How to plan and structure your life to achieve literally anything.

A lottery ticket is tantalizing because it just seems so simple. Theoretically, there's a combination of numbers or scratches you could put on this ticket that would unlock literally billions of dollars. All you have to do is get the correct combo and bam! Just like that, your new life begins. Theoretically, the same exists for your life too. There's probably a simple sequence of moves you could do today. Say the right things, be in the right place at just the right time, with just the right people. And bam! All your dreams literally come true. The only problem is, you have no idea what these secret steps are, and considering the infinite realm of possibilities, it's likely you won't just stumble upon this without some sort of plan. But just for a second, imagine there's a little blue genie sitting in your ear, whispering to you, guiding you each second of your life, telling you the exact step-by-step sequence you would need to do to achieve literally anything. But that's basically what planning is, right? We envision a future, some better life for ourselves, and we strategize the moves needed to get there. Only problem is, most people suck at it, using systems that are either way too basic or way too rigid. For me, getting into Harvard for undergrad, Yale for medical school, and Harvard again for residency was no accident. It was strategically planned and mapped out, week after week, month after month. What I'm about to tell you is the closest thing you're going to get to having a little genie in your ear, and with this power, you too can achieve literally anything. To start, let's talk about a commonly talked about framework. It goes by many names. Only thing though, there's a huge problem with it. Let me explain. Anything you do in life falls into one of four quadrants. Quadrant number one is filled with stuff that's both important and urgent. Sounds great, right? Actually, this is not where you want to be. Let me explain. Most people start in quadrant one until tired, inevitably falling into quadrant number four, mindlessly attending to the non-urgent and non-important stuff. Like cleaning out your email inbox or doom-scrolling TikTok. You goof around here until you're ready to go back to quadrant number one. Because guilt? Or because you've now consumed the entire internet. Oh, did someone just text you? Is that a new email in your inbox? Hooray! You're saved. Can't help but want to look, right? In your moment of weakness, you make a detour into quadrant three, focusing on the not-important but apparently urgent things. And just like this, from quadrant one to four to three to one, you go, running around and around like a little hamster in a wheel of life, devoid of any growth. Reality is this. Quadrant one is just the bare minimum. Quadrant one is where you go put out fires. But if you're constantly holding the fire extinguisher, when do you actually hold the hammer? Furthermore, guess where the fires of quadrant one come from? They ignored dreams of quadrant two. They sprout out from the ground and come to haunt you like a psycho ex-girlfriend. You see examples of this all the time. Ignore that big project and reap the consequences when it's due. Ignore quality time with your friends and family, and they soon become distant strangers. Ignore the gym long enough, and you'll wake up one day with a heart attack. Quadrant two is the magical fabled land where dreams are built. You know, the stuff that's good for you, but because it's not urgent, you never make time for. Imagine yourself as a box factory. A day's worth of work is fifty boxes. But oop, tomorrow the boss says he needs one hundred boxes. Uh-oh. Sounds important and urgent, right? You don't want to get fired, so you grit your teeth and force it to happen. From simple to-dos, phone reminder systems, to micromanaged hour-by-hour planners, your mindset is always the same. Learn another productivity hack to squeeze more juice from each day. What if instead of being a better worker, you became a better factory? Instead of just putting out fires every day, you spend one day to make everything fireproof, and thus free up the rest of your life. This is what I call the factory boss vs. factory worker mentality. Don't get lost in the weeds. Strategize at a higher level. Live your life in quadrant two. Easier said than done, I know. Quadrant two tasks are always foggy and unclear. There's no satisfying finish, no urgency, and no end in sight. You can always read more, learn more, work out more, and without inspiration pushing you forward, your brain is hardwired to only do things with immediate rewards. Things that feel good. As chaotic as quadrant one is, it does indeed feel good. Checking off to-dos and putting out fires gives you an immediate sense of accomplishment. And thus, back to assembling the boxes, you go. This is the inherent problem. The four-quadrant model gives you the conceptual framework, but it's not practical. Instead of fighting your brain's need for feel-good productivity, build a system that capitalizes on it. This is the crux of technique number one. Creating the magical quadrant of 1.5, the secret quadrant of success. 1.5 is quadrant two's twin brother, except much sexier. Everything in it is systematically broken down into tasks that are not only actionable, practical, and urgent, but most importantly of all, carefully picked to give the highest yield for your time. To create quadrant 1.5, you first build the cloud. The cloud represents your ultimate dream. It hangs in the sky, thousands of feet in the air, all fluffy and nice. While you admire this cloud from afar, it taunts you with its tiny little raindrops. Theoretically, as long as you follow these drops all the way up, you'll reach it. Most people's plans are to do exactly this. Follow the drops from the ground up with checklists, to-dos, organizers, just good enough to collect the lowest-hanging fruit. The few droplets right above your head, you can touch and see. The problem is, the higher you go, the more difficult it becomes. How do you know if you're chasing the right cloud anymore? Instead, do a top-down approach. You start with the top of the cloud, where the raindrops are incredibly obvious and fat. You follow them down as they splinter, seeing exactly what actions should be prioritized. This is called building the blueprint. Let's say your dream cloud is medical school. Studying the cloud, you see it's actually four key parts. Grades, medical extracurriculars, a killer essay, and an amazing interview. The interview cloud further splinters into two key parts, delivery and substance. To deliver your message well, you need charisma, a confident voice, and of course, a sexy outfit. We could do an entire series on charisma alone, so I won't go any further here, but the point is to keep following these clouds all the way down until you're literally at the level of individual raindrops. Done right, you systematically understand everything you need to focus on or prioritize, expose all your blind spots and weaknesses, and gain the ability to course correct in real time. When I was trying to get into Harvard, I remember doing this exact analysis every week. How's my GPA cloud doing? My extracurricular cloud? My letters of recommendation cloud? And all its tiny mini clouds and raindrops underneath. I was a pilot, and these were the gauges and flight instruments in my cockpit. They would tell me if I was on track. Without it, I would have been flying blind. Once you have this blueprint mapped out, you begin to schedule your life around weekly goals. The crux of technique number two. All goals have a one-week deadline. This is how you build urgency to everything in Quadrant 1.5. One month is conceptually too long. Knowing you have an entire month to accomplish something kills any sense of urgency and is too late for feedback. Having only 12 times a year to course correct is not good enough. On the other hand, one day is too short. It creates anxiety and the desire to excessively micromanage. Hence, the weekly deadline for all assigned tasks. Just long enough for meaningful work, but flexible enough for you to still handle the rest of your life. For example, let's say you have a medical interview in one month. How would the weekly goal system work? First week. Three goals. It doesn't matter when you do it, how you do it, you just have to do it. And oh yeah, you only again have one week. First goal is to watch five videos on Charisma. Second goal is to analyze five actors being interviewed. Pretend they are your clients and you are their public relations manager. Pretend they are paying you a crap ton of money for good feedback. So make sure you know your stuff. Third goal is to interview yourself in front of a mirror. After an hour of this, do it again. But this time, record it, watch it, and give yourself feedback. Second week, you have two goals. First is to come up with a list of life stories and experiences you can sprinkle into your interviews to show why you are awesome. You want these stories to be interesting so they for sure will remember you. Second goal is to prepare for gotcha questions. Some smartass is definitely going to ask you about your top three weaknesses, what you regret most, maybe what your spirit vegetable is, or some stupid thing like that. You want to have thought about some of these beforehand so you don't freeze in the moment. Week three is mock interview time. Schedule ten of them with people that you trust and make it as difficult as possible. Give them a list of hardball questions and ask them for real feedback. Week four, figure out as much stuff about the interview in advance. Where it is. Who it is. What makes them tick. Read their articles. Understand their field of interest. If their hobby is rescuing abandoned puppies, go rescue an abandoned puppy so you can relate. If you've noticed, the mini goals for each week are all actionable steps. These weekly goals are never outcome based like get 100 new subscribers or get an A on Now that each week's plan is set, how do you decide what to do each day? Technique number three, the inverted pyramid method. I've talked about this before in a previous video. Essentially, always start your day with the most important thing. Spend the most amount of time on this most important thing and less and less time on each subsequent task. When done well, this entire system works on autopilot. Each week's goals keeps you flowing forward while the inverted pyramid allows you to flexibly schedule the day to day in service of these goals. The beauty about this system is that it self-corrects. If I haven't made much progress on a goal, it becomes that much more urgent as the week draws to a close. Elegantly, this urgency gets crystallized within the inverted pyramid too. The more urgent a task, the more likely it is to occupy the top tier of importance for the day. This flexibility is the core feature of this system. No more micromanaging yourself with fancy calendars or minor systems or detailed to-dos. Focus on the cloud. Live in quadrant 1.5 and set your weekly goals in advance. Wake up each day and spend the majority of your time doing your highest yield, most important activity. When done right, you should have a clear sense of what to focus on for any given day. And that's it. Rinse and repeat until success. I hope this video was useful. If so, please subscribe, comment, and then go tell your friends, your grandma, and your pet hamster. Also, I'm doing an experiment. It is much faster for me to write my thoughts than it is to make videos. And thus, I have a whole backlog of material waiting to get published. If you want to get early access to this and more, then please go to my substack and consider becoming a paid member to support this endeavor. Link in the description. Alright. Smell ya later. And once again, shout out to keepdow8327. Thank you so much for your super thanks. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thanks again, man.