If you can spend eight hours building someone else's dreams, you can spend one hour building your own. One of the most powerful ideas I've been thinking about recently is bringing your ideal future into the now. And what I mean by that is performing the same actions that you would in your ideal lifestyle, but on a much smaller scale.
So let's say I want to write for two hours every morning for the rest of my life, then what I'm going to do, I already do that right now, but what I did in the past is I am going to start writing for five minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, one hour a day, and slowly increasing over the years until I can sustain the two hour a day writing lifestyle.
Because frankly, it doesn't make sense to wait and put off what you're already going to be doing, because I'm assuming what you're going to be doing is going to be directly attributing to the work you are going to do or your life's work. And so if you're not already doing those things, then you it's going to be much more difficult when you decide to finally start doing them and already you're already going to have to start small and taper up.
So if you don't have the time right now to write for 15 minutes every day, you're not going to have the time in the future if writing is going to be what you're doing for work. And so the way that you dissect what actions you should be taking is what we're going to talk about soon, this whole video is dedicated to deep work and actually executing on the task that you're going to be doing, but slowly tapering up until you can do them longer.
And so the reason I want to write for the rest of my life is just that, right? I realized my ideal future. And I realized that I'm going to have to be writing anyways, if I want to continue writing into the future. I also realized that writing was not the first thing, right? You have to try things and start to execute on fundamental tasks in order to understand what it is that you want, right?
Because at first, my desires were selfish, they still kind of are, but I knew that I had to make money somehow in order to sustain or build a future lifestyle for myself. And so with that, I started on social media before that I did freelancing and other things. And through that trial and error and realizing, okay, I don't like client work, I don't really care for web design anymore.
I did at the time, but I outgrew it. And now I'm getting into this writing thing. And I'm learning all about it. And I love it, right? And I would have never stumbled on that unless I had already been working towards my ideal future. So whether it be you start writing for 15 minutes every single morning, or you just start working on the things that will bring you closer to your ideal future, that way you can figure out what you don't want and allow that to act as a self corrective compass into figuring out what you actually do want.
And then once you find that, that's the best place to be, right? Then you can just execute, execute, execute until you can make it further apart of your day because it becomes seamless at that point, right? When I came across writing and understood that it is the foundation of all media.
And it is how I get my products and services in front of people and build a name for myself. I also realized that it helps me clear my mind. It helps me harness my creative ability. I started stacking wise behind this one action so that when I woke up, it was almost automatic that I just got straight into writing.
So the next thing is that when you bring your actions from your ideal future or the things that are going to actualize your ideal future into the now and start executing on them, you begin to invest mental energy in a goal through focus on that goal. So you are investing energy in that ideal lifestyle that you were trying to create.
And the more you do this, whether it be 15 minutes a day or an hour and a day or four hours a day, you're investing energy or currency in a metaphorical sense here. And so the more you do it, the more you feel obligated to do it. That's how you build momentum. And that's how you find passion. You don't just find an action that you're super passionate about.
Instead, you start investing mental energy into a goal, you do the actions that are required to get to that goal. And then you cultivate passion along the way, because you discover things that you wouldn't have discovered without that direct experience. And so when you don't work on this goal, you will feel as if you are wasting that currency, you're wasting that investment.
And so then, again, your body and your mind are going to tell you, Hey, I need to get back to doing this goal, I can't get distracted, or else I'm not going to feel the progress, the momentum, the passion that I felt before. And that's how you sustain a passionate, fulfilling and momentum full life.
And so another thing that comes into play here is my law of conceptual survival. Conceptual survival is the human phenomenon where our survival instincts have transcended the physical realm and are included in the mental, we work to survive ideas, concepts and beliefs that form our sense of self. So if you identify or you create this goal that starts to form your perspective and how you view the world and start acting in alignment with it and investing mental energy into that goal, or your future identity, you start to slowly build that identity, right? And by conceptual survival, we are trying to survive our concept of self. And so our actions are going to align with that the more that we do these things, the more that you are consistent with the deep work that we are going to talk about here.
And so with this, when you view your daily situations from the lens of your future self or from the lens of the goal that you are working towards, you are going to see life in a completely different light, right? You're going to be scrolling on social media and a post that you normally wouldn't have stopped and looked at is going to stop your scroll. And it is going to help you in the actualization of that goal, like a fitness post is going to grab your attention more than some mindless, cheap entertainment post. And the same goes with conversations, you're going to listen from the lens of your goal and be able to filter what they say from that so you can spot the things that actually help you move towards that goal.
So the main lesson here to end this little section of the video is that if you aren't working towards your ideal future, you're working towards someone else's because either way we are goal oriented creatures. And if you do not create your own goal and start to invest energy in that identity, you're going to invest energy into the identity that is assigned to you, like being a college student or having a corporate job title or being a retired at 65 years old dude, and your actions are going to follow to survive that belief, whether you are conscious or want to frame it as this whole conceptual survival thing or not.
And so next, we're going to talk about the holistic daily routine, fill your brain in the afternoons with books, learning and socialization, empty your brain before bed with journaling, planning and meditation, use your brain in the morning with creation, output, and focus. You need dedicated time every single day for creativity, productivity, and experimentation. That is what's going to help you achieve your goals, because you need the mixture, it can't only be productivity without experimentation and being able to refine along the way, or you're just executing on tasks that have been laid in front of you. And so the first objection that comes to mind here is that you don't have enough time, Dan, I don't have enough time. And that's fine. I'm not asking you to spend four hours a day on this or six hours a day or eight hours a day, I'm asking you to spend the minimum amount of time you can, because if you don't, then you aren't creating your future life, like if you aren't dedicating time, and actually blocking out and focusing for that time, in order to move levers towards your ideal future, then you're not going to create it.
It's that simple. And you don't you shouldn't feel like you need two, three hours at the very start of your journey, like a young dude who has no responsibilities. If you have a wife and kids, then yeah, you're going to have to start with 15 to 30 minutes and work up from there, and it's going to take a bit longer, because that's the thing. A lot of people don't realize this or notice this is that your psyche isn't wired for modern life, right? It's not wired for being under fluorescent lights, going and sitting in a cubicle, right? Think of it like a monkey and a cubicle. I know you're not a monkey, but a monkey would suffer in a cubicle, because its psyche is not wired for that. We need to hunt.
And in this age, what I mean by hunting is novel dopamine sources or meaningful dopamine sources or importance, something new in your life, discoveries, creativity, that's what hunting is, is being able to find something new, take it, create something with it. And that feels so good. And so many people don't have that benefit in their life. So if modern life has become normal to you, the repetitive NPC automaton lifestyle, do you know what an automaton is like a little robotic doll thing? That's what most people are. If this modern life becomes normal to you, you are by definition trapped in the matrix, which is a metaphorical term for you are just enslaved and a slave to routine. And many of you are familiar with how I structure my days, so I will keep this brief.
You need three activities to pursue your goals full force. One that fills your mind, you need education, ideas and novel resources you can apply towards your goals. This will lead to intrinsic motivation. One that empties your mind, you don't want to be trapped in a chaotic bubble of thoughts and useful ideas. That's exactly how you make zero progress, write things down. One that uses your mind, you need a vessel to focus your efforts with your ideas and the clarity to execute, build your future.
So this video is going to be focused on that last point using your mind with deep work. Now I've talked about that entire process before in my previous video, the three-step productivity framework, it's about the fill empty use framework. So check that out if you're interested, who you are, what you think feel and do what you love is the sum of what you focus on Cal Newport. So now we're going to talk about the need for deep work. Cal Newport is the author of the book, deep work, I have it somewhere out in my living room. I've never read it, but I have been doing my own version of deep work for the past 10 years, really, I'd say price six years actually productivity is about getting the most effective work done in the least amount of time possible productivity is not about seeing who can work the longest and then wear that as a badge of honor that they can show their friends, coworkers and peers. That's just a status game in a world of notifications, ample options and overwhelm deep work is frankly no longer an option. It is a necessity, you have to block out time to work on your future or to work on your business or just to avoid conversation notifications or distractions as a whole need to sit back.
You need to channel the creative firepower that you've gained through your consumption or your education or your skill acquisition. And you need to focus that into a vessel, aka a business to actually to reap the benefits from that business in the form of money, connections, and just resources in general, and then be able to have that as currency that you can trade up towards a better life for yourself. Deep work is how you build out your dreams in record time. So now we're going to talk about the priority ladder and with this with the priority ladder, you can drastically change your life in six months with one hour a day of focused work. One hour, that's it. Do not think that you need anything more than one hour, one meaningful project, one day at a time. So with the priority ladder, it's pretty it's just that it's a priority ladder where there's priority one, two, three, and four, and they are all not only decreasing in challenge, but also increasing in the amount of distraction potential that there is, right?
So priority one is just absolute laser focused on building out your vision with through a project. And then priority four is something like maintenance tasks where you are responding to emails, responding to messages and doing other things like that, where you are more open to actually potentially being distracted because there's nothing after that, right? There's no creative work that you have to do. So we will start with priority one. Now priority one, this is this pretty much built my entire life, right? For as long as I can remember, even into my younger years, I always had one project that I was working on, pretty close to first thing in the morning. Now it's always first thing in the morning, like right now I'm writing my book, because that is a new project, right? It is not something that I have to consistently work on right now. Like, it's not something that I have to maintain or update. Always, it's something new.
And so that's what the first priority should be, right? So if you have not built anything, and you only have one hour a day to spare, this is the one hour time block that you use, this is where you're focusing your efforts on the levers that are going to lead to creating your vision for the future. And then once that is done, so for beginners, it's probably going to be something like starting a social media brand, learning how to write with my two or a writer or digital economics course. And then, as you break through the perception threshold that we talked about in a previous video, where it's very difficult at the beginning, but slowly becomes more pleasurable with time, where it's going to be difficult, and your mind is going to perceive it as more difficult than it's going to be. And that perceived this difficulty is going to increase until you hit that breakthrough, right? And then you're able to systemize things, and then it just flows a lot smoother. And then you can fit so much more into that hour, right?
Your first hour of focused work isn't going to be that focused, you have to stick it out and refine your system with time. And then once you start seeing results from that first hour of work, then you move that into the second priority time block. So you can start working on something new, right?
So then when we move into priority two, that's where your lever moving tasks go. So in this case, for me, it's like, replying on social media or creating content, mostly creating content, because that's like how I feed my system, right? And it's creative work. It's something that I do not want to outsource. And then what people before, when you move that up to the second priority, you're going to start something new in priority one, because that is what's going to keep meaningful dopamine flowing.
And that is what's going to maintain momentum along this path until you systemize that, and then you bump it up another priority, right? So for the next thing that most people should do after starting a social media brand, and once they start seeing results with that, and it becomes a lot more efficient for them to keep up with that, then you're going to start building a service or a product so that you can monetize. And then once that's done, you move that up and start reaching out to people, but then you can start building out a funnel or something else.
And then all of these things slowly, like build on each other over time. The third time block is also for lever moving tasks or creative tasks, or meaningful tasks, right? So the things that you don't want to outsource, I will never outsource my writing, at least I hope I won't. Maybe I will. But in terms of like just writing in my day, I'm not going to outsource it as a whole.
The third time block is just to continue keeping the momentum going on whatever you're building. And all of this can also apply to like a corporate job, or just any work that you have, you have to structure your days with this method. And so the fourth time block or the priority for is for maintenance tasks. And for me, that's like checking messages, responding to messages, checking emails, responding to emails, checking the modern mastery community and interacting there.
This is where I expose myself to people, right? It sounds kind of weird to say it that way. But if you expose yourself to messages or your phone or notifications way too early in the morning, that one rogue thought that you get from it, that you think isn't of importance when you first see it, like, Oh, I can touch my phone in the morning and work just fine. No, you can't. It's going to pop up. And then that alone is going to split your focus. And then that opens up room for entropy, where your mind starts going to all of these different thoughts without you knowing it. That's the thing.
You probably think it's normal right now for you to do that. And you think that you're doing the best, most efficient work you are, but you're not. So you push back all of the conversational and maintenance tasks to the fourth priority. And now with all of these, I like to structure these anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes long time blocks for priority one, two, three, and four each.
And then in between, I'll take a break, I'll make breakfast, I'll make lunch, I'll go on a 30 to 40 minute walk and listen to something in my ears, usually closer to the last ones. But in a nutshell, that's really it. There's no reason for me to go over exactly like all every little hack that I do, because the entire joy of all of this comes through experimentation, creating a way that you like doing, and just testing different techniques.
So that's a technique that I'm giving you that you can test and then you can pull some of the good things from it, put it into your own day and slowly refine that over time until you live a completely self made lifestyle, if you will. So if you enjoyed this process, first, I encourage you to implement it. Second, I encourage you to like and subscribe and comment. Comment if anything stuck out to you or what you're going to implement, because I'm curious to hear which parts stuck out the most there.
And then third, check out the products to our writer digital economics modern mastery community that you can join for five bucks links in the description along with some other free my power planner, which also helps with productivity. And then some other cool resources down there. So check those out. And with that, have a great rest of your day. Peace.