3 months into my journey to ‘scale my life’

It was Saturday morning and I was sitting out on my deck drinking coffee on what looked to possibly be the nicest day of the year (so far). Although the weather and ambience were more than relaxing I found myself lost in thought trying to evaluate my life. I had just completed 3 of the most challenging and rewarding months in recent memory but the question that kept spinning around in my head was “am I actually happier?”

I mean of course I was happy with what I was doing and what I had accomplished that was obvious. It had been a fulfilling, enlightening and educational 3 month long journey, but I couldn’t help wondering ‘was my day to day happiness any better because of this new venture?’

I tried to go back and think about why I had started the blog in the first place. What were my goals, what was my motivation?

I knew I wanted to do more with my life and I knew I wanted that life to have meaning and purpose. I wanted to grow and experience new things, to build my knowledge in areas that I felt passionate about or deficient at. Mostly though I wanted to feel more content with myself and my life.

I also remembered how stressed I felt at the time by the life I was leading and the distractions that were constantly pulling me in too many directions. I wanted to streamline my life and focus on only what was most important.

Looking at the last 3 months I realized that doing these challenges had allowed me to find the drive and purpose that I had been searching for but unfortunately my big concern was still that I had just swapped one stressful life for another.

Here is my dilemma

I love what I’m doing right now. The blog, the challenges, the community, all of it feels so rewarding. It feels like I’m doing something really special, like I’ve tapped into a common feeling across age groups and demographics. I feel like I’m not alone in my sense of frustration with my life and my urge to do something about it.

My issue is that I still feel like I’m underachieving. I know that sounds crazy but between planning the challenges and attempting to execute on them I barely have the time I needed to reflect and write, let alone work on expanding the blog itself. I feel like I’m being pulled a million directions all over again and what’s worse is that the stress is beginning to spill over into other areas of my life. Things that I want to really enjoy like biking with friends or watching a movie with my girlfriend have now become burdens because I constantly feel guilty for not working on the blog (and let me tell you this is not doing wonders for my relationship…).

This must be how startup founders feel when they are slammed to the max hustling to get their fledgling businesses off the ground. But how do they not burn themselves out?! I was 3 months in and I was already feeling like I was falling behind and falling apart.’

Then it hits me

Maybe that was it! Maybe I needed to treat my goals more like a lean startup. In a lean startup the organization constantly reviews and adjusts to make sure it’s on the right path to success. Why was this theory so common place in business but not in life? Why in life do we commit ourselves to one direction and refuse to redirect even when it seems to be unwise? I don’t think goals were meant to be stagnant, shouldn’t they be just as variable and ever changing as life itself?

Maybe before moving ahead to my next challenge I should take a moment to analyse and reflect. Just like a successful startup the best thing I could do was take a step back and look critically at my plan, decide what was working and what wasn’t, and then pivot as necessary.

Scale My Life Critical Analysis

What was working:

• Challenging myself to accomplish lofty goals that add value to my life
• Not being afraid to fail but learning from my mistakes. A sort of trial by fire experiment
• Exploring all possible perspectives of each challenges. Looking at the world through the eyes someone else
• Reaching out into the network to get expert advice and instruction to help me through each challenge
• Extracing lessons and hacks for others to take away from my experiences
• Being as transparent as possible throughout the journey
• Involving others in the challenges as much as possible

What wasn’t working:

• Finding a balance between working on the blog and working on my goals
• Finding a balance between my personal life and the blog
• Finding ways to connect with more people to share my story and hear theirs
• My blog posts were often long and difficult to digest in short periods of time
• Not being able to enjoy and appriciate the now and always being stressed about the future

Review and Correct

To look at this list the problem seemed obvious, my biggest problem was actually…me. I wasn’t finding the balance in my life and I wasn’t scheduling or planning so that I could execute on the level that I needed to.

I reached out to my friend Drew about this unfortunate realization hoping he could offer me some advice. As per usual, I was not disappointed.

“You’re problem isn’t you as much as it’s your mindset,” he said. “You are trying to add more and more things into your life without the capacity to take them on. If you really want to find a balance in your life you need to first learn how to find space in your life.”

I had no idea what that meant, “find space in my life?” Then he showed me this TEDx video and made me understand what I’ve been missing in my life: Focus and Control.

If you have (and we all do) problems with balancing time, distractions and execution you need to watch this video!

My girlfriend Brittney and I had a talk about this later in the evening. She (not so surprisingly) agreed that it was all my fault but also offered an interesting insight. “Maybe you just don’t have the right organization of the important things in your life.” she said. “Your goal was to streamline your life and only focus on what was important but how much time have you actually spent doing that?”

She also had a video she felt would help me better understand my current predicament. This one was on time/focus management.

Building a new plan

After having some time to think about these obvious structural problems with my life I thought about my goals moving forward. How was I going to successfully accomplish all that I had set out to do if I didn’t first have the proper tools to accomplish them with? If I was going to have any shot at completing my goals and maintaining my personal sanity I was going to have to first build my ability to balance and execute.

I looked at the schedule of my challenges from here until the end of the year. This month I was supposed to be learning to code but that no longer seemed like the most important thing for me to do. ‘What if I shifted up my Meditation month and made this month about Mindfulness, Balance and Personal Development,’ I thought. ‘This way I could actively correct my personal shortcomings and have a much stronger chance at success!’

This idea both excited and terrified me… When I created my 12 goals I had given myself safety and structure, a set plan for my entire year; now all of a sudden I was throwing myself back into uncharted territory and onto unstable ground. But I feel like I’m at that point where it’s pivot or die, adapt or fail and maybe as David Allen said in his video above, living in the chaos and just being present will help me find my optimum productive flow.

I think this month could be my most interesting endeavor yet. To attempt to change core issues I’ve been struggling with my entire life will be both profound and problematic. I hope I’m up to the challenge.