0:00 Over the past few weeks, I've just felt completely brain fried and this just happens. It feels like it happens in cycles for me. Like once a year, I go through this period where things just pile up. The stressors, the business fires, all these other things, and I just feel off. And I'm sure you know that exact feeling. It's like you feel like you're thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. at any time of the day. And when you try to have a good idea or you try to think deeper about something or you try to brainstorm nothing's there. Nothing comes to mind. And it's not like a normal burnout where you're just emotionally fried. It's just cognitive. Like you can't think you can't generate ideas. And as a creative person, as a creator, that's the worst thing that can happen
0:47 because then like your entire work suffers. The same thing if you're starting a business or you're running a business like you need your most valuable asset is your ability to think that is your most valuable asset is the ability to be creative, which is what this video is about. And it just feels terrible because just a month ago, writing a newsletter or an article was a breeze for me, putting out YouTube videos, putting out content, just ideas were flowing in my brain. And that's arguably one of the best feelings for me, at least. And the longer this went on, the feeling just compounded more. I couldn't stop thinking like, why can't I write? Why can't I have good ideas? I have all of these ideas that I can work with, but why can't I remember them? Why can't I think of them? And then the final question that you just get to is, How do I get that back? How
1:34 do I get that creative ability back in my head? And that's my primary goal with this video. I want to provide a guide for both you and myself. I'm creating this more for myself than I am for you to help us return to our most creative state. And that's very important. you'll find my secondary goal is to show you that even if you think you aren't a creative person you can tap into this incredibly enjoyable state of consciousness it's similar to the flow state but it's potentially more potent you aren't focused on breezing through a set of tasks you're more so noticing things for the first time you're seeing a deeper layer of reality that you either forgot was there or you didn't know was there in the first place and it's like a dog who sees grass for the first time and they're just
2:22 sniffing around and they're like, what is going on? Their dopamine is going crazy. And then my tertiary goal in the last section is to provide you with a seven day protocol that you can return to whenever you feel this way so that when you go through the protocol, you hopefully go from feeling brain fried to feeling alive again. And it's a very simple protocol. Many people may scoff at it and think that it's too simple and then they'll close their minds off to it, which is the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here. We're trying to accomplish this open state creativity, not narrow state stressed focus. And while I say it's simple, it's actually incredibly difficult to do because you've accumulated these habits over time that are keeping you in this state, right? Your state of consciousness is a reflection of your behavior over
3:07 time. And so we need to undo that, which can be painful. Now, the last reason that I'm creating this is because in today's world, your creativity is the most scarce resource. Anyone can build anything today. Anyone can think anything. Anyone can write anything. The people who will win in business, writing, art, and just general quality of life, as always, will be those who can take the most creative path, the path that nobody else considered to take. So that leads to point number one is that you don't have ideas because there's too much interference. Now, it kind of pisses me off when people say I'm not a creative person. I used to say that myself because that statement that people don't actually take the time to think through before
3:54 stating it makes creativity seem like it's just talent or skill. And sure, it is those things in a way because that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about how to refine the skill of creativity by getting back to to your creative state. It's a skill to be able to sustain a creative state over an extended period of time. So if you aren't in that creative state or you aren't a creative person, so to say, then you just haven't practiced the skill of getting back to that state. Because at its core, creativity is just a natural way of being. It's a state of consciousness. It's a capacity that everyone has. But that capacity gets buried over time. And how does it get buried? It gets buried with anything
4:40 that narrows your mind because creativity is a very open, relaxed state where you see connections, patterns and possibilities that aren't immediately obvious. It's the act of noticing the unnoticed, which is not the same as what most think creativity is. And they think that it's creating something from nothing. That nothing is already there. It's already raw material you're creating with what's in reality, and that's a lot of stuff. Now, in my eyes, there are three narrowers of the mind. We'll call these the three narrowers of the mind. That one's difficult, but that's what we're calling it. The first is just conditioning. Conditioning is the enemy of of wonder. Because when you think of creativity, you think of children, you think of your younger self. Because children see the
5:28 world through such fresh eyes. They haven't received the negative feedback yet from their parents or teachers or peers. If a kid were to ask ChatGPT to build a teleportation device so that them and their friends can go to Pluto, nobody would bat an eye. They'd just be like, oh, you're so silly. But if you did that, they'd think you're an idiot. and they just tell you that's not how the world works. You need to be more mature. Now, I'm not saying that that's possible, but receiving negative feedback for thinking about imaginary things or creative things is the point here. And so the typical feedback that people receive is just guidance down the default path. And if you stray from the default path that was created during industrialization and past generations, then you're scolded. I mean, you go to school and you
6:16 receive grades so that you correct your behavior to fit into society more. Like the entire system is just meant to keep you on this one path, turning everyone into the same person. You must go to school. You must do your best to get a high paying job. You must praise this God. And if you disobey, you're going to hell. And if you don't get a high paying job, then you aren't respected by society. So by the time most people turn 20 years old, They're the exact same as everyone else, the same thoughts, the same beliefs, the same actions. They're just going down the life path that was assigned to them, not the one they chose or created. Creativity requires holding beliefs loosely and entertaining an idea without immediately rejecting or demonizing it as everyone does on social media because it drives
7:01 engagement and facilitates groupthink. Now, the second narrower of the mind is productivity as a priority, and that is a losing game. Because when the 9 to 5 job, the concept of the 9 to 5 job, became a thing just a few hundred years ago during industrialization, 9 to 5 jobs haven't been around that long before people directed their own work. There were artisans, farmers, apprentices, things of that nature. But when the 9 to 5 job became a thing, productivity became the highest value. It became productivity. God. And then everyone became a specialist in a factory that knew one piece of the puzzle. They knew how to place one piece into the puzzle because if they understood how to create the entire image themselves, they
7:47 would be an entrepreneur, not an employee. The trap that I fall into and you probably fall into and everyone falls into is that they just feel like they're falling behind. I mean, have you seen Claude on Twitter, Anthropic, just pushing out updates? It just feels like we're in this speed tunnel or something that feels like you just can't keep up. I mean, I'm building a software and we made the mistake of competing with AI companies in general, and we just feel like we constantly have to keep up. And so we're taking a step back and looking at what's going to be here no matter what. What are the human things that we need to help facilitate like creativity so that we aren't just constantly stuck in this hype cycle? And even if you're not building a company, you just feel like you're behind. And if
8:32 you're being real, you're never going to catch up. You're always going to feel that way. So what's the only way out? Creativity. And the thing with always feeling behind is that there's always this deadline. There's always some kind of deadline there. And if you know what a deadline does, it's very good for productivity. It's a productivity hack if you choose it, if you implement it yourself. But if there's just this invisible deadline in your life all the time, that just leads to a constantly stressed and narrowed mind. And that's just the thing. If your life isn't centered around efficiency and optimization in today's world, everyone just thinks you're useless because that's the normal way to live. In other words, if you aren't a robot, you're useless. But that's exactly what creativity demands. It demands useless wandering, true boredom, or creating space for the right
9:23 idea to emerge that will take you much further than the productivity bros stuck in the same race as everyone else. People who schedule every hour of their day. Don't stumble onto anything. Now, the third, narrower of the mind, is having infinite input with zero processing time. So I want you to think about fitness or health. It's kind of obvious that your metabolism can only go so fast. And if you're in niche circles on social media, there's always this group that's just trying to speed up their metabolism, speed up their metabolism. And I guess they get it to work to some extent, but there's a limit. Like you aren't just going to burn 10,000 calories a day without running or doing cardio for that amount of time. And then you're just going to drive yourself into the ground. Why would you even do that?
10:08 Nobody even wants to eat that much food. But it's obvious that you have a certain level of metabolism, how much you can burn in a day. And if you eat over that, if you overeat food, then you get fat. Of course, this is over an extended period of time. But most people don't realize that this applies to the mind as well. You have a set amount of information that you can digest and metabolize and actually use. And that's the problem. People feel like they always have to keep up. So they feel like if they don't listen to 10 podcasts a week, that they won't be able to keep up. they'll be useless. And now there's a time for consuming information or researching information, a curated set of information that helps spark more ideas. But if it isn't kept under tight control, then
10:54 you overeat, you over consume. Now, I write content. I write newsletters. I write tweets. That's like my foundation. I love writing. That's it. If I don't write in the morning, my day kind of sucks. And I know that I shouldn't bank everything on being able to write good ideas in the morning, but that's just kind of how it is. I really like writing. I love the process of capturing ideas, internalizing them, thinking about them, researching them, strengthening them, stress testing them, and then putting them out into the world to see if they help people and then getting feedback. So it refines it further. I mean, in today's world, like, isn't that just incredible that you can talk about your interests and other people can find it interesting. And then if you do the right things, you can turn that into a source of income. It's pretty freaking cool if you ask me. But with that, the way I used to
11:40 think is that I need to consume information in order to have ideas so that I can put out into the world. So if I struggle to write or to have ideas, I felt like I just wasn't consuming good information, which is kind of true. But creativity is rarely an input problem. I love the saying that you can only cook with what's in the fridge, but most people's fridges are just overflowing with like candy and ice cream and trash. Now, as an aside, I'm doing a writing challenge that probably starts in a little over one week by the time this video goes out. It's going to be called build a two hour content system in 14 days. It's 14 days long. You get 14 A.I. prompts, so one every day. And these aren't A.I. prompts that write posts for you or write newsletters for you. We're
12:26 not that desperate yet. They help refine your thinking. They help stress test ideas. They help you learn. They help you gain clarity on what you actually want to do, what you actually want to write about. They help you learn how to structure your ideas in a way that captures attention and becomes more valuable so that you don't just put out fortune cookie tweets and act like you're Marcus Aurelius when nobody's going to care about you because you're not Marcus Aurelius. The reason I'm running this is because I just need that intensive challenge. I'm going to be doing it with you. And it's meant to get your creative juices flowing. And you'll also understand why I'm creating this in the very last section of this video, because in order to be creative, you need something to create. So by the end of the challenge, you'll have some kind of brand and understanding of what your unique voice is, a batch of
13:12 non slop social posts and the first draft or even the first polished piece of a newsletter, article, sub stack, whatever. And since X articles are doing really well right now and articles, long form writing is a moat in today's world because I can't really replicate it. It's never been a better time to start writing, especially authentically. So I would join before the challenge starts using the link in the description, and I hope to see you in there now. Point number two, you're not bored. You're overstimulated. And now I say this because boredom is how you really tap into creativity in a creative state. It's how you get ideas to just pop into your head. But then people say that they're bored all the time and they're not creative. And that's the thing. Being chronically over-caffeinated and overstimulated is not boredom. You're so
14:00 fried mentally that you've gone all the way off the deep end. And then you associate that with boredom because things that would previously give you euphoria or enjoyment don't even impact you anymore. So you just, you're bored all the time because literally nothing can excite you. And so you quite literally can't go any further away from true boredom. You have to go back. And so true boredom, after you go through your withdrawal period, does a few things. First is that boredom is a gateway into novelty, novel ideas, new things. So many of you know Carl Jung, OG psychologist, but he harped on the importance of shadow work, which is confronting the uncomfortable aspects of ourselves that we typically avoid. And sitting with boredom is does just this. It
14:47 activates breakthrough insights when the rational mind stops trying to solve everything. And an important thing here, whether you're trying to be creative or just trying to get out of a rut, is that true boredom sets the scene for three flow triggers. And what I mean by that is you're more likely to enter this intense period of flow, like this monk mode, so to say, where you're just making progress nonstop. Because in order to do that, you do need a creative idea. You need this influx. You need good ideas, idea flow, because you need to, you need something to build. So those three flow triggers are one deep embodiment, which is just being present with discomfort to novelty because boredom forces you to seek new, healthier stimulation and three unpredictability, which is not knowing what will emerge from the void. So if
15:35 you don't know what you should do with your life, maybe you should do nothing. And I mean, actually nothing. not the default nothing that everyone else falls into. The second thing that true boredom helps facilitate is that the brain upregulates dopamine receptors when it's deprived. Hedonic adaptation is your psychological thermostat. No matter how high or low the temperature goes, it always tries to return to the set point. Now, this creates what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill. I'm sure you've heard of it before, where you're always running toward the next source of pleasure, but the satisfaction never lasts. Each experience becomes your new normal, requiring more intense stimulation to achieve the same emotional high. But when you deprive yourself of pleasure, the opposite happens. It's a hedonic reversal. So slowly, then rapidly, simple pleasures become
16:25 enjoyable again. And you've noticed this. I'm sure you've noticed it before. You just haven't registered it as something that you can actually do and control. And when this happens, it's like you notice the detail in the sky again. or when you have a good meal, you notice that you can like pick apart the flavors. You're not just pounding down food and like, this is so good. You have a well-cooked meal and you're like, oh, is that a hint of rosemary? You feel more sophisticated. In other words, life becomes electric as it should be. Now, the third thing that boredom helps facilitate is that you don't need motivation. You need clarity. So a quote from Naval to nail this nail in the coffin. All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly, in a room alone. So boredom creates space for sense-making, that is, processing and integrating experience. So if you're consuming too much information, you
17:16 just need to stop. Now on to the third section that you've been waiting for, which is the seven-day protocol to slow the fuck down for those who want to feel alive again. Because I'm sure you get it by now. Creativity is important, and you should probably prioritize it more. But how? How do you actually prioritize this thing? And it's the same way you get results in anything. We look at the problem, which is being mentally overweight or mentally bloated or overstimulated. And then we design a system that results in the alleviation of those things. And true change is behavior change. The only way to solve a problem for good is to change your own behavior. And so that sounds kind of obvious, but a lot of the times you don't notice your own problems. So that's why a video like this can be helpful because it can shine a light of awareness on something you were blind to before.
18:01 And sure, you can ask ChatGPT for this stuff, but you can't ask ChatGPT what you don't know to ask. Now, we don't need a full dopamine detox like I've talked about in a previous video, but we do need to commit. We need to commit for one week. So that's my challenge to you. And as I said, this is very simple. I'm going to go through it and you're going to be like, eh, yeah, nah. So people are going to think that they're above it, and that's an enemy of creativity. So no matter how simple you think this is, just fucking do it, because that's one reason you aren't very creative. So days one and two, tomorrow and the next day, you're going to reduce input fast. And this is going to be the equivalent of intermittent fasting for your mind. We're not doing a seven-day fast, but we're doing some kind of intermittent fasting, some kind of deprival. So the
18:47 first thing, impose strict time blocks on your workday. If you can, you want to limit work to four hours a day for this next week. And if you can't do that, that's fine. Just set an alarm that marks the end of your work. And when it goes off, you're done. You're not doing one last task. Your job is to not think about work or productivity when you're not working. You're practicing the skill of letting something feel unfinished without anxiety or without the stress of feeling like you're not keeping up because you're not doing anything when you're not at work anyways. Second thing is to cut out your primary input source. It's like the junk food in the cabinet at night. You want to pick the one source you reach for the most mindlessly and then eliminate that. So this could be the podcast
19:33 on your commute. Could be the scroll before bed or in the morning. Could also be the news in the morning if people still watch news nowadays and just replace it with nothing. Sit in silence. Listen for an idea. And the third thing as many could have guessed, is to go on a walk. Not because it will do anything magical for you just yet, but because ideas are caught in motion. So don't use any headphones and even leave your phone at home if you have to. This walk won't do much for you yet since it may be your first time, but just trust the process. So that's it. Day one and two, three simple changes. And psychologically, removing constant input allows your brain's default mode network, which is the brain's wandering system, to fire. This is the network responsible for random insight, self-reflection, and imagining the future. It cannot be active. while you're consuming. Now, days three and four, we're going
20:23 to digest the information that's already there and we're going to practice digesting information in general. So now that you've created space, it may feel like a flood of ideas are coming in, not just ideas, but information in general. It's going to feel kind of chaotic because your mind is opening up. It's starting to let things in that have just been there for a long time. You're going to notice unfinished thoughts. You might remember things. You're going to notice suppressed feelings or random connections or just ideas you forgot existed. So during this phase, what we're going to do as we're digesting this information is we're going to try to notice the deeper layers of reality. So the first thing is to read one chapter of a book slowly, like way too slowly, like you feel like you aren't doing anything because you aren't trying to finish
21:10 the book, right? You don't have the goal, the productive goal of finishing X amount of books in a year. You're not even trying to learn something. You're just trying to simply notice when a sentence makes you stop and think you're not reading past it. When it does, you just put the book down. You sit with why that line hit you. You think about it. And in my eyes, this is the best way to read in general. Like you don't have to finish books and you don't have to try to do it quickly because You're hoping that someone will care that you finished it quickly. Just get what you need and put the book down. That one idea will impact you more than the entire book if you actually think about it. So you're going to do that once a day. Do it in the morning. Just like start the day with something like that because then the rest of your day will be a bit more creative. Now if you want to stack this with
21:56 number two, here's what number two is. You can do this right after. And that's sit with nothing for 10 minutes. You can call it meditation, sure, but I don't want you to use a meditation app or any guided breathing technique. Just sit somewhere and let your mind do whatever it wants. It will be chaotic at first, but that's the digestion happening. Don't do anything with it. Just sit. And now the third thing, keep going on a walk. One walk a day or two or however many. Same rules. No headphones or any stimulation, but this time try to actually see things. You've passed by these things a hundred times, but have you noticed the detail in the sidewalk? Have you noticed the structure of the tree's branches or the vastness of the sky? And in terms of looking at the sky, I bet you didn't even look up the last walk. So what we're trying to do here is release the
22:42 grip that you have on your subconscious, which is the thing responsible for kind of processing background tasks and surfacing those aha moments. And the best way to do this is just stepping away from task-oriented work. And if those moments of insight or those aha moments allow you to do less but higher leveraged work that gets more results, then aren't you being more productive by not trying to be productive? Aren't you getting more done by not working? Now for day five and six, the goal or the intention is to just become interested in life again. Because something I think about often when people say, Oh, I just don't find anything interesting. Right. When I was a kid, a certain age, like people ask, oh, what are you interested in? I think,
23:29 well, I guess the gym, I guess this, I guess this. But no, not really anything. And now I can't help but wonder, like, haven't you looked around like I'm looking at a camera like it's so weird. I know it sounds stupid to think this way, but that's exactly what I talked about at the beginning of this thing. Allow yourself to romanticize things a bit like this camera. This piece of technology is just incredible. I don't know anything about it. I don't know how to recreate one. It it's a work of art. It's a work of genius and it's mass produced at scale. And it allows me to talk to you like asynchronously. And if I just let my mind continue to go down that rabbit hole and don't let any beliefs or like thinking this is just an immature line of thinking, if I don't let that stop me, then I get to some kind of idea. I start thinking
24:15 about how it was done. How can I replicate that? How can I learn about this thing? How can I apply something in this camera to my business? Or even that's like going down the productive line of thinking, but just let yourself go crazy. And that's the thing is like your mind and my mind at times is just so occupied with meaningless shit that we don't think anything is interesting when all of life is interesting. So by now... In this protocol, the mental fog in your mind should be lifting. You feel a bit sharper and the colors are a bit more vivid if you actually try to notice them. And small things feel meaningful again. You walk outside and you just finally, like, enjoy a breath of fresh air. When was the last time you enjoyed a breath of fresh air? So three things for these days, five and six. First, trust that ideas will come back. What I mean is
25:05 that you should resist the urge to take notes on everything. If it's important, it will find its way back to you. When I'm talking with my co-founders on this, when we're building a software in order to capture ideas or to have ideas, I often think about this when I jot down ideas. Like if they're more than seven days old, I'm not going to go back to them. Like I'm not going to remember them. And if it's important, it will find its way back to the top of my notes. And I used to worry about that. But now I'm just like, oh, whatever. Yeah, it'll come back. We're in a different state now where that idea doesn't matter anymore. So I want you to practice not writing something down. For now, I'm not saying that's a worthless activity, but just stay in the stream of consciousness for the seven day protocol. Don't reach for your own phone and just learn to trust your own mind. Now, the second thing is to have one real conversation. no
25:53 catching up for five minutes before your next meeting, no networking to form a business connection that feels fake. We're not trying to perform here. We're trying to remove the performative act. So you want to listen to other people's perspectives and attempt to be as present as possible. And your brain may just light up. And the last thing, extend the walk. And you might find that you don't want to stop. Now, day seven is to finally create a with what emerged. You're going to create something. And this is actually going to be a part of the next video, which is why writing an essay is such a powerful practice, why it's something that you should probably do, because an essay doesn't start with a conclusion. You figure out the conclusion as you write. It's a way of figuring out what you think about things. An article
26:38 On the other hand, for the sake of giving distinction, while these things can overlap in many ways, it starts with the topic. It starts with the conclusion. You map out the structure and you like fill it in and it's like informative. in a sense. And now why we waited for seven days to actually create something is because most people try to create from a depleted state, either a depleted state or just a overstimulated state. And then everything just feels forced. And I know this feeling well because I've written a newsletter, I've written articles, I've created content for the past five years consistently, long form content. I've done short form for longer than that. But this last month, like I talked about, it just felt forced. I didn't have anything to write about because I was in this overstimulated state and I had many times throughout my career, so to say, where I felt depleted, where I haven't had anything to
27:25 write, but I tried to force it out anyways because I wasn't in this creative way of living. So now that we've spent six days creating space, processing information and letting connections form, we can actually create from a place of abundance now. So two things here. First, make something with no plan. Write, draw, record a 20 minute voice note or cook without a recipe. The only rule is no rules, no strategic thinking or trying to find the perfect angle here. Just start a thread and follow it. Now, the second thing is don't share it. I know this is antithetical to everything that I preach, but we need to remember what it's like to not have silent opinions influencing your direction. Notice how it feels to have made something that's yours. And then after at least 24 hours, then you have my permission, not that
28:15 you need my permission to share it, post it somewhere. Be my guest. And if you enjoy that practice and you don't know what to post or share or how to do it, then again, I'd recommend joining the writing or content challenge that starts very soon. Link in the description for that. But it's to build a two hour content system in 14 days with 14 AI prompts to help you do that faster and more creatively and not just have it write everything for you. Now, what we're doing on that seventh day is we're separating generative thinking from evaluative thinking. So normally this happens in tandem, like when you're writing an article or a newsletter intentionally, you're trying to produce novel ideas and like criticize them and edit them at the same time. But when you do that, you suppress the generative thinking's potential. The
29:02 level of novel and creative ideas you can have is kind of suppressed by the part of your mind that is critiquing them and judging them and telling you that they're worthless. Now, the last point here, point number four, is that to be creative, You need something to create. So if we go way back in our lives, maybe I don't know how old you are, but do you remember spelling tests in school? Because I remember this vividly actually is when I would take a spelling test or prepare for one. I don't remember exactly which I would learn a new word. And once I learned the new word, I would just start hearing it everywhere. Like someone would say it as I'm passing them. I would overhear it in conversation. I would see it somewhere. written. I would see it on my computer when I played video games. And the same thing happens when I saw a new car. I'm like, oh,
29:48 that's a pretty nice car. What is that? And then I'd look it up and then I'd literally see the next day. I just see it everywhere. I'd see like 10 of them. And when I started a business or just made it a goal, an actual prioritized goal to start a business, then I would notice more business opportunities. And I didn't know these existed before because I was made to believe that getting a nine to five job was like my only option. So this thing, this phenomenon is the single most important catalyst for creativity. It's the reticular activating system in our brains. It's kind of like a homing mechanism, right? It's like a heat-seeking missile going towards the heat. And it's based on what's important to you. It's based on the goals, the unconscious and conscious goals that kind of occupy the frame of
30:34 in your mind. So if you're going on the default path your entire life, then you're really only going to notice things that help support you going down the default path. But if you change direction, you truly change direction, and it's not as simple as just saying, oh, I'm going to change direction, then you start to notice things that aid in you going that direction. Talked about this many times. Go and look at the most popular videos on my channel. People really resonate with that fact. Go watch any of my videos that have changed your life in the title and it will go over that. So you need a meaningful project to work on. You need a problem to solve. You need a business to build. You need to create an essay, a design, whatever. You're creating a lens by which you reprogram your mind. Because
31:19 if you are the culmination of the ideas you've accepted into your head and the ideas you accept are based on what you deem important, and the only things that were important to you were the school, job, and retirement that industrial culture permeated into your parents, teachers, and peers, then the primary way to pursue a rare life is to simply question and choose what is important to you. you have something important like a project a design a product even a conversation you overhear on the street becomes creative fuel you read a book and a sentence pops out to you but when another person reads it they don't get the same effect so without a project it's like your mind is a boat just drifting in water the seven day protocol we just did helped calm the storm that was previously there rocking your boat but even
32:04 if the sea is calm now and you don't have a direction you're just a boat floating just gonna stay there it's nice but at some point you're probably gonna want to do something so the question now is what makes a good frame what makes a project worth creating the first thing is that it has to be something unsolved for you it doesn't have to be completely original or novel but it must be a challenge there must be something you don't know the answer to yet which allows your subconscious to become a magnet for relevant and useful ideas second it has to matter to you Your pattern recognition is powered by emotional investment. So a project you chose because it looks good on paper, like a high-paying degree that you don't actually care about, won't activate the same radar as the one that genuinely keeps you
32:50 up at night. And third, it has to be shareable. In other words, it has to take some form. It has to exist in reality. It can be words, visuals, code, a conversation, a business, or a meal. You have to take the abstract thoughts in your head, ground them in reality, and test their worth. We aren't just imagining things we can't do here. And we are. We're letting our mind get very creative and be like a kid again who wants to build a teleportation device. But that's for thinking, right? That's for getting the ideas. When you actually put them in reality and test them, then yeah, it has to be useful. But don't let that stunt how creative you can think. And so that begs the final question. How do you find this meaningful project that you want to build? And honestly, it It just takes a bit of floundering, which is very unpleasant, but it does help if you flip
33:38 the problem on its head. You invert it. So what you do is you think deeply about all of the meaningless projects, tasks, and activities you currently tolerate to fill your time. Because if you aren't engaged in something meaningful, where do you think your life will end up? If you cultivate this deep awareness of what you don't want in life, that starts to create your frame. You start to see it everywhere. And once you see it, it's much easier to start moving in the opposite direction. Thank you for watching. Like, subscribe while you're here if the video actually impacted you. Links in the description for my newsletter that I send out weekly with very similar thoughts to this. So if you like this, it's definitely worth reading as well. So subscribe to that. And then just keep an eye out for the next video on why writing essays is very important and why you should probably do it. Thank you again
34:27 for watching. I'll see you in the next one.
