In Most Cases the Answer Isn't More, It's Less

When we are overwhelmed or need to make change, the answer is usually subtraction.

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I recently opened up my Instagram and came across a perfect post from my friend DeeAnn Chomiak (founder of Philosophy of Leisure).

When things become overwhelming, the answer isn’t more motivation or better planning - the answer is to begin subtracting.

I have found this philosophy to serve me well… in life and in business…

In life, overwhelm has taught me the following:

1. I’m doing too much that I shouldn’t be.

2. I’m saying yes to more than I can handle.

3. I’m complicating the simple.

4. I’m giving more energy out than to myself.

5. I’ve moved off track from the “basics” and my routines.

In business, overwhelm has taught me the following:

1. I’m doing too much that I shouldn’t be.

2. I’m saying yes to more than I can handle.

3. I’m complicating the simple.

4. I’m giving more energy out than to myself.

5. I’ve moved off track from the “basics” and my routines.

No, you’re not seeing double… you’re seeing how life and business have a lot of the same principles…

When we are overwhelmed, chances are we’re doing more than we should and the solution is subtraction… get rid of the non-essentials.

Side note, a really great book to consider… Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less… this will make you rethink 90% of the things you think are important, which the author states are not… and I agree.

The “problem” is, when most people are overwhelmed, they instinctively think,

What more can I do? How can I work it in (plan it)? How can I stay motivated to keep going?

To which, the answer is… PAUSE.

Don’t “do” more. Don’t “work it in.” Don’t look for more motivation to do it all.

Instead, start eliminating.

When your house is a mess and there’s too much stuff in it… especially your closets… what do you do?

You eliminate things. Maybe you donate them. Maybe you throw them out. Either way, you clean house.

Well, sometimes you need to “clean house” with yourself.

Additionally, stop celebrating “busyness” and the fact that you can do it all.

Do you want to do it all? or maybe it’s you want to have it all WITHOUT doing it all? That would be the better choice because now you’re thinking about what needs to be cut, what needs systems to expand and how do you create a life that works for you instead of you being a slave to it.

I saw another great post from Sahil Bloom,

Glorify the right things. Let go of status symbols like busyness and 100-hour-weeks. Celebrate sleeping 8 hours, regular physical activity, and freedom. Control of your time is true wealth.

So, the real questions are…

• how do we know what to eliminate (subtraction)

• what do we drive more of our energy and attention towards (focus)

• what is the ideal lifestyle that either keeps us from entering overwhelm, or at least helps us manage it… managing uncertainty of life? (intention)

👇🏼

The Art of Subtraction Is Actually the Art of Expansion…

We subtract all of the non-essentials… the things that:

• distract us

• don’t align with us

• move us off path

• move us out of routines

• take our energy, and

• take us away from our purpose

If this is a good spot to do so, please write these down somewhere and post them where you can see them daily to serve as a reminder.

This subtraction now helps our expansion. Why?

We are left with looking at what the essentials are for having a life… the life… one we create, are responsible for and feel called to pursue.

I got rid of 90% of the unimportant things. The things that sucked at my soul. Technically, I’m still working on it because it takes time and patience and lots of practice… not to mention “rebuilding” and “redistributing” energy, but more on that in a bit.

With less, we now have the “vital few” things that get more… more energy, attention, focus and drive, which in turn yields far greater results… our expansion.

👇🏼

I’d Rather Have 4-Hour Days of Deep Focused Work, Than 60-Hour Work Weeks of Aimless Activity

Do 4-hour days exist?

Short answer, yes!

Currently, I do 6-hour days but that’s because I’m in build mode.

For the record, it was estimated that of the average 9-5 corporate employee, 2.5 hours of the total 8 were dedicated to work.

To give you an idea… for peak performance, driven entrepreneurs that spend 8-hours of deep focused work, their weekly output is equivalent to 1-month from a traditional employee.

The definition of “deep work”…

Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate

How does one get to 6-hour, or even 4-hour work days?

By cutting the “fat” from your daily activities, especially from all the unimportant things you’re focusing on in your business.

Here’s how you gain back time and cut the fat in your work or business:

• Get rid of meetings. If they’re necessary, keep them to 15-min or less.

• If you have to have meetings such as business development or clients, make sure they’re in the afternoon after deep work has been performed.

• Designate time to do email… I usually respond to emails at 9am and 4pm with some occasional ones during the day to the people that matter the most.

• Schedule your 90-120 min deep work sessions. Remember these are uninterrupted so no social media, email, phone calls etc. I created 3 morning sprints.

• Within each “sprint,” identify what the main focus is, then add the priorities that support the focus and the immediate tasks that have to get done to support the priorities. This ensures you don’t have to think too much about what you’re doing but sit down and get right to it.

• I make one sprint for creativity and production, one for business development and revenue, and one for for systems and admin. In other words, output to attract and grow my audience, delivering services to earn revenue and systems to automate my growth… the goal is always to work yourself out of the business while providing immense value. More on “productization” in another letter.

• Systems, systems, systems. If you’re a service-based business, I can accurately tell you that you will not only live in overwhelm without systems, but you will definitely contemplate your entire life’s decisions 😂… don’t… it’s about having “systems” to handle all the processes within your work so you can do more of what you love at scale. Systems include automations in email marketing, sales, invoicing, client onboarding, social media and content, etc.

The goal is simple… you’re trying to reduce distractions, amplify productivity and output in shorter timeframes and create replaceable systems so eventually what you build works for you.

👇🏼

Have an Ideal Lifestyle for Yourself or Someone Else Will Make it For You

If you don’t know where you’d like to be, do, have or create in life, there’s a good chance others will dictate what that looks like for you.

Don’t let that happen.

Most of how you reduce the amount of activities in your life and business that are “non-essential” are tied to how you’d like to operate in the future.

So build from that place.

In other words, if you know what you’d like to do with your time (spend it with family, work on things that matter, create, build your body and health, be in nature, etc), then how does what you do today get built to support that?

Well, other than the obvious… financial investments, savings, etc, I look at my work and see how I can have it work for me.

For example: I know that servicing “clients” is an exchange of time for money. That’s not scalable without systems, but even then, clients need a lot of additional support.

This gives me two options:

I work with “by referral only” clients who need very specific help for very specific results, give me full autonomy to deliver and work under my conditions. By referral only allows me to not only be exclusive (charge my value), but birds of a feather flock together and I know that most referrals will be like the people I’ve already worked with.

Second, I productize my experience and expertise (creating “customers”), selling consumable information that offers very specific solutions backed by very specific results, and delivering this value through systems and automation.

I bring this up because we live in the age of the Internet and we’ve never had more leverage in our control to create more sustainable, thriving lives.

As Naval said,

Naval @naval

The Internet enables eight billion monopolies.

Translation: with access to an immediate audience of clients and customers, along with the technology to deliver value in fractions of time and with less labor, we can create whatever we want and have it work for us.

Knowing what my future self wants allows me to be more present with how I’m building today. If I know the schedule, time, income and impact I want in the future, then how I design in the present has to reflect that.

This is how you become more optimized… in everything.

And one of the first things you’ll ask yourself is “how can I do this smarter.” From there, your whole life will change.

TL;DR

• When things become overwhelming, the answer isn’t more motivation or better planning - the answer is to begin subtracting. (Philosophy of leisure)

• Don’t complicate the simple… it’s your best friend waiting to have a deeper relationship with you.

• Get rid of the 90% of unimportant things. The remaining 10% receive all of your time, consistency and commitment.

• Create 4 or 6-hour days of deep focused work instead of living 60 to 80-hour weeks of aimless activity.

• Sooner or later you’re going to realize having systems in your life will reinforce your dreams.

• Envision an ideal lifestyle for yourself so you can reverse engineer the activities it takes to get there.

• The Internet enables 8 billion monopolies… you can create any business you want and thrive in fractions of the time it took previous generations. Don’t miss that opportunity.

Simplify, Multiply, Diversify below…👇🏼

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SIMPLIFY…

You’ll automatically split your work time in half simply by cutting out non-essentials… social media scrolling, Internet browsing, pointless meetings and excessive emailing. Start from that point and you’re already twice as productive.

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MULTIPLY…

It’s not about more. It’s about less, but better. Better amplifies quality… quality of experiences, quality of work, quality of living. Less is actually more.

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DIVERSIFY…

Clients distract. Customers scale. If you’re going to take on clients, make sure you have a system in place that they completely surrender to or they will reduce your profit margins to nil.

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