Andreian Law: You are forbidden from putting burdens on tomorrow that you can address today.
The burden placed on tomorrow–“I’ll do it tomorrow“–is too much for any man to handle.
The Most uncomfortable–meaning important and life-changing–tasks get postponed until tomorrow.
A hero does it today.
Responsibility defines character. Jordan Peterson often says, it’s responsibility that makes life worth living. And, responsibility is what creates purpose in one’s life.
A life without purpose is empty, unsatisfying, and can lead to severe mental health problems. Even suicide. Think of the rich kid who doesn’t have to work for anything, so nothing has value.
Empty.
Humanity needs struggle to thrive. Rewards convince us to struggle, but it’s our struggles that give us purpose.
The Burden of Tomorrow
The future self crumbles underneath burdens thrown forward into time by the present self, like building a castle on a foundation made of mud.
You can have all the aspirations in the world waiting until for tomorrow. But nothing will ever happen, and the castle built on mud will sink away until forgotten. The castle in this metaphor represents a lofty, purpose-defining goal.
You don’t have to give up. But, you need to do what you want to do tomorrow, today.
An individual without discipline, recites rationalizing statements to escape responsibility.
- “I’ll do it once I’m done with school.”
- “I’ll lose weight after I get back from vacation. I’m not going to go on a diet in Las Vegas, it’s not realistic.”
- “Once I have a child I’ll start my business. I just need the motivation to do it and a mouth to feed is motivational.”
- ‘Once the kids are out of the house I’ll start writing a novel. I want to make sure they’re taking care of first.”
- “I’m fifty years old, and I have high blood pressure. My doctor says I need to minimize stress, there’s no way I’m writing a book until this I handle it.”
- “I’m old and I’m too tired to write.”
Dead.
The castle sinks below the mud, the goal is lost and it’s never coming back.
An important goal comes with distractions waiting to pull you off the path. The path is freedom and so is discipline. Discipline equals freedom.
Distractions will attack whenever you work on important work. Important work is hard and distractions are always easier. No one pivots to doing harder work than their important work.
Any thought or action that dumps responsibility on tomorrow is a lazy excuse; a spy for resistance, who wants nothing more than to coddle you in a gravity blanket while feeding you re-runs of the office.
Whenever you rationalize doing ‘it‘ tomorrow, you failed. You let yourself down, you let the Muse down, you let your ancestors down but worst of all, you let the kids down.
There is no tomorrow.
Stop timelining your responsibility like a cheap fortune teller at a swamp carnival who says: “your dreams will come true in five years,” for five dollars.
There is no such thing as ‘personal credit‘. If you worked hard yesterday, you don’t get the day off. You work hard today, too. You work hard every day.
A meaningful life doesn’t come with the weekends off. You’re full time in this mother-fucker. Get after it.
Nobody cares about how hard you work. The world cares about what you contribute.
You cannot expect to become the greatest version of yourself without starting now.
There is now. There are winners who do what they need to do, and there are losers who will do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
You don’t have any tomorrows. You have now.
The faux entrepreneur who hides shame behind an empty title puts their business off for tomorrow. A ‘meme page’ on Instagram is not a business and you are not an entrepreneur.
There’s no time to start tomorrow. You’re dead.
Greatness requires dedication to the way. The way is improving every day, even if it’s a sliver of improvement, like increasing the number of pull-ups you can do by one.
Musashi, the greatest samurai to ever live, trained daily. Legends don’t take days off. Musashi’s 21 rules for life detail how to follow the path.
Start now.
Leisure is a lure. Responsibility is the right course of action for any Andreian, for anyone who wants to accomplish a dream rather than work for someone to accomplish their dream.
Their dream. Not yours. If that doesn’t hurt your heart, don’t read the rest of this. You won’t like it.
Habits today make a hero tomorrow
There is no time to do it tomorrow. You have time right now. Everyone has the same amount of time. It’s how individuals use their time that determines their outcomes.
If you do what your present-self requires you will get everything you want. The best part is: work compounds like investing in ETF’s in the stock market.
Haven’t invested yet? Have a free stock, courtesy of Robinhood.
Musashi believed the way exists in all disciplines. And, once you understand the way, you understand the way in all things. If you master a mental pursuit like mathematics or creative writing, you’ll understand how to master another skill–even if your new skill pursuit has nothing in common with your mastered skill. Mastery doesn’t change and neither does the way.
Many have written books about Musashi and these are the best.
Mastery takes a long time so people quit. It’s unfortunate. The internet connects the world but disconnects focus. Without focus, there is no mastery.
Robert Greene distilled mastery into a series of parables anyone can understand in his book on mastery.
Mastery doesn’t provide easy feedback
A warrior on the path to mastery is blind for most of his journey; a warrior needs faith. Faith, that he’ll become a master, and faith to continue through the worst battles against the self and the worst defeats of confidence.
If you want it easy, get a job. Understand that a job offers no control over your future. You are a tool regardless of how… inclusive you feel your employer is. If your employer can’t make money off you, you’re no longer needed. And you’re replaced.
Your job will pay you every two weeks until you die or you’re fired. The path to master may not pay you for years. But, masters make all the money and no one gets rich as an employee.
If you do what the present-self requires you’ll become the greatest version of yourself in no time. Wasted talent manifests as depression. Depressed? You’re not living up to your potential. If everything was going right in your life would you be depressed?
We don’t have an epidemic of mental illness, but a graveyard of dead dreams keeping the could-of-been awake at night.
Wake up at 5 am and figure out what actions will make you feel good about yourself.
Start by making your bed and brushing your teeth.
Your hero should be you a month from now
Your hero shouldn’t be another individual. Make your hero who you could be in three months, one year, five years. That’s the way. Stay in your lane and focus on yourself. You will never be like someone else but you can maximize who you are.
The greatest version of yourself is the role model you haven’t met yet.
Make the vision of who your greatest self is. Then, copy their habits and work until you become the greatest version of yourself. It’s easy to say but hard to do. That’s the way. Follow this prescription. It won’t make your life perfect, but it will make your life better.
Don’t make goals for yourself years away from today.
Goals ten years away allow too much time for sloth. If the greatest version of yourself is ten years away, you can rationalize playing video games, looking at porn and being an obese marshmallow-man for nine years and eleven months before the deadline.
Live for who you want to be in three months. Three months of personal growth is a personal revolution.
Ten years to make something happen is not pressure; it’s lazy. Three months, two weeks, one week; realistic deadlines create diamond-tight pressure to get after it.
Reward yourself. If you accomplish your goal before your deadline, reward yourself with an activity or a purchase.
Create a ‘reward bank’ wish-list in amazon full of enticing products you’re willing to work for.
Here are a few products you don’t need:
Make a goal. If I accomplish X I get to buy a new range bag guilt-free.
The Video Game weight loss Strategy
“If I lose ten pounds I get to play Red Dead Redemption 2 for ten hours. Guilt-free.
“For every pound I lose, I get to play an hour of a video game.”
You can sink a hundred hours in a game like RDR2 and lose 100 pounds while you’re at it.
Gamify your life. Setup real-life achievements in a three-month plan. Not longer. Shorter, yes.
Andreian Law: You are forbidden from putting burdens on tomorrow that you can address today.
Don’t put burdens on tomorrow that you can do today. This is how dreams die. Waiting. Don’t wait for anything. Take what you want. The takers rarely leave leftovers for the waiters.
If a lion waited to hunt because he didn’t feel like it today, pushing off a crucial task for tomorrow; he dies. We live because society is a security blanket for losers; you don’t need self-improvement, you can watch Netflix instead.
It’s a lie.
You don’t know what comes next after you die. Nor do you have guaranteed time.
Accomplish today what you offload to tomorrow.
Give yourself an incentive to get better. Don’t be a dictator, be a hostage negotiator. Reward yourself for great work and shame yourself for being a pus…–for being a quitter.
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