Choose Your Hard: Practical Principles for the New Year

Midjourney prompt: “A Stoic Zaddy embodying practical principles during the meta-crisis in 2024.”

I want this Substack to maintain a balance between dropping esoteric theoretical wisdom bombs and offering straight-shooting practical guidance. This post will focus on the latter, presenting three practical principles I will be leaning into for 2024, which my dear readers may find beneficial to adopt as well:

Principle #1: Choose Your Hard

“Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard. Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard. Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard. Pick wisely.” - Unknown

I just read solopreneur Justin Welsh’s newsletter this morning, where he argues that everything is hard, and some hard things are more draining, and others are more nourishing, so we should choose our hard wisely. This advice is helpful, especially since "choosing by not choosing" will have hard consequences.

My foci for 2024 will not be resolving the "meta-crisis" or chasing after the "main character" high of winning in the attention economy, but I will be doing things bound to be hard for me. Personally, I'll be fertility-maxxing; professionally, I will focus on less foolishly growing this Substack and my philosophy practice while engaging in a "small bet" through launching a philosophical-themed coffee product. It's all so simple on paper, but they need my concentration, my sacrifice, and the ability to say "no" more than I say "yes."

Complementary advice: “What would this look like if it were easy?"

This question from Tim Ferriss provides a valuable complement to the "life is hard" ethos. While steeling oneself toward hard pursuits is wise, sometimes we make things harder than they need to be, chasing hard for its own sake, overlooking the potential for simpler and more clever paths that also happen to be wiser. When we choose goals, we often adopt "best practice" paths unthinkingly, and these common paths lead to common results. 

Principle #2: No More Zero Days 

Rule numero uno - There are no more zero days. What's a zero day? A zero day is when you don't do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on. No more zeros. - ryans01

I am a disciple of Reddit legend "ryans01" no more zeros advice, especially when it comes to my "ecology of practices" (EOP) - all the practices I am consciously committing for the day, aka journalling, weight lifting, cold showers, etc. 

I generally recommend two approaches for one's EOP:

Sebastian Marshall

’s "70% rule" or ryans01's "no more zero days." The former states that one should be satisfied with a 70% success rate because if one achieves 100% of their aims consistently, they are probably not challenging themselves enough. The latter aims for any accomplishment, arguing that allowing for days with no wins can lead to creeping laziness.

When embarking on an experimental EOP, the 70% rule is appropriate. However, committing to avoiding zero days should be the default. Maintaining a consistent track record of zero-free days builds my self-efficacy in quiet yet resilient ways.

Complementary advice: PACT Goals 

"SMART Goals" are painfully overrated. Having goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely presumably helps one meet reality. However, in our ever-complexifying world, attempting to shoehorn SMART goals into our lives is a dumb thing to do. As the paper "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting" finds, the negative side-effects of goal setting are "a narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation."

I contemplated establishing a SMART Goal for this Substack, such as "attain 10k subscribers by 2024," but such an objective felt creatively stifling. It introduced an anxiety-driven urgency that would likely have resulted in me writing inauthentic entries. Instead, I adopted a "PACT Goal," which stands for purposeful, actionable, continuous, and trackable. An example of a PACT goal I had for this Substack was: "For three months, write three entries per week," which I accomplished in June-August. 

Having the creative constraint of a PACT goal led to a degree of creativity that happily surprised me, resulting in 39 entries, including the "terrible communities" series. Furthermore, PACT Goals align remarkably well with the "no more zero day" approach, offering a practical way to field-test a potential life practice within one's EOP in a time-bounded way. 

Principle #3: Live In Day-Tight Compartments

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly ahead.” – Thomas Carlyle

During my tenure as a corporate trainer for Dale Carnegie training before the COVID pandemic, I was impressed by the expressed depth of Carnegie's life advice. One of his principles in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is to live in "day-tight compartments," which means focusing on the activities that arise in the temporal unit of the day and nothing else. 

Often, our worries arise from factors that not only lie beyond our control but also extend beyond what we can realistically accomplish in a day. These worries induce an anxious body that diverts our focus from taking the wisely practical actions within our reach today. When we allow future worries to put us out of daily integrity, our self-efficacy corrodes, and we are forced to believe in the following: if we cannot do what we say within a day, we cannot do what we say within a week, month, quarter, or year. 

Accomplishing personal integrity daily grants us greater agency to achieve longer-term goals.

Complementary advice: 12-week Year

The second best temporal unit to focus on is the quarter. The book The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months concurs with this. Upon completing this book, I ceased setting annual objectives and shifted my primary focus to quarterly ones, whether they adhere to the SMART or PACT framework. 

In these meta-crisis days, with rapid technological change, experimentation is needed, and goals, assuming they are even needed, need to be nimble. The one-two-punch approach of day-tight compartments and 12-week years allows for the agility required to navigate the present complexity of our lives. 

“Those who love wisdom must investigate many things.” - Heraclitus

I love collecting wise principles. Typically, I turn to fringe online thinkers or theoretical philosophers, whether they reside within or outside academic circles, for such wisdom. Ultimately, the source of wisdom doesn't concern me; it can come from anonymous quotes, Reddit forums, or even corny-looking self-help authors from the first half of the 20th century.

The crucial aspect is to discover a life principle that you sense is wise, whether you find it or create it. Once discovered, the aim is to embody it and have the courage to see where it takes your body.

For the past few years, I have been hosting an annual audit on the morning of New Year's Eve. I will continue the tradition this year but with some philosophical innovations. This year's audit will span a little over three hours, divided into three distinct parts: yearly recap, minimum viable philosophy, and the three V’s: virtues, vibes, and ventures.

Each of these exercises will be approximately 60 minutes in duration and will be conducted in a manner similar to Collective Journaling, meaning we will come together in a Zoom room and write in silence as a group. After each exercise, there will be optional breakout rooms for further discussion, as well as social rooms for mingling. 

December 31st @ 8 AM Eastern. Less Foolish paid subscribers can RSVP behind the paywall.