Testing Dan Koe's 12 Rules to Change Your Life
Right now, I am stuck in a rut.
It's been one of those months where I have been neck deep in work and unable to see anything past the next deadline.
Battling to keep my head above the surface, it's hard to be aware of anything but the impending deadline and the work that needs to be done to achieve it.
Luckily, times like these often act as a catalyst for immensely positive change in one's life. Coasting by in a life that is only somewhat unpleasant can be the slowest and easiest way to a life of regrets.
"Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
- Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Workweek
Jarring, painful experiences are the medicine for this, and I have been having such experience with how busy I have been.
So, I'm back writing and making videos to give myself more creative outlet and give myself some great skills to focus on making.
I realised I needed some goal, structure or framework to keep me creating even when I was unmotivated and forgetful of the painful experiences I face now.
Fortunately, I stumbled on a video from Dan outlining just such a framework. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be immersing myself in the step-by-step framework he outlines and reporting back to see how effective it is, and what I can achieve by doing so.
Dan Koe's 12 Rules to Change Your Life
In the video titled "Disappear And Come Back Unrecognizable (12 Rules To Change Your Life)", Dan talks through a framework for envisioning your desired future and how to go about achieving it.
Whilst I won't talk about every step in detail, I will break down the fundamentals and the overarching direction that he gives from these 12 steps.
Understanding, Clarity and Direction
The first 3 steps focus on becoming more aware of where you currently are, and where you want to start moving towards.
1) Anti-Vision
The first step is becoming aware of what you don't want to for yourself and your life.
- What tasks do you not want to do?
- Who do you not want to be?
- What possessions do you not want to own?
- What responsibilities do you want to avoid?
I spent 30 or so minutes (distraction-free) walking outside and contemplating these questions.
Some of the answers I came up with were:
- Working late frequently
- Long working hours
- Sacrificing time on things I love doing to do things I don't love doing
- Living far away from friends and family
- Feeling inadequate in my body
Often, getting clear on what you don't want to achieve can be an easier and more effective method of directing your actions, since only chasing something you want may lead you down many rabbit holes.
2) Vision
Having a clear picture of what you DON'T want for your life gives significant clarity for your overall headway. Now, think of things that you DO want in your life.
What are you curious about?
What do you love doing?
What excites you?
For me, I wrote down things like:
- fulfillment in an interesting job
- working hours that suit me
- helping people
- becoming extremely skilled in a craft
- time & freedom to pursue things that pique my curiosity
Some of these were directly informed by what I wrote down in the previous section.
Also, these things should all remain flexible. You can add, remove and edit this list as time goes on. As you grow, experience things, and change, so will your likes and dislikes.
3) Mission
Anything that does not align with your mission should be treated as a distraction.
I myself am struggling to determine what this is. Narrowing down my aim to one thing at the present time is rather overwhelming difficult.
Whilst I do not have an clear picture of what this is yet, I want to develop this over time, whilst testing and experiencing ways of living, whilst bearing the previous two things in mind.
Planning & Action
The following steps are about getting you to where you want to be.
4) Standards
Having standards for yourself, your situation, and your environment drives you to make changes if they are not being met, or prompts you to do nothing if they are being met.
As Dan proclaims:
You aren't where you want to be because you are okay with where you are.
When your standards aren't being met, you will be driven to make changes.
Once again this is something I am still pondering, and not sure exactly how to record or use. Writing these down feels tricky at the moment and I suspect they are heavily linked with the next step.
5) Goals
Dan advises that there are two types of goals: big and small. With big goals being used for direction (having a general idea of where you want to be moving towards) and small goals being used for clarity (small goals that will slowly move you towards the big goal).
A big goal might be 5 years from now, for example, I have a 5-year goal to have published 500 articles and YouTube videos.
This gives me a good idea of roughly what I have to do - namely a tonne of writing and video creating.
However, it does not give me clarity on what I need to do today.
Breaking these big goals down into smaller goals is going to give me the concrete actions that I need to take to gradually move towards achieving it. For example, my 5-year goal may be broken up like this:
5-year goal - publish 500 articles and videos
1-year goal - publish 100 articles and videos
Goal for this month - publish 5 articles and videos
Goal for this week - publish 1 article and video
Goal for the day - write up a first draft of my article
6) Projects
This flows on from your goals. Turn your goals into projects that you can work on and create tangible actions from.
For my blog and YouTube, I have taken my yearly goal of 25 articles & videos, and turned it into a project of the same name.
I personally use Notion to track all of my tasks, to do lists and projects. Currently I use Thomas Frank's Ultimate Tasks for Notion template for all of my projects in work and in my personal life. If you use Notion and are interested in the template for this page, it is available for download for free here: Ultimate Task Template.
Having set up a project for my yearly goal, I then break it up into smaller tasks that need to be completed.
Continuing with the article & YouTube example, I create a parent task for each article/video that I want to create, which then break down into the individual tasks that I can assign deadlines to. For example:
- Write article by Friday
- Record video by Saturday
- Edit & publish video by Sunday
So far I have definitely found the act of creating these projects and listing out tasks very useful for making sure that I keep my goals at the front of my mind.
Setting deadlines for the tasks also keeps some artificial pressure on me to complete the tasks in a timely manner.
Supporting Tasks
The following tasks are more supplementary than concrete actions you can take write now, though that is not to say they are not important.
I am still in the process of exploring these and how they affect the projects and the overall trajectory, so maybe that is something I will cover in more detail in future articles.
In the meantime, here is a brief overview of the remaining steps as outlined by Dan:
7) Education - continuously educating yourself on the things that interest you and that are relevant to the things you are working on is key to further developing your skills and knowledge that will help you to stand out from peers and potential competitors.
8) Limitations - Knowing and setting limitations on your goals will force you to be creative about how you achieve them. What are you willing to give up and what are you not willing to give up in pursuit of your goals?
9) Levers - every day you need priority tasks that take you closer to achieving your goals. I have already covered this in the sections on projects and goals. These are often seen as boring or fundamentals, things that can often be overlooked. But these are crucial for achieving the goals that you have set - they literally make up the majority of what gets you there.
10) Challenge - you're not going to have fun if you are doing something that is far too easy for you because you'll get bored. Equally, you will not have fun doing something too hard for you because you will get frustrated or anxious. Aim for a Goldilocks zone - somewhat challenging, but not too hard. A good number representation for this is 4% harder than of what you are currently capable.
11) Curiosity - being curious about what you can still learn and how you can continue broaden your horizons will allow you to learn more skills, and deepen your expertise in skills that you already have.
12) Experimentation - part of being curious is also being open to testing out new ideas and ways of living and working. Try new things, improve, iterate.
Those are Dan Koe's 12 rules to change your life. I'll be testing them out for the next little while, so I'll probably make another video in a few months time to update my progress.
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Thank you friends, see you soon.