In this newsletter I would like to talk about developing a vision for your future.

Having no clarity of vision means you are aimlessly stumbling through life and allowing yourself to create the outcomes that society has set for you.

Go to school, work hard, get good grades, get a reliable secure job with decent pay, save money, buy a house with a mortgage, settle down with your girlfriend/boyfriend, get married, chip away at your mortgage for the next 30 years, pay taxes, take a holiday every now and then until you die.

If this doesn’t sound like your ideal life then read on.

If you are living out a vision that society has assigned to you, you need to be aware that it is going to take a complete re-alignment of your current mental framework in order to tear you away from this.

It will take time but don’t be deterred. Once you have developed a vision, the time factor will become a minor consideration.

First you need to develop a strong vision for your future.

You then need to analyse everything you are doing in your life.

Eliminate any activity that doesn’t serve your vision.

Plan your life so that anything you do moves you towards your vision. You can do this by creating a daily schedule of work blocks and constantly iterating.

Everything else is to be treated as a distraction.

This is incredibly important.

As you work towards this vision you will gain immense mental clarity and confidence.

Prior activities and routines that do not serve your goals will disappear from your life and you will not even notice they weren’t there.

Incorporate meaningful rest to let your mind process what you have learnt and let your vision guide you.

Creating Your Vision

Set some time aside to write down exactly what you want out of life. Be very specific.

Your vision will change over time, it will be an iterative process.

You will gain more clarity during your progression and you may pivot.

This is ok, just keep refining.

If you don’t know what niche or content themes to pursue with your business, consider completing an ‘Ikigai’ exercise. You can learn about that here.

Daily Process

If you are carrying out a task or activity that is moving you toward your vision you will feel the positive dopamine hit in anticipation of completing a valuable task.

Your brain will produce dopamine when pursuing your intrinsic goals and reward you.

Learn to trust your instincts and emotions.

When you feel like you are spending your time in a fashion that does not align with your vision, you will start to feel anxious and frustrated.

Take note of these tasks or activities that produce these negative emotions and quickly re-align your focus towards doing a task that moves you towards your vision.

This task or activity when completed or nearing completion, will give you that dopamine hit which signals to you that you have made good use of your time and that you are on the right path.

This is good.

In this process of carrying out our vision we are fighting entropy. Entropy is the tendency for matter in a closed system to tend towards disorder.

We need to develop a system derived from our vision that will allow you to recognise entropy and when to release it.

We may set a work block timer for 90 minutes of deep work.

We may enter a deep work flow state very quickly but at the 80 minute mark we may feel entropy taking hold and we lose our ability to focus and be productive.

At this point we can recognise what is happening in our mind and we can then release entropy by doing something like going for a walk.

Your daily routine will be a process of constant iteration in order to optimise efficiency and productivity.

Stack failures in this process.

Don’t be scared of this.

Remove what doesn’t work and keep testing different methods for improving your routine.

You will develop confidence and anxiety will be vastly reduced.

You will learn to recognise the healthy dopamine signals your brain is giving you when you are successfully moving toward your vision.

Create, generate and move forward

It is up to you as to whether you decide to take control of your life, create your own vision and move towards it. Or work for someone else’s vision that has been assigned to you.

If you choose the former, the process will hopefully create more personal freedom and joy for yourself.

Go forth and create. Good luck….

– Shernon