- The most important things you need to find in life are your priorities
- Mine are:
- Health
- Family and Friends
- Service
- Company
- Investing
- Continuing Education
- External Presence
- FLOATER: Travel
- These are extremely unique to every person and are perhaps the most unique thing about us
- I don’t think you can really “Know thyself” if you don’t have a good grasp of these
- Mine are:
- I find that you can really only have 4-8
- Less than 4, you probably aren’t really taking into account everything that you do. Most people, especially those who care about maximizing their life (which is hopefully you since you’re reading this!), care about several things (probably at least health, family and friends, work, and various hobbies; that’s 4-5 right there)
- More than 8 and you’re probably getting way too granular, or some of the priorities really aren’t that important
- Between 4-8, you have enough to fully capture everything that’s important without duplicating anything or making things too granular
- You can break down a priority into multiple actual themes of what you do, and then break it down even more to actual things you do on a regular basis, and so on (note that you can break it down infinitely, but that shouldn’t be necessary beyond the second level; no need to overthink it)
- For example, here’s how I break down my priorities:
- Health
- Mental Health
- Limit screen time to only what’s necessary
- Be easy on myself for my mistakes
- Have a clear head
- Make time for relaxation every day
- Reading
- Physical Health
- Strength training
- 6 days a week
- Mountaineering training
- 5 days a week
- Stretching
- Every morning
- Diet
- Extremely precise to achieve the goals I want
- Strength training
- Spiritual Health
- Keeping an open mind to all forms of spirituality
- Accepting and spreading love in the world
- Mental Health
- Family and Friends
- Family
- Calling parents and brother at least once a week
- Calling extended family at least once a month
- Seeing them when possible
- Friends
- Calling my best friend to catch up every week
- Seeing a friend at least once a week
- Reaching out to old/new friends when I get the chance
- Family
- Service
- Active service
- Helping people discover the joys of STEM
- Teaching people new things
- Always helping people who ask me directly for it
- Passive service
- Doing what I can to leave each place and situation better than how I found it, no matter if I get rewarded for it or not
- Active service
- Entrepreneurship
- My company
- Investing
- Real Estate
- Setting rules for buying and selling real estate and following them
- Stocks
- DCA in my IRA
- Other investments
- Real Estate
- Continuing Education
- Personal development
- Always work on one long-term hobby
- E.g., learning to be a pilot
- Always work on one short-term hobby
- E.g., learning to juggle
- Always be working on one language
- E.g., 20-minute Spanish lessons every morning
- Always have one personal development audiobook in rotation
- E.g., listening to the E-Myth while doing cardio
- Always work on one long-term hobby
- Personal development
- External Presence
- Online presence
- Keep an updated personal website and other social media
- Post whenever possible about important things
- Physical presence
- Take every opportunity you can to spread who you are in person, such as with invited speeches
- Sharing my ideas/experiences
- Always be writing about 1 important thing that you know a lot about, with the aim to post it and help others
- Online presence
- FLOATER: Travel
- Note: This priority is a bit different than those above, because it’s the only one I don’t do on a weekly/daily basis. It “floats” in the sense that when I am traveling, I put it as my third priority (after health and family and friends), but when not traveling, it doesn’t apply to my life on a daily/weekly basis as the ones above
- Travel Once a Month
- Since I love traveling, and would put anything else to the side and travel forever if I could, I force myself to follow a schedule of no more than 1 trip a month, each consisting of 2-4 days, except for 3 trips a year which can be 1-3 weeks, and which must be split up evenly in the 3 four-month increments of the calendar year
- Family
- At least 3 times a year (preferably split up between the 3 four-month increments of the year) and whenever possible
- Scuba
- At least 1 new class every year
- At least 1 trip every year
- Mountaineering
- At least 1 major climb every year
- At least 1 minor climb every year
- Backpacking/Hiking
- At least 1 trip every year
- Cities
- At least 1 trip every year
- Abroad
- At least 1 trip every year
- Health
- For example, here’s how I break down my priorities:
- Priorities come out through your actions that you have already done, not through any theory
- It’s the idea of saying, “I really like playing racquetball, so I’ll make that a priority” (good) versus “I think I should play basketball because that will be best for my life, so I’ll make that a priority” (bad)
- You want to make it as easy as possible for yourself, and the best way to do that is just to look at things you have already done!
- Your priorities may change over time, especially at first, but you should aim to label priorities that will stick with you throughout life
- For example, “grades” may seem very important when you are in university, but they will not be very important 4-6 years down the line; if you do care about grades and school, maybe there’s a more encompassing way to say that, like “continuing education,” that can last your entire life
- Ultimately, don’t overthink it, and just pick somewhere to start and iterate your priorities over time. It took me close to two years before I solidified my core priorities, and they are still changing slightly!
- There should be a pretty clear hierarchy in your priorities
- I’m okay with creativity and making different types of relationships between all your priorities, but to make it easiest on yourself, you should start out by making a very clear hierarchy or flow-chart to how priorities are related to one another. For example, I just use a very simple “most important to least important” for my first seven, and then my eighth is a free floater
- Your priorities should be what you base all major decisions on
- I’m all about making life easy as possible; instead of punishing yourself for days/weeks/months and making hundreds of pros/cons lists on each important decision in life, just look at your priorities (in their hierarchy) and make the clear decision based on them
- The best part of this is, is that if you end up making a decision and you feel bad about it afterward, then either you didn’t actually listen to your priorities or your priorities are not actually the ones that are important to you. Either way, you know that something needs to change, and most likely, the priorities you thought were important to you really weren’t that important.
- You will NEVER feel bad about a decision, no matter the consequences, if they are based on your well-thought-out, proven list of priorities
- I’m all about making life easy as possible; instead of punishing yourself for days/weeks/months and making hundreds of pros/cons lists on each important decision in life, just look at your priorities (in their hierarchy) and make the clear decision based on them
- You will create your weekly/daily routine based on these priorities
- Each priority shouldn’t have the same time value associated with it, e.g., saying, “I’m going to spend 10 hours on each of my 8 priorities every week”; in fact, it’s impossible to base your routine on that and still have a balanced lifestyle. Instead, think of it like “how much of this priority do I need to do this week to feel like it’s truly important to me?”
- For example, I spend 40+ hours a week working for my company, but only 24+ hours a week working on physical health. Does that mean my company is more important than my physical health? Of course not! It just means that all I need to feel satisfied with my physical health is 24 hours, while for work, I need 40 hours
- But if there came a time when I had to decrease one of those for whatever reason (for example, if I had children), I would choose to decrease work since it’s lower on my priority list
- For example, I spend 40+ hours a week working for my company, but only 24+ hours a week working on physical health. Does that mean my company is more important than my physical health? Of course not! It just means that all I need to feel satisfied with my physical health is 24 hours, while for work, I need 40 hours
- Each priority shouldn’t have the same time value associated with it, e.g., saying, “I’m going to spend 10 hours on each of my 8 priorities every week”; in fact, it’s impossible to base your routine on that and still have a balanced lifestyle. Instead, think of it like “how much of this priority do I need to do this week to feel like it’s truly important to me?”
- Someone should be able to look at your life and be like, “Yeah, the priorities that they named are clearly the most important things to him/her”
- This again comes to the idea that your actions are more important than any values you preach or theory you try to apply to yourself; you can lie to yourself and others by saying certain things are your priorities, but ultimately, how you spend your time will be evident to both yourself and others
- In the end, priorities should be EXTREMELY EASY to find
- They should reflect what you naturally find yourself drawn to or what you like doing; give yourself permission to be able to just trust that you are a reflection of your actions, not the other way around
