How to make life complicated and unsustainable?
Life is tough unless you work hard to process it towards an easy path.
Letter 31
‘Life is hard unless you process it towards an easy path.” - I wrote in my journal on 23rd August 2022 while writing the morning pages.
Introduction
‘Is life hard or easy?’
I used to ponder upon this question very often back two to three years ago.
It is rather difficult to answer but very easy for one who has designed their life systematically and built a proper system or to be exact disciplined around most areas of their life.
But lately, life has revealed to me, and most authors of nonfiction books tend to help readers understand, that it unfolds in a certain way.
If you use your resources and stay focused on a clear and concrete objective with iteration, it will reward you, provided you perform consistently.
But if you continue to waste your free and most useful resources, you will be punished sooner or later.
[Resources means your free time, high energy, your attention, and circle of competence ]
It doesn’t matter whether one is in 2012 or 2025; one’s primordial fuel [time] is always limited. The earlier one acknowledges this, the better one can manage one's plans.
The surest way to make life hard and unsustainable is to avoid clarity.
Life is hard. Get used to it. - Dan Koe
Nobody wants or expects to deteriorate their rich lives but we get diminished by our surroundings, limiting beliefs, and engaging in immediate urgencies in our limited times.
A few successes in making my life hard might come down to these -
Waste your free time doing normal shallow activities.
Care about what other people are engaged in.
Play the status game.
Grouping with people to talk about other parts of the world has zero significance to your life.
Mind-talking lies by comforting yourself and engaging in full confidence in your wrong beliefs.
keeping your ultimate road in disguise.
The solution
In one sentence - fill your five buckets.
‘You cannot pour from an empty bucket.’ - a famous saying from world-renowned guru and spiritual leader Radhanath Swami.
I came across the subtle solution from the opening chapter of the book ‘The Dairy of a CEO’ by Steven Bartlett, which I recently read in January 2025.
what you know [your knowledge]
what you can do [your skills]
who you know [your network]
what you have [your resources]
what the world thinks of you [your reputation]
At the start of a career, one should focus on filling one's buckets because someone with full buckets can positively change his world in any way he or she desires.
Knowledge → Skills → Network → Resources → Reputation
Interestingly, these five buckets are interconnected, filling one helps to fill another - and they are generally filled in order from left to right.
We usally start our professional life aquiring knowledge (school, univeersity, etc), and when this knowledge is applied, we call it skill. When you have knowledge and skills you become professionally valuable to others and your network grows. consequently, when you have knowledge, skill and a network, your access to resources expands, and once you have knowledge, skills, a valuable network and resources, you will undoubtly earn a reputation.
With these five buckets and their interconnected relationship in mind, it is clear that an investment in the first bucket is the highest-yielding investment you can make. Because when knowledge is applied (skill), it cascades to fill up the following buckets.
Further, the force that clouds our ability to act upon this logic is usually ego. Our ego has an incredible ability to persuade us to skip the first two buckets and go all in for the job.
This happens quite often and taking on a job is the only way, and which is almost acceptable.
But in this AI-powered digital world, is working hours to get paid the right way to uncomplicate life and give yourself a pat for working hard?
Perhaps that’s the cue for another substack.Book - I am currently reading ‘Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want’ by Dr Grace Lordan.
Podcast - watching James clear on the ‘Behind The Brand’ podcast. An incredible simple human being.