand them. Then, take the concepts and make your own take on them. Create your own unique solution to a common problem, that's influenced by how 1,000 people do it (and 3-5 hyper-successful persons). Learn from everyone at every level. Then, you can teach others climbing their first mountains :)

What you take from everyone is your own; this is creativity that fuels self-actualization.

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4. Exponential evolution

Place down one puzzle piece, and the four surrounding pieces standout to your eye. Every gap filled makes others easier to spot and fill.

Everything in life is linked. Philosophy, psychology, economics, biology, neuroscience, it's all connected. When you start the see the dots linking, that's your own understanding you're building. That's it. You've actualized a part of yourself, an understanding of the world that's uniquely your own that nobody else can replace. God-forbid if you were to leverage this, and were to start your own newsletter, and were to write about your understanding of any of your interests under a high-performing idea.

That's how you become a paid-thinker.

Your vision will evolve as your capabilities broaden and deepen. I also use goals for gap identification. What do I want to improve in my life by 1% in a weeks time? Bang, the next thing to fix, change, remove, or improve. You'll never know what to do with your life if you never do anything to start with. Start doing, and the paths will start to form.

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Once this (profound) idea becomes a part of how you think, every week becomes a brand new week. You'll never get bored because there's always a new challenge. No two days will ever be the same. Stagnation, boredom, and misery comes from repeating the same tasks and wanting different outcomes.

I have two free prompts that will help with all this:

1. Prompt: How I Organize My Life To Achieve Everything I Want

2. Prompt: Remember Everything You Read (to become an original thinker)

If you want a hand organizing your life into domains, each with a vision, list of goals, to-dos, and a time-blocking schedule. It's how I've been organizing my own life for the last 3 months with a system I've built.

If you want to become articulate, think and speak originally, and remember everything you read, use this prompt. I based it on how I like reading books at the minute!

These prompts are two mountains to climb that are low cost, low risk. At minimum, you’ll gain clarity from trying them. Again, like I said last week, you can check out my other prompts in my Prompt Library.

Thanks for reading. You're an absolute legend.

- Craig :)

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