How I go from feeling lost to working 12 hours a day
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Dan Koe
I've talked about the 4 hour workday many times in the past. But life isn't static. When you feel th...
Video Transcript:
you won't find rare results in an average Lifestyle if you feel lost tired and can't focus on making progress toward the life you promised yourself you would live sometimes the only thing you can do is flip the switch create a glitch in The Matrix become a completely different person change your habits all at once remove every distraction from your life start the business build the project work 12 hours a day and forget to eat look back and realize you've done more in 3 months than you have in the past 3 years you need seasons of intensity that launch you into a new Baseline of living I personally don't think that consistency is the route that people should take to achieve success I think it's a balance it's a cycle of intensity consistency curiosity and sometimes feeling lost that's what we're going to talk about first waking up at 4:00 a. m. gives you 3 to 4 hours of experience that others just don't get to have it's a completely different reality a quiet one people aren't awake distraction lack gravity now I'm not saying that you need to wake up at 4:00 a.
m. I'm just saying create a glitch in The Matrix do something different maybe stay up 2 hours later when you're more creative I do think that I don't know if this is something spiritual or esoteric or whatever it may be or maybe there's science behind it I'm sure there is but the early mornings and the late nights nobody's awake it's just quiet it's the world is quiet so your mind is allowed to have those creative thoughts and ideas that you can Channel into your work now the reason I say and I wake up earlier is because there's obvious Health deficits to going to bed very late but the thing here is if your mind is already pushing back on the idea of doing something different with your life or potentially doing something extreme this video probably isn't going to benefit you very much so open your mind or leave to set the scene you already have motivation you can already Focus for 12 hours a day when you're playing a video game or scrolling on your phone it's automatic you don't need to discipline yourself to do it but you know deep down that you're ruining your life and your subconscious knows that you could be doing better and that's why you feel terrible so we need to create a physical mental and spiritual environment that makes it seamless to work on your dreams first we need to understand that 12-hour work days aren't always possible or feasible or even worth doing I'm not here to say that you need to be in the right phase of life and if you understand the different phases of life you can guide yourself into that into a season of intensity where you enjoy working that long second we need to remove the blockers that prevent you from treating life or seeing Life as a video game in other words we need to remove the blockers that prevent you from wanting to play the video game of life your life needs to become more interesting than the games that you're already playing and that goes far beyond just like video video games I'm talking about games that could be scrolling on your phone to receive the reward or win the game of the cheap dopamine that you get from it or almost anything else that you do in life has the structure of a video game watch my video life is a game here's how you win so if you want to completely change the direction of your life continue on but first I have some good news by popular demand The Writer's boot camp is starting back up under cortex it starts on October 28th so if you want to master digital writing in five weeks and have everything you need to be able to build an audience if you watch my other videos you understand the importance of building an audience as a creative worker going into the future of work or you just want a skill that allows you to pursue new career opportunities maybe freelancing maybe marketing maybe writing a book whatever it could be so you can go to boot camp. cortex with a.
co and there is also now a curriculum only version so if you're not a fan of the cohort style then there's the curriculum version getting back into it we need to talk about the cycles of progress or the phases of life so that you can understand how where you're at and how to navigate into a new phase so that you can start making progress cu the thing here is with consistency if you're only consistent you're not really making any progress we'll figure that out soon many people know my 4-Hour workday philosophy I've made many videos on it I've talked about it a lot it's actually received a lot of controversy mostly because people don't understand the philosophy or they don't watch the video they just read the headline and we all know what that leads to they just see the idea and latch on to it so it either becomes something that guides them in a positive direction or it becomes something where it's like no that's impossible that's never going to work but if you watch the videos you understand that that's just for a specific phase of Life the 4-Hour workday is for a specific phase of life and I'm not a fan of sticking to something because by sticking to something you stagnate and you stay the same and you don't actually really stay the same you start to decline unless you change and evolve and that's what the phases of life that we're going to talk about lead to progress is nonlinear you don't go to the gym for 10 years and build the same amount of muscle every single year you build a lot at the start because you're new it's called new begin gains then you build muscle in cycles of consistency and intensity you bulk and cut life happens and you get thrown off for a year the next year you regain motivation in a hyperd discipline gaining more in year 10 than you did in year three the same holds true for productivity you're going to get thrown off you're going to have times where you just have a ton of motivation and you get a ton done and you're also going to have times where you're just consistent because other goals and priorities in your life take over but you have to know how to navigate those things so that you can move from one to another and not let the chaos in your mind build up because you can be like Oh I'm not productive I'm not making as much progress as I used to but your life doesn't allow for that so you shouldn't get more stressed and more anxious because of that you should learn to lean into the phase of life that you're in so you can reap the maximum benefit from it many entrepreneurs just think that you work 12 hours a day day in day out I'm not like that I don't like that philosophy I haven't lived it I think it's just stupid and I think limiting yourself and actually creating boundaries is what allows for more Creative Solutions and more progress than the 12-hour workday entrepreneurs that just grind themselves into the ground most people don't want to live that lifestyle but they do want to be an entrepreneur so I'm here to tell you that that balance is possible and potentially more fulfilling the other thing is that I personally believe that 12-hour work days shouldn't be forced they should be natural you should want to do it it should be one of those binges where you just have to you feel like you can't stop working because you need to actualize the purpose you set your mind on I personally believe that no amount of work should be forced if you have to force yourself to work or you are forced to work change what you do for work or change your mind so that you can perceive the work in a better light like a lion hunts and rests to be quote unquote productive we're going to learn how to replicate that in our work the first phase or cycle of progress is perplexity and this is just my fancy way of making the words match because it's perplexity curiosity intensity consistency so the first phase perplexity is just the phase of feeling lost and this is where most people are they just feel lost they don't know what to do they're working on things that they don't care about so we're going to start with this tweet of mine the solution to boredom is building build a skill build a brand build your body build your mind build your social life build anything it doesn't matter if you don't know how that's the entire point you learn act and discover your way out of boredom so there are four cycles of progress and you can think of these as chapters in a book because humans make sense of the world in stories the first cycle is perplexity which is feeling lost or confused you're at the start of the story and you haven't figured out what the goal or the purpose of it is yet you're kind of just in limbo you can't work for 12 hours a day because you don't have anything to work on that is your own choice you can go to work and be told what to do but that's not something that you want to do you still feel lost and confused because you don't know what to do with the rest of your life most people are in this cycle they don't let themselves be bored they don't let themselves go into the next phase they continuously just dwell in their minds and let their thoughts take over and get stuck in this trap of constant negativity anxiety and overwhelming confusion and they try to numb that pain in their mind with the cheap dopamine sources that they're so focused on so the video games or the phones or alcohol or drugs or whatever it may be so you escape the perplexity cycle by first allowing yourself to be bored and second becoming curious you have to be become bored enough so that you become curious so you need to strip your life from all of the distractions start completely new and allow your mind to gravitate towards something good so that you can choose it the second phase is curiosity so you go from feeling lost to being curious about something this usually stems from identifying a problem in your life that you want to solve because problems and purpose exist on the same Spectrum they're just Polar Opposites of one another so purpose can't exist without a problem and a problem can't exist without a purpose so once you discover a problem you need to open your mind enough to realize the opposite side the other side of the perspective where purpose lies so if you notice a problem in your life of oh I don't have enough money oh I feel sluggish and I don't like how I look in the mirror I can't find a partner I can't get a date whatever it may be usually these problems are going to start out relatively shallow because they have to that's just survival you have to solve the shallow problems in order to transcend your survival so that your mind can actually open and notice the more spiritual or metaphysical or deeper problems to solve for a greater life's purpose that stems from those and when this happens when you get curious about a problem that you want to solve you need to allow yourself to start searching for information once you have the problem and goal framing your mind because that's how you perceive information in the world your goals and your problems that are sitting in your conscious mind or even subconscious mind are framing the information that you perceive so if you identify a problem and you understand how it's impacting your life and you actually want to solve it and you start to gain Clarity on what you should do you start to notice more in conversations in books on social media Etc your life starts to take shape because it's like if I am having money problems and I can't pay the bills then in conversations and in books I'm going to notice the information the highlights the the tools the resources that allow me to solve that problem the reason people can't make progress is because they're focused on the wrong problems they get stuck in their head and start giving too much attention to these little negative and meaningless thoughts that pop up to just distract them or they just distract themselves in general from the problem and never make progress towards it because it's not actually important to them so in the Curiosity phase this is where shiny object syndrome is kind of encouraged you're supposed to try everything and see what sticks you're supposed to try different techniques and experiment with things to solve the problem in your life until you start to gain Clarity and a bigger picture on what's going on and then you launch into the next phase which is intensity intensity is the climax of the story the main battle the most interesting and fulfilling part of your life the 3 to 6 months go by in a blur Pure Flow State completely focused on actualizing one meaningful goal in Fitness this is when you're disciplined with your diet and training it's all you think about in relationships it's the honeymoon phase all you want to do is build your connection with the person in business it's building and launching a new product or going on a writing spree both lead to new heights in growth and revenue this is when you pull 12-hour work dayss and it just comes naturally it's when the click happens or the aha moment and you know exactly what you need to do it's all makes sense in your head it's the only thing that you can think about so you have to take that energy and actually pursue the purpose and actualize it that's when you reach a new phase or a new Baseline in your life the Trap here is is that the intensity phase can become dangerous fast we've all heard of burnout and overwhelm and that's usually stems from trying to stick out the intensity phase for too long and not allowing yourself to transition into the next phase which is the consistency phase so just to touch on that don't try to push the bulk to the point of getting fat don't push the cut until you're scrawny and losing muscle don't get so obsessed with the relationship that you become needy and desperate don't try to push Revenue higher and destroy your brand reputation know when to drop down to a new Baseline and maintain the progress you've made so that leads us into the fourth phase we've talked about perplexity feeling lost curiosity getting out of that intensity for when you find the one thing you want to go all in on and then once you've made your progress fourth phase is consistency no consistency is not everything consistency is a tool to maintain progress not make progress stagnation isn't maintaining progress stagnation is death being consistent with content creation doesn't get you anywhere you must become curious and experiment with new angles and strategies when you find the right one you double down and see the most growth you've seen this is personally how I grew by 200,000 subscribers when I first started doing well on YouTube and 1.