Adopt an ‘anti-hustle, pro-rest’ approach to work, prioritizing rest and joy over constant productivity. This helps build a sturdy, meaningful career and prevents burnout from measuring self-worth through output.
Figure out what truly matters to you in life (beyond career) and actively manage and invest in those areas with the same intent as your career. This ensures your definition of success is met and prevents you from pursuing paths that lead to unhappiness.
Internalize the belief that your self-worth is separate from your productivity or work output. This combats the ‘productivity mindset’ that makes it impossible to feel permission to rest and is crucial for preventing burnout.
View rest as a fundamental requirement for human beings, not merely a reward for productivity. This is essential to avoid burnout and maintain overall well-being, as a lack of rest is unsustainable.
Reframe failure not as a moral judgment or bad thing, but as an outcome where something happened differently than expected. This gives you permission to take chances, try new things, and de-risk opportunities, knowing you can recover.
Actively build your muscle of resilience and comfort with uncertainty and discomfort. This prepares you for a world that often lacks sufficient friction and challenge, enabling you to handle adversity and navigate unknown outcomes.
See yourself as more than just your specific job, skillset, or how you monetize your time. This helps you avoid putting yourself in a box and remember your multi-dimensional talents, skills, networks, and interests.
Diversify your life beyond just your job by cultivating hobbies, communities, relationships, and other sources of joy and downtime. This future-proofs against disruption, absorbs systemic shocks, and creates flexibility for pivots when needed.
Rebalance your ‘portfolio life’ (allocation of time and talents across relationships, health, hobbies, rest, work) as your needs and life chapters change. This ensures sustainability and alignment with your evolving desires and needs.
Design a ‘business model’ for your life that integrates how you pay for your life with your passions and other things you care about. This creates a sustainable approach, allowing you to pursue interests without burnout, even if your passion isn’t your main income source.
Apply the ‘flair and focus’ technique to manage uncertainty: first, broaden your understanding of a problem and potential solutions (flair), then narrow down to one or two options to pursue (focus). This broadens your sense of what’s possible, identifies multiple potential futures, and empowers you to design your life.
Identify all your skills, networks, and interests (even those you’re not good at or from past lives) to understand your unique ‘human Venn diagram.’ This helps recognize all you have to offer and spot opportunities at the intersection of seemingly disparate areas.
Ask a diverse range of people in your network three questions: ‘When have you seen me happiest?’, ‘What do you come to me for?’, and ‘Where do I stand out against my peers?’ This provides external feedback to reveal contexts, skillsets, or superpowers you might not recognize, aiding in identity understanding.
Use sticky notes to list current skills, past job talents, personal interests (e.g., first newspaper section read, TikTok corner), and things you’ve been known for, then group them to find themes and overlaps for your Venn diagram. This helps excavate your multi-dimensional identity and identify potential areas for future opportunities.
Plan your life and schedule your capacity to only 85%, leaving 15% unplanned. This creates space for life, do-overs, rest, maintenance, serendipity, and avoids stressing the system by going above 100% capacity.
Actively manage your calendar by scheduling not only work deliverables and stress periods but also workouts, kids’ activities, social time, and personal projects. This visualizes all commitments, identifies potential crunch periods in advance, and allows for redesigning moments to prevent stress.
Prioritize establishing a ‘fuck off fund’ (emergency savings) to provide the financial cushion needed to say no or walk away from situations that aren’t working (e.g., a job, living situation, relationship). This grants flexibility and agency in designing your life, even if the amount depends on your circumstances.
Understand your market value and actively work to get paid what you’re worth, whether in a job or as a self-employed individual. This makes your life sustainable without overworking and helps avoid depressing market wages for others.
Talk about money with friends and colleagues to understand market rates for your work. This gathers intel for salary negotiations and ensures you’re not just getting information from potentially underpaid peers.
When advocating for yourself (e.g., salary negotiation), pretend you are negotiating for a friend with the same name and life. This helps overcome the discomfort of self-advocacy, as people are often better at standing up for others than themselves.
Intentionally build and invest in ‘orthogonal’ (perpendicular or non-redundant) networks in different areas of your life. This allows you to connect seemingly unconnected worlds, add value as a connector or translator, and leverage diverse relationships.
Instead of seeking a single ‘mentor,’ build a ‘board of directors’ composed of people with specific expertise who can play different roles (coach, cheerleader, negotiator, connector) for you. This provides diverse support and advice, recognizing that one person cannot fulfill all mentorship needs, and fosters reciprocal relationships.
When seeking help or advice, approach relationships with the mindset that you also have something to offer in return. This transforms interactions from one-way asks into reciprocal relationships, making people more willing to help and fostering mutual benefit.
Proactively connect the dots and tell your story (your ‘one-page,’ ‘one-paragraph,’ or ‘one-sentence’ narrative) to explain what you do and how your diverse pieces fit together. This ensures people understand your multi-faceted life, can help you, give you opportunities, and make introductions, as your life won’t make sense on paper alone.
Once you’ve crafted your story, put it on the internet (website, LinkedIn, social media) to make it easy for others to find you. This allows your ‘people’ to discover you and understand your interdisciplinary or unique path.
Adopt a ‘day job + moonlighting project’ model, where a ‘good enough’ job provides necessities, and other avenues bring joy, creativity, or growth. This gains stability and income while fulfilling other interests, making you happier and potentially better at your day job.
Embrace a ‘zigzag life’ model, going all-in on one path for a period, then pivoting to another, recognizing that your first path provides valuable skills and perspective for the second. This allows you to pursue new paths and leverage past experiences, rather than starting from zero.
Explore a ‘multi-hyphenate’ model, living in and being visible in multiple worlds simultaneously, potentially with multiple income sources or distinct roles. This helps spot opportunities for innovation, connect dots between unrelated ideas, and position yourself at the vanguard of future trends.
Use side hustles strategically to make additional income, fulfill missing needs (creativity, community), or de-risk new ideas before going all-in. This builds runway, gains validation, and avoids the privilege-based assumption that everyone can afford to go ‘all in’ immediately.
Attend the VIP guided meditation and Q&A session at the live podcast recording in New York City on March 28th. This provides an opportunity to engage directly with Dan Harris and other frequent flyers from the show.