A quick peek into my mind wrestling with life changes over the past few months — maybe you can take something from it:
I feel like I’m operating at 30% of my capabilities… which is never a great feeling.
I want to be clear, that while I am selling software that aims to get us operating at a higher percentage, I am still feeling like I’m at 30%.
What I’m selling isn’t a magic cure to life struggles… I’d be lying if I said so. Which is why I’m talking about my current struggles.
The life season has added some proverbial weight on the ole shoulders. But whatever… that’s life.
Turns out having another baby and moving to a new state within the same week throws a wrench in the grand plans. But it’s not a derailment… more like a necessary detour.
I remember saying my wedding vows, which included a line, “The path to this day has not been linear, nor has it been easy,” which I think is just another way of saying we can plan and hope and wish for things in the future, and even if we achieve them, the path there will have some trying times.
Competing goals and priorities are such a b*tch sometimes.
But if I’m honest with myself, the impatient and covetous part of myself is mostly just ego protection.
If I look at a friend who makes a lot more money than I do or gets to travel and meet awesome people for work — I compare and feel worse.
This is a human failing of mine, which I just have to own and move on with.
I’ve been fluctuating between being hopeful and being distraught about the future. “Man plans and God laughs…” the saying goes.
Going into 2025, I had my list of goals and my ‘path’ laid out, looking at my different categories within my life. I don’t know if it’s the toxic political soup we’ve been served (or created…) reaching new levels of mania or whether I’m reaching the end of the low-hanging-fruit in some of the things I’m aiming at.
You may be familiar with the feeling: finishing all the problems that are (relatively) easier and more fun to solve, now the obstacles (and tasks) in the way demand more. Talent may take you or me further than others, but talent will run out. I think that’s where the work begins… and that’s where I’ve been struggling recently.
Let me give you my specific example: I want to build an app business. I want to, specifically, bootstrap this idea (or set of ideas) I’ve been trying to bring to life for about a decade. I’ve learned that building an app is different than bootstrapping an app business… because I now see that as a far more complex problem.
Specifically, getting peoples attention, interest, and commitment (money, time, energy) is a lot different than delivering a product.
Why not be nihilistic? In nihilism, power is the ultimate currency. The power to manipulate, the power to extract, the power to maximize the pleasures of the moment, irrespective of downstream consequences.
Because, ultimately, what’s the point? In secular living, this oftentimes seems like the logical outcome. There’s nothing after death, this is it. So why not YOLO for the rest of time? In business, this is lying, cheating, and stealing. Doing anything for a buck.
Doing hard things takes energy. It takes effort to do the traditional things “that matter.” Getting a job, getting married, starting a family all come with the significant cost of your time, energy, and sheer pleasure. I think we’re naturally inclined toward these things, but obstacles get in the way. Modern-day obstacles
Embedded in something worth aiming at should be what you value most. I wish it was as common as it is obvious… especially for me. (I often aim at really dumb things).
MEEO: A Valuable Lens
Momentum; Effort; Expectations; Outcome.
While I lose steam on goals, there is always latent momentum, provided I have already done some of the work.
Everything we do, to some extent, requires skill. The more skill and mastery you have lets you gain momentum in something. The more momentum you have, the less effort it takes to get a specific outcome.
But how we view outcomes depend on expectations. Finding the right balance of momentum; effort; expectations; and outcomes is a complex problem to solve because it gets to the core of what being a human is.
Adaptability is our niche, but it comes at a cost — effort (at the very least). That’s why specialization is needed to a certain degree — you store momentum of skill and performance-ability to lessen the amount of effort needed to apply.
With that, you can
- set expectations high and achieve high outcomes (and be happy and fruitful),
- set high expectations and not achieve them (and be sad),
- low expectations and high outcomes (happy but unchallenged…bored?)
- or low/low (maybe don’t do that activity).
It’s hard to get good at things and it’s hard to achieve good outcomes in competitive environments.
That’s why the effort and expectations are such important markers to pay attention to.
Effort requires structure. I remember this thought rocketing into my mind when I was 60 minutes into a ruck through the Pennsylvania hills, destroying my earlier best, all because I selected a different programmed workout.
But the same applies for anything.
Effort at work needs boundaries — like specific hours, roles, responsibilities, etc.
Music requires structure, otherwise it’s just noise.
The key is getting the on-ramp correct. The right progression is enough to get us from 0 to up-to-speed… it just requires the humility of good progressions.
For example, the Fibonacci progression is a good shortcut to anything really… workouts, reading, writing, etc. 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21…
A Fibonacci pyramid to 8 with burpees will get you warm. (1,1,2,3,5,8,5,3,2,1,1)
For reading: read one page, take a 30 second break, one page, break, 2 pages, break, etc.
Task switching takes energy, and that energy need, if too high will stamp out genuine excitement — and this is a type of progression that can start with humble beginnings, but ramp up in intensity quickly, regardless of the activity.
It’s embarrassing to be seen starting a humble progression, but by set 4 or 5 you can be doing things that genuinely raises peoples’ eyebrows.
I love box jumps — I’m reasonably good at them. But my first box jump oftentimes is like jumping onto a shoe box, one time.
I’m confident that it is the least impressive thing that happens in the gym each day.
I’ve injured my lower back enough times from power-exercises to know that sprinting, jumping or any ego lift from a cold start is disastrous.
So the question is, “How can I convince myself to genuinely get excited about the least exciting part of the workout?”
For me at least, simply applying some structure to it and finding a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern problems is enough to focus and care about something I’d otherwise opt to neglect.
Part of the mental game, for me, is engineering some habits through self-awareness — knowing my tendencies and probable outcomes (ego injuring me).
Fitness and strength & conditioning is such an obvious arena for all these lessons — but life’s a maze.
And these patterns re-occur all over the place. Getting into work-mode for tasks I find dreadful is hard — and I still struggle with that. I procrastinate, I get distracted, I scroll on my phone, I open YoutTube.
And all these actions hurt me, hurt my progress, hurt my future. Yet I still do them. So I’m still working through this maze of applying progressions and on-ramps into things.
Playing with different time horizons does funny things to urgency. For exmaple, I am going to set a timer for the next 10 minutes… starting now:
I now have a time horizon that did not exist before. And I have a ticking clock. My brain is moving faster, my fingers are more energetic… and i make more mistakes. Excitement level and urgency has definitely increased. And all my focus is on getting as many words and ideas out as I can in the allotted time. But what has changed? It seems like an artificial constraint. There is nothing different about each second that goes by — except the value it now has in the limited timeframe I’ve instilled. It oftentimes forces us to pare down to the essential bits — but we can be screwed if we commit this time horizon to the wrong thing.
This gets to the difference between white-knuckling our way through life or just flowing with it.
Forcing round pegs into square holes is a shitty way to go through life — but so is aimless drifting. So that balance is a tough one to strike, but I think it requires playing around with how each time horizon we set is nested.
If my 10 minute timer is dedicated to something that I need to accomplish by the end of the day, which feeds something that needs to be accomplished at the end of the week, etc. then it’s probably a good time horizon.
But something that fills us with shame:
“I gotta stuff these donuts in my face in the next 5 minutes before my wife sees them and gets on me about my new years resolution to lose 20 lbs” makes us feel panicked, embarrassed, and ashamed, while setting an arbitrary time limit to generate some hustle-effort toward a meaningful project is fulfilling.
Constraints and fitness of the aim I think are key ingredients to finding the balance, where you can have agency and directive intention, but also flexible and maneuverable enough to flow, which is more fun.
Flow also requires form — technique, skill, ability. When the circumstances align: we’re put in a place where the stakes are real, stress levels rise, and we’re prepared for it.
The alternative, as extreme as it sounds, is nihilism. And nihilism, I believe, is fatal.
Seasons change… demands shift. But keeping the connection to the bigger aims can help re-orient toward things that bring meaning and excitement.
Even while scattered, rhythms will emerge, and that’s what gives some hope that being mediocre across multiple streams of effort is only temporary. But the demands in effort will also shift — and it’s up to the stories under our aims that can convince us to accept the added demands.
