How to make your life easy
You can either let life happen to you, or you can actively go after what you want. What is the ideal end state you are looking to create? You can choose to design your life around making it happen. But if you don’t actively pursue creating your dream life, you are actively choosing not to.
Find your highest point of contribution
How do we make the important things easier? The answer is to find your highest point of contribution. Your highest point of contribution is the combination of your:
Talent — what are you great at?
Passion — what do you love?
Market — what can you get paid for?
We are often guided by societal expectations but not everything fits that guideline. You can set your own guidelines based on your highest point of contribution. Be extraordinary on your standards, based on your talent, passion and market rather than by a ‘one size fits all’ guide.
We hold ourselves back due to the narrative of our own limitations. People say ‘that is unrealistic’, or ‘it’s too hard’ but what if it wasn’t unrealistic, or too hard? What if we could find a clear path and make it effortless?
Design your day
Design your day to ensure you get all of the essential things done. A question I ask every morning:
What is the most important thing I need to do today?
I complete that thing before doing anything else, even checking emails.
Have a clear vision of what ‘good enough’ looks like. You should be striving for ‘good enough’, not ‘perfect’. Perfect does not exist.
Find a clear path. Clarity is more powerful than you might think. When you become clear on what needs to happen, progress starts to flow.
It’s like you are enabling your mind to execute what you want. Create a buffer for the unexpected, as things happen throughout your day that you don’t plan for; traffic, a phone call, an ‘urgent’ email. Include time in your schedule to deal with the unexpected.
Relax. ‘No pain no gain’ is nonsense. You do not need to go harder to achieve better results. Relaxing and scheduling time off enables you to spend the necessary energy on the important things you have to do.
Do not do more today than you can recover from today. Relaxing is a responsibility.
Life is a series of choices
You always have a choice. Figure out what is essential and you can eliminate the non-essential. There are ways to accomplish more by doing less.
Can you have more than one priority? Focus every day on what is important right now. If you are clear on what the most important thing is each day, it changes your focus.
When you are trying to simplify, start with zero. Ask, what is the minimum possible addition that will help you achieve your goal?
Be aware of the sunk cost bias. Ask:
How much would I pay for this thing right now?
How hard would I work to get on this project if I wasn’t already on it?
This helps you recognize its true value to you. When something has zero or a negative value to you, you have to uncommit.
Learn how to say ‘no’ as saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities is an undisciplined pursuit of everything. Saying ‘no’, simply means you can say ‘yes’ to the important things.