Weekly Question & Framework: September 8, 2023

Hello and welcome to the Curiosity Chronicle Weekly Question and Framework. In three minutes or less, I will give you one question and one framework to leave you thinking going into the weekend. Without further ado, let's dive right in A question to design your life what does your perfect workday look like? When I was starting to think about building my own company and professional ecosystem, a mentor asked me this question. I had never really thought about it. I think most of us probably fall in that camp. I had generally just let the days come and go. I didn't think about what my perfect day looked like. I answered the question with a simple exercise. Split a piece of paper into two halves. On the left side, sketch out the details of your current workday. On the right side, sketch out the details of your perfect workday. Zoom out and look at the difference between the left and the right. What tiny steps could be taken today to start making the left look more like the right? Go through this exercise, either on paper or in your head. What does your current workday look like? Map it out hour by hour. What are you working on? Who are you spending time with? What are you thinking about? What does your perfect workday look like? Again, map it out hour by hour, asking the same questions. There will always be a difference between the two, but the power is found in identifying that difference and brainstorming the small incremental steps you can take today to close that gap. It may take weeks, months, years, or even decades, but if you develop an awareness of your perfect workday, you can slowly start to make changes to your current state to get there. A note As I wrote in the Passion Paradox, it's perfectly okay to let work be work. Your career does not have to be your purpose. For many of us, a job is just something that we do in order to fulfill a different purpose. Example Providing for one's family. If this is the case for you, you should not feel any pressure to create a perfect workday. Simply focus on connecting yourself to your outside purpose and you'll always find energy at work. A framework to structure your days the 3:3:3 method this is a strategy for structuring your day from my friend Oliver Berkman, whose best selling book 4000 Weeks was one of my favorite nonfiction reads of the last few years. The 333 method is as spend three hours on your most important thing, complete three shorter tasks you've been avoiding, and work on three maintenance activities to keep life in order. The idea is that if you execute and check off these three major boxes, you've had a good day. It removes the pressure of never enough Thinking, whereby ambitious people get into bed at the end of the day and feel the stress and anxiety of saying they could have done more. I have found this framework to be extremely helpful. Spending three focused hours on your most important thing is guaranteed to generate meaningful daily, weekly, and monthly progress. Completing three shorter tasks you've been avoiding keeps your doom pile from getting too large. Working on three maintenance activities allows you to make progress on other focus areas of life like health, relationships, housekeeping, and more. To try it for yourself in the evening on a blank page, Write down your 333 plan for the following day. What is the most important thing you'll dedicate three hours to? What are the three small tasks you'll complete? What are the three maintenance activities you'll work on as you go through the day? Cross each off the list. If you do it, you'll get into bed with the satisfied feeling of a day well spent. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you learned something, and I hope it got you thinking. As always, until next time, stay curious. Friends.