How to become someone who actually does sh*t

“People experience your behaviour, not your intentions.”

Image credit: midjourney

I used to be the worst procrastinator. It was embarrassing.

I’m not even sure I want to share this because it’ll take the shine off my BS public image. It may even make me look like an amateur or a wannabe. But a theme of this newsletter is I’m willing to look dumb for your benefit. So here goes…

I used to be full of excuses. I’d think with my d*ck. I never did anything. I had mediocre goals. I’d act short term. My life was directionless. I spent 5 years in call centers because I was full of fear.

In my head there was this version of me that could do better.

That version was technically a fantasy, but I was delusional enough to believe they would one day run my life. I spoke to them in third person too.

There came a point 5 years ago where I’d finally had enough. I was not tapping into my potential and got sick of being underpaid. A mentor I worked with screamed at me and basically told me I was useless.

I’m not alone.

Many people live like this. They have potential but they never actually do sh*t. They just indulge in fantasies and tell people “I have potential, dontcha know.”

The world doesn’t care about your potential.

You’re either already doing things and have proof of work, or you’re ignored. It’s ruthless but that’s how the world works and most people don’t understand this. And I’m not here to sugarcoat it or kiss your ass for empty likes.

I’m now someone who actually does sh*t. I can make a decision to drop $2M in 30 minutes which I could never do before. It’s inspired many people around me to start doing things themselves.

These ideas will help you actually get sh*t done instead of being a daydreamer.

Stay away from these events full of parasites

When I used to work in banking I got told to “network.”

So I’d go to startup events like a junkie. My event of choice was Startup Grind. I’d go there at 7PM with a pocket full of business cards and a $2 smile. I’d sit around and eat canapés with other wannabe entrepreneurs.

After a while I found these startup events repulsive.

They were full of people who had big ideas and talked a big game but never actually did anything. Most of the people were hoping investors would come to the event, so they could pitch their miserable eCommerce startup and get free money.

Many of the attendees accidentally thought I could invest in their startup because I worked in a bank. They were so uneducated they didn’t understand that banks only lend to businesses if they have security (they take your house if you don’t repay the debt, which means you need a house).

I attended these events for 5 years. I no longer go.

Events are full of idea guys and gals. They’re pretenders. They’re procrastinators. Most importantly, networking events are full of amateurs.

Real people who have real results don’t hang out at networking events.

That’s because doers have results and they’re too busy doing to go to a networking event and hand out business cards while jerking off over startup ideas. I retired from going to startup events a long time ago. It gives me time to actually do sh*t.

Networking events are full of parasites. They’re full of people who want to use and abuse you to help them progress their selfish intentions.

The best way to network is to actually build things, then you’ll attract other doers.

Overwhelm equals growth

The average person can’t do things because they’re too easily overwhelmed.

And when they experience overwhelm, they label it as burnout or a mid-life crisis and it goes from being mild to life-threatening.

Most overwhelm is good.

The reframe is that overwhelm leads to growth.

The opposite of overwhelm is comfort. That’s how most people drown and waste decades of their life. If you only do easy things or subconsciously choose paths that contain zero discomfort, you won’t do anything notable. It gets worse…

Too much comfort leads to boredom. It robs you of the joy of uncertainty. And so you die at 25 and get buried at 75. It’s a slow death. Overwhelm is actually better than an orga$m. It’s how you produce idea babies and do something that changes the world in some small way.

If you’re not overwhelmed at least once a week, something is likely wrong.

Reframe overwhelm as a positive opportunity, and you’ll finally start getting more things done. Society has got to stop calling everything burnout because it’s producing millions of useless, unproductive cowards that AI is primed to replace.

Master the incredible power of neuroplasticity

Self-improvement is bullsh*t. Neuroplasticity proves it.

Your brain doesn’t care about your goals, your intentions, or your Lambo vision board. It’s running one question on a loop: “What should I get better at?” And it answers based on what you actually do, not what you want. That’s neuroplasticity in action, wiring itself around your behavior whether you like it or not.

Stop wanting outcomes. Start repeating behaviors.

Want to be fit? Show your brain what a fit person does every day and neuroplasticity will rewire it around that, whether you “feel motivated” or not.

I did this with writing. I didn’t sit around dreaming about being an author — I wrote online every single day and published over 7,000 essays. That repetition is what got me a book deal with Penguin, not the goal.

Wanting isn’t the mechanism. Repeating is.

Once you understand neuroplasticity, you stop chasing outcomes and start engineering behavior — because that’s the only thing your brain is listening to.

Worship systems like they’re your Jesus

People who get sh*t done don’t guess or wing it.

They don’t go it alone with trial and error and end up frustrated and then quit. No. People who do sh*t rely on systems. They know that if they don’t systemize it, then the task isn’t repeatable, and they can’t outsource the work later on either.

Systems are now even more important because you can train AI to complete and run low-level systems for you that saves you a heap of time.

I had someone tell me yesterday on Threads “AI is evil and you shouldn’t endorse it. People still do things without AI dontcha know.”

No they don’t. AI is everywhere. These same people are already using AI and don’t even realize it because it’s in most software.

Don’t hate AI.

This is low IQ. Understand the pros and cons and use AI to build systems that make you the Jesus of your field.

Turn hard problems into easy problems in your head

Tim Ferriss is not my guru. But he says some clever stuff.

His mantra is “What would this look like if it were easy?” The tendency is to overthink hard problems or big tasks which prevents you from taking action.

I take hard problems and ask myself what the easiest version would be to solve it. That means stripping away all of Timmy-Time’s perfectionism and the 101 steps, and just starting with the bare minimum.

I recently wanted to change accountants. It’s a big project. I didn’t wanna do it. So I turned it into easy mode by only agreeing to have one meeting with one accountant.

This made it easier. The meeting went well. The next step was small. For 3 months I worked my way through each small step and eventually signed the contract. This is how you take giant projects and make them actionable.

Being too big picture is a nightmare that’ll give you herpes.

Stop waiting for the right time or for the chaos to pass

Mental model: it’s never the right time to do anything.

You will never feel ready. You will never have 100% certainty. There are zero guarantees in life other than you will die and pay taxes. You could be dead tomorrow so the only right time is today while your heart is still beating.

The reason you wait for the right time is because your brain creates these fantasies that one day in the future the chaos will calm down and you’ll be free to think clearly and make your move. This is a XXX p0rn movie.

Chaos never goes away.

People die. You get sick. Babies will be born. Marriages can end in divorce. Investments blow up. Houses get broken into. And clumsy people like me fall over in the gym and injure their leg because we think we’re Rocky Balboa.

The chaos never passes. The universe runs on entropy. Chaos is hard-wired into mother nature. We need chaos AND order for the world to function. So if you’re hoping for no chaos, you’re hoping to live a life no human ever experiences. Are you an alien from Mars here to give me an anal probe? (Joking not joking).

Learn to expect chaos. Learn to thrive in chaos. See chaos as an opportunity rather than a threat that’ll stab you in the heart and murder your firstborn baby.

Mental model: Do it today, never tomorrow.

If you’re not going to do it today, it’s a pure fantasy. Don’t indulge.

Chunk everything down into stupidly small steps

How a goal looks and feels in your head is enough to stop you doing sh*t.

The default is for your brain to overthink and exaggerate every problem you’re trying to solve in life to protect you from predators. The antidote is to chunk problems down. Break the goal down into small steps.

For example, I help people build digital businesses. That feels scary and big. I overcome the problem by turning a business into a set of small actions with KPIs. Post content, build email list, have conversations, make offers – stuff like that.

If you’re not already chunking down every action you need to take to achieve a goal, start doing it. It’ll help you make a lot more progress. I often ask “What’s the smallest step I could take right now?”

Not the biggest step. Not the highest ROI step. Not the smartest step. Not the step I most want to do. THE SMALLEST STEP.

This is how you get out of your own way.

Controversial truth: You’re the biggest roadblock to actually getting stuff done

Being obsessed with the external factors holds people back.

It’s not the market, the customer who didn’t sign the contract, the lowering of interest rates, or the market adoption that’s stopping you from making stuff happen.

No. 99.9% of the time you’re the reason sh*t isn’t being done.

You’re the biggest problem which is also a huge opportunity because you have complete control to fix that.

Most people don’t get stuff done because their psychology prevents them from thinking about problems, action, and ROI in the right way.

So they stand in their own way and overthink and overanalyze everything, then always come back to the same logical conclusion in their mind. But these logical conclusions are logical to them, and illogical to anyone other than them.

The smartest, most highly credentialed, most high IQ person doesn’t get sh*t done. Read that ten times.

So-called smart people are so smart they talk themselves out of every good opportunity because they don’t actually do sh*t to see if the opportunity is good. They assume they can vet an opportunity by thinking through it which you can’t.

As the meme goes, an idiot in motion will always go further than a genius at rest. Get in motion. Do sh*t. Any sh*t. Just don’t sit there in your head thinking you’re going to outsmart the power of momentum that comes with action.

Once you get moving you figure out what you need to do.

And whatever you start out thinking you need to do will almost certainly be wrong. So if you can’t predict, plan, or strategize what is going to happen, then what do ya do, man? You act.

You act ruthlessly with a level of execution that makes you look like a psycho. Then your friends say “You’ve changed, man” and you end up being best friends with Youtuber Mr Beast and celebrate with chocolate cake. You feel me?

Believe in yourself, Scotty

This is where I get a little biblical.

You gotta believe in yourself. I know…corny as hell. Here’s what I mean: if you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll never go all in. You’ll keep hedging your bets and making pissy moves that get you nowhere.

When you don’t believe in yourself you end up sabotaging yourself and your every move. This leads you to act like a coward which becomes a massive lack of focus.

Do the opposite. The cool kids now call this delusional optimism. It means act as if you will succeed and you’re highly likely to find a way to make it happen.

Understand the important role of dopamine

Dopamine is a form of her0in for most people.

They chase things that give them dopamine:

• Information collecting

• Making plans

• Going to events

• Buying equipment

• Designing logos

• Telling people about their goals

• Collecting credentials

• Doing podcast interviews

Even eating junk food produces dopamine. Watching Netflix does too. And your brain loves dopamine. It craves it. So when you do too many dopamine-producing activities, you give the brain a sugar high.

But then comes the slump. Then comes the dopamine addiction. And before you know it, you’re looking at your phone most of the day because it’s the biggest producer of dopamine in history.

If you overindulge in dopamine, it goes from being a subtle creator of human motivation to completely hijacking your brain’s reward system

You may as well be a crack addict. There’s not much difference.

The antidote is to swap out the artificial forms of dopamine and naturally produce it by doing sh*t, getting results, achieving goals, and doing real work.

Understand this one idea, and you’ll be ahead of 99% of people.

Closing Thought

Most people don’t do sh*t.

They get to the end of their lives and end up with regrets. They tell people about their potential rather than what they’ve done.

They indulge in mental gymnastics for decades trying to outsmart the laws of the universe, the laws of science and momentum, and the last few hundred years that shows action-takers get paid a lot more money than everyone else.

I won’t copy Nike and say “Just do it.” (Or will I?)

I’ll leave you with this. You already have the talent, enough information, enough expertise, enough time, and enough skills.

What you need to do is rewire your brain using neuroplasticity to become someone who behaves like a person that actually gets sh*t done. That’s it. Behavior leads to action. Action leads to results. Results create momentum. Momentum builds confidence. And quiet confidence makes you undeniable.

Light the self-improvement books on fire. You got this.

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P.S.

Top of the list of sh*t people never do is make $10,000 in a single month.

Is this possible?

Yes.

How?

Because making $10,000 in 30 days is not an effort problem but a business model problem.

If you’re ready to stop procrastinating and hit your first $10,000 month, head to this page and read carefully.