Clarity - daily writing, 1st thing in the morning, This seems to bring me the most clarity, and direction in life. Show me what I’m missing. The direction I need to be headed.
This was previously not an issue for me but since I’ve gotten into such a murky life situation, especially without having work over the past year, and after having lost Asami, I feel like I need to realign on this. My brain used to work differently, I used to think much more strategically. And it’s hard to think strategically when you’re in a survival mode situation, especially after prolonged many months at a time.
One thing that helps is having guidelines/guardrails/a checklist…, whatever you want to call it, but basically a basic structure to guide me through the day. I work on autopilot a lot. My mind just works on autopilot.
I think most of us do at some level. So, for example, whenever I’m driving to a specific coffee shop, I always take same route. and if I have a special errand to run I don’t remember because it’s not part of my regular routine. I end up having to backtrack and it costs me more. The benefits, though, are that as long as I follow my regular routine and there’s nothing out of the ordinary, everything just works and my brain is free to think of other things.
If you have a good system and you simply follow the system, things generally work out. And so the key is getting a good system in place.
Plans help with this. Mapping out goals, and of course goals should align with the highest-level vision. What is our vision for our lives? Where do we see ourselves in 10-20, 40 years? That’s where we should start.
Start from the 40 to 50 year vision – How do you get there? What’s required to get there? Don’t assume that because it’s a long way away, you’ll just get there eventually. You have to start taking the steps now to get there.
At this point in my life, I’ve realized that time is so short, and so it is so important for me to make great use of every second of every hour, of every day. It seems like just yesterday, my children were born, and now my oldest child is almost seven, and I look back and think, “Where has the time gone?”.
Anyway, back to the goal setting. The goals should come from the vision. Then you establish strategies to achieve all of the goals.
from the strategies you just implement or you break it down into tactical level items daily to-do lists even one-year plans three-year plans five-year plans where do you want to be in a year okay six months okay three months you can really start to create your weekly checklists at that point and then even your dailies from your weeklies
It can seem overwhelming to plan life to this level of detail, but it’s really not that much. The point of this is not to create more work, but to create structure and guidelines so that you’re not flailing, waking up every single day and asking, “Ok, what am I going to do today?”.
I’ve added daily writing to my calendar now and I have a 30-minute block where I write so that I can give myself clarity for myself and then also publish something.
I want to publish to my blog some kind of writing every single day. This will push me to both write for clarity as well as create content that maybe somebody else will be able to use as well. Maybe someday I’ll move to Substack or a Beehiiv newsletter.
But this old school WordPress blog is better than nothing, and momentum and consistency are key.
I have nothing to add, no fancy or elegant close. Have a good day!