DataDrivenInvestor
May 27
Member-only
Save
In this article, I will share 10 powerful exercises that will enable you to accelerate your progress in your career and in your life. If you want to achieve 10x in your work, do these 10 exercises immediately. They will change your perspective and supercharge you for fascinating achievements.
In this thought experiment, you will imagine that your workday is just two hours instead of the usual hours (9 till 5). Please respond to the following questions:
2. Using this philosophy, create your weekly schedule and strategy. What will you be working on throughout next week?
3. Research suggests that in a seven or eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for three hours. So, you now have an added hour to work with (i.e. three hours every day). How would you work? How would you prioritize? What are your top 2 priorities every day? What would be the projects you truly want to implement? Create a weekly strategy that you can use.
4. Research has been conducted on the most frequent unproductive activities employees do on a given day, and the duration of each activity (see below). Track your day to see if you are also guilty of these activities throughout your workday:
5. If your workday were just 3 hours long, how would you spend the rest of your day? Create an itinerary that includes refreshing activities (such as hobbies, art, walking, exercising, taking a bath, reading, writing, Netflix, etc.)
6. Think about all your workdays and ask yourself: Which day was the best one you have ever had? Why? Write a story that recounts and describes your emotions and experiences during this best workday.
7. Think about all your workdays and ask yourself: Which day was the most creative workday? Why? Did you have a breakthrough or Eureka moment? Write a story that recounts and describes your emotions and experiences during this workday.
8. Think about all your workdays and ask yourself: Which day was the worst workday? Why? Perhaps you were stuck and there was no progress whatsoever, so you lost your hope. Or, you have lost all your data. Write a story that recounts and describes your emotions and experiences during this worst day. How did you handle it?
If you want to increase your wealth, you should challenge your assumptions, habits, and mindset. You need to increase your self-confidence and self-worth by treating yourself seriously. You need to convince yourself that you are a top professional, and continuously upgrade your knowledge, skills, and habits to achieve the highest level of performance.
In this exercise, you will imagine that your one hour is worth £500. How would this assumption change your life? Please respond to the following prompts:
Let’s say you need some motivation to move forward. One of the best strategies is to write an inspirational letter to yourself. In your letter, you can focus on what you want for your life, what your goals and dreams are, which principles and values guide you, where you want to see yourself in the future, and what your desires and aspirations are.
Please write a letter to yourself that inspires you. You have 10 minutes to do this. It is a simple exercise, and there is no wrong way of doing this. Below you will see two examples of short inspirational letters I have written to myself. I am sharing them with you, hoping to help you get started.
Now, it is your turn to write your inspirational letter. When you are done, please feel free to put this letter on your wall (or somewhere you can see it easily, so that you will get inspired each time you see it).
In this exercise, I build on the 10X mindset of Grant Cardone (Check out his book titled “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure”). In his book, Cardone suggests you take massive action and focus exclusively on actions that could propel yourself by a factor of 10.
To do this, you need to free up 20% of your workday to focus on the responsibilities that matter to you. Which 20% of your actions are the most strategic ones that are transformative and valuable? You need to eliminate or delegate unimportant tasks and replace them with these strategic actions.
Once you find your strategic actions, you need to prioritize them, put them on your calendar, double down on these actions, and take massive action to amplify your impact. This requires your 100% time, energy, and focus. You need to find your priorities that will generate the best impact. Ask yourself: What are the top strategic priorities I need to focus on to solve pressing problems and improve people’s lives? How can I create highly influential and creative work that is so good that it cannot be ignored? Create at least 10 ideas to respond to these two questions.
Please look at the poster below.
Go over the poster and create at least 20 ideas that will inspire you. Open your notebook and spend 20 minutes creating as many ideas as you can. Try to respond to the following questions:
Now, please create the top 3 actions that you can implement in your life instantly. Write down concrete and small action points you can carry out starting today. Which ones will you try out today? Which ones will you try out tomorrow?
In this exercise, you will go over the poster and then create 20 ideas that will inspire you. Open your notebook and spend 15 minutes creating as many ideas as you can. Try to respond to the following questions:
To perform at the 10X level, you need to make radical choices, get serious, avoid distractions, eliminate barriers, be passionate, achieve momentum, and perform at your best.
Now, please create the top 3 actions that you can implement in your life instantly. Write down concrete and small action points you can carry out starting today. Which ones will you try out today? Which ones will you try out tomorrow?
Plan your next 7 days based on your fresh vision. How will you make your next week outstanding by elevating your productivity and creativity 10X?
What is the one thing that only you can create and bring to the world? What is most important to you? In which areas do you wish to achieve the most success?
After you make a long list of all the things that come to your mind, please write a letter to yourself and describe where your big contribution will be. Where do you want to go in the long term (let’s say 10+ years)? What is the one field you will make your contribution to? How will you go there?
Please brainstorm possibilities, make your list, and write your letter now.
You will need to prioritize your one thing (the area you are obsessed with) rather than doing hundreds of other things. You need to have a firm and unwavering commitment to your big vision. You should say no to all the things that do not support your big vision. You need to put aside all your excuses and do your work consistently every day. You need deep work and immersion, as well as a commitment to your long-term game.
Please think about this question and this exercise in detail. Make a committed decision about who you want to become and where you want to be after 10+ years. You then need to align your everyday actions with your long-term vision and contribution. You should never underestimate the value of your obsession or passion. Passion is the most sustainable fuel you can use during this long-term journey. It gives you momentum and it helps you to remove obstacles.
Where will your best contribution be? What will you be obsessed with? What is your one thing? You need to always keep this as your number 1 priority.
In most cases, the world will try to stop you from being engaged with your priority. There will be obstacles, meetings, excuses, busyness, fear, and anxiety. All will try to prevent you from reaching your best potential. That is why you should remind yourself of your priorities every day.
For your priority projects (i.e. your obsessions), you should allocate time every day in your calendar. These will be your Pomodoro sessions for your one thing. At the start of each session, you should clearly define what you will accomplish in that session and write down small tasks you can easily finish. Make sure they are easy things to accomplish. These tasks will give you incremental success and momentum. Remember: You should have a relentless focus on your passion project and not get distracted.
The most ambitious entrepreneurs constantly plant seeds for the future. You should be also planting your seeds for your future. You should always aspire to be helpful, generous, courageous, resilient, and creative. You were born creative. You were very creative as a child. You need to reclaim your creativity.
You should ask yourself: How can I contribute? How can I be of service? How can I help other people? How can I solve problems and meet the needs of others? You need to be the best version of yourself and keep creating new and fresh things that will excite you and help others.
Imagine you are a one-person company and you are the CEO of your own life. Ask yourself these 3 questions: What exactly do you want from your life? Where do you want to be in 10 years? What is the one thing that you can do today to make this day a success?
You need to think and act very strategically to maximize your impact. Imagine that your one hour is worth $1000. How can you create this much value in every hour? How can you maximize value creation and innovation to help solve problems for a large number of people (your fans or target segment)?
Try to be the only one who does what you do. This requires you to navigate uncharted territories and find your blue oceans. Do not compete with the crowds. Avoid the crowds altogether. Listen to your heart and find your voice. How can you create your signature work? Establish your own game where you can excel.
Focus on your long-term contribution. Imagine that you have the vision, talents, knowledge, skills, and tenacity to change the world and make it a better place. Choose the one field you will focus on and make an impact in the long term. What is the one thing that only you can create and bring to the world? How can you play your own game and create your creative assets in this field?
You are a marathon runner, and you will exercise and run every day to sharpen your saw. In the words of Marc Andreessen:
“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
Write an inspirational letter to yourself describing your dreams (where you wish to see yourself in 10 years) and your system to get there (how you will establish a system of creativity and productivity for yourself).
A bucket list is a list of all the things that you would love to do before you die. When we start thinking about our mortality, we become more alive. We want to live more fully and more adventurously. We want to go after our dreams — even if they are crazy.
In the movie titled “The Bucket List”, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson who are both ill, pursue adventures together. They take a road trip to realize the list of things they wish to do before they die.
Creating a bucket list is a strong exercise that will help you explore your dreams, wishes, and priorities. Sharing your bucket list with the world aims to make you more accountable to realize your dreams.
In this exercise, I invite you to create your bucket list. What do you enjoy doing? Which activities would energize you? What would make you excited and happy? How can you incorporate more hobbies and fun activities into your life? What are the life experiences you wish to experience before you die? Please make your list.
You can include places you wish to travel, skills you want to learn, adventures you want to take up, creative projects you wish to realize, and people you would love to meet. It is up to you. Try to dream and visualize what you want. Put them on paper.
How will you make them happen? Create an action plan. Do you need some ideas? Check out this list of bucket list ideas to get inspired.
Create a concept map or a poster of your bucket list ideas. Take an A3 paper and a pencil in front of you. Write down or doodle everything that comes to your mind. Try to organize these thoughts into a concept map. See my bucket list below, as an example.
Some principles:
Only you can change your life and no one else can do it for you. However, changing yourself is extremely hard. If you tried to lose weight through regular exercise, or make a major break from the past in your career, you know how difficult it is to achieve change. In this challenge, you will imagine that you can achieve incredible changes in your life.
Imagine that you can change radically. Respond to the following prompts:
In this exercise, I will introduce you to a powerful way of thinking about your work and progress. I have applied this mindset to achieve multiple streams of income and follow my passions. Since the pandemic, I have created much more than I have ever dreamed of — all thanks to this mindset. Apply this mindset to create your mindmap and to create your renaissance. As you read on, create your notes and reflections. Make sure you write your ideas down in your journal to make these ideas concrete and useful for yourself. If you apply these ideas rigorously, you will be wildly successful in bringing your vision to life.
Think of yourself after 10 years. What would your future self tell you? What advice and suggestions would your future self provide you? You need to create a list of strategic actions that you can do now. Which actions would be endorsed by your future self? What are the things that you truly care about? What will make you truly happy and productive? What will the world look like when your vision has fully manifested? What are the things that you want to accomplish before you die? What are the things that you can do now so that your future self in 10 years will be proud of you? You can create your renaissance in ten years. Write down your list of ideas now.
After you make your list, you are now closer to your big vision. The steps to get there will become more obvious when you start vividly imagining your desired outcomes. What do you need to do now so that you are progressing towards this vision? What is the highest impact activity you can do right away? Write it down and do it now. You have 10 seconds to do it. If you do not act in 10 seconds, your brain will stop you. You will create excuses. That is why acting now is paramount. Remember that you only have the present (not tomorrow) and the present is a gift to you. You can make the most of it only if you take an action.
What is your top priority now? You can not have more than three priorities on any given day. It is better if you focus on your number one priority now and forget about the rest. Keep it simple. Have a bias towards action. This will give you a laser focus.
If you are overwhelmed with a project, ask yourself a simple question:
“What is the simplest way to do this right now?” If you had only one shot, what would you try? Do it now and see what happens. Even if you fail, you will turn it into a learning opportunity to get better and try it again.
This is how you make progress on your life goals and vision: Act now, start small, conduct an experiment, try it out, see what happens, learn fast, iterate, and improve your action each time.
Do not give up on your big dreams. Dare to dream big, but be ready to act small and make a very small dent in your big goals.
For example, I want to write several books, but writing a book in English is too overwhelming, too scary, and too complicated for me. That is why I decided to write consistently on Medium every day or every few days. This method allowed me to make rapid progress toward my big vision. Having published 475 articles on Medium, I have now achieved momentum in my writing goals. I can easily see multiple ebooks or digital products being created out of my Medium library. It is just a matter of revising, remixing, improvising and mashing up what I have already created. I feel I am progressing well and I am now much closer to my bigger vision: Creating and publishing multiple digital books on topics that I am passionate about.
To be successful, you need to dream big, start small, and act now. Break your vision into small manageable chunks, and complete these small chunks one by one. You will be testing your ideas and improving your skills along the way. That is how progress happens. You need to give yourself a lot of opportunities for experimentation and failure.
If you want to fail, you need to think small. You need to be anxious all the time and not let yourself take any risks. You will create countless plans, but you will never act on them. You will wait for the perfect time to act, and that perfect time rarely comes. That is how you fail: You just stop yourself because of anxiety, complacency, or fear. You are easily overwhelmed and annoyed, so you give up on your big vision. You become reactive, passive, and jealous over time because you have never tried to go full-on with your vision, nor have you actualized your true potential.
Ask yourself this question every morning: What can you do right now, that requires the smallest amount of effort, and will have the largest amount of impact? If you figure it out and act on it every day, you will be in a much better position in just a couple of years.
Using this mindset since the pandemic, I created 780 YouTube videos, 475 Medium articles, and 800 pages of doodle artwork. I have transformed my life in just two years, and I feel I am still in the earliest stages of my journey of asset creation:
When it gets hard, ask yourself the question Tim Ferriss always asks: “What would this look like if it were easy?” Do not overcomplicate your work. If looking at a task brings up feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, or fear, consider it a clue that you are making it harder than it needs to be. How can you make things easier? What is the simplest thing that you can do now to accelerate the process? Can you find new ways to unstick yourself? How can you reframe setbacks as opportunities for learning and improvement? How can you flow with your business? How can you simplify your way of doing things? How can you achieve focus and momentum? How can you make things more enjoyable by inducing a sense of play? What would things look like if they were easy?
What can you do now, that requires the smallest amount of effort, and that will generate the largest amount of impact? Do not overwork or keep yourself busy. When you are busy, you are engaging in meaningless activities. Keep it simple and act now. Follow your heart and focus on the single thing that matters now. Doing only one thing consistently over time is so much more powerful than trying to do a thousand pointless things. Eliminate the unessential things from your life, so that you can focus your attention on the one thing that matters.
What is the one thing that matters today? Why? You need to always figure out your why. Your ‘why’ will get you fired up and give you a reason to persist even when you run out of inspiration. No one feels like doing the work 100% of the time. That is why you need to ask yourself why you truly care about this goal.
Allocate time in your calendar for thinking and dreaming about your vision. This will be your big-picture thinking time — keep it sacred and cherish it. Ask yourself big questions that matter to you. Write down your reflections and your answers to these questions in a journal. What are the big opportunities that you can tackle? Divide your big vision into specific smaller goals that are manageable. Give yourself deadlines to achieve these smaller goals. Start small and act now in the pursuit of these goals.
Remember: You want to take control of your future. You want to follow your passions and curiosities. You want to make the most use of your skills and creativity. Then, the best way forward for you is to create your creative assets. The only time you have is right now. You need to create like there is no tomorrow. Creating your creative assets is the best way forward to be happy, productive, and rich in your life. What do you care about? What do you wish to create? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to establish your own online business? Do you want to create your YouTube channel? Do you want to create your Instagram brand? Do you want to create your music? Start acting on it today. Start it right now — like in 10 seconds. The only time you have it is right now. Your life is short and you might not have another chance tomorrow. The only day you have it is today.
fahrikarakas.medium.com
Subscribe to DDIntel Here.
Join our network here: https://datadriveninvestor.com/collaborate
—
—
4
empowerment through data, knowledge, and expertise. subscribe to DDIntel at https://ddintel.datadriveninvestor.com
Jake Kahana
in
Caveday
Team: Solo Admin
Kristina H
in
Publishous
Huh!
Marvin Marcano
Eli Straw
in
Better Humans
Sanya Gurnani
Sahil Khosla
AboutHelpTermsPrivacy
Associate Professor in Business & Leadership at University of East Anglia. Passionate about doodling, imagination, and creativity. Author of Self-Making Studio.
Cait Mack
Fahri Karakas
in
DataDrivenInvestor
Jose Luis Ontanon Nunez
in
New Writers Welcome
Lukas Schwekendiek
Help
Status
Writers
Blog
Careers
Privacy
Terms
About
Knowable
About Author
