One Year of Obsession Can Change Your Life Forever
Here's what a wild year of obsession looks like
Obsession is a big idea.
Most people go through life in a pajama suit holding a banana, hoping someone will give them permission with a lukewarm, no-urgency, non-action plan.
Obsession blows up the normal way of life. Once you experience its power it makes you as high as a kite. The meaning of life changes. Your life operating system gets chopped into tiny pieces with a samurai sword.
All it takes is one year of obsession to become an extraordinary human. Here’s how.
Go beyond what feels normal
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. — T. S. Eliot
Obsession isn’t normal and that’s the whole point.
Being normal sucks. You get paid the worst. You work some boring cubicle job with a bunch of other lifeless zombies who are more lost than you. You wait to be chosen and believe in false gods that rob you while you sleep.
Obsession is to risk going too far.
It’s to see how far you can go before things break. And what you realize after a year of obsession is the point at which things break is either non-existent or miles beyond what you thought.
A year of obsession is where undiscovered potential lies.
Obsession isn’t cookie-cutter habits
F*ck James Clear and Atomic Habits.
Consistency doesn’t lead to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You’ve been lied to. Average people are consistent with their habits too. Yet they never achieve much in life because they do the same boring habits repeatedly and expect difference results over time. This is also the definition of insanity.
“Just be consistent” drives me nuts.
I wanna jump off the Golden Gate Bridge when I hear it. I consistently do the dishes every night. Yet my housework skills are still worse than a newborn baby.
Habits built on hope aren’t much better. Habits built with systems are easier to maintain, iterate, and even share. The result is more predictable. It forces you to track what works and what doesn’t. You have life KPIs (crucial).
10,000 hours + 10,000 iterations + Systems = ObsessionYou have to actually change. You have to experiment and break yourself to find the next level of the game. Playing the same game through repetition is stupidity.
Obsession starts with Alice and Wonderland
Curiosity -> Interest -> Passion -> Obsession
Curiosity -> Obsession
If you don’t already have an obsession then it starts with curiosity.
It’s where you become Alice in Wonderland and allow yourself to go down deep rabbit holes. You get lost. You follow your intuition and gut instincts. At some point you choose a rabbit hole you don’t want to ever come out of.
The rabbit hole morphs into your obsession.
Obsession isn’t just showing up. It’s doing nothing else.
“Just show up.” Yuck.
More bad advice. In the world of obsession, you don’t show up or manage a portfolio of “interests.” Nope.
Obsession is doing nothing else. Your life is built on one thing. It’s the only thing. So all your focus and energy go into it, which is why the power you get is enormous. And it’s why the intensity of success from obsession is bigger than a nuclear bomb.
You stop hedging your bets like a dummy and go all in.
My obsession is writing. I don’t do anything else. I build my cult. My mission is to help 100,000 people write online. Simple. Nothing outside of that goal ever makes it into my calendar.
Obsession doesn’t have to-do lists, priorities, or stretch goals. Obsession is the goal. Obsession is your calendar.
Obsession is unhealthy. It’s what psychopaths do.
My critics say obsession is unhealthy.
Well, bend me over and call me Larry, but if chasing your obsession and being ridiculously creative is unhealthy, then sign me up. Give me the obsession heroin into my right arm, thanks.
Obsession is psychopathic. That’s only the case, though, because mediocrity is the default that runs the world. If more people were obsessed it wouldn’t be so crazy.
Being unhealthy is what made me obsessed. In 2015 a near-miss with cancer forced me to come alive. You could call it cancer motivation.
I realized I statistically had 4000 weeks to live. The only problem is if a curveball hits me in the face, like cancer, then an already short life is even shorter.
So I woke up. I got obsessed. I got a level of urgency that’d rip most people’s faces off.
I got deals done in banking that took others 5 years. I took 10-year digital transformation strategies and spat, pissed, and stomped all over them. Some people didn’t like it. But many people loved the traction it created.
When I tell these cancer motivation stories people ignore them. Why? They think they’re too good for cancer. They think cancer is an outlier so it doesn’t motivate them.
Until you meet someone like me.
Then you realize none of us are too good for a wooden casket and an early grave. Even you, dear reader. Wake up to obsession.
Be obsessed or be obsolete
What’s the alternative to obsession?
Well, how about becoming obsolete. The 9-5 economy is dying. People’s trust in governments and centralized corporations is at an all-time low.
AI is redefining what human intelligence can do. That means the information age is likely dead and being replaced with the over-information age. That leads to endless distractions and phone notifications that’ll ping your brain to death.
The world is so noisy it’s like having a Mack Truck driving your hallway at home 24/7.
Obsession is the solution. It’s extreme focus applied to one thing. It forces you to block out the noise, and become a person of incredible depth and value.
If you become distracted you become obsolete. If you become obsessed you become unstoppable. Choose wisely.
Obsession is a war fought in your mind
Everyone freaking teaches how-tos and strategies. I hate it.
To become obsessed and reach unbelievable levels of success, it has nothing to do with information or gurus. Every battle in life is fought in the mind. The skill you want to develop is your mindset.
Because…
If you think like sh*t you get, well, sh*t results.
I got a mindset transfusion from Tony Robbins. I downloaded his programming and it’s never left me. There’s no problem or challenge I can’t solve. Nothing will defeat me. I am fearless in every sense of the word. Except I’m not special (bizarrely).
What you want is a limitless mindset. Spend every second you can figuring out a path to get one. Once you have it the world is in the palm of your hand.
It’s crazy what 10x the effort can do to your life
Obsession is a 10x way of life.
Most people don’t put in enough effort, so they never pass the threshold of participation that leads to obsession. Then they scratch their head and feel confused.
“It doesn’t work.”
Everything works if you put in enough effort. But no one tells us how much effort. So we guess. Then a dopamine distraction enters our field of vision and we run for it. In the process, we piss away the effort we should have channeled towards our obsession.
I have a low IQ. So I can’t win on memorization or tests.
The current woke culture war lets you win based on whether you’re approved as a minority (instead of being merit-based).
I can’t win based on that either because I’m a white guy from a wealthy Western country. And I’m also highly successful financially (not to brag) so the woke culture war screws me in the butt on that front, too.
To top it off, I hate culture wars and the black and white “Ya woke or not, mate.” I’m neither. The movement is confusing so I stay out of it.
The only way I can win in life is by putting in an unreasonable amount of effort. That’s what I’ve always done with writing. I just write more than seems humanly possible. And I care about the people in my movement more than anyone else.
A reader emailed me today. I replied. They couldn’t believe it. The thing is, when you give a damn, you do stuff that doesn’t scale.
Obsessed people put in 10x the effort.
Most people are obsessed… just with the wrong BS things
Obsession isn’t a magic fairy tale for a small few. 99% of people already have an obsession. The challenge is it’s the wrong one.
They’re obsessed (accidentally) with housework.
They’re obsessed with saying yes to every stupid request in their inbox.
They’re obsessed with wars in Europe that have nothing to do with them.
They’re obsessed with a job that’ll happily lay them off in a tiny downturn.
They’re obsessed with keeping their boss happy and ticking the KPI boxes.
They’re obsessed with an election that’ll make no difference to their lifestyle.
They’re obsessed with being a consumer and falling for the lie of coupons, discounts, and useless loyalty points that keep people poor.
They’re obsessed with pleasing everyone they encounter.
Doing a year of obsession is about trading in bad obsessions for one great one.
Life is so much simpler when you stop explaining yourself to people and just do what works for you. – Ankur Warikoo
Being obsessed puts you in a flow state
The most powerful state in the world.
When I discovered flow everything changed. It’s that feeling where the perception of time disappears. Where 8 hours feels like 10 minutes. It’s when you enter a distraction free zone that Olympians obsess over.
Flow states are the best form of productivity, and obsession enables them.
The reason the average life sucks is because it’s spent at a job doing boring repetitive tasks that lack any creativity. So the outcome is boredom, not your life’s art.
Adam Chalmers explains it like this:
My theory: burnout has nothing to do with how many hours or how hard you work.
It's caused by working for people you don't like, towards goals you don't believe in, in systems that grant you no agency.
Because an obsession feels effortless to work on, you just sit down and get to work. You start with one small task, and before you know it, you’re lighting the world on fire.
Go where there’s flow.
Burn the bridges and piss all over your Plan Bs
Obsession is when you go all in.
To remove the distractions and reach peak obsession, there comes a point where you have to burn all your bridges and Plan Bs.
I did this in 2021. I left banking. I deleted most of my phone contacts. And I started trashing corporate life on LinkedIn. There’s no way any bank would be dumb enough to hire me again. My resume now has a 3 year, unexplainable career gap.
Recently, as an experiment, I rang a few old banking contacts. None of them answered my calls. I followed up. I sent text messages. Nothing. No former banking contact will ever talk to me again.
What does that mean? I must chase my writing obsession. My old life is dead.
Make it so you can’t go back to your old self.
If they feel like sacrifices, you're probably not doing the thing you're meant to do.
– Kobe Bryant
Obsessed people have zero competition
Saturated markets and high competition destroys a lot of potential dreams.
The thing about obsession is it’s an infinite game. You think in decades. You don’t need sugar high instant gratification. You build life-long goals. And you just don’t stop no matter what.
What I’ve found in the writing world is this murders 99.9% of your competition. The majority can barely do one thing for 30 days, let alone 10 years. Obsession outlives goals, plans, hopes, and dreams.
Obsession has a shelf life of a lifetime. Why the hell would you live any other way?
Obsession isn’t hustle culture. It’s a cult of creativity.
Uninformed people mistake obsession for hustle culture.
But obsession has nothing to do with overworking or grinding it out. Obsession is built on a foundation of creativity. You make art. You draw. You write. You build stuff. You dance. You make music. You build a business, the ultimate creativity project.
The number of hours you work isn’t a measurable metric. It’s the impact you have on yourself and those who are part of what you do.
If you aren't obsessed, why should anyone give a f*ck?
I have a high close rate for anything I sell.
Why? Because people can instantly see that I’m obsessed with what I do. And I’m relentless at onboarding them into my worldview, so they can live a limitless life inside the permissionless economy. They can feel that I want them, too, to be fearless.
If no one is paying attention to whatever it is you wanna build, ask yourself: If you aren't obsessed, why should anyone give a f*ck?
It starts with you. Do you care enough?
Here’s what a wild year of obsession looks like
Now you know why obsession is a huge personal advantage, it’s a must to implement this idea. The best way is with a year of obsession. Here’s how.
Wake up earlier than everyone else
Eat the same boring meal every day
Do the bare minimum hours at a job
Wear the same boring outfit every day
Work on a project that feels effortless
Get into daily flow states
Post daily on social media
Build something bigger than you
Be part of a group of other obsessed people
Do more hours on your project than seems normal
No drinking, smoking, or going to nightclubs/pubs
Take daily walks to synthesize everything attached to your obsession
Take what feels effortless to you to the extreme
Mute and block critics
Turn off news/politics
Cancel Netflix
Do this for a year. Watch it change your life.
Let me know in the comments section if you think obsession is a good idea and why.
P.S. If you read this, you're probably at least a little obsessed with my writing.
So my question:
Are YOU writing consistently online?
If not, what's stopping you?
"Every battle in life is fought in the mind."
I need to remember the quote. Love your posts on obsession, Tim.
Tim, Tim, Tim. You had me until the ‘woke’ shit. It just revealed way too much about your actual relationship to others. I’ve not yet met someone with much emotional intelligence or empathy who would use that word.
Going down that rabbit hole of condemning people for caring about others is … disgusting? You should know better if you want to help 100,000 people. By calling others woke, you’ve dog whistled the wrong audience. You’ve joined a movement of ‘poor white men’ who think they are disadvantaged because of it.
Here’s another poor white man who doesn’t agree. You and I are not disadvantaged by that. We can’t get ahead because there’s no one to get ahead of. We’re still in the lead.
I too am obsessed. I’ve been on your list until recently, more or less seeing your point. But there’s a lot of stuff to read man, and I’m really not inclined to tolerate vapid advice given by someone without empathy. Oh, you do love other people? Step up and prove it. Knock it off with this anti-woke crap and wake the fuck up.
Yours truly