Process

The Process refers to the set of daily activities that keeps me moving towards The Direction. They were designed to match my needs and remain a subject of continuous questioning, based on which they’re modified and improved to serve me best at any given moment. Likely, they won’t work for you, but you may find plenty of inspiration and resources to shape your own system.

Everyone is constantly telling you what is good for you. They don’t want you to look for your own answers. They want you to believe in theirs. ~ Dan Millman

Some Context

Setting and writing down goals is considered to be essential to achieve results, but doing so has many hidden flaws, such as a need to specify upfront what we want and where we’re going, which itself may become our limitation. On the opposite, we may specify a Process that consists of certain activities focusing on covering various areas of our life, so we follow our Direction and possibly get to a place we were unable to specify at a starting point.

Because of this, it is a good idea to use both Goals AND Process to take what’s best from each, as described in the concept of Genius of the AND by Jim Collins.

In practice, I find it quite difficult to predict the future for more than a week ahead, and often even this is tricky, as we struggle to predict what will come the next day. At the same time, we can outline roughly where we’re heading quite easily.

My Perspective on Goals

A goal determines the end result and a deadline. Together with visualizing a reality in which it was achieved, we shape the right attitudes, such as enthusiasm (which is one of my Values).

More complex and demanding goals can be split into smaller chunks, as it reduces the Resistance, about which you can read in Steven Pressfield’s books, The War of Art for example. Moreover, smaller goals give us momentum, useful for moving from one target to another more smoothly.

In practice, though, goals have a few important flaws:

They naturally build a certain kind of expectations, which may or may not match the reality or even the actual result.
We never truly know if we want what we defined; at the moment of setting a goal, we rely mostly on expectations and imagination.
We never know what we’ll actually get in the end, nor what price we’ll need to pay for it.
After achieving a goal, especially a big one, we often face the effect of “okay, but now what?”, which in some cases may even lead to a kind of depression.
Goals reduce our ability to change direction, adjust to a shifting environment, or simply drop anything that no longer serves us. Biases such as Commitment Bias and Status Quo Bias kick in, making these things much harder.

Among other reasons, I use goals on a case-by-case basis. Previously I worked with OKRs, but I found it quite off, as that system was developed for organizations like Google or Intel, not necessarily for individuals. Instead, I rely on The Process and The Direction.

Direction vs Goal

A goal has a deadline and requirements. A direction does not.
By definition, the Direction can be followed but never reached.
The difference between the two plays a significant role in self-narrative. As David Goggins says, the dialogue we have with ourselves is the most important of all.

Process

Almost everything I do comes directly from a continuously optimized Process, which is about:

Foundations such as good sleep, diet, training, and proper rest.
Getting to Knowing Thyself by writing and reading my journal.
Environment, especially the people around me, my newsfeed, and the closest surroundings, including things in my physical space.
Continuously shaping My Learning System and increasing cognitive abilities.
Understanding mental models and how they affect my own thinking and the behavior of others.
Reading books and giving myself the mental space to “connect the dots”, especially between things that are not obviously related.
Using leverage, so that whatever I do, a single hour generates a multiplied effect across various areas of my life.
Freedom: I don’t sell my time and avoid rigid planning, so I can adjust to whatever happens at any given moment.

When shaping my Process, I highly rely on things such as:

Curiosity, as it leads us to unimaginable places and allows us to shift reality in our minds.
Open-mindedness, the honest acknowledgment that I may be wrong, and that what is widely accepted as truth may have very little to do with it.
The Process isn’t just about shaping; it requires acting, and that demands tremendous discipline, which I learn from people like Jocko Willink and David Goggins through their books.
When working with processes, concepts such as Ergodicity and the compound effect are worth considering, as they provide a valuable perspective on long-horizon outcomes and side effects.
Philosophy and insights from various cultures are also valuable, as most of the problems we face today aren’t entirely new.
Books such as Way of the Peaceful Warrior, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, or Pound the Stone are especially useful, as they describe the processes of their authors.
Taking full responsibility for what we do, as Extreme Ownership describes, and committing fully, as Skin in the Game argues, are further examples of how books shape the Process.
Continuous improvement and reflection can quickly become counterproductive and turn into a form of the Resistance described in The War of Art.
Sometimes things don’t go as planned, or the environment shifts in ways that call for adjusting our actions. In such cases, the attitude described in Letting Go by David R. Hawkins becomes crucial.
Questioning things and re-thinking them to find new paths, simplify, bend some rules, or shape new ones, as described in books such as Think Again, Insanely Simple, and Think Like a Rocket Scientist.
Always moving at the edge of my current competence to expand my knowledge, develop skills, and discover new things.
Relying on habits while keeping in mind that “the chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Staying in the present moment, here and now.
Playing long-term games with long-term people, as described in The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.
Working closely with intuition, seeking signals, deeper connection with the world, and deeper connection with others.
Doing things that make me stronger, even when they are hard, as described in Antifragile and Fooled by Randomness.
Not giving up unless common sense says otherwise, as described in That Will Never Work and Grit.
Learning about a wide range of things, as described in Range and Rebel Ideas.
Making smart decisions, as described in All I Want to Know Is Where I’m Going to Die So I’ll Never Go There, The Great Mental Models, Seeking Wisdom, and Gladiators, Pirates and Games of Trust.
Shaping and updating my so-called “models of reality”, as described in The Code of the Extraordinary Mind.

In practice, my Process is based on a foundation: my mental and physical health. I maintain good condition through activities such as:

Regular Sleep: at least 7 hours, without screens directly before bedtime. All my devices stay out of the bedroom.
Vitamins: D, K, Omega-3, and magnesium, reviewed every quarter. I also eat bee pollen diluted overnight in boiled but cooled water. Note: bee pollen is a strong allergen.
Sport: 5 times a week with the Recommended Routine.
Breathing: with Oak and Headspace.
Doing Nothing: a form of meditation without rules. It is simply about doing nothing.
Staying Present: actively focusing on what is here and now.
Self-love: building a relationship with myself as the foundation of my self-care. It is about treating ourselves as if we were our own best friend.

In general, shaping the Process isn’t easy, but actually living by these rules is much harder. The trick is to shape my surroundings in a way that makes it almost not an option to ignore the rules, while also building proper beliefs and habits. This is why I pay a lot of attention to things such as:

Surrounding: consciously deciding with whom I spend the most time.
Proactivity: actively taking care of things, especially relationships and people who are important to me.
Discovery: intentionally reaching out to people I feel I want to have contact with. The same goes for activities and places that feel right for some reason.
Limitation: avoiding things and people who only take my energy, or situations where I take theirs without giving anything in return.

Together with the Process, I develop my personal style of work, which involves balancing my personality traits, current skills, and the available tools or workflows created just for myself.

Actual Work: working between 8 and 10 hours, 6 or 7 days a week.
Focus & Relax: maintaining as much focus and as much high-quality rest as possible.
Leverage: building tools, automations, and even apps that save energy and time, giving me more space for things I love.

In other words, I do everything I can to use available time and energy in the best way, but not in an extremely optimized way. Some things happen when we don’t expect them to happen, and they require enough space to come to us.

Up until now, I’ve mentioned leverage a couple of times. It’s one of the most powerful concepts I know. Using it properly gets me to a place where I can do something now and get results for the next couple of years, or even for the rest of my life. I have a few rules for using this concept:

My time is not for sale. Since Q2 2020, I’ve made the decision not to sell my time. I’ve almost completely reduced consulting and client work in favor of developing my own products. I only do this when it either makes me happy or gives me benefits far beyond money.
I take actions that use scale and help others for a long time, such as creating online content.
When I take action, I ask myself: “How can I make 100 hours out of a single hour?”
I pay attention to small details. I eliminate them with automation or optimize them, for example by simplifying, within reasonable limits.
I automate many areas of my daily work. I have an army of robots that work for me day and night.

The most interesting and important form of leverage is the idea of a product with minimal replication cost. ~ Naval Ravikant