Cal Newport

It's a great foundation for all of this.

You know, that really is going well.

I have some time to reflect away from the busyness, and I can just sit with a little bit of gratitude about parts of my life that I actually like.

Once you've laid that foundation, the second thing you're going to address in your journal, what parts of my life are not going well?

Where do I feel stuck?

Like professionally, do I feel trapped?

Do I have these certain ambitions that I had as a young person that aren't coming true?

Like wherever it is, this is where some of the more serious work happens.

Now, here's what I want you to do.

Take each of these items where you feel stuck.

And maybe you're just going to look at one in your pause.

That's fine.

Take one of these items.

You're going to start with the most radical blue sky solutions to this possible, the real drastic, like, you know, going to quit and join the circus type of solutions, right?

And then start systematically as you brainstorm solutions.

reducing the level of radicalness or disruption of your ideas.

And you're going to start kind of like marching from like very blue sky radical ideas to increasingly simple and practical ideas.

Okay?

Now what you're looking for is where is it on this march, on this march from like the radical ideas down to the very simple and pragmatic, where along the way did I feel like my suggestions are no longer working?

Like, ah, that's not really going to fix it.