Your Mind Wants Chaos - Be Focus

I spent 3 hours yesterday doing fuck all.

• I didn’t read

• I didn’t go for a walk

• I didn’t continue building my giveaway for you

Fair enough - I already spent 6 hours that day priming up the best-ever guide on peak performance that the world has ever seen (genuinely, I’ve poured more than 50+ hours into that fucker already and it’s not even 70% done).

I could have done more.

I should have done more.

But in the end, doing “fuck all” led me to come up with an email idea after all.

“Fuck all” meant doing 2 things:

• rebuilding gym and weight tracking systems

• putting together an “idea lab” for content creation of all kinds

Both funnily enough sound productive.

I mean, who doesn’t need more efficient, cooler-looking gym systems?

And I bet none of you’d complain about an idea lab that genuinely spawns ideas, links, creations, and originality out of thin air (I’m not either, just to make that clear)

Yet both tasks are simply not “my thing” right now.

Not the “highest-ROI-lever-needle-movers”

Not the most important tasks.

And to top it all off, my ass even skipped reading, walks - aka learning and recovery for that day.

I built both these things purely because I wanted to, because I felt like it, because in the end - it was just

Busy Work

Don’t get me wrong.

It’s not a doomsday tragedy that I spent 3 hours doing something slightly suboptimal instead of forcing myself to adhere to my calendar.

And as long as you don’t fuck over your entire day with doing useless tasks, building something you enjoy is a great way to spend your time - and in the end, both the gym systems and the idea lab will be the complete opposite of useless.

But one question I had was still burning in my mind.

Something that wouldn’t let me go.

What’s happening here?

Why do we do unimportant things?

Why is it, that our minds try to open more loops, more tasks, more stuff?

Usually most people have too much to do and deal with stress, overwhelm, doubt, uncertainty and have no idea what the fuck to do in the first place - leading to procrastination down the line.

But if you’ve ever felt in control of your situation, as if you've reached the top of the hill, when you calmly manage all your workload, you take on new challenges.

Why?

Your mind defaults to chaos, always.

Think of your mind as a See-Saw, either having too many tasks that you have to complete VS. not having enough work to excite you, leading you to search for new tasks, projects, and challenges.

As soon as the first sign of boredom appears, you overload yourself with new tasks and chase new opportunities, so that soon enough you’re stressing out again.

You’re constantly balancing this see-saw.

Even though some people might find themselves spending way too much time on the “too many tasks” side of this balance.

But by default, this mechanism is quite cool.

If we have too much to do, we try to solve all our problems.

If we have too little to do, we search for new problems to solve.

In other words:

You’re never stagnating (if you play the see-saw game right)

IF.

The issue?

Your mind is susceptible to deception - deception from itself.

These last few days, I’ve definitely been more on the “my mind is getting a bit bored” side of the see-saw - having one big project only to work on is the best thing ever, but can sometimes lead to boredom.

The truth is - I have enough work to complete.

Technically, the best option I have is to just plow through the boring task, day after day, putting in more and more hours, putting in more and more effort, until it’s done.

What happened?

I got a touch too little stimulation and built some other stuff instead.

As mentioned, not tragic at all, and at least that led to this quite decent see-saw idea.

And to the following insight:

I enjoyed building the systems.

It’s not like I’m missing deadlines on the giveaway because of that.

But if you want to be the most efficient version of yourself - then you have to be very careful with what do on your see-saw.

Because sometimes controlling your own mind to a degree where the see-saw balance stays perfectly straight is the way to go - one task, one duty, one straight line to success.

Sometimes.

At other times, take it easier.

Occasionally, overload yourself with tasks to experience some massive growth.

But realize:

The one in control is always you.

You have the power to use focus. To make use of discipline. To control yourself, your actions, and the tasks you take on, work on, complete, or ignore completely because they’re simply not of importance right now.

YOU must focus if you want to control the chaos that is your mind.

Like I should right now, instead of writing this email.

I’ll get back to working on that present for you

See you soon,

Henri