Pursuit of Progress: A Framework for Life

For a long time, I’ve been trying to collect knowledge - which is often scattered - and shape it into a usable system—a personal framework that makes day-to-day living more productive and effective. This is that work in progress:

🔍 Identify the Most Important Thing

What’s the current bottleneck holding you back?

Identify the areas that would provide the most value.

Focus on your highest-value task—The ONE Thing that moves the needle the most.

This is classic Pareto Principle thinking:

20% of input creates 80% of output.

Don’t skirt the edges and difficult tasks. Read the most important book in your field. If it intimidates you, read it again until it doesn't.

🔥 Be Aggressive

Life won’t slow down to match your pace. The world doesn’t pause for hesitation. And it certainly won’t lower the bar just because you’re tired, uncertain, or waiting to feel “ready.”

People will tell you to relax, to take it easy, to be more “balanced.”

Often, that’s just projection. A subtle way of justifying their own lack of urgency. Balance is important—but not when it becomes an excuse to coast.

Train yourself to move fast, to execute, and to take risks that force you to grow.

Men of action are favored by the Goddess of luck.

⏱ Parkinson’s Law

Work expands to fill the time you give it. If you have 1 month to work on assignment, you will work on it for a month.

As said above, be aggressive. There's something to be learned from Elon Musk's biography on this point.

Give yourself less time. You’ll surprise yourself.

Set artificial deadlines and move fast.

🪵 Beware of Bike Shedding

Don’t get caught doing trivial tasks because they’re comfortable. This often presents itself when you go to tackle a difficult assignment or read a difficult book and is closely related to your ONE thing.

The hard thing is usually the right thing. Protect your attention.

“That which matters most must never be at the mercy of that which matters least.”

🌅 Ritualize the Morning

Don’t waste your prime cognitive bandwidth on low-value tasks like checking emails, scrolling social media, or tweaking minor details.

Instead, front-load your day with your hardest, most meaningful work.

• Tackle the problem you've been avoiding.

• Make progress on the thing that actually moves you forward.

• Do the uncomfortable, high-resistance task first.

Eat That Frog

If you do the hardest thing first, the rest of the day flows easier. And if you don’t—resistance builds, energy fades, and decision fatigue creeps in.

Your day tends to follow its start.

If I break my diet and eat fast-food early on -> “Day ruined. I’ll start again tomorrow.” 

It's extremely faulty thinking.

But if I exercise and read in the morning, I don’t want to break the streak.

When you win the morning, you don’t just get more done—you build momentum, which creates a cascade effect. One disciplined choice compounds into the next. One small win sets the tone for an entire day of forward motion.

❄️ Embrace Discomfort. Self-Denial is the Root of Self-Mastery

We’re wired to avoid pain and seek comfort. Most short-term temptations exist purely to relieve tension—not because they serve any real purpose.

But every time you lean into discomfort—whether it’s a cold shower, fasting, or tackling a mentally demanding task—you’re not just building willpower. You’re training your brain.

According to Andrew Huberman, these acts of self-denial engage and strengthen the anterior mid-cingulate cortex—the brain region responsible for persistence and effort in the face of resistance. Every time you override the impulse to quit or delay, you’re reinforcing the neural circuits that make it easier to do next time.

Self-discipline isn’t a trait—it’s a muscle, and discomfort is how you train it.

🏁 Set Your Own Milestones

You don’t need permission to feel progress. You choose the milestones.

It could be the next lamppost (running). The next sentence (writing). The next rep (lifting).

Create a reward system that’s internal. That’s how you live in the Zone of Proximal Development.

🧭 Have a Mantra

Orient yourself every morning.

I learned this from Lex Friedman and his ridiculous work ethic - I struggle to apply it though.

Start the day by writing your long-term goals, followed by ambitious short-term goals, and then a specific daily routine designed to move you forward. Include a list of things you want to avoid, or rules of the game.

Stay connected to your future self. They are not a stranger. You are them.

By reciting your long-term vision every day, you bring it out of the abstract and into the present moment. That’s how we close the gap between intention and action.

🧠 Observe Your Urges

Urges aren’t you—they’re just habit loops firing.

Unfortunately we don't choose our thoughts. They are often 'thrust upon us,' bubbling up from the unconscious, shaped by repetition and reward. Most are automatic, not chosen.

It's essentially a battle between your more modern, higher self and your more ancient, lizard brain:

• One chases growth and fulfilment.

• The other chases comfort.

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Urges feel urgent—but you need to see them as just surface tension. They rise, peak, and pass.

You don’t have to obey every thought. You only need to see it clearly.

Each time you resist, the circuitry of discipline strengthens. You’re learning to ignore a reflex.

🧼 Create Order in Your Environment

Organize your workspace, your desktop etc.

Practice minimalism. Make your space reflect clarity.

Your external world is a reflection of your internal state.

And often, changing the outside is the fastest way to shift the inside.

A clear mind is better able to focus.

Start small. Wash a cup. Make your bed. This creates order and control, and spirals into momentum.

“People don’t see God because they don’t look low enough.”

The sacred often hides in the simple.

🧬 Rewire Your Dopamine System

Your brain runs on dopamine—not just the chemical of pleasure, but of motivation, pursuit, and anticipation. It tells you what to desire, and how much to care.

If you're constantly feeding on cheap dopamine—junk food, tiktok, porn—you start numbing the system that drives you. You teach your brain to chase immediate, low-effort hits, and in the process, you blunt your ability to find satisfaction in meaningful effort.

Hijacking your dopamine system is one of the biggest issues people face today (imo)

The more you reward yourself for doing nothing, the harder it becomes to do anything worthwhile.

Future rewards always look smaller than they are—like a distant mountain seems tiny on the horizon. But that’s a trick of perception, not value.

Your brain is wired for now. It needs practice to trust in the delayed reward.

Once you start seeing results in the gym, it's much easier to keep going - sadly a lot of us falter before we reach this stage.

The more you resist immediate gratification, the more clearly you can see the long game—and the more powerful your actions become.

⏳ Invite Serendipity Into Your Life

Opportunity rarely shows up dressed as certainty.

Serendipity isn’t just about luck—it’s about perception. Most people think of it as something random, something that just happens - but it's a skill.

The world is full of invisible signals—missed connections, surprising detours, quiet hints.

But if you're locked into your plans or staring at the ground, you’ll miss them.

Serendipity doesn’t arrive with a roadmap. It shows up unannounced,

Serendipity is the art of seeing what others overlook. It’s the skill of recognizing value where others see noise.

And more often than not, it begins with being open—to people, to uncertainty, to paths you didn’t plan for.

If you want to create opportunity, create collisions.

• Ask unexpected questions.

• Go where you’re not expected to be.

• Share ideas before they’re polished.

• Say yes to things that don’t have a clear payoff.

You don’t find serendipity by waiting. You create the conditions for it to show up.

It begins when you loosen your grip on how things should unfold—when you stop trying to script every outcome and start showing up with curiosity instead of control.

Serendipity lives in the unscheduled moment. It hides in the person you almost didn’t speak to or the detour you nearly avoided.

To invite it in, you need to leave space for it.

🎓 Master the Best of What Others Have Figured Out

Charlie Munger made friends with the eminent dead.

In other words, he read what the greats had written and what others had written about them.

You don't need to be all that original if you learn from others.

Learn how to clone people and put yourself in their shoes. What would they do in your situation?

Study the best and apply what works.