Few years ago I was sitting with a group in a circle. Someone asked a question: What’s your biggest achievement in this life so far?
Most answers were nice things, like:
- “I finished my MSc”
- “I moved out of my parents’ place”
- “I bought my first car”
- “I started my own small business”
But one answer really stood out. He was a 27-year old, and when it was his turn to talk, he took a deep breath and said: “I now know what I want”.
At the time I was 22, I couldn’t help but think: That must suck! At 27! And it wasn’t until now that he knew what he wants out of life! – Few years forward and I’d find that that was probably the wisest answer said on that day.
Developing an anti-vision
I very recently learned about the concept of the “anti-vision”, where you learn what you want by eliminating everything that you don’t want. It’s much more of an effective practice than it sounds. I now believe that very few people I meet probably know what they want. The rest are just going with the flow.
To create your anti-vision you have to be alone with your thoughts for a significant amount of time. You have to write them down, visualize as much of them as you can. You have to write down everything you despise and everything you want.
Much of the notion behind the “Disappear for a few months” idea in self-help context is just for you to be alone with your thoughts for as long as possible. That’s not to physically disappear but just prime your environment for focus. This is what makes a vision materializes, because you can’t have what you can’t express, and you can’t express your vision without iterating over it for tens and possibly hundreds of times. This level of iteration & depth can’t just come easy.
The anti-vision is so effective because negative emotions aren’t necessarily a bad thing. A negative emotion is probably as potent as a positive one if you’re in the right state of mind. If you feel uncomfortable every time you imagine what would happen if you didn’t take control of your life, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Working as a life game designer
When you obsess over the details of a specific vision, how you’d like your days to look like, what you want out of life & work, and how you’d like to go from point A to point B to point C, that’s just the first step to make any of it happen. Think of it like a prerequisite.
What I found is that this obsession is really just Step 0.
And it magically sorts big parts of the steps head; you now have a map, but you have to move & do the work to claim rewards. And then along this way you’d naturally come up with Strategy & Systems. Now you know what the next few steps will probably look like but you have to maintain some order to make things happen. Systems help maintain that order.
But now this time is different because you’re exploring systems out of need rather than force. Self-help cults are always talking about systems, but without discussing step 0, which doesn’t make sense. If I don’t have something to obsess about, it doesn’t matter if I have the best systems. So systems should naturally happen along the way, not forced into your day because the world’s top 10 billionaires do it.
Every yes is a no, no is a yes
More we grow, the more we feel 24h/day is no longer enough. Especially during early years of adulthood when you just want to get lots of things done at once! If only we can do things in parallel!
I used to think I have all the time in the world. I used to be gracious with my time, and I always said yes because I always feared FOMO. Few years doing this, and exactly on my 27th birthday, I felt something weird. I felt like the whole world has been moving and I’m the only one who’s still. All of a sudden I felt I’m growing up so fast but still the exterior made little to no sense.
I felt like it is still wasn’t enough, although don’t get me wrong, I love my life when I’m not working. But this year I felt something for the first time, like everything I’ve done is really -really- not enough. And then I found I might be suffering from lack of execution rather than lack of direction.
It just hit me this summer that I ought to be extremely protective with my time & money because they represent the only safety in the face of adversity. Every vision is made possible by two concepts: Momentum & Compounding. Now unplanned use of resources messes up with both. I can’t state this enough but I was more reckless than I should, and I can say I regret 0% of it. I now know every phase shaped me for who I am, and if it weren’t for the short-term mistakes, I would’ve been prone for longer-term loss.
But here we are, and it’s about time I learned that every no is a yes to something else, and vice-versa. This only makes perfect sense because our resources are quite limited, so while you’re allocating your time & headspace, you’re also actively filtering things in or out, whether you know it or not. Every time you spend doing one thing you’re also spending it NOT doing something.
There was this podcast I loved about how we couldn’t have many concurrent desires. We can’t keep on wanting, at one point we’d have to choose, it’s how life works. And as much as I wanted life to accommodate my concurrent desires, time had its ways of proving me wrong. I just couldn’t do it, and I believe no one can. Life only makes it permissible to obsess over a handful desires at once.
You can always go to the next after you’re done with one, but you can’t just want everything. In fact I’ve learned that wanting everything is just a signal that you’re not serious about your most important desires. If they’re that serious, you wouldn’t ignore them for that long.
And then all of a sudden it occurred to me, that after ruling out my least important desires, and developing my anti-vision towards everything that I don’t want in my life, the fog seems to be clearing, which made my actual vision towards life & work clearer than ever.
My biggest achievement to date, at age of 27¼
I now know what I want.
🎧 enjoy this short snippet