You’re Supposed To Feel Stressed (How To Productize Your Life)
March 18, 2024 | Daymion Alvarez
Stress is a fundamental unit needed to create the most progressive life possible.
We’re commonly told that stress is no-good and that we should do our best to live a stress free life, but this is simply not true.
Before learning a system to manage my day and thereby control my stress levels, everything was so overwhelming that I was constantly spinning my wheels and getting nothing done.
When everything always feels like it’s the most important thing, you constantly jump from task to task, never giving yourself the opportunity to enter a deep flow state and get actual work done.
I would start doing something, then get distracted by something else I needed to do and start working on that. Halfway through completing that, I’d get a notification for something else and start working on that.
I was just creating a bunch of open loops and never giving myself the opportunity to close any of them.
This is where stress stems from - having too many open loops and being unable to complete any of them.
Eventually, you’ll get so overwhelmed and frustrated that you’ll give up on all of them all together.
Then you’ll wake up the next day having not completed any of the work, start to complete some of it and end up getting distracted by the seemingly never-ending mount of work.
This was a constant for years for me. Without having a system or strategy to deal with pending tasks, you’ll fall into a similar trap as well - if you haven’t already
Stress = Success
I believe that the most successful people in the world are simply the people who can deal with the most stress.
They’re able to take on huge problems, tasks, and situations and find a way to figure them out.
How stressful do you think Elon Musk is? What about Bill Gates? Do you think they just frolic through life hoping that they don’t get “too stressed”? Not a fucking chance.
They are making decisions that can cost or make them billions and billions of dollars every single day.
They run companies with thousands of employees, all relying on them to feed their families. Do you think they have peace of mind ever?
Now, this isn’t saying that you need to get to that level. But, to think that you’ll just be able to lackadaisically stroll through life stress-free and somehow live a life of success is asinine.
You need to come to the realization that stress breeds competency, and the only way to improve your stress tolerance is to be continually stressed.
Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
We’re often told “don’t bite off more than you can chew!” I wholeheartedly and completely disagree with this.
If you only take on as much as you think you can handle, you are only bottlenecking yourself. How are you supposed to grow if you never push the limits?
You need to take on as much bullshit as humanly possible and then figure out a way to get it all done. This is the only way you’ll increase your capacity for stress and for work.
It’s like training a muscle group. How do you expect to grow your chest if you never do chest exercises?
The way you grow your chest (on a fundamental level) is to train it until it’s uncomfortable, rest and recover, and then do it again. This is the same for stress tolerance.
The only way to grow your stress tolerance is to push your stress limits to the max, finish all the things that are stressing you out, and then do it again.
Over time, you’ll be able to take on more complex problems and situations without feeling the overwhelm of being stressed. It’s a superpower.
4-hour Work Week
Let me start off my next point by saying this - the 4-hour work week is bullshit.
If you’re looking to escape your life of living paycheck to paycheck and you want to do so stress-free while only working 4-hours a week, you’re in for a very rude awakening.
People who push this 4-hour work week onto you are trying to sell you a dream.
They’re likely pushing some course or program onto you to “help you do that”, when in reality, they’re working 12-16 hours a day pushing this idea on to you.
Also, if you’re looking to only work 4-hours a week
before you even accomplish anything of sustenance, you’re almost certainly going to fail.
It’s going to take shit tons and shit tons of work to get to where you want to be.
If you think you can get there with any degree of speed working 4-hours a week, give up before you start.
“But I work smart, not hard! I only have to work 4-hours a week to get my stuff done!”
This idea of working smart and not hard is the biggest load of BS I’ve ever come across. If you “work smart not hard”, why don’t you work all the hours in the day “smartly” and get 10x the work done?
I’ve never understood this mindset. I wholeheartedly believe if you have this mindset, you’re just looking for an excuse to blame your monumental laziness on.
“But I don’t really want to work more than 1-2 hours a day, I need breaks for my mental health”
No you don’t, you’re just scared of hard work. You don’t want to face the genuine problems that stop you from achieving your goals and you’re looking for a reason to blame it on.
There are people that don’t want to work and are still pulling 12-16 hour days consistently,
you will perpetually lose.
Stress Tolerance Is Mind Control
Imagine your life in 10 years if you were able to do everything your mind tells you to do. Imagine if whenever you got the urge to train, you simply got up and went to the gym. Imagine every time you had a craving, you simply didn’t act on it.
This is what the stress tolerance will do for you. It’s an absolute superpower.
Being able to deal with a lot of things at once without becoming overwhelmed and breaking down is essentially callousing your mind for the daily problems that come up.
Everyone gets the urge to eat the cookie. Everyone gets the urge to sleep in. Everyone gets the urge to skip the gym.
The ones that have mastered the art of stress tolerance are the ones who are able to tell their bodies exactly what to do.
Now, imagine your life in 10 years if you acted on every impulse and constantly cut yourself breaks. Imagine you always skipped the gym because you “needed a break”, or you always ate the cookie because “it’s just one, how much harm can it do?”.
Now imagine it being 10x worse because every single time you say yes, you take a baby step backwards. You’re putting yourself in an exponentially decreasing spiral intentionally.
This is what having zero stress tolerance will do for you. It will ruin your life.
Luckily for you, I’ve developed a system that I’ve used for the past 6-months that has given me an iron stress tolerance.
It has allowed me to systematize every single day, get done exactly what I need to get done, and do it seamlessly without even thinking about it.
Let’s make this actionable for you.
The iCal Hack (4 Steps)
If you aren’t utilizing your calendar every single day, you are intentionally handicapping yourself. It is a tool that I started using in September, 2023 and have never looked back from.
If you run an online business, this is even more important for you. It allows you to block out times on your sales / meetings calendars so you always have time to do the things you want to do.
Let me give you my system in 4 easy steps.
1) Set up recurring calendar events for sleep, food, and non-negotiable.
If you aren’t going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day, you need to start today.
Adapting solid sleep hygiene is the easiest way to boost mood, energy levels, and overall productivity.
Also, create calendar events for when you plan on having your meals throughout the day. You’ll figure out a system for maintaining the best brain function along with managing hunger levels as you build your routine.
I used to eat first thing in the morning and throughout the day, but I’ve recently started fasting until 2pm.
I found that being in a fasted state allows for the best mental clarity, and also saves me a lot of time. Cooking & cleaning 4-5 times throughout the day burns a few hours, so just having 2 meals per day in the afternoon works best for me.
Find your own system that works for you.
2) Link your sales / meeting calendars together
Whether you’re working a 9-5 or running your own business, it’s important to have all your calendars linked together.
You can set it up on your calendars so that when events are created on one calendar, duplicates are created on others.
This will give you reminders when you have meetings or working blocks scheduled throughout the day.
Most importantly, your recurring events will show as “busy”, so people aren’t able to schedule anything during those time blocks.
This allows you to have set hours during the day to take a break, have a meal, take a walk, or have a deep working session. It’s a true game-changer.
3) At night, take 15 minutes and plan every single time block in your day
This is the kicker here. This is how you stay 100% focused every single day, all the time. Before you head to sleep for the night, take 10-15 minutes and decide what you’re going to be doing for every single minute of the next day.
This will allow you to constantly check in on what you’re supposed to be doing and give you soft deadlines for every single project.
Subconsciously, I think it works because it forces you to choose to do something else instead of what you planned out.
For example, if you have 10am-12pm blocked off for outreach tomorrow, it forces your brain to choose to scroll TikTok instead of just doing the outreach.
It makes the baseline of that time block something productive, forcing you to actively choose to do self-destructive behavior instead of just doing the work. It’s amazingly effective.
4) Adjust and iterate as you develop your daily routine.
The only way to find out what works best for you is to try something, self-reflect on it, and iterate.
If you try eating first thing in the morning and you constantly have brain fog, move your first meal to the afternoon and spend that morning time simply working instead.
If you’re trying to wake up at a certain time but you find it’s extremely difficult, move your wake-up and sleep time an hour back.
Eventually, you’ll find a routine that works seamlessly with the way your life is set up and you can rely on your calendar to guide your day.
Do this for the next 90-days and you’ll build an iron stress tolerance.
You’ll be able to handle more difficult and important situations and problems seamlessly.
Hope that helps.
-Daymion
The only thing I sell is a 1-on-1 mentorship program where I help you develop a plan for your future, force you to take action, & hold you accountable to your word. Everything else is free forever and not locked behind any form of paywall or email list. You have my word.
Learn about that here.
Who Is Daymion Alvarez?
Just A Man Making Mistakes And Teaching You How Not To
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