Block out 1 hour a day.
Work on 1 meaningful project.
Aim for 1 vision for your future.
Take it 1 day at a time.
You don’t need more motivation, you need more clarity.
You don’t need more time, you need more focus.
This letter will teach you to unlock insane focus on command.
Most people think they need to work like a millionaire to achieve their goals.
But most people don’t understand how most millionaires work.
Two examples:
The first, Sam Altman from OpenAI
Second, Tej Dosa. A low-key copywriter who writes great X content:
Third, myself.
So no, you don’t need any more time than you already have.
Everyone starts somewhere. People don’t start with a fake millionaire routine. They start with what they have.
Aside from building new projects, I’ve rarely worked more than 4 hours a day.
Especially when I was starting out and had other responsibilities.
I had 1-2 hours a day and a bit more on my days off.
The entrepreneurs who work more make that choice, often at their own psychological expense.
Productivity is like fitness and you wouldn’t train 8 hours a day with no food or sleep and expect to make progress.
There are 2 types of work:
- Building – when you are building the foundation of something new. Like a product, service, or brand. This requires a lot of upfront work.
- Maintenance – when you are fueling the foundation you’ve built with a streamline productivity system. Like writing content, marketing yourself, building an audience, or fulfilling on your product or service. This requires 1-4 hours a day depending on your skill level or choice of work.
People trying to change their life or quit their job often get discouraged at the amount of work it takes to build.
They can’t zoom out and realize that once it’s built, your work decreases drastically.
Focus compounds.
You become better at what you do with time.
Like learning to walk, it’s difficult at first. It takes more time to walk from where you are to where you want to be.
But as you try, fail, and let your self-corrective mind rewire new neural pathways you can walk there as fast as you want… or just sprint.
If you want my complete philosophy for focused living, grab my book The Art Of Focus.
Focused work is only one part of changing your life.
Your Mind Is A Supercomputer Running The Game Of Life
Your mind is a supercomputer.
Your attention is the RAM.
Thoughts, regrets, and tasks are the programs slowing your performance.
Writing, mindfulness, and focus are the reboot you can access at any time.
RAM — or “random access memory” — is one of the most important parts of a computer, it determines performance.
The more RAM you use up with different programs running, open browser tabs, and the performance requirements of what you have running, the slower your performance will be.
This is no different from your focus, what you hold in your conscious attention.
Humans can process 50 bits of information per second. That adds up to 125 billion bits of information in your lifetime.
Most people live with multiple high-demand programs running that are draining the limited creative energy they have.
- Thoughts about regretful past mistakes
- Thoughts about stressful future happenings
- Desires of hunger and entertainment to escape those thoughts
- An internal cry to break out of their conditioned way of living
- A list of mixed-priority tasks that need to be finished
- Open loops of tasks they were supposed to complete but forgot about
The list goes on and on.
The modern mind has its attention split in infinite directions by default.
We go about our lives stressed and near sickness. Rather than living in the present with singular focus and a worry-free mind, we are the opposite. Living in a false reality created by split attention.
When we hold too much of the past or future in the contents of our consciousness, chaos ensues. The mind tends toward disorder. If not kept in check, we lose the sense of control over our lives that leads to enjoyment. This is accomplished through controlled consciousness.
Psychic Entropy: The Danger Of Distractions
Entropy is the supreme law of the Universe.
Without getting too complicated, if you don’t attempt to maintain order in a system by putting energy into solving problems, that system will decline into chaos.
If you don’t put effort into maintaining your bookshelf, books will end up all over your house, at your friend’s house, and small-scale chaos will ensue.
If you don’t put effort into the system of cleaning your room, it will slowly get dirtier and dirtier until you live in a disgusting nest of filth.
This is the state of most people’s minds.
A disgusting nest of filth.
Psychic entropy is the natural process of your psyche (or mind) tending toward chaos and disorder.
You aren’t productive because you don’t have clarity.
You aren’t productive because you focus on one distraction, don’t correct yourself, and slowly become overwhelmed by the chaos in your mind.
Distractions are the problems in your productivity system that must be solved if you want to unlock laser focus.
There are 2 ways to identify distractions and correct yourself:
Boredom and anxiety.
If the challenge of the task you are completing is too low for your skill level, you will get bored.
If the challenge of the task you are completing is too high for your skill level, you will get anxious.
The boredom stems from self-centeredness.
Your focus breaks, a new desire pops into your head, and related thoughts start to fill your attention.
If you are bored of the task, you will start thinking of better things you could be doing.
The anxiety stems from self-consciousness.
Your focus turns inward and negative thoughts flood your mind about how you aren’t good enough.
If you look in the mirror and spot a pimple, that is going to be on your mind for the rest of the day. It will impact every other area of your life.
The RAM of your mental supercomputer will be consumed by rogue programs until your performance suffers as a whole.
The chaos induced by boredom or anxiety can only be cured with clarity.
You must refocus your mind not only on the task in front of you, but on the ideal outcome of your life as a whole.
When you have the skill and knowledge that matches the challenge of a task, life becomes a video game of quests that you love to play.
The 4-Hour Workday – Creating Your Productivity System
Humans find meaning in stories.
Humans love playing games.
Why?
Because they present a clear hierarchy of goals that our mind can adopt as an indistractable frame.
They follow the curiosity > intensity > consistency cycle of the Universe.
First you’re lost. Then you’re curious. Then you’re obsessed. Then it’s a consistent part of your life with little extra effort.
Most people get lost, focus on distractions, and never put effort into a goal (even if they don’t see the meaning in it yet) to reverse the hole they’re digging themselves into.
Understand that nothing is perfect.
Like a story, you will experience lows, but those are what allow the highs to exist. Success doesn’t exist without failure.
Like a video game, you will have to progress from beginner to advanced by completing a series of quests to level up. It will take time.
If you want maximum enjoyment and focus in your work, these guidelines will help you create a hierarchy of goals for your productivity system.
The longer you stick with it, the more potent it becomes.
Identity – Solving Productive Problems
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had the goal of working 4 hours a day.
A 9-5 job was the bane of my existence.
- I observed society and realized the life I didn’t want
- I observed the successful and realized the life I did want
Over time, this perspective shaped my identity.
I was attached to that desire.
Most people tell you desire is bad, but in my eyes, it’s only bad if the desire is bad.
Your goals are the axis of your suffering, and you get to choose what you suffer for.
Perspective is everything.
It allows you to identify problems and opportunities that (when solved) result in achieving the goal of that perspective.
It was an automatic decision to get to where I am today.
Anything that threatened my 4-hour workday was noted as a problem.
I was able to spot opportunities like social media, digital products, and audience building to solve those problems.
Most people have an identity and perspective shaped by society, with the goals of society, so they never identify and solve problems that lead to abnormal results.
Project – Building Out Your Potential
Your identity is shaped by your vision for the future.
Your vision is the all-encompassing goal you are pursuing in your life. It is at the top of your hierarchy. Everything falls under it.
Now, you need a project that will move the needle toward that future.
You need something to build that will expose you to problems you must solve.
You need clarity for your work so you have something to anchor your attention.
And if you read the last letter, you understand that building a project is the best way to learn new knowledge and skills.
- Create an outline – braindump everything you know that should be built in the project. You will add to this outline as you build.
- Create milestones – break the project down into manageable goals you can achieve in 1-4 hour work sessions depending on your current responsibilities.
What should your project be?
I can’t tell you that.
But it should probably be a business as that’s the vessel for your purpose. It is the catalyst for the good life that breaks you out of robotic living. Entrepreneurship is modern survival, and your psyche is wired to hunt. You aren’t meant to be a monkey in a cubicle.
Along with that, your health and relationships are important projects that enhance your business results.
Deadlines – The Procrastinators Edge
You aren’t productive because you aren’t public.
Another point for building an internet business on social media. The flow-state requirement of challenges and deadlines is baked in.
When I set a launch date for a product and accept pre-orders, once the first person pays, I have to build the product before the deadline.
It doesn’t matter how good or bad it is.
I can improve it after the fact that it’s actually out and I did something with my life.
Another thing:
Procrastination isn’t bad. It’s human nature.
Most successful entrepreneurs are lazy.
They wait until the last minute to get work done.
But during that last minute, they enter the most enjoyable season of their lives. Their mind becomes a magnet for ideas. Their best work happens in these periods of obsession and intensity.
They don’t have a choice, their survival is at stake.
Timeblocks & Breaks – Managing Your Focus
Focus is a muscle, and success is reserved for those who train it. – The Art Of Focus
Identity, projects, and deadlines narrow your attention.
Timeblocks take that one step further, making it easy to get into flow.
Set a timer for 45-90 minutes.
Focus with intensity.
Then, take a break.
Go on a walk. Eat. Watch some YouTube. Play a video game. I don’t care what you do.
Your focus is finite. You need to take rest between your sets.
Personally, I write for two 60 minute time blocks. That is what builds my entire business.
Leverage – Doing The Right Things
I’m going to save you a lot of pain:
Choose a career that allows for a 4-hour workday.
Start a one-person business. Become a value creator. Use the internet to do what you love.
Learn the skills that allow for this.
Evolution is the process of solving problems that reverse entropy.
Labor work and long work days are a massive problem. People hate it. So, social media, the internet, and artificial intelligence were born.
AI will solve the problem of overwork. Potentially in this lifetime (especially if we solve the problem of aging).
Now, your work sessions for the day should consist of 3-9 lever-moving tasks that build out your project.
Some people can handle more, some less. I help you structure this in the FOCI planner.
Routine – Becoming Efficient
You have a routine.
Even if your routine is “no routine.”
We discuss this in The Daily Routine That Changed My Life.
Routines are how you condition your mind to run on new systems.
If you want to solidify a new identity, you must start, refine, and stick to a routine.
For the first month, building your project will feel uncomfortable.
You’re supposed to feel overwhelmed. It means your mind is expanding into a new identity.
Slowly, then all at once, everything flows with ease.
You begin making exponential progress.
You move from intensity to consistency and let the results compound.
Rest – The Secret Of The Greats
“The clever man may work smarter, not harder, they say, but the creative man doesn’t work at all.” — Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
I’ve always had some form of aversion toward Western work culture.
- 80-hour work weeks.
- High-pressure environments.
- Little time for rest and recovery.
It never seemed “right” to me.
Why would I want to waste my entire day, knowing that 2-3 hours in my work quality would suffer?
This has been a talking point for a long time now. I believe it has started to shape the creator economy and remote work.
Ancient Romans, Ancient Greeks, Steve Jobs, Charles Darwin, and an infinite list of visionaries, strategists, and innovators attributed their success to surprisingly low “work” times.
Writers from multiple domains, like Hemingway and Tarantino, would spend the majority of their days lounging by the pool, spitting game with girls, and doing everything aside from what they deemed “work.”
Work for 1-4 hours.
Then, stop.
This is arguably the most difficult part of your day.
At the end of my work sessions I go to the gym as a “transition” into rest.
This allows the Default Mode Network to kick in. My subconscious begins to munch on problems related to the work.
When I get back to my morning focused work, I have the rest and creative resources needed to make those 4 hours more potent than those fatiguing their mental muscle beyond belief.
I hope you enjoyed this letter my friends.
Dan
