Craft a masterplan and go all in

Depression, nihilism, addiction, anxiety, and fatigue. These physical and mental states are consequences of lacking a meaningful goal to pursue.

When you have a meaningful goal and make progress toward achieving it, you actively produce meaning, joy, safety, clarity, and energy. On the other hand, if you don't make progress toward a meaningful goal, you will be guaranteed to experience negativity.

I was depressed when my only action was watching Netflix. I was nihilistic when I didn't have the discipline to write extensively and ponder ideas. I was addicted when I didn't have a meaningful project that I was building. I had anxiety when I wasn't taking action but thinking about taking action. And I was fatigued when I didn't take my health seriously, and wasted my time on stupid activities.

I failed to form a life mission and forge a definite, finite, and specific goal to pursue. The only thing I know to exist with 100% certainty, is my life. Therefore it would be stupid to waste it on negative states of body, mind, and environment.

So if you want to go all in on life, and make the best out of the things you've got, this is how you craft a masterplan that you actually care about, and stick to:

Meaning

Meaning or purpose is attached to things that you consider important. The more important something is, the more meaningful it feels.

When we discuss the meaning of life or the purpose of the universe, we really ask: "Is there something truly important, and what would that be?" because stuff already happens, but we don't know if any of it is even important to our lives.

So if you want to find your purpose, or create meaning, you just have to ask yourself: "What is the most important thing?"

The answer to this question is literally the most important thing, and therefore extremely meaningful to you. Look, even if it was the case that life has no meaning (which I doubt), figuring out what is most important to you, or crafting something that is ultimately important to you will give meaningless existence meaning, even if it is artificial.

So if you are convinced that you can create your own meaning, I recommend that you literally just open a doc on your phone, or grab pen & paper, and write about what is most important to you. Make a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise. That means that you don't stop writing for a given amount of time (you might want to set a 10-minute timer), and you don't make any edits while writing. You just write non-stop. By doing that, your unconscious mind comes to the surface and you can see it in front of you.

Then once you have this text, you have your answer (if you wrote honestly). You can then synthesize it all down to one sentence, and boom: That is your life mission.

"The most important thing in life is (insert most important thing)."

Mission to goal conversion

If you did this you feel excited right now, am I right?

That is because your life now has a mission, and that mission is built on what you think is most important, not what society, your parents, your friends, or whoever else thinks is important. It’s your authentic mission in life. You crafted it yourself.

If you are serious about this life thing, however, the next logical step is to forge a finite goal. Missions almost always turn out to be infinite goals, and that is great. Infinite goals are the overarching compass for your life and make sure that you walk an authentic path and don't get caught up in limited milestones. Your mission should always be remembered and will be the source of lifelong meaning to you.

But if you want to make a difference, and actually get some progress, it makes a lot of sense to form a finite goal based on your mission now. That will ensure that you are grounded in reality, and take action.

Your finite goal should be hard to achieve, but achievable at least within a few months or years. But most importantly, it should be derived from your mission so that you stay aligned.

Form a goal right now, and decide that you will pursue it. It is literally the most important thing. Everything else comes after the pursuit of your goal from now on. It is by definition, your priority.

First-principles action taking

Let’s quickly recap what you did:

• you figured out what is most important to you

• you synthesized that down to a mission statement

• you derived a finite goal from your mission statement

• you made the decision to manifest the goal no matter what

Now, it makes sense to boil it down to the essence of things and figure out which actions will increase the likelihood of manifesting the goal.

I like to divide this into positive and negative action items. Positive action items are things that you have to do to make your goal become a reality. Negative actions are things that you have to stop doing to make your goal become a reality. Think of this as to-do's and not to-do's.

Literally just brainstorm, and write the action items down in a list.

(+)

• action item

• action item

• action item

(-)

• things to avoid

• things to avoid

• things to avoid

After you've done this, there's nothing else left but taking action.

Depression, nihilism, addiction, anxiety, and fatigue will happen in direct correlation to how little improvement you make in implementing this list.

Since your goal is derived from what you think is most important, you have a meaningful goal. And so if you make progress toward your goal (implement the list) you actively produce meaning, joy, energy, focus, health, clarity, and courage.

Given that you implemented the logical exercises of this letter you should now be very excited. Go all in. Stick to the list, and potentially edit it until your goal has become a reality.

Implementing your list is literally the most important thing you can possibly do with your time. I hope you can see that, and build yourself an amazing life.

Ömer, powered by Ozmania