I was completely overwhelmed with everything I had to do:

• Podcast

•  Youtube

• 1-1 Clients

• Skool Community

• Newsletter + X Content

I felt like my brain was going to explode. Committing to so many things was causing me to sacrifice my quality of life.

I was so overwhelmed because I was doing busy work. I didn't have clarity on what was important. I was forcing myself to work longer hours instead of prioritizing the most important things to work on. I was being lazy

I needed essentialism in an area. Not essentialism in life where I sacrifice my health and other things for business. But where I sacrifice certain things in business for the most important areas.

The most important things for me to do were:

• Building a product

• Newsletter + X Content

• Getting results for 1-1 clients

It took me longer than it should have to reach this conclusion because I thought the problem was discipline. When it reality the problem was clarity.

Most people think they just need to be more disciplined when they are overwhelmed. In reality, you need more clarity.

I'm going to show you exactly how to escape the endless trap of overwhelm and how to use it properly to trigger the flow state.

Learning to use overwhelm as a tool instead of letting it hold you back is how you achieve a flow state.

When you choose things to work on that aren't important or priorities. Your subconscious picks up on this, causing you to be more prone to distraction. You think about the things you "should" do. Rather than the things you need to do.

The Pareto principle(80-20 rule) is useful in discovering what you need to do.

The Newsletter + X Content creates traffic and nurtures that traffic.

Working with 1-1 clients gives me authority, improves my skills, and helps me build a digital product.

A digital product incentivizes me to build an audience and it gives me leverage.

Those 3 things are the 20% that are going to get me 80% of the results (at least at my current stage in the journey).

The rest are bonuses.

I've eliminated the skool community project (for now).

The YouTube videos and podcasts are bonuses. I have not yet systemized my content creation process for X (Twitter) and the newsletter. Once that is done I will transition over to video content more heavily.

Overwhelm leads to burnout. And the person who stays in the game the longest and iterates wins over the one that overwhelms themself with intensity and quits.

What you focus on can evolve at different stages of your journey.

For the next 3 - 6 months my priorities will be in those 3 areas. And I will overwhelm myself in those areas (will be touching on what this means later).

The lie of discipline

Most people think that being disciplined means doing hard things. And while that's true to some degree it doesn't mean you have to make things impossible for yourself. Make sure you are choosing the right things that are difficult.

Don't take on a lot to take on a lot. Choose very carefully what you suffer for and are disciplined with.

The people who have a life of freedom are the people who suffer for the "right" or most important things.

If you are disciplined in areas that aren't the 20% that get you 80% of the results you will be more likely to burnout and will waste time.

This means you need to have clarity on what your priorities are.

By choosing the priorities that give you the best bang for your buck. You are giving yourself every chance and making everything as easy as possible. Thus increasing your odds of success.

However, there is a caveat here. If you are just starting more likely than not you haven't taken enough action to know what you should prioritize. This is okay. You just need to spend more time in the game.

That's the only way you get better at ANYTHING.

But make sure to build awareness around what you're doing. Because working on the wrong things is the best way to waste your time and energy.

Why Leverage Matters

You need to prioritize or else you will work on low-leverage tasks.

Low-leverage tasks are the ones that don't move you towards your goals as fact compared to other more "high" leverage tasks.

For instance, if my goal was to get traffic to a product.

One option could be doing door-to-door sales for 5 hours and knocking on 100 doors.

Another option could be spending 3 hours writing one thread and getting 10,000 impressions and then reaching out to everyone who liked that thread for 2 hours.

One has much higher leverage.

Prioritization

The reason you're overwhelmed is because you lack prioritization.

Not only do you have so many things to do but you're not even sure that when you are working intensely you're working on the right things.

Let me tell you, it's much better to be working on a few things that are the right things than a lot of things because you need to be "busy".

People often think they have too many things to do.

But do you actually?

Have you ever sat down and asked yourself what are the most important things for you to do?

Now some of you might have too many things to do. Nonetheless, this exercise will be useful for you.

Business Prioritization

I thought that I HAD to do all of these:

• Podcast

• Youtube

• 1-1 Clients

• Skool Community

• Newsletter + X Content

I can do all of them but just not at the same time.

You can't determine what to prioritize if you don't know what you're aiming at. That's why you will see in all of my newsletters that I highly stress having a clear goal or vision for the future.

Otherwise, you will end up chasing a goal that doesn't align and prioritize the wrong things.

Life Prioritization

Not only should you prioritize in your business but you should prioritize in your life.

For me, some of the most important things are:

• Walks

• Spending time recovering (sleep, etc)

• 4 Hour Workday (on fulfilling high-leverage work)

Once I have a life vision/priorities, I can create my business priorities.

Truthfully I probably could do:

• Podcast

• Youtube

• 1-1 Clients

• Skool Community

• Newsletter + X Content

But is it worth the sacrifice for my life quality?

No, it's not.

Forcing yourself to maintain your quality of life forces you to increase the quality of your work.

Now there are exceptions. I'm fortunate that I don't need to earn money currently. For some people, a season of sacrificing their quality of life for work may be necessary. But if you don't transition to improving the quality of your life. You will leave your 9-5 and build another life that you hate.

Prioritization → Strategic Overwhelm process

Now, overwhelm isn't all bad. In fact it can be a powerful tool if applied correctly. But first, you must choose what you will be overwhelmed by.

Once you know what your priorities are you can apply strategic overwhelm to kick you into the flow state.

Prioritizing your time and removing overwhelm

Unless you do this step you will be overwhelmed and spend lots of your time on the wrong things.

You want to find the 1% and then spend 99% of your effort on that. The only way you get to that point is through prioritization.

If you working a 9-5 that you hate. This step will allow you to build a life of freedom.

Passion

There are three areas to assess for prioritization. The first is Passion.

Take personality tests and understand where your zone of genius lies.

For me, broadly speaking it seems to be the pursuit of understanding. For you, it may be music. Or art. Spend time really thinking about this. Ask yourself what you liked to do as a kid. What feels like work to others but play to you.

You need to do this step or else you will prioritize doing things that you hate and that's not a sustainable way to live.

Skill

Skill and passion go together.

If you are passionate about something you're more likely to be skilled at it or have the desire to become skilled at it.

For most they might think about what they are skilled at and little to nothing comes to mind.

This isn't possible.

A skill is your ability to solve a problem. You've solved lots of problems in your life. So you have a skill.

If you don't have a skill then you can learn one that your passioniate about.

It may take time for you to discover your passion and that's okay.

Leverage

Once you have a list of pursuits that you are passionate about rank them in order of highest leverage to lowest leverage.

If you're focusing on work that doesn't give you leverage you're not being rewarded for your skill.

You can implement leverage to your passion or skill with the power of the internet.

That's why I highly recommend that you begin a creator business.

Once you've chosen a pursuit use the internet (start a personal brand/build a creator business) to create leverage.

You need to prioritize in the pursuit.

If you are building a brand on X (Twitter) it might be:

• Comment 40x a day

• Write one newsletter a week

• Write 18 tweets weekly and 1 thread

You can then prioritize by the leverage (the highest leverage activities depend on your goal and stage of the journey)

If your goal is to grow as fast as possible the highest priority might be commenting 40x a day.

Your priorities depend on your goals.

If you don't have a goal you will prioritize the wrong things. That's why so many people are lost.

Strategic Overwhelm

Once in a pursuit and you have tasks to do apply strategic overwhelm.

In the flow state, there is a trigger known as the skills/challenge balance. It is necessary to get into the flow. If your challenge is too low you will be bored. If your challenge is too high you will be stressed.

The key is to get to around 4% or just outside of your skill level. It's slightly overwhelming but not suffocating.

You can increase your overwhelm by:

• Setting deadlines

• Increasing your expectations

• And more

Since you have crystal clear prioritization aligned with your goals the work is more meaningful hence allowing you to muster up the discipline to take on the challenge. If your work feels like play oftentimes you won't need discipline at all.

When you start your brand if people don’t engage, buy, or follow, you’re doing something wrong, and you probably need to educate yourself on the right things to prioritize.

Here are a few places to start:

• How to grow a brand(9 lessons on building a creator business)

• How to position yourself online

• Work with me 1-1

That’s it for this letter.

Thanks for reading.

– Christian