Think, Plan, Act. How I optimize my life with a simple 3-step framework.
By: Rafa Hansen
Tags: Perspective, Personal Development, Productivity, Habits, Framework

So if you noticed we’re almost having an Inception moment here; I was just explaining that thinking about a subject in foreign language makes you analyze things differently without the “emotional weight” that each word carries in your natural language — while at the same time as I was doing that, I was also entering the subject of the first word of the title; think.

Alright, no big deal.. continuing:

Perspective is certainly one of the best “tools” for thinking clearly.

Perspective

As in many other tools that can be used (drugs, microdosing, exercise, flow, movement..), writing and thinking in a different language has the capacity of making you see things slightly different, contributing directly to your personal development by improving your world view and decision making skills.

We live in a big routine bubble. We wake up early, rush to work, work, have problems at work, have fun at work, leave work, indulge in some entertainment, maybe get caught up in some late emails, try fitting in some exercise, try to think a little about ourselves & self-care, and so on.

We like predictability, and that's ok.

The problem is that while we are living in this bubble we tend to lose life's macro perspective; we get caught up in small problems that start to feel like they are a life or death situation. We over-react to small things. We start losing the sense of the real importance of each happening.

The curious thing is that while we get caught up over-reacting to the small stuff we also under-react to the important macro stuff.

Why?

Simply because we lose perspective, we are seeing every situation from a microscope, not from an airplane.

We start setting our priorities by the urgency of each task, but we slowly lose the ability to measure the importance, in a macro-standing, of each task. Let me put it in other words; at work it’s really easy to know what is urgent and what is not. In life it is impossible to know what is important and what is not when you are looking too closely at the microscope — therefore you lose the ability to prioritize accordingly.

Remember that some of your biggest life objectives and even your wellbeing are important but not “urgent” (it is urgent, but not a life or death situation like responding to the insignificant email you just received seems. That’s the whole point.). So if we lose perspective, we lose the ability to see things properly and we end up sucking at work-life balance and prioritizing the important stuff.

You can try using the Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle, but that’s not enough if you don’t have the ability to gain perspective from time to time. A map is useless if it’s too zoomed in or too zoomed out — so the Eisenhower Principle will only work if you first have the right perspective.

Look at the following picture. You’d never be able to see the airplane if you were below the clouds.

Getting out of your mind to seek perspective

This is not a huge breakthrough, many highly productive people have figured this out and are figuring out all sorts of tactics to gain this different perspective — to gain this slight edge over competitors. We can clearly see a rise in micro-dosing LSD and psilocybin at Silicon Valley offices, cannabis usage for work, extreme sports for entrepreneurs, expensive "flow" programs for beginners, wellness trips that seek to get away from everything, and so on.

Coffee to wake up. Psilocybin to think creatively. Alcohol to slow down. Traveling to get away from it all. Bubble.

The problem is that this is not accessible to all and they carry lots of obvious risks. An extreme sports junky might die trying to get more extreme to get the same adrenaline load as when he started — just as the psilocybin user might need to push it a little more to have his next insight breakthrough. Discipline is the essence here.

We are pushing these boundaries choosing for the "easy way out". And if you are new to my texts, I have tested with all these tactics, from psilocybin to wellness trips, and even had an extreme sports TV show, so I’ve been there. I also haven’t given up on many of these, but I did come to understand that these are not sustainable in a long-term life design and that we can figure out different ways of attaining 'em.

That's me.. Certainly a different perspective..

Attaining perspective as a habit

It might seem too small of a change to matter, until it sums up and gets huge and irreversible. That’s the power of habits.

Habit is the core principle here since the idea is to do these things daily so it builds up over time. It might seem too small of a change to matter until it sums up and gets huge and irreversible. That's the power of habits.

Getting more practical, there are some core concepts you can follow to gain perspective:

Biohacking and Self-Knowledge: Start learning more about yourself, start understanding your physical energy rhythm, notice the impact of certain activities and food on your general mood and energy levels. Try new activities and notice how it feels.

Then start to analyze your thoughts, with no judgment, at first just try to analyze what you're thinking. If you are too negative with yourself that will directly impact your energy and motivation. Slowly try being more positive and policing yourself against negativity. At first it might seem impossible or even pointless, but remember, let it sum up.

Tony Robbins does this practice called Incantation — which at first I thought it was.. stupid and not for me. After a couple of months when I noticed I was practicing it daily (in my more introverted version) and also policing my negative thought. Sometimes just giving me some rest when I'm getting too negative (spoiler; it works. You are just like that baby version of you that starts crying when you're tired).

Reflection: The great power of movement, drugs and extreme sports is that it has the ability to make you reflective because you are putting your entire life in perspective. Journaling, thinking on paper, practicing gratitude, scribbling, and just laying down random thoughts on your journal can have the same effect. Of course, writing a few lines doesn’t bring you the same energy as jumping out of an airplane, but after some time, it does. Habits.

Let me explain; while your adrenaline will slowly reduce with every jump you give (and you will need to increase the difficulty/risk to increase the adrenaline), your capacity to gain perspective will increase with every single day you journal. Therefore external factors slowly reduce your capacity to gain perspective while internal practices sum up over time.

This is beautiful.

Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

There are a couple of possibilities about what you are feeling now:

You have no idea about what I’m talking about and need to better comprehend this bubble thing. Or you think I’m crazy. Or both. You understand that sometimes you need to gain perspective to get out of the bubble and gain an edge (life-wise & work-wise). You have understood that this is crucial to your performance and life satisfaction, and you feel like it doesn't need to be a one-time magic-spell- that it would be great to intercalate risky external factors with internal, habitual, risk-free practices that build up over time.

Think -> Plan

I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my life with simple and accessible tools and mindsets. Throughout this life search of personal growth and habit formation, I've come to conclude that sometimes it's better to implement stupidly simple frameworks that work instead of robust methodologies that are hard to follow through.

As the habit formation core-principle goes (according to my personal research called "my perspective from trial and error and talking to a small group of friends"), it will always be easier to implement a habit that is stupidly simple (and apparently ineffective) and slowly grow on that until it's effective instead of trying some super-useful-habit that is hard to follow through and you eventually give up. So go for the easy path at first and stay committed and disciplined even if you don't see clear benefits in the first few days. Then slowly grow on the habit to make it useful once it is not such a burden to simply do it.

I was just explaining that after seeking new tools to think differently and see the world with different lenses, we need to plan before acting. Sometimes we just feel extremely motivated with our ideas (when we gain a different perspective on a topic for example) and we just want to get started on the subject with all of our energy. Instead, one of the main strategies on this topic is simply to break it down into easy, small steps and follow through. The follow-through part that’s hard. So you need to plan considering it — don’t fool yourself into thinking that the motivation you have right now to do something will be a constant.

If you feel like you can't get through with your big insights always remember the following: Your idea is probably great. Your consistently doing that is bad.

To reach some big audacious goal you need to start today, with a small step. And then do it every day for a long time. There is no better plan than this one.

Breaking through the friction is hard. (I love saying this to entrepreneurs and my startup team )

Of course, if the idea you had is life-changing and you can easily get done with it, just get done with it asap. Forget the whole planning thing. But usually we aren't as lucky, smart or efficient; our big insights that come from a different world perspective aren't easy to follow through.

Therefore the secret is to make a foolproof plan (ourselves being the fool that is not able to forecast that our motivation won't be constant). The best way to do that is by having a simple plan that you will follow every single day. Then commit yourself to it. Don't skip a day. Yes, your motivation will almost be gone somedays, but you will recommit and have the discipline to get through with it. I can promise you that it gets easier by the day.

Moving on from the thinking and planning, the crucial part of the process is to do. Our ideas and plans don't mean anything if we can't make changes or execute.

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Doing

This is were consistency, commitment and discipline come into play. And long story short, you don't learn these three, you practice.

You will lose many times to procrastination and to the resistance, which will eventually lead you to rationalization; where you try to justify to yourself that the plan wasn't very good in the beginning after all, that "it's okay" to quit.. sorry, it's not.

You will lose. But you will also learn. Eventually you'll become disciplined, focused and consistent. And that's when sometimes you'll win. That's when you'll see a project from beginning to ending and gather the wins.

As Mark Manson wrote, "Personal Growth is merely the process of learning to lie to oneself less". So don't fool yourself into thinking your plan wasn't good, or that you don't identify yourself with the goal anymore. Just stick with the plan. It is hard. Recommit that it will work out eventually.

Trust your past self.

Make changes and adjust direction with what you learn if needed (following through with something you can really confirm is stupid, is.. stupid), but don't let yourself rationalize. If that's hard for you to do with yourself, commit and talk with people that have an outsider view.

Just to give an example, just this week I had an important decision to make regarding an idea I had a couple of year ago that required me to plan my way into this business and now led me to start doing. Thinking was fun. Planning was great. But when I started Doing I felt overwhelmed and started rationalizing that I should quit. I was like the guy that only had the hammer looking for the nails to confirm my rationalization. So I was about to give up when I decided to analyze the situation with less biases. So I listed all the benefits (trying to resonate with what I expected when I came up with the idea for the first time) and all the real problems. Since I was too emotionally involved with the situation and was seeking for confirmation to quit, I decided to call one of my mentors that would offer me an outsider view. Immediately after the conversation I was convinced it would have been stupid to quit.

You can think of the last time you tried to consistently meditate or eat healthily — I bet it wasn't easy and you can resonate with what I'm saying.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Part II

Going Practical

Going to the practical appliances, today I [try to] organize my life and day between this framework of Thinking, Planning and Doing. There is not a lot left to do, maybe I'd include resting and exploring, but that's a different discussion because it would need an entirely different approach.

Start by dividing your day between these topics; the bigger chunk of your working day doing and thinking, and a small time-block for planning. You'll probably spend way more time doing than thinking, but one of the big goals here is to try to balance these out. It is terribly hard. Especially in the "hustle-mindset" society.

By "thinking" I don’t mean just sitting down and thinking, though this certainly is an important part of it, "thinking" also might be done reading, learning and stopping to contemplate what is being said.

But don't take my word for it, take Munger's or Buffett's. Or all these guys.

Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash

The big secret here to increase your productivity is to try to never overlap the subjects. It might feel obvious, but it is not:

Thinking

When you are thinking, don't start planning or doing until you've really gone deep in and through the thought. Things usually aren't as simple or binary as they seem to be in the first few seconds or minutes of the thought. Give yourself time to think it through. Test different scenarios. Foolproof it by giving arguments against it and not trying to defend it, take different sides of the table.

Set up time to think about things that happened during the day, dive deeper into small ideas you had while you were "doing". Reflect on the last steps you took, think about different solutions and corrections you can make to straighten the line towards your objective.

Again, have the discipline not to start planning or doing until you are done with thinking. Really done. I won't dive deeper because this is way harder than it seems at first.

Planning

Daily plan. Plan for the big goals, plan for the small goals. Plan for every hour, plan before every day. Then let things flow naturally inside the confines of the plan.

Planning is crucial to the process. It will be the fastest of the three, but don't misinterpret it. If you skip or rush through it you'll certainly lose efficiency and productivity. A lot of people get this part wrong and think they are losing time by planning. If you identify yourself with this, remember: the Ferrari isn't the best option if you are just speeding several times around the same block — you'd be better of walking straight to the destination.

I love the physics concept of Speed vs Velocity applied to the planning and productivity mindset. You need velocity, not speed. For velocity, you need to plan. No matter how smart or fast you are. Think of it as a game; if you burnout you lose, if you take the least efficient way you lose, if you forget to stop for maintenance you lose..

Break down big goals into small steps. Break small steps into habits. Then time-block your agenda to follow through daily with your habits. Commit and never negotiate over your habits. This way you'll consistently reach your milestones and big goals.

Set your priorities for the day. Think about the urgency and importance of each goal, prioritize.

Photo by Phil Desforges on Unsplash

Know when you are at your best energy and tackle the important and hard things. Respect when you are at your lowest and do the easy and fun stuff, or simply relax for a couple of moments.

Be careful not to over-plan or over-complicate — the important thing is to organize things into goals you can really accomplish. Too big of a daily goal and you'll get burned out. Too small of a goal you'll lose the motivation (and lose productivity).

If you find this interesting you should dive into the concept of flow behind game design. You need to find your sweet spot to accomplish the most in a day while also feeling satisfied and successful.

The objective is not to get the most out of every single day, but to consistently be your best throughout a long horizon of time with a sustainable effort.

Planning is hard and far from obvious. It requires a lot of self-knowledge and experience (or trial and error) to find the sweet spot. Not to mention that life isn't linear, it is always evolving and changing — so you'll also constantly need to adapt to find the sweet spot again. But I'd bet you already figured this out the hard way.

Oh, Planning is also important since it connects Thinking with Doing.

Doing

It's pretty obvious what you need to do; do.

While planning is a little more counter-intuitive, Doing is more transparent. Not easier, but with a faster feedback loop. Well, that makes it easier to learn and adapt. Easier to understand, but way harder to stick to. So let's say it equally hard as planning.

You can have the best tools and productivity hacks, but if you don't have discipline and self-commitment it doesn't mean s***. No great change or accomplishment is made in one single motivation sprint. Our projects are more like marathons, and we can't run a marathon if we start running with a sprint.

Photo by Daniel Kuruvilla on Unsplash

Who am I to say anything over here, I’m a type-A, overachiever, with Atlas complex and impostor syndrome and can also proudly say I’m a burnout expert (at first an expert in the sense that I’d constantly be there, then an expert in the sense that I thought it would be wise to study and overcome it). I can say my personality didn’t change, but I did manage to work on the Atlas and impostor issues by seeking my personal growth and understanding the whole burnout and life design stuff. So my credentials here are that I'm constantly struggling with the right balance between doing and being, that's why I've even started to study this and structure my day. It is far from natural for me. >>We tend to better understand things that aren’t natural for us if we study it (when compared to things that we just "are" or just "know", these things just "happen" without our "knowing".) Too confusing, let me explain with an example; ask an extroverted how to fit into a group, and he will have no idea on how to explain, he just knows. Otherwise, ask a smart introvert and he’ll give the entire playbook.

Continuing;

Therefore, going back to the "not-overlapping-the-three mindset", it is important to "just do it" when you are "doing it:

We will have new ideas when we start following the plan, or we will try to rationalize to give up, or we will be sucked into some distraction (dopamine) on social media or games, or we will say we need a rest when we don’t.

The thing is- we usually know what's the idea, we now the plan, but when it gets to focus or action time to really do it, things get hard.

Attention and focus are one of the greatest assets we can have nowadays, but it is getting harder every day to do it. But it is not totally your fault; companies are spending trillions of dollars to figure out how you can spend more time using or buying their product and services. It's not like you are bad it, far from it; they are the ones that are getting too good at it.

As former Facebook's data scientist Jeffrey Hammerbache famously stated:

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads"

But as in every situation in life we can either become the victims and give ourselves the argument we needed to finally "give up" or we can fight harder and take over the leading role of our lives. Therefore, to do this, we need to gain back control of our attention. We need the ability to focus. We need to proactively decide when we use social media or distract ourselves with the endless Youtube streaming and so on.

The hard thing with doing is that defying our natural ways, or I could even say our autonomy, is hard. We will procrastinate, we will seek easier things, we will lose to the resistance, we will rationalize, we will get frustrated, we will lose. But eventually we will learn, we will become habit-masters, we will understand ourselves, we will be able to focus, we will be able to reach our goals, we will be able to have fun whilst at the same time taking the hard path.

All we need is to start today, with commitment and building discipline. Reminding that everything we do is a decision we make. And as in every other thing in life, the right decisions sum up to beautiful things.

Start today. Every big goal starts with a commitment. With time you learn discipline. With discipline, you can build lasting habits. With habits, no one can stop you.