The struggle many people have, that I had, was that all my systems for school or non-entrepreneurial jobs were built around receiving tasks from someone else and getting them done.

When it’s up to me, how do I figure out what to do?

I’ve seen how the lack of clarity has eaten away days, weeks, months of my life and the lives of those I’ve worked with. You don’t trust yourself that the goals you’re working towards are the “right” ones so you set many goals and end up making progress on none of them.

Lacking clarity on a single objective, you don’t have the confidence to keep others from pulling you off your bearings. You see a new project, a new tactic that might be faster or easier and so you jump to it, leaving a wake of half-finished projects behind you.

We all know that if we try and work on too many different projects/concepts, none of them will excel. However, when you’re interested in pursuing many different paths, how do you choose? When do you branch out, if ever?

The problem with to-do lists and task management solutions is that lists go on forever, but your time and energy doesn’t. This results with cramming your day with too many tasks and ending the day tired and scattered.

Even if you’ve done goal setting exercises to get clear, you don’t have a way to “operationalize” focus. Focus is hard because it isn’t making a single decision, it’s making hundreds of decisions. You have to say no to competing priorities every hour of every day.

A single “yes” must be protected with a thousand “no’s”​

So you do things that make you feel like you’re being productive. But when you look back at your last month or year, you don’t see the the progress toward your goals that you know you’re capable of.

Most productivity books and systems don’t even mention the concept of emotional work, what Steve Pressfield has called “The Resistance.”

The Resistance is the emotionally difficult work: it’s sending the cold email to someone you respect or publishing your thoughts for thousands of people to see. These are not hard logistically, they are hard emotionally.

Ben Horowitz, one of the most successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, had this to say:

“By far the most difficult skill I learned as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring, and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check. I thought I was tough going into it, but I wasn’t tough. I was soft.

Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs, all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”

Not all work is created equal and often the difficult emotional work of fighting The Resistance and managing your own psychology

Principle #1: The Fear is the Compass to Effectiveness

Overcoming Overwhelm, Getting Your Priorities Straight, and Making Consistent Progress

Principle #2: Do More of Less: Work In Sequence, Not In Parallel

Reduce stress, increase your chances of success and feel a sense of accomplishment.

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Principle #3: Treat it Like an Experiment

What Thomas Edison and Buckminster Fuller can teach us about doing our best work

Principle #4: Vertical Coherence

Regain your Clarity. Fuel your Motivation.

Principle #5: Systems Always Win

Rock-Solid Confidence and Conviction.

How exactly does the Effective Entrepreneur Work?

I organized The Effective Entrepreneur into 4 stages:

1. 25 Year Vision​

2. The Quarterly Plan​

3. The Weekly Review​

4. The Daily Ritual​

Introduction and Principles

In this bonus ‘Getting Started’ module, you’ll start to set yourself up for success with the system. Before I send you into the Core Modules, I want to help shape your psychology to get the most out of the masterclass.

In this module, I’ll show you:

• A summary of 40 years of research on productivity and what we can (and can’t) conclude from it
• Why launching your project can be scarier than going on patrol in enemy territory and how you can act in spite of the fear
• The neurobiology showing how social media acts on your brain (Hint: a lot like cookies) and how to build a system which lets you do your most important work (instead of eating the cookies)
• The surprising cost of context switching and how you can eliminate it while still working on everything that interests you
• What a 1990’s study of two unlikely professions teaches us about staying motivated

Module #1 Part i: 25 Year Goal Setting

Module #1 Part ii: The Quarterly Plan

Module #2: The Weekly Review

Module #3: The Daily Ritual

Conclusion and Implementation

Instead of just leaving you with broad concepts, I’ll be immersing you in a day-in-the-life.

In this module, I’ll show you:

• How the “80% Rule” can help you get the most of the system without feeling constrained or deprived
• The wisdom of “muddling fuckery“
• The tradeoff between stress and meaning and how to balance between them
• A tour of my complete implementation of the system showing you exactly how I put it into practice on a day-to-day basis

You’ll see exactly what the quarterly, weekly, and daily review and planning look like when I do them. You’ll finish with the system already implemented in your life.