Anticodeguy

Author: anticodeguy

  • How to Survive Mass AI Replacement: The One-Person Business

    How to Survive Mass AI Replacement: The One-Person Business

    AI isn’t just evolving — it’s exploding. Not merely at the speed of light, but at a pace that’s forcing us to rewrite all our old metaphors, multiplying them by a factor of 100.

    ChatGPT became the fastest application in human history to reach a million users in just 5 days. It wasn’t just exponential growth — it was nuclear, a chain reaction from day one. Because any person with half a functioning brain immediately grasps how this technology is already reshaping our reality.

    I use ChatGPT and other AI tools constantly. Not just daily, but sometimes more frequently than I use my own brain. There might be nothing good about this dependency, yet the way these tools assist me genuinely feels like having a superpower. I solve problems faster, work more efficiently, and accomplish tasks I previously couldn’t handle.

    “The true potential of AI lies in its ability to amplify human creativity and ingenuity,”

    notes former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. This is precisely what I experience daily.

    Consider a simple example: when I need to solve a complex algorithmic problem for a client’s system that exceeds the capabilities of no-code development, but could be addressed through programming. Before AI, writing this code meant days of debugging, scouring the internet for examples, lurking on forums, asking questions, and investigating why certain errors kept appearing. It was practically scientific research.

    Now? A properly crafted prompt to an AI instantly generates working code. When the AI understands the context of your system, knows the patterns, and grasps the syntax, it becomes like having a programmer assistant available 24/7, ready to execute any task immediately, explaining how everything works along the way.

    This is just one example. There are thousands more across virtually every domain. Looking at all this, you can’t help but wonder: where will I be in a few years when AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) emerges? When machines can set their own goals and make their own decisions to achieve them? When they have access to necessary resources and potentially reach that turning point many associate with AI domination?

    What skills will remain valuable? What role will I play? How will I earn a living? And most importantly — what must I do now to survive in this new world?

    The Coming AI Apocalypse Is Not Science Fiction

    Let’s not dance around it — there is only one viable answer to what AI cannot replace: a business that’s genuinely unique, a one-of-a-kind personal enterprise built around your individual persona.

    A business that’s the only one of its kind in the world, not commoditized, with no true equivalents. Sure, similar businesses might exist, but none with your unique perspective, your specific combination of experiences, insights, and approach.

    “There has never been a worse time to be competing with machines, but never a better time to be a talented entrepreneur,”

    observes MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson. This encapsulates the idea that routine competition with AI drives returns down, but unique entrepreneurial ventures — often built on personal vision — can thrive.

    Goldman Sachs’ analysis in 2023 estimated that approximately 300 million full-time jobs worldwide could be significantly impacted by generative AI. Another frequently cited Oxford study found roughly 47% of U.S. job roles face high computerization risk in the next decade. The reality is stark: any skill and any profession will eventually face AI replacement.

    Even physical labor, which seems safe at first glance, is already being automated. In China, autonomous vehicles are rapidly being deployed in major cities. Companies like Baidu’s Apollo Go operate hundreds of self-driving taxis with plans for thousands more. While it’s not yet true that there are “more cars on autopilot than with human drivers” nationwide as some claim, the direction is undeniable.

    The same transformation is happening in agriculture. Autonomous machines plant crops, drones monitor fields and send signals at the right time, and robots harvest produce — all operating 24/7 without breaks except to recharge. AI manages this entire ecosystem. According to research teams in China, a single multi-functional AI robot can now handle the entire tomato cultivation process, from pollination to pruning to harvesting, replacing six human workers in a greenhouse setting.

    For digital work, the writing is already on the wall. It’s simply a matter of time.

    I’m not just talking about online work, but including physical labor that robots with AI control will replace. Even creative tasks and invention can be handled by artificial intelligence. I already delegate a huge number of tasks involving creative thinking and idea generation to AI.

    So what remains for humans? What will we do in this utopian world where neither manual labor nor intellectual work is needed? How will we live and earn?

    The economic system itself might transform under this new AI-autonomous reality. That’s difficult to speculate on because there are countless possible scenarios.

    What interests me more is what to do with my own life. How can I prepare now for the inevitable, and what actions should I take to avoid being left behind when it’s already too late?

    At least for now, I’ve found my answer: a business that can help me earn far more money than I’ll need throughout my lifetime. One that grants true freedom to do what I want, what interests me, to create something new — because that’s my fundamental nature.

    Why Only Personal Brands Can Withstand the AI Tsunami

    “Technology amplifies human intent and capacity; it doesn’t replace them,”

    notes virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. This sentiment underscores that tools like AI are multipliers of human will, not substitutes.

    Humans are unique creatures on our planet with the ability to think across time. We can contemplate the past, remember and resurrect memories. We process the present, perceiving what happens around us and drawing conclusions. And crucially, we can envision the future, model potential outcomes, and imagine what might exist later.

    We use these capabilities to create something new, because all creation revolves around this perception of time. We form a vision of what might exist in the future — a painting, a building, a project, or a new location — and this compels us to make decisions and take actions in the physical world that lead toward this goal.

    When discussing creation, many think only of traditionally creative people — those who make things with their hands in some artistic form, be it architecture, painting, sculpture, or something else.

    But creation is far broader. There’s technical and technological creation — new machines, robots, AI itself, coding, information systems. Everything related to and revolving around these domains.

    What we create typically reflects our inner world, our character, our knowledge. This is readily apparent in art. When we see a painting, we can tell if the artist is a beginner or experienced. We might sense if they’re depressed or ill, or conversely, if they’re positive and see the glass as always half-full — this immediately manifests in their work.

    The same applies to information systems. You can feel when everything works precisely, without bugs, when perfectionism shines through.

    This extends beyond art to information systems, business models, and digital products.

    Accordingly, humans express the culmination of their knowledge, skills, experience, inner world, feelings, and emotions in everything they create. Creation itself is bringing what’s inside you into the world, giving form to what exists internally in a way others can perceive.

    While it remains hidden inside you, nobody sees or experiences it except you. But once creation begins, once you express your inner world externally, that’s precisely what creation means.

    This is what no artificial intelligence can replace. Well, technically it could, because different models have their own unique internal worlds since they’re trained on different datasets and their learning processes differ. Their responses vary from model to model. Everyone understands this and uses it to their advantage, as each model has strengths and weaknesses.

    Each AI, each model is unique just as each person is, and therefore this uniqueness cannot be replaced.

    Thus you are a personality, a persona, an individuality that no artificial intelligence can replace. Your existence, your skill set, experience, expertise, knowledge, and abilities compare to individual AI models — each is unique.

    As business ethics author Dov Seidman puts it,

    “Our ability to forge deep relationships — to love, to care, to hope, to trust, and to build communities based on shared values — is one of the most uniquely human capacities we have. It is the single most important thing that differentiates us from machines.”

    In today’s world, this seems an apt analogy. Each AI has pros and cons, and so does each person. Understanding these is crucial. Just as you might use Claude for writing and ChatGPT for everyday tasks, you can be the person others turn to for specific purposes.

    This works to our advantage in building a personal business.

    Job vs. Investing vs. Business

    Let’s step back and discuss what business actually is. Business is a system that generates income.

    I’m reminded of the black box concept I’ve written about before. Business is such a black box, with resources as input and profit as output. It’s a profit generation system.

    Without this system, existing in modern society becomes extremely difficult. The ability to earn through traditional employment will grow increasingly challenging. Relying on assistance from government or other organizations doesn’t seem promising or reliable because it’s completely beyond your control.

    Investing

    There’s another method called investing, but honestly, if you were already earning through investments, you probably wouldn’t be consuming this content. You’d likely be busy investing your money or spending it.

    I think if everything’s already working for you, content about creating a personal business isn’t relevant anymore.

    But investing has one important nuance: you need money to do it, oddly enough.

    There’s the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early), which involves an extremely frugal lifestyle where you save every last penny and invest in index funds and other conservative instruments, living on what remains.

    This approach prioritizes investing, with everything else only covering your daily needs.

    It’s actually not a bad option for many, though I don’t particularly like it because it doesn’t fit my lifestyle.

    Although I somewhat follow it by leading a minimalist lifestyle and trying not to spend excessively. Everything I earn above necessities, I invest. But this approach works for some people while requiring a steady income.

    You need some salary, and naturally, the higher it is, the better, as you’ll have more opportunity to save and invest immediately.

    This implies a lack of time for further development — most of your time will likely be spent working to maximize savings and investments.

    And it takes decades to reach the level where you can stop working and live on dividend income.

    The final argument turning me away from this approach is market fluctuation. The current market cycle, where all stocks and indices decline, will directly impact your existence.

    During such “red calendar days,” your income and dividends will fall dramatically, which will, first, make you quite nervous, and second, if you’re already living exclusively on this income, it will severely decrease, forcing you to find alternatives.

    This approach seems extremely unreliable to me because, again, you have no influence or control over it.

    And one more point: investing still requires capital. Everything changes when you’re investing not $1,000 monthly but $100,000 or more. If you already have $5-10 million, investing this sum would allow you to live quite well on monthly dividends — not super luxury life in a mansion with staff and a private jet, but an excellent life with the ability to afford almost anything.

    In this case, market fluctuations won’t be particularly noticeable because your monthly income constitutes such a significant sum that it’s difficult to spend unless you’re a gambling addict who blows everything at casinos. But honestly, I don’t think someone with such dependencies would reach that point — or rather, they might reach it, but would first need to overcome these dependencies, work on themselves, and reach the stage of understanding they need to do something with their life.

    Business, in turn, allows achieving such results, earning tens, hundreds, sometimes even millions of dollars monthly. And this isn’t based on luck or circumstances — it’s a systematic approach.

    Job

    I won’t elaborate much on business examples here, but currently, it’s the only method allowing you to scale your income disproportionately to your efforts.

    That is, conditionally, one person owning a business can structure it to generate income far exceeding the resources invested to keep it running.

    What does this mean? In employment, we spend our time and receive payment for it. That time, typically averaging 8 working hours daily, implies that regardless of tasks completed, you still receive your salary.

    To earn more, you need to spend more time, perhaps another 4 hours daily. Then you’re earning 1.5 times more, but that’s the limit because beyond this, you’ll feel the physical need to find more time, and your strength and energy won’t sustain two jobs.

    I know what I’m talking about because during one period, I effectively had two jobs consuming 10-12 hours daily. Yes, this wasn’t pure work time, including breaks and distractions, but after several months of such living, you realize something must change, and permanently living in such a regime is extremely detrimental to mental and physical health.

    Moreover, when you understand that it’s better when your business or earnings don’t depend on your time — when you can earn more by doing something to increase your income without investing more time — it’s better to spend part of your life on this than building a project for someone else that ultimately won’t bring you disproportionally more money.

    Business

    So how does this work? A businessperson spends the same or less time but earns more.

    This requires leverage. For this, you need tools that can change the amount of money your business generates.

    Such leverage exists in business. Consider any business, absolutely any type.

    The IT business illustrates this well. First, it’s closer to me because I’m in IT. Second, it currently possesses one of the largest and most effective leverages because it requires fewer time resources for distribution than, say, a business selling physical goods.

    And it can be completely independent of manual labor, of other resources that never exclude the human factor and consequently, errors. In the IT world, almost everything can be automated.

    Perhaps the most interesting business from an income perspective is resource-based — oil and gas, extracting natural resources and selling them. But how to become the owner of such a business, honestly, I don’t know, I have no idea, so I won’t discuss this field.

    I’ll just say that if you have such an opportunity, it seems one of the most promising ways to earn a ton of money. And if I ever get close to this opportunity, I’ll definitely take advantage of it. I recommend you do the same.

    So, leverage — tools that enable this. As Archimedes said,

    “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.”

    That’s leverage.

    The force applied to this lever might be small, but the result produced by this lever’s action, compared to the force or effort applied to it, can be disproportionately larger.

    That is, we simply moved the lever but shifted the Earth from its orbit, as in Archimedes’ example. We need to do approximately the same.

    We need to influence something, even slightly — apply a little effort but achieve incredible, disproportionately large results.

    This is precisely what happens in business.

    The Four Critical Elements of Any Successful Business

    For a business to thrive, it needs four key components working together. Understanding these elements is essential to building something AI-resistant.

    The first element is people – those who pay for your end product. These are your customers with money who give that money to your business in exchange for your product. No business can exist without end consumers. Even in resource-based businesses like oil and gas, the ultimate consumer is an ordinary person refueling their car at a gas station or using gas for heating. In B2B services, there are still people making purchasing decisions, allocating budgets, and signing contracts with specific authority and responsibility.

    The second element is the product – what you’re actually selling to people, what they pay money for. This is where the concept of value enters. It’s a good or service that represents some value to the end client, to this person. When we talk about food products or soft drinks, there’s some value people are willing to pay for. They might like the taste, texture, or sensation when consuming it. The specifics don’t matter as much as the fact that there’s something they’re willing to pay for – they have a need that your product satisfies.

    As Jeff Bezos said, “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” Without a product that delivers genuine value, everything else falls apart.

    The third crucial element is brand. There are hundreds of different types of soft drinks on store shelves – you could try a new one every day and new ones would still keep appearing. But those that have been with us for decades are relatively few. Coca-Cola is one of them – the brand that comes to mind first when you think of carbonated drinks. It’s known to everyone from young to old in almost any country worldwide, and this brand has such a large network of fans that disputing its value in terms of audience is quite difficult.

    If a business has a brand, it has this lever in its hands, and it doesn’t even need to do much to sell its product – it just needs to attach this brand to the product. We see this in collaborations where even people unfamiliar with the games Coca-Cola collaborates with will still buy the product because it’s a new flavor they’ll try. They trust the brand, recognize it, and are willing to buy it.

    The fourth element, which connects all the above elements, is distribution – the spreading of your product or delivering value to an audience. It connects brand, product, and people. Using your brand, you need to communicate information to as many potential buyers as possible about the existence of your product. When this happens, the connection occurs, and people will give their money to own this product.

    This combination of elements forms the system of business. When all four components work together – audience, product, brand, and distribution – you have a complete business model.

    Building Your One-Person Brand Business

    “Human-only work is our future. Anything that cannot be digitized or automated will become extremely valuable.” — Gerd Leonhard, futurist.

    So what business model combines all the elements we discussed — audience, product, brand, and distribution — in a way that’s resistant to AI replacement?

    The answer is clear: a personal brand business. This model exists and is called personal brand or one-person business. It’s a model where you primarily build distribution.

    How? Through social media.

    Build distribution — attract people

    We live in a time when it’s much easier to find people online, and they’re all there. You’re reading this in one of the social networks, so we’re already here.

    This is, conditionally, the city square where a huge crowd gathers, where you can step onto a pedestal and start broadcasting. The main task is to make people listen to you, not everyone else broadcasting at that moment.

    I really like this analogy because it immediately becomes clear that, first, many people are here, they’re already present. No need to bring anyone in by hand.

    But you need to stand out somehow, attract attention, because if you just say something, there are hundreds of thousands of others here also attracting attention, and those who have already built their personal brands sound louder, brighter, and naturally gather crowds around them.

    Your task is to distract them for at least a short time — it’s a war for attention, for eyeballs. You need to do something to make people start listening to you.

    This is exactly what needs to be done on social media. I like this approach because we’re building distribution from the start. These people who are here, who become your subscribers and are in these social networks, are the aggregate of distribution — you can distribute your product using this mechanism.

    You already have everything ready for this, and people who subscribe to you, your followers, are potentially your clients.

    It doesn’t matter if your product is B2B or B2C, but in any case, returning to the thesis that even when selling to another business, the buyer is a specific person, meaning you can attract their attention and make a sale right here.

    Accordingly, the first two points — distribution and people — are already covered.

    Distribution is covered almost automatically because you’re on social media, and distribution implies content presence in these channels.

    And you have people if you manage to attract the crowd’s attention on this platform.

    Build product to sell

    The next point is the product. I won’t dwell on this in detail now, perhaps it’s a separate topic for discussion, but as I’ve said, the product can be almost anything — it can be an offline product, selling something, and we see numerous examples.

    I’ll mention the most famous and widespread: MrBeast sells chocolate, Sahil Bloom sells a book, and so on, but there are many different variants of digital goods or goods that don’t imply physical presence, such as business services. It could be web design, information system development (as in my case), SEO promotion, video editing, and so on — a huge number of possible options. It could be software, some software you sell, either for business or for specific individuals — there’s room to expand here.

    And finally, it could be the simplest options that come to mind: various guides, templates, for example, there are entire businesses selling Excel or Notion templates, earning millions of dollars.

    In 2022, Thomas Frank, a productivity expert, generated over $1 million just from selling Notion templates. His audience viewed him as the go-to authority in this niche. The key wasn’t the templates themselves (which could theoretically be replicated by AI), but Thomas’s specific approach and the trust his audience placed in him.

    Build your personal brand

    There are many examples of products you can build, and it’s only limited by your imagination and knowledge of the market, understanding your client’s needs. If they have such a need, if people need to buy a particular product, they will do so if you provide it to them, and they will do it because there’s also a fourth element, a fourth component to this entire structure.

    This component, of course, is the brand. When you’ve been on social media for a long time, everyone knows you, your name has become familiar, and you provide value to people, you develop an understanding as a brand or persona.

    People know your name, they reference you, repost, save your content to bookmarks, trust you, listen to your opinion. This is what’s called a brand.

    Only now it relates not to a specific business but to you personally, to your persona. More precisely, to the image you build online in your social media presence.

    And this is the key task in building this type of business.

    Gary Vaynerchuk, a prominent entrepreneur who built his empire through personal branding, states it plainly:

    “The best strategy for building a personal brand is to be 100% you… Provide useful content and share what you learn; by doing so, you’ll attract followers who trust you.”

    You are the part of it right now

    So, we’ll build a personal brand. This is what I’m doing right now. I’m providing you with useful content and sharing information I find valuable.

    And I’m doing this hoping you’ll want more such information from me. And I’ll continue sharing it.

    If you follow me and find my content consistently valuable, I’ll have succeeded in building my personal brand.

    Then, having all these components in aggregate, you can and should, I believe, monetize. Here’s the very important point of market validation.

    There’s a playbook in modern startups where you sell before building the product itself — you go to market and validate your idea.

    And the ideal outcome indicating your idea will work and you can build a business on its base is to sell a product that doesn’t even exist yet.

    How is this done? There are different mechanics. You can preliminarily collect money for a product that doesn’t exist yet. Property developers do this excellently. When building real estate, you typically contribute money before construction begins, though the house doesn’t exist yet. This is a familiar story.

    Or you can do it more gently, without money. For example, a waiting list. You leave your contact, like an email, and await product updates. You’ll be notified when the product is released for general use or when updates become available.

    Then you can purchase it if necessary.

    This is a softer option because validation with money is always more reliable. When someone pays money, it means it has value, and they evaluate it at the sum they give to the business.

    It means they have this problem that needs solving, which the product will potentially solve.

    And in building a personal brand or one-person business, this also manifests well. If you offer a product and it doesn’t sell, despite having an audience, distribution, and having built some brand, it means the product is poor and won’t sell, it doesn’t represent value — or you’re promoting it poorly.

    At minimum, this signals that you need to improve these elements, either the product itself, adding value to it, or changing it completely, or adjusting its promotion methods.

    Because it’s quite likely that many people simply don’t sell in a quality manner, don’t do it in a way that stimulates sales, because this too is a whole science and art that can be learned.

    And most importantly, all this is achievable, all this is realizable in the modern world, accessible to almost anyone with internet access. Well, if you’re currently consuming this content, it means you at least have this, so you also have such an opportunity.

    I suggest not missing it but starting to act, starting to build your presence on social media, starting to develop, learning this along with me.

    My journey is just beginning, and I intend to share my findings with you, what I learn. Fortunately, there’s a huge amount of open information about this, which I’ll gladly share with you.

    Your Path to Freedom in the AI Era

    The time to act is now. As we’ve seen, AI is advancing at an unprecedented pace, threatening traditional employment across all sectors. But by building a personal brand business, you can not only survive but thrive in this new landscape.

    This approach leverages what economists call the comparative advantage of humans versus AI – creativity, personality, and trust. Recent data shows the creator economy is not a trivial trend but a structural shift in the modern economy, valued at approximately $250 billion in 2023 and forecast to double to around $500 billion by 2027.

    While AI can replicate processes, gather information, and even create content, it cannot replicate your unique combination of experiences, perspectives, and personal connection with an audience. This is your moat against automation.

    As Kai-Fu Lee, AI pioneer and author, puts it:

    “AI will do the analytical thinking, while humans will wrap that analysis in warmth and compassion.”

    Your personal brand leverages precisely these human elements that machines cannot replicate.

    Building a one-person business based on your personal brand is not just about survival – it’s about creating true freedom. Unlike traditional employment, where your income is directly tied to your time, a personal brand business allows you to scale disproportionately to your efforts. It gives you control over your destiny in a way that both conventional jobs and passive investments cannot.

    The beauty of this approach is that it’s accessible to anyone with internet access. You don’t need special credentials, large capital investments, or permission from gatekeepers. You simply need to start sharing valuable content, building your audience, and developing trust.

    Remember, what we create reflects our inner world, our knowledge, and our unique perspective. This is something AI can augment but never replace. By building a business around your persona, you’re creating something that is, by definition, the only one of its kind in the world.

    The journey won’t be easy. It requires consistency, value creation, and genuine connection with your audience. But the alternative — relying on skills and professions that will inevitably be automated — is far riskier in the long run.

    Don’t wait until it’s too late. Start building your personal brand today. Share your knowledge, connect with your audience, and create something truly unique. Your future freedom in the AI era depends on it.

    The choice is clear: adapt now and build something AI cannot replace, or risk becoming obsolete. The opportunity is here. Will you take it?

  • How to Kill Stress Before It Kills Your Dreams

    How to Kill Stress Before It Kills Your Dreams

    “It’s not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it.” – Hans Selye, pioneering stress researcher

    Stress. It’s that thing you never think about until it’s there. But when it is there, it occupies almost all of your mental space. You can’t escape it. It follows you everywhere like a shadow, even into your dreams – if you manage to sleep at all.

    Most often, stress emerges from interactions with other people. Situations where someone asks you to do something you feel incapable of doing. Or when you promise something and don’t deliver. Or when someone keeps pushing and asking and demanding constantly. Since you need to provide feedback or complete something, it all becomes this growing snowball in your head that literally prevents you from sleeping.

    The result? Anxiety and the inability to sleep properly. Even if you slept for a solid seven hours, you might wake up earlier than you should. You find yourself unable to fall back asleep because thoughts about what needs to be done are circulating in your head. They pursue you constantly. You can’t just get rid of them.

    This is incredibly draining because, first of all, this state is unusual for most of us. Maybe some people have adapted to living under constant stress, but for many, it’s a relatively rare condition that signals something’s wrong. It’s uncomfortable and unnatural, and you want to eliminate it as quickly as possible.

    According to a 2021 Deloitte survey, 77% of professionals have experienced burnout at their current job. It’s not just you – this is an epidemic. The World Health Organization reports that stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression cost the global economy approximately $1 trillion in lost productivity each year. This isn’t just affecting your sleep – it’s destroying dreams, ambitions, and possibilities.

    I understand that the source of this stress is your own psyche – it’s you who created these obligations. And when you don’t fulfill them, you start to stress. Tasks pile up – client work, things that aren’t functioning properly in your projects, deadlines that feel impossible. It all consumes an enormous portion of your mental space.

    “Your mindset matters. It affects everything – from the business and investment decisions you make, to the way you raise your children, to your stress levels and overall well-being.” – Peter Diamandis

    But there are ways to kill this stress before it kills your dreams. I’ve tested these methods myself, and they work. They’re not just theoretical bullshit from some wellness guru – they’re practical approaches for real people dealing with real stress in the real world.

    The Mental Prison of Unfinished Business

    “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen, productivity expert

    Stressed-out entrepreneur screaming in frustration, representing the emotional toll of poor stress management

    Let’s be honest – forcing yourself to switch contexts and think “it’s just work, not my whole life, not the end of the world” is fucking difficult. Work naturally occupies a huge part of your mental bandwidth, and it’s challenging to somehow get rid of this stress-producing machine that runs in your head 24/7.

    The ideal solution would be to take all these tasks I’m currently doing myself and delegate them to others. But that’s not so simple, especially in the early stages. When you don’t yet have a stable team, when you don’t have the cash flow to support that team, when you don’t have established processes that allow you to work smoothly with a team – you have to deal with stress on your own.

    What’s happening in your brain has a name – psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect. Your brain keeps nagging you about unfinished tasks, causing mental tension that doesn’t let up until you resolve them. In studies on workplace stress, employees who tackled issues directly had significantly lower stress levels than those who used emotional coping without addressing the root cause.

    Here’s a real example from my life: Yesterday, I was completely exhausted by the end of the day. My work is intellectual, and there’s a certain limit to how much I can do. By evening – usually when I go for a walk and then have my gaming session to mark the end of the week – my client started bombarding me with new tasks. A massive snowball of tasks accumulated, each occupying a specific space in my head, and beyond a certain threshold, it transformed into stress because I couldn’t think about anything else.

    This is what happens to all of us – the mental load becomes overwhelming. Tasks build up like a dam about to burst. Your brain simply cannot process that much information while simultaneously maintaining the emotional balance necessary for creative work, relationships, or simply enjoying your life.

    The irony is that feeling this stress is actually a good thing. It means your system hasn’t normalized chronic stress as “just how life is.” Your body and mind are sending you clear signals that something’s wrong. Listen to them. According to the Mayo Clinic, your body’s stress response is designed for short-term emergencies; when activated long-term, it “wreaks havoc on your mind and body.” People may subjectively feel they’ve gotten used to living under stress, but research shows they still suffer negative physiological effects like elevated cortisol, inflammation, and hypertension.

    “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension.” – George Burns, who lived to 100

    One advantage many of us have (that we rarely use) is the ability to change our environment. If you don’t like where you live, you can change it – it’s within your power. I’ve changed my location multiple times within the same country and have changed countries several times. It’s one of the most effective ways to drastically change your life in the direction you want.

    Moving does add a bit of stress initially, but afterward, against the backdrop of such adventures, everything else seems insignificant. Your stress tolerance increases significantly. Next time you face these tasks, instead of avoiding them, you can meet them with open arms, remembering that you’ve solved more difficult problems in more complex situations. What’s happening now isn’t actually such a serious problem.

    But until you reach that point, until you can build a team or change your environment, you need practical methods to defeat the stress monster. Let’s get into those now.

    Proven Methods to Kill Stress Before It Kills You

    “For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” – Lily Tomlin

    Stress doesn’t have to be your permanent roommate. Below are methods that actually work to get your brain back online. I’ve tested all of these personally hundreds of times. They’re not aspirational bullshit – they’re practical tools for when your brain feels like it’s about to explode.

    Method 1. Complete the Fucking Task

    The most obvious and direct way to eliminate stress is to address its source head-on. If you’re stressed about something because it isn’t done – just do it. This shuts up that inner voice screaming that something needs to be done. Once it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

    In stress coping theory, this is called problem-focused coping, and research confirms it’s often the most effective approach when the stressor is controllable. A study on workplace stress found that employees who used problem-solving coping had substantially lower subsequent stress levels than those who used emotion-focused coping without addressing the root cause.

    How to do it? There needs to be some physical action that represents the completion of the task. In my case, each task concludes with a brief report to clients that something is done, now it works like this, the button is fixed, etc. Task completed, checkbox ticked in the task management system. This ritual tells your brain that this task is finished and no longer needs to occupy space. After this, I truly stop thinking about it.

    This is the cleanest, most effective stress-killing method. It literally eliminates the thing causing your stress. But it’s not always possible to use this approach. That’s when you need…

    Method 2. The Strategic Pause

    Sometimes completing the task immediately is physically impossible. Take my situation last Friday evening – typically a time when I finish work early and start my gaming session to conclude the week and transition into rest mode, which is essential for any work because it’s important to switch your mental focus.

    The client started pressuring me, sending a huge number of new tasks. I realized I couldn’t physically do them right then, but the deadline was supposedly that day, with everything needed by Monday.

    In this case, my solution, since I didn’t want to let the client down and took responsibility for these tasks, was to work on them over the weekend. I explained that I couldn’t do it right then because if I tried to tackle these tasks on Friday evening after my walk, when my brain had already switched contexts mentally, the results would be extremely poor.

    I could spend hours on a simple task that, with a fresh mind, I could solve in literally 15 minutes. I’ve tested this hundreds of times in practice – sitting there at night, poking at one task for hours and failing, then waking up in the morning and finding the solution in 15 minutes.

    Recognizing when you’ve hit cognitive exhaustion is crucial. Stanford researcher John Pencavel’s work revealed that output beyond approximately 50 hours per week drops off sharply. Someone working 70 hours achieves no more than someone working 55 – those extra 15 hours are essentially wasted effort.

    I understood it would be much more efficient to finish my day, perhaps with a gaming session or by going to sleep, and deal with it tomorrow. I objectively assessed that I couldn’t solve these tasks effectively today.

    So I communicated my decision to the client, saying we’d work on the weekend. This didn’t reduce the mental space the tasks occupied in my head, but it at least pushed them back a bit. It didn’t eliminate the stress, but it put my brain on pause, knowing a plan was in place.

    Working longer and harder without rest has diminishing or negative returns on productivity. After about 17-19 hours of continuous wakefulness, cognitive function declines to a level equivalent to being legally drunk. After 24 hours, it’s around BAC 0.1%.

    The pause isn’t about avoiding responsibility – it’s about strategic timing to ensure quality work while preserving your sanity.

    Method 3. Physical Context Switch

    “Doing something that is productive is a great way to alleviate emotional stress. Get your mind doing something that is productive.” – Ziggy Marley

    If you can’t eliminate the stressor immediately for whatever reason, you need to find other methods. One approach is temporary stress management until you can address the root cause.

    Any form of physical activity is an excellent way to distract yourself and relieve stress. It shifts your brain’s focus to something else – to your body’s movement, muscle work, and breathing. During exercise, your brain is busy with restoring muscles, distributing heat throughout the body, etc., rather than ruminating on work tasks.

    Harvard Health Publishing notes, “Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates production of endorphins, the body’s natural mood elevators.” These biochemical effects create a sense of relaxation and well-being post-exercise.

    You don’t need to go to the gym if you’re not into sports – even simple activities like walking are beneficial. The key is using physical activity to switch contexts.

    Method 4. The Nature Reset

    “Nature itself is the best physician.” – Hippocrates

    Nature – or even the city, depending on your preferences – gives an even stronger effect because it combines physical activity with visual context switching. You’re no longer sitting in front of your computer staring at these tasks; you’re out observing nature or your surroundings.

    From my experience, nature seems to have a greater effect because it contains more entropy and fractal changes – everything changes unpredictably, and you never know what will happen in the next second.

    Think about the ocean – every time you approach it, it’s different. The shoreline constantly changes as the sea reshapes it. I’m not talking about coastlines reinforced with concrete; I mean natural beaches. A sandy beach is always in motion – sand getting deposited, then washed away. The shoreline is always different. If you visit the sea daily, you’ll notice it changes. The sand is never the same as it was yesterday. The waves are never identical either.

    Because of this – let’s call them fractals for simplicity – which look similar but are each unique, you see something new every second. Your brain has to process it anew each time.

    Even if we don’t consciously perceive the differences in details between one wave and another, your subconscious sees the complete picture. Even if we don’t realize it, your brain processes it as entirely new information. It’s a constant rewrite of new information over what’s already in your brain.

    A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology demonstrated that just 20 minutes in nature significantly lowers cortisol levels. Participants who spent 20-30 minutes in a natural setting had cortisol drops of over 20% on average.

    Your tasks won’t disappear. Hopefully, you’ve recorded them in a task management system. Most importantly, you don’t need to keep them in your head. Nature provides an extraordinary powerful effect that allows you to “disconnect,” as they say. It’s genuinely that effect.

    The city might work less effectively because it’s built by humans and has more repetitive patterns. A building that stood in one place yesterday is in the same place today, and it basically doesn’t change. It changes on a microscopic level, of course – dust settles on it, cracks appear – but these changes are mostly invisible to the eye unless something drastic happens, like the building being demolished.

    This happens on a much smaller scale and less frequently than with nature, which is constantly in motion. Nature is never static. Buildings, for the most part, are static.

    It’s great if your city is immersed in greenery, like Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, which have many natural elements that can serve the same purpose of distracting your brain. But nature in its pure form is ideal. Even in any city, you can find a park where you can walk for free and enjoy nature.

    Method 5. External Brain Dump

    The next method is to externalize all your tasks into a task management system. I hope you did this immediately. As soon as a task appears, the key is to formalize it.

    Instead of leaving it where it is – and I made this mistake yesterday when the client wrote in our general chat and I left the task there – you need to move each task to your task manager. Why? Again, it’s a ritual that tells your brain that this thing no longer needs to occupy space in your head because you’ve saved it somewhere.

    It gets replaced by the understanding that all necessary information is saved and won’t disappear. It’s in a safe place, and you can always come back to it. This gives you peace of mind.

    For instance, if I have 10 tasks that need to be done by tomorrow, and I’ve saved them all in a task manager, instead of those 10 tasks in my head, there’s only one: I need to complete the tasks recorded in my task manager. That’s it. So I don’t have 10 tasks to remember individually, just one piece of information that repeats consistently.

    If I do this exercise regularly and record tasks in a manager, I only need to remember one thing – that all tasks are in there. I don’t need to stress about each one.

    This is a vital tool that helps you get rid of the mental burden you carry in your brain – you transfer it to paper or a digital equivalent.

    By the way, if you do this on physical paper, writing with a pen or pencil, it has an even stronger effect because your body is involved. Your brain processes information more easily when it’s registered through multiple sensory channels simultaneously – we engage the mind, perception, physiology, the microdynamics of finger movements, visual processing as we see the text, and auditory processing through the sound of writing on paper. All of this influences how we perceive what we’re doing and writing.

    Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that writing by hand activates different neural pathways than typing. Researchers at Indiana University found that children who practiced writing letters by hand showed increased neural activity in areas associated with reading and writing – activity that wasn’t present when they typed the same letters.

    Method 6. Journal Purge

    Similar to the previous method but broader in scope – take a sheet of paper (ideally) and start writing everything currently happening in your head. All those anxieties, worries, all that excitement – just a stream of thoughts onto paper. After writing for a while, you’ll notice that the anxiety gradually begins to fade.

    Why does this happen? Again, we’re freeing up space in your head and transferring it to paper. It’s now safe, and you can go about your business calmly. If you need to return to this information, it’s all there.

    This signals to your brain that it doesn’t need to keep thinking about this constantly, even if it’s important. The important stuff is saved on paper. You don’t have to worry about it.

    Psychologist James Pennebaker’s foundational work on expressive writing found that writing about one’s deepest thoughts and feelings regarding stressful events can improve mental and even physical health. A 2017 study in Psychophysiology demonstrated that anxious individuals who did a brief expressive writing exercise before a stressful task performed better than those who didn’t, suggesting that writing freed up working memory resources that worry would have consumed.

    It’s not just psychological. A study on job seekers found that those who journaled about their negative emotions found employment at a significantly higher rate than the control group – 53% versus 25%. The journal writers also reported fewer depressive symptoms.

    Method 7. The Zoom Out Exercise

    “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James

    This is a mental exercise best done during a walk or physical activity. You imagine your life and situations at a different scale. Okay, you have this task that needs to be completed – what does this task mean on the scale of your city? It might have some impact if you’re doing a task for a business that affects construction in the city or people who are clients of this business – naturally, their lives might be affected by whether you complete this task.

    Let’s go further, changing perspective, changing the level of abstraction to the country where you live. Does it affect anything at the country level? Again, it depends on the business, maybe in some cases, but I think in most cases, no one will notice if the tasks aren’t done today but are done tomorrow. No global change will occur at the country level.

    What about the entire planet? Will mother nature notice if your tasks weren’t completed? Here I seriously doubt it, unless you’re designing a nuclear bomb.

    At this scale, it’s clear how insignificant the problem is. Go even further – look at our planet from the moon, when it’s small and tiny, just a little ball hanging in space. What problems concern you at that moment if you imagine yourself on the moon’s surface? This task hardly seems significant.

    Step back further – look at the solar system, at the enormous distances between our planets. Even within one solar system, it’s incredible. You can’t even see them – they’re just points in the sky, white glowing points that simply disappear as you move away from them.

    Go further still and look at this in the scale of our galaxy. Does your task have any place at such scales? No, it’s such a minuscule, incredibly atomic thing that even within one or two days – by cosmic standards, this time is infinitesimally small.

    As we move further to galaxy clusters, even the entire lifespan of humanity becomes so insignificant and small and simply unnoticeable in all of space-time that what happens within your timeline or within your specific task is just… well, not even a grain of sand. It’s smaller than that.

    You realize how exaggerated the importance of your task is, and it exists exclusively in your head. At minimum, this reduces the mental load and level of anxiety about this task.

    This perspective shift is a form of cognitive reappraisal – looking at your situation from a different viewpoint to change its emotional impact. Research on stress and coping found that people who naturally employ positive reappraisal experience fewer negative outcomes under stress.

    Method 8. Sex with Partner

    Sex perfectly relieves stress. Most importantly, not with yourself, as that won’t really help, but with a partner. This is also an excellent way to relieve stress, scientifically proven.

    Sexual activity (particularly with a partner) releases a wave of “feel-good” hormones like oxytocin and endorphins while reducing cortisol (the primary stress hormone). One study found that after positive physical contact with a partner, people had lower blood pressure and cortisol responses to stress than those who only received emotional support or no contact.

    Regular sex has been associated with lower baseline blood pressure and better stress reactivity. Researchers at the University of Paisley observed that people who had intercourse before a stressful task had more moderate blood pressure spikes than those who abstained.

    Method 9. The Ultimate Combo

    “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

    This is a combination of all the above methods in one. What do I mean? Take your body and move it somewhere outside, ideally in nature.

    Start walking or running, whatever you prefer. You can take a notebook if it’s convenient, with a pen if writing is comfortable, or just take your phone with a voice recorder to capture your thoughts.

    We combine all these methods:

    • First, distraction and switching of visual context.
    • Second, physical activity. Depending on how you walk or run, even a casual stroll already provides the necessary effect.
    • Third, ideally, this happens in nature so you can see fractal changes and entropy, forcing your brain to process this information in large quantities.
    • Finally, you have a notebook or voice recorder where you can put down your thoughts or dictate them, thus saving everything accumulated in your head – including thoughts about this stress – in a safe place.

    This is actually what’s happening with me right now. After yesterday’s load, I forgot to follow my own advice and went to sleep after my gaming session. I should have probably gone for a walk and put all my thoughts in a journal.

    But I do this every day, every morning anyway. Right now, I’m on my morning walk, literally dictating my thoughts into a voice recorder. I went to the sea, looked at the huge waves that are here today. The sea is restless.

    And now, at the end of my walk, as I dictate these words, I feel how much easier it’s become, how much this situation has released me. I understand I’ll handle it. I perfectly understand that everything depending on me, I’ll do. I’ll complete all these tasks, even if they seemed impossible yesterday, or there were too many, or they all piled up on each other. No, everything is fine. Everything is in order. And I’ll do it all, despite having other plans for the weekend.

    This multi-modal approach – combining exercise, nature exposure, journaling, and perspective shifts – is highly effective because it addresses stress on several levels (physical, mental, emotional) simultaneously.

    Bonus Method: Dance

    Finally, dance! Turn on your favorite music and forget about everything – just jump and move in a way that completely distracts you. This really helps too.

    If you love club music, you can go to a club and dance. If you prefer any other music, you can put on headphones and combine it with a walk, or you can just dance when nobody’s watching – really dance in a way that distracts you and saves your brain from the stress load.

    Music has a profound effect on our neurochemistry. A 2013 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who listened to upbeat music could improve their mood and boost happiness in just two weeks. When combined with movement, the effects are even more powerful.

    Reclaiming Your Mental Space

    “It’s also our collective delusion that overwork and burnout are the price we must pay in order to succeed.” – Arianna Huffington

    You’re now armed with battle-tested methods to kill stress before it kills your dreams. The truth is, stress is not a requirement for success or achievement – it’s often the very thing standing in your way.

    Remember that you have more control than you might think. Whether it’s completing tasks directly, strategically pausing when you’re fried, walking in nature, or zooming out to gain perspective – you have tools that work.

    What happens when you let stress run unchecked? Your creativity diminishes. Your decision-making suffers. Your relationships strain. Your health deteriorates. And ultimately, your dreams – the very things you’re working so hard for – start to slip away.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way. The research is clear: managing stress isn’t just about feeling better – it’s about performing better. Companies like LinkedIn and Bumble have given entire workforces week-long breaks after recognizing that burnt-out workers are less effective. The 4-day workweek trials in multiple countries have shown that with more rest, people maintain or even improve productivity while experiencing significantly less stress.

    Start small. Choose one method from this article and implement it today. Maybe it’s a 20-minute walk in the nearest park. Maybe it’s externalizing all your tasks into a system. Maybe it’s the zoom-out exercise while waiting for your coffee to brew.

    Whatever you choose, remember that each time you successfully manage stress, you’re not just surviving the day – you’re protecting your future, your health, and your dreams.

    “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.” – Eckhart Tolle

    Don’t stress. You’ll handle this.

    Apply these methods. You got this.

  • The Black Box Method: How Systems Thinking Can Free Your Brain (And Your Time)

    The Black Box Method: How Systems Thinking Can Free Your Brain (And Your Time)

    Your brain has a serious problem — one that’s holding you back more than you realize.

    When we move through life, our consciousness is limited to a tiny window of information we can actually process. It’s not your fault — it’s simply how we’re built. Research shows our brains receive around 11 million bits of data every second, but our conscious mind can only handle about 50 bits per second. That’s less than 0.0005% of incoming information!

    Think of it like having an 8GB flash drive permanently installed in your head. You can’t just go to the store and upgrade to 32GB. We’re stuck with our hardware limitations (at least for now). Maybe someday we’ll be able to upgrade our brains, but we’re definitely not there yet.

    This creates a serious bottleneck. Studies show the average knowledge worker spends about 1.8 hours every day — that’s 9.3 hours weekly — just searching for information they need. Almost one-third of your workday disappears into this black hole of trying to find shit you already know exists somewhere.

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately — how our brain’s limited “context window” restricts what we can accomplish. It reminds me of those AI models with short context windows; after a few messages, the AI starts forgetting what you wrote in your first prompt. You have to keep reminding it of the original information.

    Our minds work surprisingly similarly. We focus on one task, then switch to another, and suddenly we’ve forgotten important details from the first one. This is why multitasking is such bullshit — research shows it can cause a 40% loss in productivity. A one-hour task ends up taking 84 minutes when you’re constantly switching contexts.

    But here’s the thing — I discovered a methodology that completely transformed how I approach complex problems. It’s called systems thinking, and specifically, the black box method. I first learned it in university, and it genuinely changed how my brain operates. It’s like I took the red pill in Matrix and suddenly could see systems everywhere.

    This approach has become my daily toolkit for designing information systems, understanding businesses, and maintaining a complete picture (as much as possible) of any venture I’m working on. It’s fundamentally shifted my mental model to a systems approach.

    In this article, I’ll show you exactly how to use the black box method to create systems that run without you, free up your mental bandwidth, and ultimately, give you back your time and freedom. This isn’t some theoretical bullshit — it’s a practical approach that’s helped me build systems that work while I sleep, travel, or focus on what actually matters to me.

    Why Your Mind Needs Systems to Scale (And Your Business Does Too)

    First, let’s get something straight: a system is a collection of interconnected elements working together toward a specific goal. Every word in that definition matters, so keep it in front of you.

    An even simpler definition is this: a system is a means to achieve a goal. That’s it. Any system exists to accomplish something.

    When I explain systems thinking to people, I start with the black box concept. This approach is useful when studying a system for the first time, trying to understand how it works, or looking for specific elements within it.

    Imagine any process as a literal black box — a non-transparent rectangle drawn on paper with the name of the process. We call it “black” because we don’t know (or don’t currently care) what happens inside. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat — the cat might be alive or dead, but we’re not opening the box yet. We’re just observing from the outside.

    Simple diagram of a black box system showing input and output arrows, representing the essence of black box systems thinking

    Since this is a process (not a physical object), the black box has inputs and outputs. Arrows go in on the left side and arrows come out on the right. The input is information entering the process — data, objects, or anything that interacts with the process. This information is processed somehow inside this mysterious black box and transformed into output information.

    Let me give you a simple example anyone will understand. You write a prompt to ChatGPT asking what a chicken crossed with a mammoth would look like. The prompt is your input — the arrow on the left. You see an animation showing the AI “thinking.” That’s the black box processing your request. We don’t know exactly how it works (it’s opaque to us), but eventually, it produces an output — the arrow on the right — describing your chicken-mammoth hybrid.

    Diagram of ChatGPT used as a black box system, illustrating input-output simplicity in AI interactions

    That’s the essence of systems thinking. Any system whose inner workings are unknown or irrelevant at your current level of analysis can be viewed as a black box. What matters are the inputs and outputs.

    This concept is incredibly powerful for entrepreneurs. As venture capitalist Peter Senge said,

    “If you don’t understand a system, it will own you.”

    The reverse is also true — when you understand systems, you can build ones that work for you instead of trapping you.

    There are two important factors to consider when analyzing systems:

    1. point of view
    2. abstraction level

    Point of view is essentially whose eyes you’re looking through. If I put my brain in the body of a business owner and look at a business system, I might see a black box containing my employees. On the input side, I see clients (people I meet, greet, and talk with daily), and on the output side, I see money appearing in my bank account. But what happens in between? Somehow my employees process these clients and turn them into money.

    Now, if we look at the same business from an accountant’s perspective, the picture changes completely. From their viewpoint, the inputs are figures — company expenses and income. The output is a profit and loss statement. What happened to generate those expenses and income? The accountant might not know or care about those details.

    Same system, completely different picture depending on whose eyes you’re looking through.

    Then there’s abstraction level — the height from which you observe the system. You can look closely at individual elements (like a specific marketer’s work) or zoom out to see entire departments or the business as a whole. At different zoom levels, the system appears completely different.

    The McDonald’s franchise system is a perfect example of systems thinking in action. The McDonald brothers designed their kitchen as an assembly-line system, breaking down burger-making into discrete steps with specialized roles. By optimizing how each part interacted (ordering, ingredient storage, cooking, etc.), they achieved identical, fast outputs every time. Ray Kroc recognized that this systematic, reproducible process was the key to franchising. Each restaurant functioned like a reliable black box delivering consistent burgers.

    This is why most entrepreneurs struggle to scale. They’re stuck inside their business, constantly firefighting, instead of designing systems to run the business. As management expert Michael E. Gerber says,

    “Systems run the business and people run the systems.”

    The truth is, when you’re wearing all the hats in your business, your limited mental bandwidth becomes the bottleneck. You physically cannot process everything needed to scale. This creates the gap between the Instagram-worthy lifestyle you project and the daily reality of constant overwhelm.

    Instead of being consumed by this cycle, you need to start thinking like a systems architect rather than an employee of your own business. This perspective shift is critical. As Einstein famously said,

    “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

    The 6-Step Black Box Method: Building Systems That Set You Free

    I’ve been testing and refining this approach for years, both in my IT development work and in how I structure my own business and life. What I’m about to share is the exact process I use to free my mind from overwhelm and create systems that work for me even when I’m not actively involved.

    Let’s break it down into practical steps you can apply immediately.

    Step 1: Map Your Current Reality as Black Boxes

    First, grab a notebook. Seriously. Getting this out of your head and onto paper is the first step toward mental freedom.

    Start by identifying all the major processes in your business or life. For each one, draw a simple rectangle (your black box). Label it with the name of the process. Draw an arrow coming in from the left and an arrow going out to the right.

    For example, if you’re a freelance developer, you might have boxes for:

    • Client acquisition
    • Project scoping
    • Development work
    • Testing/QA
    • Delivery/handoff
    • Support

    Don’t overcomplicate this. The power is in the simplicity. As Herbert Simon noted,

    “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes attention. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

    By simplifying complex processes into black boxes, you’re conserving your most precious resource — mental bandwidth.

    Step 2: Define Your Perspective and Abstraction Level

    This step is crucial and often overlooked. Before you go further, you need to decide:

    1. Whose eyes are you looking through? (Perspective)
    2. How zoomed in or out are you? (Abstraction level)

    Are you viewing your business as the owner (high-level strategy)? As the marketer (execution of campaigns)? As the service provider (delivery of work)?

    Similarly, are you looking at the entire business ecosystem or zooming in on specific operational details?

    The key is to maintain consistency. If you start mixing perspectives or jumping between abstraction levels, you’ll create a distorted view of your system that leads to bad decisions.

    This inconsistency is very dangerous because, looking at a system with different levels of abstraction, one can misunderstand how it works and make incorrect decisions based on distorted data.

    It’s like looking at a beautiful professional photograph where one section is suddenly pixelated and blurry. Something’s clearly wrong with that picture.

    Pick one perspective and one abstraction level, and stick with it for this analysis. You can always create another map from a different viewpoint later.

    Step 3: Identify Process Boundaries

    Now that you have your boxes drawn and your perspective defined, it’s time to clarify what belongs inside each box and what doesn’t.

    For each process you’ve identified, ask:

    • What’s the primary function of this black box?
    • What’s the scope of this process?
    • Where does it begin and end?
    • What belongs to this process vs. adjacent ones?

    Clear boundaries prevent overlap and confusion. They help you understand where one system ends and another begins.

    For example, does your “content creation” process include ideation, writing, editing, formatting, and publishing? Or is “ideation” a separate black box that feeds into “creation”?

    There’s no universally right answer — it depends on your business and goals. The important thing is that you define these boundaries explicitly.

    When I analyze IT systems for clients, this step often reveals critical gaps. Processes that nobody “owns” or boundaries that are fuzzy lead to things falling through the cracks. Clarifying these boundaries brings immediate improvements in reliability.

    Step 4: Document Input and Output Flows

    This is where the magic happens. For each black box in your system, clearly define:

    1. What goes in (inputs)
    2. What comes out (outputs)

    Be as specific as possible. Vague inputs and outputs make for vague systems.

    For a content marketing black box, inputs might include:

    • Topic ideas
    • Audience research
    • Brand guidelines
    • SEO keywords

    Outputs might include:

    • Published articles
    • Social media posts
    • Email newsletters
    • Engagement metrics

    The key insight here is that if you clearly define the inputs and outputs, what happens inside the black box becomes flexible. Different people, tools, or processes can handle the internal transformation as long as they convert the specified inputs to the required outputs.

    This is how you create systems that aren’t dependent on any specific person — including you.

    As systems theorist Stafford Beer says,

    “The purpose of a system is what it does.”

    Not what you hope it does, not what it should do — what it actually does. By focusing on concrete inputs and outputs, you’re focusing on reality rather than wishes.

    Fox example order fulfillment systems can be utilized in a black-box fashion. When an order comes in (input), it triggers a series of actions via automation tools: customer details are sent to a production partner, a shipping label is created, an email update goes to the customer, etc. By thinking in terms of the overall system (from order to delivery) rather than individual tasks, you can achieve scalability that would be impossible if you tried to personally intervene in every step.

    Step 5: Design the System, Not the Steps

    Here’s where most people go wrong — they try to define every single step inside the black box. That’s micromanagement, not systems thinking.

    Instead, focus on designing the system as a whole. Ask:

    • What resources does this system need?
    • What constraints must it operate within?
    • What outcomes must it produce?
    • How will we measure success?

    The beauty of black box thinking is that it gives people or processes freedom to innovate within boundaries. As long as the system reliably converts inputs to outputs, the internal mechanism can evolve and improve over time.

    Cloud services are perfect examples of this in action. A online entrepreneur might use a print-on-demand service for their e-commerce business. They send design files and orders (inputs) to the service, and finished products ship to customers (outputs). The entire printing and logistics process is a black box — the entrepreneur doesn’t need to understand or manage the internal details.

    This approach lets you integrate complex capabilities into your business without having to master every component. Cloud computing encourages this approach: users interact with cloud services via defined interfaces, not needing to know the internal machinery.

    Step 6: Connect and Optimize Your Systems

    The final step is to connect your black boxes into a comprehensive machine.

    Draw lines showing how the output of one black box becomes the input for another. This creates your system map — a visual representation of your business as an interconnected set of processes.

    Flowchart showing idea to content creation and distribution, visualizing a content system using black box thinking

    Once you have this map, you can identify:

    • Bottlenecks: Where is flow constricted?
    • Redundancies: What processes duplicate effort?
    • Gaps: What critical connections are missing?
    • Leverage points: Where can small changes create big results?

    Systems expert Donella Meadows explains,

    “Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns.”

    This is the ultimate power of systems thinking — you can make precise, targeted improvements instead of random changes.

    The CEO of JotForm, an online software company, applied systems thinking to improve their product development. Instead of just pushing features in isolation, they set up continuous user feedback loops (input) and observed usage outcomes (output). By treating user feedback as an integral element in their system, they identified which changes would improve the whole system’s performance, leading to higher user satisfaction and retention. This holistic view prevented siloed fixes and enabled strategic decisions that improved the product’s success as a whole.

    You can use this step to identify leverage points in your business — places where small tweaks create outsized results. When you can see the entire system, these opportunities become obvious.

    Remember what systems thinker Russell Ackoff said:

    “A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole.”

    By connecting your black boxes and optimizing the flow between them, you create something greater than any individual component.

    Your New Reality: From Constantly Busy to Systematically Free

    Let’s circle back to where we started — your brain’s limited bandwidth. Remember those 50 bits per second? That constraint isn’t going away. But now you have a way to work with it rather than against it.

    By using the black box method, you’re essentially creating an external operating system for your business and life. You’re offloading complexity from your limited working memory into documented systems.

    Think about what this means for you practically:

    • No more forgetting important details (your systems remember for you)
    • No more being the bottleneck (processes continue without your direct involvement)
    • No more context-switching fatigue (clear boundaries between systems)
    • No more reinventing solutions to recurring problems (the system already has the answer)

    The data on decision fatigue is shocking — judicial studies found that decisions were 65% favorable at the day’s start but dropped to near 0% just before breaks. After lunch, the pattern would reset. This dramatically illustrates how our mental resources deplete throughout the day.

    Systems thinking protects you from this depletion by requiring fewer decisions. The system itself makes many choices for you, conserving your mental energy for what truly matters.

    For a digital nomad or online entrepreneur, this isn’t just convenient — it’s transformative. It’s the difference between a business that chains you to your laptop and one that runs while you explore a new city or take a month off.

    As W. Edwards Deming wisely noted,

    “The system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

    If you want different results, you must change the system producing them.

    I encourage you to start small. Take one process in your business or life and apply the black box method today. Draw it out. Define the inputs and outputs. Set clear boundaries.

    Then watch what happens.

    You’ll likely discover, as I did, that this simple mental model becomes a lens through which you see everything. You’ll start noticing systems everywhere — some working beautifully, others desperately in need of redesign.

    Your brain may be limited to a small context window, but with systems thinking, your impact isn’t. By creating well-designed black boxes connected into a coherent whole, you build something greater than what any single brain could manage alone.

    That’s the real freedom machine — not just a business that makes money, but a system that expands your capabilities beyond your inherent limitations.

    So grab that notebook. Draw your first black box. And step into your new role as the architect of systems that work for you, not the other way around.

  • Letter To My 25-Year-Old Self: 19 Brutal Lessons I Wish I’d Known Earlier

    Letter To My 25-Year-Old Self: 19 Brutal Lessons I Wish I’d Known Earlier

    I’m writing this after learning a ton of shit in the decade since I was 25. Things that would have made my path to freedom faster, easier, and less fucking painful if I’d known them earlier.

    The gap between where you think you should be and where you actually are is crushing you right now. You scour through social feeds looking at these digital nomads living the dream – working from beaches in Thailand or cafes in Singapore – while you’re still struggling with your job deadlines and wondering if you’ll ever break free from the daily grind.

    Let me be blunt: 95% of purchasing decisions are driven by subconscious factors. Most of the choices you’re making now – from relationship priorities to business strategies – are influenced by unconscious patterns you don’t even recognize yet. This is why so many aspiring entrepreneurs stay stuck despite having all the technical skills they need.

    What I’m about to share isn’t the inspirational bullshit you’ll find in mainstream entrepreneurship podcasts. These are the brutal, sometimes uncomfortable lessons that have actually moved the needle in my life – and they will in yours too, if you have the courage to implement them.

    Consider this my letter through time, from someone who did not follow conventional wisdom, but learnt these lessons the hard way.

    The 19 Brutal Truths I Had To Learn The Hard Way

    1. Business and entrepreneurship are your path to freedom

    This isn’t just motivational crap – it’s backed by hard facts. Self-employed business owners are four times more likely to become millionaires than employees. Despite making up less than 20% of households, they represent two-thirds of high-net-worth households in America.

    While your tech job pays the bills, you need to think of it as a stepping stone, not the destination. Start exploring different business models now. Find one that resonates with you and commit to it like your freedom depends on it – because it does.

    The path won’t be easy – only about 1/3 of new businesses survive their first decade. But staying an employee for life is a guaranteed path to mediocrity. As Richard Branson says,

    “Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.”

    2. Build your personal brand immediately, and make it global

    Your LinkedIn profile isn’t a fucking brand. Neither is that halfhearted Twitter (I know, X) account you check once a month.

    I wish I’d understood that your personal brand outlasts any business you’ll ever build. Companies will come and go, but your reputation and network stay with you forever. Jeff Bezos nailed it:

    “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

    Look at Elon Musk. Tesla spends virtually zero on advertising because Musk’s personal brand does the marketing for him. His tweets drive more sales than million-dollar ad campaigns.

    Start writing in English right now. Seriously, today. Forget the narrow audience of your home country. Go global from day one – it exponentially increases your opportunities. Your accent doesn’t matter. Your grammar mistakes don’t matter (and you have an AI to fix it for you). What matters is getting your voice out there consistently.

    3. If you think it’s too early (or too late) – start anyway

    That voice telling you “I’m not ready yet” or “the market is saturated” is bullshit. The perfect time to start is now.

    Thinking cryptocurrencies have already peaked? Wrong. The global markets are just warming up.

    Think it’s too late to become a content creator because “all the slots are taken”? Ridiculous. The creator economy is still in its infancy.

    Zig Ziglar said it perfectly:

    “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

    Our brains are wired to think everything moves faster than it actually does. In reality, most “overnight successes” took years of invisible work. Start now, not when you feel ready.

    4. Relationships with the opposite sex aren’t your priority

    This will be controversial, but hear me out.

    Romantic relationships can seriously derail your path to success if they come at the wrong time or with the wrong person. Studies show divorce rates among entrepreneurs hover around 43-48% – higher than the general population. In one survey, 57% of divorced entrepreneurs reported their company suffered financially from the divorce.

    I’m not saying become a monk. I’m saying prioritization matters. Study the psychology of how relationships impact success trajectories. A demanding partner who doesn’t support your vision can drain the energy you need for building your future.

    The right relationship can be an asset, but at this stage of life, a partnership should be evaluated partly on how it affects your freedom and growth goals. Be strategic, not just emotional.

    5. Health and physiology come first – non-negotiable

    “In a healthy body, healthy spirit” isn’t just a saying – it’s a fundamental success principle backed by science.

    Harvard researchers have confirmed that regular exercise improves cognitive function, memory, and mental sharpness. When you’re building a business, your brain is your most important asset.

    Richard Branson claims his daily exercise routine “doubles” his productivity. He’s not exaggerating – studies show exercise can boost creative thinking by 60% on average.

    Even when money is tight, prioritize clean eating. Learn basic nutrition. Your body is the vehicle that will carry you to success or failure. A sick person has only one goal – getting healthy. A healthy person can pursue multiple ambitious goals simultaneously.

    Don’t wait until burnout forces you to care about health. Make it your foundation now.

    6. Study psychology like your success depends on it (because it does)

    Psychology underlies literally everything that matters in business: marketing, sales, leadership, team dynamics, customer behavior, and your own decision-making.

    Harvard marketing professor Gerald Zaltman found that 95% of purchasing decisions happen in the subconscious mind. Think about that – your customers aren’t primarily making logical choices. They’re responding to emotional triggers you need to understand.

    Simon Sinek put it bluntly:

    “If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.”

    Read Robert Cialdini on persuasion. Study emotional intelligence. Learn how cognitive biases affect decisions. This knowledge isn’t just theoretical – it translates directly into better marketing, stronger sales, and more effective leadership.

    The sooner you master human psychology, the faster you’ll see patterns in business that others miss completely.

    7. Embrace change and new experiences constantly

    Change creates opportunity. Full stop.

    Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied “lucky” people and found their luck wasn’t random – they maximized chance opportunities by consistently putting themselves in new situations and meeting new people.

    Stay in one place, doing one thing, with the same people, and your opportunities remain static. Move around, try new things, meet diverse people, and your “luck surface area” expands dramatically.

    Don’t fear relocating. Don’t fear changing your business model. Don’t fear exploring new markets. That discomfort you feel when faced with change is your comfort zone being stretched – exactly what needs to happen for growth.

    As Branson demonstrated when his flight to the Virgin Islands was canceled, he didn’t accept fate – he chartered a plane, sold seats to stranded passengers, and discovered an opportunity that became Virgin Atlantic Airways.

    Your next big break probably lies just outside your comfort zone.

    8. Fix your mental health – therapy isn’t optional

    This might be the most important point on this list. Your unresolved psychological issues will sabotage your success in ways you can’t even see yet.

    Carl Jung wasn’t fucking around when he said,

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

    Those destructive patterns you keep repeating in business and relationships? They’re not bad luck. They’re your subconscious running the same broken program over and over.

    You think you’re making rational decisions, but studies show up to 95% of our cognitive activity (including many decisions) happens unconsciously. Until you understand how your past shapes your present choices, you’ll keep sabotaging yourself.

    Get therapy. Read psychology books. Journal. Meditate. Do the inner work of understanding your triggers and trauma responses. It’s not soft shit – it’s perhaps the highest-leverage activity for your future success.

    Look at Arianna Huffington – only after addressing her burnout and mental health did she build the Huffington Post into a media empire. Don’t wait for a breakdown to prioritize your mental well-being.

    9. Think carefully before taking on business partners

    You probably won’t want to hear this, but you can do this alone. You have enough skills, determination, and capacity to succeed without partners.

    That said, data doesn’t fully support going solo. According to startup research, teams with complementary skills often outperform solo founders. Y Combinator openly prefers founding teams over solo entrepreneurs, as they’ve observed solo founders struggle to cover all business functions.

    Here’s the nuance: partner only if it truly amplifies your capabilities. Don’t partner because you’re afraid or want to share responsibility. If you haven’t done the psychological work I mentioned in point #8, partnerships often become a crutch that slows you down.

    The bottom line: you don’t need partners, but the right partner can be valuable. Choose extraordinarily carefully, and only if they bring capabilities you genuinely can’t develop yourself.

    10. Read more, and not just business books

    Your education doesn’t stop when you leave university. In fact, it barely begins.

    Tom Corley’s research found that 85% of self-made millionaires read two or more books monthly, while the average CEO reads 50-60 books annually. Warren Buffett spends 80% of his day reading and credits much of his success to this habit.

    Don’t just stick to non-fiction and business books. Classic literature contains wisdom that’s survived centuries for good reason. A 2013 study in Science showed that reading fiction significantly improves empathy and social perception – crucial skills for any entrepreneur.

    Reading fiction gives you access to thousands of years of human experience and insight, compressed into stories you can absorb in days. It’s the closest thing to living multiple lives.

    11. Don’t take on debt for investments – especially if you’re inexperienced

    This advice is painfully simple but ignored by many: don’t borrow money to invest if you don’t know what you’re doing.

    The Federal Reserve has documented countless cases where individuals who aggressively borrowed to invest in volatile assets ended up financially ruined after market downturns. The 2008 financial crisis is full of these stories.

    If you want to invest but don’t have capital, focus on building your income first. Taking high-interest loans to chase investments is a recipe for disaster unless you’re exceptionally knowledgeable.

    As Mark Cuban bluntly puts it:

    “If you use a credit card, you don’t want to be rich.”

    The math rarely works in your favor – market returns average around 7% annually, while most loans charge significantly more.

    12. Distribution matters more than your product

    This is counterintuitive, especially for tech-minded people, but critical: having an amazing product means nothing without distribution.

    Remember Betamax vs. VHS? Betamax was technically superior, but VHS won because it had better distribution and licensing. More recently, think about Slack vs. Microsoft Teams. Slack pioneered a great product, but Microsoft bundled Teams with Office 365, instantly distributing it to hundreds of millions. Teams quickly eclipsed Slack despite being an inferior product initially.

    CB Insights analyzed 101 startup failures and found that the #1 reason for failure (42% of cases) wasn’t product problems but “no market need” – which often translates to poor market reach or understanding.

    Start by figuring out how you’ll distribute and sell your product, not by perfecting features. The “if you build it, they will come” mentality is entrepreneurial suicide.

    13. Constantly meet new people and expand your network

    This isn’t just feel-good advice – it’s backed by hard numbers.

    LinkedIn and HubSpot surveys reveal that 85% of jobs are filled through networking contacts rather than open applications. Up to 70% of jobs are never even advertised publicly – they’re filled via connections.

    Oxford Economics found that executives believe they would lose nearly 28% of their business if they stopped networking with clients. For entrepreneurs, network effects are even more profound.

    Look at Airbnb’s founders – when conventional investor pitches failed, they leveraged networking at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, building relationships that led to media coverage and eventual success.

    Meet people outside your current circle. Join communities you’re curious about. Attend events in person whenever possible. Each new connection exponentially increases your reach and opportunities.

    Be strategic, though. Use your psychology knowledge to vet people for trustworthiness and alignment with your values.

    14. Cut out alcohol, smoking, and drugs completely

    This might seem extreme in a culture that normalizes drinking, but the data is clear: substances impair your potential.

    Even moderate drinking disrupts sleep quality and next-day cognitive function. A World Health Organization report stated in 2022 that no level of alcohol consumption is completely safe, and chronic use links to depression and increased anxiety – emotional states that kill productivity.

    Smokers miss more work due to health issues, and even occasional use reduces physical stamina. A JAMA study found smokers had significantly worse productivity than non-smokers.

    You might worry about being the outsider at social events, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Being the clear-headed person in a room of intoxicated people gives you a massive advantage in both conversation and perception.

    Many Silicon Valley professionals now practice “sober networking” because they find they connect better without alcohol’s effects. Sobriety isn’t a sacrifice – it’s a competitive advantage.

    15. You are enough – cultivate self-sufficiency

    You don’t need external validation or permission to succeed. The research on self-efficacy (belief in your own abilities) shows it’s a powerful predictor of actual achievement.

    Psychologist Albert Bandura’s work demonstrates that believing “I am capable of handling this” often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in performance. It’s what Henry Ford meant by

    “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

    Develop an internal locus of control – the belief that you determine your outcomes through your actions, not external forces. Research consistently links this mindset to greater achievement in work and education.

    This isn’t about isolation – it’s about building inner sufficiency so you’re not psychologically dependent on others’ approval or help to move forward.

    16. Learn to listen to your intuition

    Your intuition isn’t mystical nonsense – it’s your unconscious pattern recognition system detecting things your conscious mind hasn’t processed yet.

    In domains where you have experience, research shows intuition can be remarkably accurate. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between “System 1” (fast, intuitive thinking) and “System 2” (slow, analytical thinking). While System 2 is crucial for novel problems, System 1 (intuition) is reliable in areas where you have expertise.

    Study by Gary Klein on veteran firefighters found they made life-saving split-second decisions based on gut feelings they couldn’t articulate – their intuition was synthesizing environmental cues faster than conscious thought could.

    Steve Jobs advised:

    “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

    Quiet your mind through meditation or journaling to better hear your inner voice. It’s often trying to guide you toward the right path.

    17. Nothing in life is inherently good or bad – it’s about perspective

    This isn’t just philosophical – it’s practical psychology. How you interpret events largely determines their impact on you.

    Shakespeare wasn’t just being poetic when he wrote,

    “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

    Modern research on cognitive appraisal confirms this wisdom.

    Studies on resilience consistently show that people who reframe negative events in a more neutral or positive light bounce back faster and often achieve greater subsequent success.

    The classic study by Lazarus & Folkman demonstrated that appraising a situation as a “challenge” rather than a “threat” leads to better performance under pressure.

    When you face setbacks, zoom out to a cosmic perspective. Remember how small our problems are in the grand scheme. This isn’t spiritual bypassing – it’s a proven technique for maintaining emotional equilibrium during ups and downs in your life.

    18. Don’t live somewhere with a combined bathroom and toilet

    Especially if you’re living with someone else.

    Seriously, who the fuck thought putting a toilet in the same room as the shower was a good idea?

    19. You are the most important person in your life

    As counterintuitive as it seems, focusing on yourself first isn’t selfish – it’s strategic.

    When you prioritize your development, you become magnetic to better opportunities and better people. It’s like the airplane oxygen mask principle – secure yours before helping others.

    Investing in yourself yields the highest returns. Your skills, health, network, and mindset are assets that can never be taken from you, unlike businesses that might fail or relationships that might end.

    Every improvement you make to yourself compounds over time. Small daily investments in your knowledge, health, and mindset create exponential returns as years pass.

    From Advice to Action: The Choice Is Yours

    I know some of this advice sounds harsh. It challenges the comfortable narratives we tell ourselves about success and happiness.

    But imagine implementing even half of these principles over the next few years. The momentum you’d build would be unstoppable. The freedom you’re seeking – which feels so distant now – would become your daily reality rather than an Instagram fantasy.

    These truths work whether you’re in Bangkok, Prague, or Palo Alto. They apply whether you’re building a SaaS product, working as a developer, or creating content.

    Start with just one lesson today, don’t wait till the freaking New Year. Perhaps begin building that global personal brand, or schedule a therapy session, or commit to daily exercise.

    Freedom and happiness aren’t built in grand gestures. It’s constructed one decision at a time, often when no one is watching. The quality of those decisions determines everything.

    The future version of yourself is watching what you do next.

  • From Startup Failures to Freedom: The Million-Dollar Business Strategy I Ignored

    From Startup Failures to Freedom: The Million-Dollar Business Strategy I Ignored

    In my relatively short life, I’ve launched dozens of business projects. None of them became something I’d brag about as a phenomenal success. I haven’t earned my first million dollars. I haven’t sold a business with a huge multiplier. I haven’t built a money-printing machine that runs itself while I’m off somewhere, not needing to do anything.

    Every time a project failed — and there were many — I couldn’t help asking myself: what’s going wrong? Why do others succeed while I fail? How can someone build a successful business on their first attempt when I’m on my 34th (yes, I counted my attempts) try with nothing to show for it?

    I’ve been searching for answers all these years, and I think I’m finally closing in on the truth. I’ve been piecing together this puzzle for years, but a puzzle isn’t complete when even one piece is missing. And if there’s a hole, the picture isn’t ready.

    After my latest failure — a project I shut down at a loss after investing $25,000, writing it off as another unsuccessful startup — I decided to act radically. I looked at the problem from a completely different angle.

    During all these years, I’ve read books and listened to countless “successful” people — those who’ve built businesses and now write those books, record YouTube videos, and produce podcasts sharing their success stories.

    I’ve watched people who started much later than me, from almost nothing (well, not exactly nothing — maybe $10,000), accumulate capital of half a million dollars in just a year and a half by successfully flipping a real estate property. I’ve seen startup founders who began just before me, following the same playbook from books like “Zero to One,” succeed where I failed: selling their businesses, earning enough to live on, and now traveling around India, Bali, Thailand, sharing their experiences on social media.

    Yet here I still am. After another failed attempt, working at an IT company as a middle manager, using my monthly salary to close another portion of debt. Something isn’t working.

    The First Missing Puzzle Piece: Partners

    After exhausting seemingly every approach in the never-ending epic of self-development — reading books, listening to podcasts and lectures, including psychology — the one thing I hadn’t tried was actual therapy with a professional. Someone who could ask the right questions and guide me toward meaningful insights.

    A successful acquaintance in real estate invited me to try “cinemology” — watching films followed by analysis through a psychotherapeutic lens, studying character behaviors and motivations. I was intrigued. The first film was the “Wall Street” with Michael Douglas, which excellently shows how relationships between people, childhood traumas, and mental frameworks influence final decisions.

    This experience led me to therapy sessions with the professional who conducted the cinemology. I wasn’t surprised that sessions with this particular therapist cost three times more than regular ones — he works with business people and uses unconventional methods.

    In our session, I laid out all examples of my ventures, explaining how my relationships with partners unfolded and where they ultimately led. One pattern — obvious to him as a professional observer but hidden from me — emerged immediately: I always start business projects with a partner, never alone.

    But why? Isn’t this straight from the classic playbook? Understand your strengths, recognize your weaknesses, find someone who compensates for them, who’ll handle what you can’t. Plus, sharing responsibility is easier — the tasks and accountability get divided among multiple people.

    And therein lies the main catch. Throughout my life, I’ve been looking for someone to shift responsibility onto. A second “mom” psychologically, whom I could come to with complaints, who would solve problems for me. I saw this mother figure in potential partners.

    However, I needed to realize that I alone am enough to run a business. I possess sufficient qualities to make a project successful. If I’m currently lacking something, it’s exclusively my responsibility to take everything into my own hands and bring it to order.

    The simplest recommendation — that I can do everything myself — wasn’t obvious to me. This is one puzzle piece I was missing. I’m not saying businesses can’t be built with partners. If you’re successful with partners, that’s wonderful.

    I’m saying it depends primarily on psychology and the specific situation applicable to me. For some people, this is completely normal, and they can operate independently without transferring responsibility to others. But for me, it became a compensatory mechanism — a psychological crutch.

    The Second Missing Puzzle Piece: Audience

    The one area of business I kept delegating to others was finding clients. I’ve always considered myself technical, usually handling product implementation. I can create information systems, build websites, sales funnels, automate business processes, assemble teams, motivate people, and so on. Basically, most business components except marketing and sales.

    My business ventures typically ended exactly when they reached that point. Marketing requires money already spent on product development, teams, and other things I enjoy doing that come naturally. Either that, or we needed to find customers, and here I hit a brick wall. I didn’t quite understand how to do this, where to look, why people should buy my products or services. Should I walk the streets? Network? Attend trade shows? The connection wasn’t clicking.

    How do all these startups that sell for trillions of dollars operate? I highly doubt Mark Zuckerberg travels to trade shows finding customers one by one for his social network. Somehow it works differently, right? I doubt Travis Kalanick walks the streets meeting people to convince them to install Uber. Something else must be happening.

    The only method that made sense was online advertising, which isn’t free. Yes, there are growth hacks many startups used, but that’s usually a story of luck. It might work once but won’t work for your business. It could work, of course, but it’s more like a legend or a one-off case you can’t reliably count on when building a business, because you need consistent customer growth, not just a one-time spike.

    And I kept going in circles. The only approach that seemed reasonable and controllable was marketing — buying traffic and advertising the business and product — but that requires money the business isn’t earning yet. How to break this vicious cycle? I didn’t understand until recently. There was something else I successfully ignored all these years.

    The solution that’s now my main focus at this stage of my life is the principle: “clients come first.” First the client, then the product.

    I won’t build or create any products until I have a customer base that can and will buy this product. And this shouldn’t be a customer base I acquire somehow. It needs to be more reliable, something I don’t have to worry about, something that doesn’t depend on another business. Something I can count on independently.

    This approach is called by different names but is widely known as building a personal brand. Because any sale — whether service, product, application, or anything else — ultimately ends with a person making the purchase. Some specific person either transfers money, installs an application, subscribes to your service, or clicks “buy” in an online store. It’s always a human.

    Where are people in today’s world? They’re online. Online is the most accessible place almost anyone can reach, with no barriers to entry except perhaps in countries where internet access is restricted.

    How can I find these people? The same way audiences are earned by those already doing it: creating something useful with your own hands, creating content. You might roll your eyes and say, “Oh God, more advice about being on social media, building a personal brand, growing an audience.” But think for a moment about what I just said…

    People — you need eyes and ears to sell anything. First, there’s no business without people. Business is essentially creating value and convincing others your value is worth their money. That’s any business in very crude terms.

    According to a survey, the top reason startups fail is “no market need” (42%), meaning they built something without an audience demanding it. Another 14% failed due to poor marketing (inability to reach customers). This aligns perfectly with what I’ve experienced — building products before establishing who would actually want them.

    Accordingly, value relates to specific people — actual individuals to whom your business provides value. And convincing means dialogue with a person in some form, after which they decide to give you money for what you’re offering. This happens with any business.

    Trust Is the Ultimate Currency

    If you simply buy a product in a store, it convinced you to purchase either by sitting on the shelf or because you automatically buy your favorite brand — Diet Coke, for example — without looking at other products. That is, you already understand some brand, already trust it, have a certain attitude toward it, and it’s very easy to make you spend money on it because all that’s needed is to see the product itself. Something clicks inside, and you make the purchase.

    Nielsen finds that 89% of people trust recommendations from people they know most. Even in retail, having a trusted brand dramatically eases the sale: consumers often grab their “go-to brand” on the shelf without reconsidering. That reflects brand familiarity and loyalty reducing friction in purchasing.

    If we’re talking about a service business, you need to find someone with a specific unresolved problem they’re willing to pay money for because it will be easier, faster, and in some cases even cheaper than doing it themselves, finding someone, or trying to figure out the problem on their own. Again, this person may be a business owner (for small businesses handling such issues themselves), a middle manager looking for contractors to solve particular tasks (in corporations), or perhaps a beginning entrepreneur seeking freelancers for tasks they don’t want to handle themselves.

    “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.”

    This is the quote from Steve Forbes, who know something about both business and brands.

    Now, if I want to build a business that doesn’t depend on social networks — because obviously no platform belongs to me, and I can’t be independent from them, and any social network could ban or block me at any moment, cease working, or become prohibited in a country for whatever reason — then I need mechanisms that allow first, diversification (having backup landing spots, preferably several), and second, audience gathering that maintains contact even if all social networks suddenly disappear.

    This is called a client base. Today, one of the most reliable ways to do this is to build an email list — a list of user email addresses that becomes your property, not controlled by any other social networks. You can export it, save it, it’s your database, you can do whatever you want with it, and it’s controlled only by you.

    Because you can’t directly manage subscriptions on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and so on. You can only rely on these platforms’ mechanisms, which work either for or against you.

    There is substantial evidence that a trusted brand (personal or corporate) yields a ready customer base and can lend success to new offerings. In marketing, this is akin to brand equity – the built-in advantage a known name has when launching products.

    Consider that recommendations from influencers (a form of personal brand) are trusted by 71% of consumers globally, and 57% of consumers have made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation. When someone with a strong personal brand releases a product, a significant portion of their loyal followers will try it.

    Look at YouTube creator MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), who leveraged his strong personal brand to launch a chocolate bar line “Feastables” that sold over 1 million bars in its first 72 hours, exceeding $10 million in sales. Within its first year, Feastables generated $251 million in sales, outpacing the revenue of MrBeast’s own media business, thanks to the millions of devoted fans he amassed on YouTube.

    Building Your Personal Brand Is Evolution-Proof

    So we’ve arrived at that moment when I understand that to build any business, I need an audience. And practically the only way to do this in today’s world is to gather followers, which means social media.

    To accomplish this, there are several methods. All these methods ultimately come down to creating content and publishing it. What you choose depends on what’s closer, more interesting, aligned with your internal values, and corresponds to your personal brand, but the essence doesn’t change. You need to create something, I need to create something, and share it with others.

    Then the herd effect works: if this information is necessary, interesting, useful to people, they’ll share it, forward it to others, influence the algorithm to distribute this information with their likes, subscriptions, “share” functions, and so on. This tells the algorithm the information and content will generate new views, readings, generally engage users to use social networks and their mechanisms. So they’ll stimulate this content to appear in other people’s feeds.

    And at this point, the circle, oddly enough, closed. Those same things I identified above as my weaknesses — marketing, sales, and my psychological dependence on others, placing responsibility on them and trying to build partnerships first, then business — all perfectly translate into building a personal brand, which is the quintessence of precisely these skills.

    First, building my personal brand means I can’t rely on anyone. It’s exclusively my task, and no other person will do it as I need because they don’t have my experience, knowledge, or information I want to share. Because I build it myself, it’s the result of my thinking, my brain function, my consciousness, processing all this information in my subconscious. So it’s inherently not something that can be transferred to another person or delegated if we’re talking about the ideological part, when I share knowledge, as now, or my observations or experiences. This can’t be delegated or responsibility transferred to someone else.

    According to Tom Peters, a management expert:

    “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”

    A LinkedIn analysis found employees with strong personal brands (via content, thought leadership, etc.) not only helped their companies but also insulated their own careers against layoffs by having external networks and followings. Additionally, 80% of recruiters say a personal brand can help a candidate get new opportunities.

    Finally, the sales I successfully avoided for so long, staying in IT trenches, constructing websites, information systems, developing, managing teams, and so on. Yes, sales bypassed me. And now I can and must engage in this myself. I simply have no other option here, and the basis of these sales is precisely people — the audience I earn by developing my personal brand.

    The Personal Brand Ecosystem: Getting Started

    Know Yourself First

    The simplest recommendation that wasn’t obvious to me: I can do everything myself. This applies to both business partnerships and the essential skills needed. Understanding your own psychology is crucial. For some, partnerships are perfectly normal and don’t serve as a psychological crutch, but for me, they became exactly that — a way to avoid taking full responsibility.

    Through therapy, I discovered that my pattern of always finding partners wasn’t just about complementary skills — it was about offloading the most uncomfortable aspects of business building. If your pattern resembles mine, consider whether this is serving you or holding you back.

    Start Creating Content Consistently

    The way to build an audience is straightforward but requires consistency: create content. Choose platforms that align with your strengths and preferences, whether that’s writing, video, audio, or visual content.

    On Instagram, 83% of users report discovering new products or services on the platform (often via influencers or brand pages). Meanwhile on YouTube, 70% of viewers say they bought a product after seeing it recommended by a creator.

    Decide what value you can provide based on your experience and knowledge. In my case, I’m building my personal brand not based on my butt, abs, or dancing in front of the camera, but on my experience, expertise, knowledge, and what I learn on this journey of gaining that expertise, knowledge, and experience.

    Build Platform Independence

    While social media platforms are essential for growth, remember that they don’t belong to you. Any platform could ban your account or become irrelevant overnight.

    Because social platforms eventually change or could ban accounts, diversify your audience channels to maintain independence.

    The most reliable approach is to develop an email list — the digital equivalent of owning your audience. This becomes your property, independent of algorithm changes or platform policies.

    According to MailBakery email lists have a 4200% ROI (return of $42 for every $1 spent), far higher than the average ROI of social media ads (~28% or $0.28 per $1). This is because emails go to an already-warm audience who knows and trusts you.

    Developing Your Authentic Voice

    Your voice must be authentically yours. You can also try to mimic others or create a persona, but remember not to add something that doesn’t align with who you are. Authenticity builds trust, and trust converts to sales.

    A study by Stackla noted 86% of consumers say authenticity influences which brands they support; personal brands usually rank high in perceived authenticity.

    As Zig Ziglar famously said,

    “If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”

    A personal brand builds that trust at scale.

    Creating Value With Instant Monetization

    Contrary to popular advice, you don’t need to wait months or years before monetizing your audience. If you’re providing genuine value, it’s perfectly acceptable to offer products or services immediately.

    Building a personal brand is portrayed as empowering: leveraging your own experience and knowledge (which “no one else can do” in the same way) instead of relying on partners or others. This path also forces you to embrace sales and marketing, skills previously avoided, by directly engaging with your audience.

    Having an audience via personal brand makes sales almost inevitable — if you’ve got an audience, you’ve got people you can pitch your product to. All that’s left is to put it out there.

    Designing Products That Extend Your Brand

    Your product should be a natural extension of your personal brand. If your brand is built on your expertise and knowledge, then your product should deliver that expertise in a structured, valuable format.

    This could take many forms beyond just courses and books — software tools, communities, events, consulting services, or physical products that solve problems you’ve identified for your audience. As Simon Sinek noted,

    “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

    In essence, personal branding is not vanity, but a foundational business strategy for sustainable success. We see this in countless creator-led product launches — from authors selling courses to gamers selling merch — where an existing fan base converts into customers overnight.

    The Evolution-Proof Approach

    Building a personal brand isn’t just a current trend — it’s an evolution-proof strategy that safeguards against technological disruption, including AI.

    Personal branding is an obvious evolutionary step to not get left behind by AI in a few years, because your unique experience and expertise baked into brand-building.

    While this claim may be somewhat speculative, it makes intuitive sense. As AI becomes more capable of producing generic content and performing routine tasks, the unique human elements — your personal experience, perspective, and connection — become increasingly valuable.

    I believe that my knowledge and personality are “locked in” and only growing over time. This human capital appreciates while AI struggles to replicate the authentic journey and trust relationship developed through consistent personal branding.

    The circle has closed for me. I now understand that to create a business and the lifestyle I want, I need a personal brand. This brings me an audience — people who will potentially become my customers.

    If you’re still reading, I invite you to join me on this journey of discovery. I’ll be sharing what I learn along the way, helping you while helping myself navigate this fascinating, still unexplored, but absolutely captivating — and profitable — adventure.

    As Henry Ford insightfully noted,

    “It is not the employer who pays the wages… It is the customer who pays the wages.”

    This underpins why focusing on an audience first is wise — because ultimately, cultivating customers’ goodwill through personal connection is the real key to business survival.

    The puzzle is finally coming together. Personal branding is not just another marketing tactic — it’s the foundation upon which sustainable businesses are built in the digital age.

  • The Creator’s Manifesto: Align Passion, Purpose and Income While Contributing to Humanity

    The Creator’s Manifesto: Align Passion, Purpose and Income While Contributing to Humanity

    Yesterday I rewatched “Interstellar” and found myself pondering once again: what’s the actual purpose of a human being? What’s the goal of humans as a species in the world we currently inhabit? A world where we basically have everything, where we don’t yet face the catastrophic problems shown in the film. From an existential standpoint, things are pretty damn good. Humanity’s future looks bright, and we’re moving forward at breakneck speed.

    Brian Johnson is developing immortality protocols. Brett Adcock is producing robots that will replace human physical labor. Elon Musk is building rockets to send us to other planets. Sam Altman is building AGI to solve our most complex problems. Microsoft is developing quantum computers to provide the necessary power to solve these tasks. Basically, everything humanity could dream of lies ahead. And some company is working on genetic engineering to eradicate all diseases. Another is preserving animal embryos in case of extinction and trying to resurrect mammoths to help protect the Arctic permafrost from melting. It all sounds incredibly inspiring.

    On one hand, I look at these people and what’s happening with awe. On the other hand, it’s almost unbelievable that all this is actually real. It seems like these are just magazine covers or news feeds, that none of this actually exists beyond media headlines. But thinking about it seriously, I feel endless admiration for how far humans can go using creativity, thinking, cognitive abilities, and the desire to discover something new, to move forward and bring all of humanity along.

    Yet for most of us, there’s a crushing reality beneath these lofty accomplishments. Research shows that nearly 80% of workers globally are disengaged from their jobs, creating a staggering $438 billion black hole of lost productivity. The gap between what we’re capable of and what we’re actually doing has never been wider. And if you’re reading this, chances are you feel that tension acutely – the pull between earning a living and creating something meaningful.

    When I read such news, I inevitably think about my own life, its purpose, and what specifically I can do for humanity, maybe not on such a global scale. I’m not Elon Musk or Brett Adcock. Although, who knows, maybe they once had exactly the same thoughts, but eventually managed to bring their lives to a point where their decisions become something that moves humanity forward.

    This manifesto isn’t about becoming the next tech billionaire. It’s about finding your unique contribution at the intersection of passion, purpose, and income – a place where over 90% of people admit they’d sacrifice some earnings to stand. It’s about how you, as someone navigating the digital landscape with newfound freedom, can create ripples that extend far beyond your laptop screen.

    When Freedom Isn’t Enough: The Search for Meaning in a Digital World

    The greatest paradox of our time is that despite unprecedented freedom, most of us feel trapped. The digital nomad lifestyle promised liberation – geographical independence, flexible schedules, escape from corporate bullshit. Yet something’s still missing. The emptiness persists, even with a coconut in hand and a beachfront coworking space. Even with freedom.

    All these grand dreams about becoming part of some global movement quickly shatter to pieces when suddenly the rent bill arrives, and you realize these dreams won’t take you far and pursuing them doesn’t help pay the bills. You quickly come back down to earth and return to your familiar circle of existence, where there’s work – work you don’t love, where you have to do things you don’t like, and after a long, hard day, you simply have no energy left to create.

    And talking about creating and being creative for inspiration isn’t even on the table – it becomes quite difficult to even think about it. Because inspiration doesn’t pay the bills, creativity doesn’t earn money. The starving artist is the fate of most who engage in creative work. But is that really true?

    Let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. Since the beginning of time, humanity has been driven by curiosity, the pursuit of first discoveries, the desire to create something new. The drive for development, the desire for order, the striving to answer the question: why do I exist here? The desire to understand this world and answer the questions it poses to us, and actually understand: what is all this for, why did we appear on earth, why was I specifically born, do I have some kind of purpose, is there some path I need to find during my life, why am I here and what can I do, do I need to do something?

    All these questions have led us to where we are now. Robots, rockets, artificial intelligence, life extension, and dreams that someday there will be no diseases, we’ll fly to other planets, become a truly interplanetary species, and heavy physical labor will cease to be necessary, even intellectual labor, when it will be possible to live in complete abundance and do what you want.

    This is, by the way, a key moment – doing what you want. Because if your life currently represents doing what you don’t want to do, then at the very least this should suggest a thought or a couple of questions about why is this happening? Why, as a human, was I born and still live in such a wonderful time, when there’s plenty of abundance around, yet must spend my life time solving some petty household issues, some tasks that seem incomparably insignificant compared to those being solved by the world’s powerful figures?

    “The passion principle can lead people to accept lower pay for meaningful work,”

    observes Harvard sociologist Erin Cech. And yet, there’s an economic revolution happening right under our noses. The global creator economy – currently valued at around $250 billion with an estimated 50 million creators worldwide – has fundamentally changed how passion connects to income.

    Most people view the divide between meaningful work and financial stability as fixed and unchangeable. But the research tells a different story: technological progress, particularly the internet and digital platforms, has created unprecedented opportunities to align passion with income. The evidence is compelling – the number of Americans living a “location-independent” work lifestyle has surged dramatically – rising from 7.3 million digital nomads in 2019 to 17.3 million in 2023, a staggering 131% increase.

    What most people miss is that this isn’t just about remote work – it’s about the democratization of impact. For the first time in human history, a single motivated individual can potentially reach millions with their ideas, creative work, or solutions. This isn’t just marketing hype; it’s the new reality being shaped by digital infrastructure that’s still in its infancy.

    Indeed, by such feelings, this definitely shouldn’t be the case, there definitely should be something that I can contribute as my part to human development, humanity’s movement forward – at least at the level of my own life, even if not at the level of the entire species.

    And in such moments, when I watch this film, after watching it, these are exactly the questions that arise for me. What am I doing, what am I engaged in, how important is it, how interesting is it, how much do I like doing what I do, how useful is it for me, for the place where I live, for the people I live with, at least for someone, does it bring benefit?

    You involuntarily ask yourself such questions, and when you get answers that, it seems, no, it seems that everything is much simpler, more banal, more down-to-earth, and I don’t feel myself part of this big vector that moves humanity in the direction of development. Okay, but if I ask myself such a question, then at the very least it’s within my power to try to find an answer to it. And at the very least to try to make it all have at least some meaning, so that it all doesn’t lead me to the insignificant life of an insect that has one task throughout its life, which it unquestioningly follows, listening to its natural instincts.

    We are humans, we have consciousness, we can think, we have cognitive abilities, we invented language, we can create, we can synthesize something from natural materials, from what we have, we can create concepts, we can think and share our thoughts, we can store information, we can pass it from generation to generation, thereby learning, expanding our knowledge zone, becoming better over time, developing. Okay, am I at least doing this?

    In reality, all these questions have haunted me throughout my life, and it seems I’m still searching for answers to them. But it seems that lately I’m starting to find answers to them, at least for myself, and I’m beginning to understand that, in fact, despite not building rockets, not creating artificial intelligence, not curing diseases, I am still contributing, can contribute my feasible part to human development.

    Your Bridge from Bill-Payer to World-Changer: The Creator’s Manifesto

    The global statistics are sobering: only 23% of employees worldwide are engaged at work (as of 2023 – a record high), and in 2024 engagement slipped back to 21%. This means roughly 4 out of 5 workers globally are not fully involved or enthusiastic about their day jobs. Disengagement on such a massive scale suggests many are in jobs that do not tap into their passions or talents.

    What if there was a practical framework to bridge this gap – between our need to survive financially and our deeper yearning to contribute meaningfully? The Creator’s Manifesto isn’t some abstract philosophy. It’s a concrete pathway that acknowledges both the reality of bills and the possibility of impact. Here’s how to implement it:

    1. Redefine Your Place in the Human Story

    Most digital nomads make a catastrophic error – they define freedom only in terms of what they’re escaping from, not what they’re moving toward. This creates what psychologists studying the nomad phenomenon call “digital nomad dissonance” – the gap between the Instagram-worthy lifestyle they project and the day-to-day challenges of finding real purpose.

    Start by reconnecting to the human story. As I wrote earlier, since the beginning of time, humanity has been driven by curiosity, the pursuit of first discoveries, the desire to create something new. You are part of this continuum. Your existence isn’t separate from these grand ambitions – it’s an extension of them.

    The research shows this isn’t just philosophical masturbation. In a Harris poll, 58% of employees said they would take a pay cut to do more meaningful work. Among Millennials and Gen Z, over 70% say “having a sense of purpose” is a key factor in their career choices.

    Ask yourself: Which aspect of human progress resonates most deeply with me? Is it education? Technology? Art? Well-being? Environmental sustainability? This isn’t about saving the entire planet overnight. It’s about finding your particular thread in the grand tapestry.

    2. Transform Consumption into Creation

    How? In exactly the way that I’m sharing this information with you now. If this film inspires me, if it makes me ask these questions, if it makes me write this text, then it means someone else might be interested in it, someone else might resonate with everything I’m saying. And so my responsibilities as a human include sharing this information with you, which might become an impetus for you to do something similar, to share with other people.

    This is exactly what Christopher Nolan did, who creates a work of art capable of inspiring, thinking broader, thinking deeper, thinking on a larger scale, which is capable of making one look at life from a different angle, from a different perspective. This is a country of the fifth dimension, the tesseract. And to make it clear that everything happening around you, everything you see around you, and even the fact that you’re now reading this text on a computer or smartphone screen, loading it through the worldwide internet network and using electricity – all this is the achievement of humanity.

    But most people live in pure consumption mode, even when they have the tools for creation. Studies find that most digital nomads (despite having significant free time and resources) primarily consume content rather than create it. Yet the barrier to entry for creation has never been lower.

    The critical shift comes when you begin to see yourself as a creator, not just a consumer. What knowledge, insights, skills, or perspectives do you have that others might benefit from? The goal isn’t to become a full-time content creator overnight, but to start the habit of transforming your unique experiences and expertise into shareable assets.

    3. Find Your Bridge Point

    Yes, we admire the genius of those who create these breakthrough technologies, but we forget about those who help them on this path, about those who contribute their part to the common cause. Even though it seems very insignificant from the perspective of this one person, without their existence, this entire process would slow down significantly, and maybe it would be impossible without a strong team of people to create and build, for example, a rocket that can fly into space and even return to earth all by yourself. It’s an insurmountable task within one lifetime.

    This is where practicality meets purpose. Most advice falls into two extremes: “follow your bliss and ignore money” or “just focus on making money and find purpose elsewhere.” Both are bullshit for most real humans.

    Your bridge point is where your passion, skills, and market opportunity converge. This isn’t some mystical coincidence – it’s a strategic intersection you can deliberately engineer.

    The research shows this isn’t a fantasy. In a survey of those with side hustles, 37% started their side gig to pursue a passion, and 41% did so to spend more time doing what they love. Yet financial necessity doesn’t disappear – about one-third say they started side businesses to supplement income or savings.

    What if what I’m interested in doing, what if what inspires me, what can inspire other people, what I find myself in a flow state doing, what I don’t need to force myself to do, will allow me to pay the bills? What if it will allow me not just to pay the bills, but also earn enough for the lifestyle I want, and even more? What if it will bring me so much money that I can gradually grow my potential and create larger, more ambitious projects, ever closer to those with which I began my story?

    The bridge point isn’t permanent either. It evolves as you test and learn. The emerging pattern among successful digital nomads is one of continuous experimentation – trying small projects that require minimal investment while maintaining stable income, then gradually shifting as viable avenues emerge.

    4. Build Your Global Amplification System

    This is where the digital nomad has an extraordinary advantage over previous generations. Your ideas, creations, and solutions can now reach virtually anyone, anywhere. The infrastructure for global distribution exists and is largely free to access.

    The statistics are mind-boggling: over 5 billion internet users worldwide, with 60% of the global population online. Platforms like YouTube see over 1 billion hours of video watched daily. Your potential audience is literally in the billions.

    Building your amplification system isn’t about being on every platform – it’s about finding the right channels for your specific contribution and mastering them.

    Online platforms like YouTube, Etsy, and Patreon enable creators, educators, and entrepreneurs to monetize their content or crafts globally with low startup costs. And we’re still in the early stages of this revolution.

    5. Create Connective Content

    The most powerful form of creation isn’t just sharing information – it’s creating connections. This means producing content that links individuals to ideas, communities, and possibilities they wouldn’t otherwise discover.

    Howard Thurman, the theologian, put it perfectly:

    “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

    Connective content doesn’t require you to be an expert on everything. It simply requires you to share your authentic perspective on what you’re learning, experiencing, or creating. This is exactly what I’m doing now – connecting philosophical questions from Interstellar to practical steps you can take in your own life.

    When you create from this authentic place, you naturally attract those who resonate with your perspective. This is how tribes form around creators – not because the creator is perfect, but because they’re genuine.

    6. Monetize Through Resonance

    The starving artist trope needs to die. In today’s digital landscape, authentic creation that resonates with even a modest audience can generate sustainable income. The key is understanding the multiple ways your creation can create value:

    • Direct monetization (products, services, memberships)
    • Indirect opportunities (consulting, speaking, partnerships)
    • Attention arbitrage aka referrals (building an audience that others want to reach)

    The data supports this reality. While 71% of independent content creators earn under $30,000 per year from their work, 9% earn six figures. And these figures don’t capture the many indirect benefits that come from establishing yourself as a creator – from professional opportunities to lifestyle flexibility.

    Importantly, the research shows that those who monetize effectively don’t start with money as their primary motivation. They focus first on creating genuine value, then find natural ways to capture some of that value financially.

    7. Scale Your Impact Incrementally

    Where am I going with all these reflections? To the fact that I’ve begun to understand that the purpose of my existence and the tasks I want to perform are no less inspiring and no less important than those we all see, which are on our lips and in our sight, those that undoubtedly lead to some development, forward movement of the entire human race. But even if on a much smaller scale, one way or another, I’m making my contribution.

    But to do this, I need to share, I need to create, I need to be creative. This is exactly what I’m calling myself to do. To become a Creator. To create something new. To create and to share it with others. To create and inspire a person and myself to become part of this global movement forward in human development.

    The most common mistake is believing you need to create world-changing impact immediately. This leads to paralysis or quitting when immediate results don’t materialize. Instead, think of impact as a series of expanding circles:

    1. Personal impact (how creation changes you)
    2. Immediate community impact (close connections)
    3. Audience impact (your growing community)
    4. Industry or niche impact (influencing peers)
    5. Cultural impact (shifting perceptions more broadly)
    6. Systemic impact (changing structures and institutions)

    Few creators start beyond circles 1-3, but many eventually reach circles 4-6 through consistent, quality creation over time. This perspective allows you to celebrate small wins while maintaining a long-term vision.

    As the Sufi poet Rumi said,

    “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

    This isn’t just poetic – it’s practical. The research consistently shows that those who align their work with internal motivation sustain their efforts longer and achieve more meaningful results over time.

    Your Invitation to the Creator’s Journey

    So where does all this leave us? The question that began this manifesto – about purpose and contribution – doesn’t have a single answer. It’s a personal journey each of us must undertake. The constant tension between paying bills and finding meaning isn’t something to solve once and leave behind. It’s an ongoing lifetime process.

    But here’s what I know for certain: you don’t need to build rockets or develop AGI to contribute meaningfully to humanity’s progress. The act of creation itself – whether it’s writing, coding, designing, teaching, or any other form of bringing something new into the world – is fundamentally aligned with humanity’s grand journey.

    “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

    Maya Angelou reminds us. This isn’t just true for creativity – it’s true for meaning, purpose, and even prosperity when approached with the right mindset.

    The true challenge for most isn’t finding grand purpose – it’s starting small. It’s writing that first blog post, recording that first video, launching that tiny project, sharing that perspective that only you have. From these humble beginnings, futures unfold that we cannot possibly predict.

    And it’s exactly human creativity, curiosity, and ability to solve such tasks that will lead me to the answer to this question.

    I invite you on this journey with me.

    I find it very inspiring for myself, so I’m confident it can become no less inspiring for someone else.

    Join in.

  • The Missing Key: Your Business Is Failing Because You Skipped This One Step

    The Missing Key: Your Business Is Failing Because You Skipped This One Step

    You feel the potential inside you. You know you’re capable of so much more than what your surroundings expect. The path society outlined — the conventional one — doesn’t work for you. It’s that traditional route where you follow the script, the template, the pre-made plan that’s supposedly for everyone.

    You’re supposed to grow up a bit, go to school, get good grades, then go to college or university, keep getting good grades so you can become a rookie in some career you had to choose when you didn’t understand anything about yourself, your strengths, or what you even want to do in life. Yet somehow, miraculously, you need to make this choice, a decision that will impact your entire future from that point forward.

    And this decision is critical because if you choose the wrong specialization, your life is doomed. You won’t be able to earn enough money to support yourself, to support your family that you’re supposed to start after you finish your education. You’ll need to buy property on credit that your salary from your new career can afford. You’ll need to buy a car and several pieces of furniture from a list.

    Somewhere during this period, either during your university life or after, you’re supposed to find your spouse, create a family with them, have children. And then comes the next wonderful algorithm. You wake up. You wake up with difficulty, because today will be another hard day, and you have to do things you don’t really want to do, maybe things you really hate, things that make you sick, and there’s absolutely no pleasure in starting this day.

    In your mind looms the ghostly goal called “Friday,” Friday evening, when you can go party with your work friends at the local bar. Discuss the latest political news, come to some conclusions, and so on. But for now, you need to get ready for work. You make your way through traffic jams and other people, trying to find some meaning in this exercise.

    Well, I did feel like this conventional path wasn’t for me. And throughout my conscious life, I’ve unconsciously been searching for ways to avoid this script, trying all possible methods that somehow differ from those prescribed in this scenario, in which I had no desire to become an actor.

    I talk more about this rejection of the conventional path in my article on The Freedom Equation: How To Develop The Skills That Create Location Independence, where I explore why the standard life script never felt right to me.

    I was 10 or 11 when I tried my first business in quotes — when my neighbor and I wanted to organize a lemonade stand near our house and feed passersby with meals we prepared from instant noodles, tea, coffee, and a small dessert. We were going to sell this literally for a few cents, adding a small margin to the cost of purchasing the goods, which we naturally bought with our parents’ money.

    The next attempt came many years later after I finished university. My girlfriend and I organized a flower business and launched a flower salon in the city where I lived then, and started selling them. Everything went pretty well, we had such a side income because at that time I was working at my second job in an IT company, earning good money. I had money to cover the loan we took for renting the premises and purchasing the first batch of goods to get the machine spinning.

    And it actually spun quite well, we had a side income, and we developed it to the point where we could even sell it. And this was, in fact, the first real experience of feeling out the life model called “business.”

    There was something attractive and wildly appealing about it — the fact that we solved all the problems ourselves, no one told us what to do. The tasks were, of course, much bigger, the problems were much more complex than when you work at a job, but we did it ourselves, we did it by choice, it was interesting because it was ours. And it was a feeling of freedom, real independence from other people, and this feeling, which didn’t leave me alone, in fact, doesn’t even now.

    This feeling is so attractive and addictive, like a drug, that you want to return to it again and again. But then things weren’t so rosy. There was the digital nomad life in Bali, when I discovered this lifestyle in 2014, when it wasn’t trendy and ubiquitous yet, when Bali wasn’t as crowded as it is now, and popular with everyone. Back then, Peter Levels hadn’t become famous with his digitalnomads.com, back then Canggu was 90 percent occupied by rice fields, not tourist service buildings, and there were so few people on the beaches that you could enjoy the sunset without Instagram poles constantly interrupting your view.

    From that moment, I began my path as a startup founder because it was the second way I discovered to build a business. And here the playbook tells you that you need to come up with a brilliant idea, find investors to implement it, take money from them, go build a business, not necessarily looking for clients, the main thing is to pretend that everything is going well, report regularly to your investors and everyone involved in your business, grow capitalization and at some point sell it. Ideally, of course, create a unicorn — that very company that will later become world-famous, replace Facebook, and you will live happily and famously.

    This path of a startup founder, though wildly attractive, seductive, alluring, and imbued with the very spirit of freedom I mentioned above, still doesn’t allow you to pay your bills, and quickly brings you back down to earth. You realize that if you don’t earn money, you simply won’t have anything to pay for housing and your own food, which is necessary even if you live the life of a digital nomad. Surprisingly, they also eat something.

    Tropical guesthouse entrance with empty chairs and a welcome mat, representing the failure of skipping audience first business strategy

    And to pay the bills, I needed a real income, and we started a business with my new partner from the Netherlands. What many do around — at that time it was a rental business, re-renting housing. We rented a guesthouse, lived in two of its rooms ourselves, and rented the rest to guests. At that time, Airbnb was just starting to develop, becoming popular in these places as well, and for us, this became the main source of income, with which we lived on Bali for almost a year.

    Outdoor seating area of a small business with empty chairs, symbolizing the need for an audience first business strategy

    Until one day representatives of the local authorities came to us, took our passports for illegal business activities, and deported us from the country. This is a story for a separate article, which I’ll definitely share someday, but one way or another, I had to leave. I still had a small amount of money left, and then there were attempts, a huge number of attempts to launch various businesses and projects, none of which brought the expected income.

    This was an online store, online schools, startups again, an arbitrage business, basically everything that was fashionable at the time: online courses, online schools, everything that appeared. And the shiny object syndrome didn’t pass me by. I took up any opportunity that appeared on the horizon and tried to make something worthwhile out of it.

    Something worthwhile didn’t really work out, what did work out was debt to the bank, several banks to be precise, which forced me to return to salaried work, because after a few years of such a life, I got tired of scraping pennies to pay for my housing, food, which, by the way, was quite crappy at the time, because I bought the cheapest of what I could afford. Living in a big city, it’s not so easy to do this, everything else went to rent and covering debts.

    And after a few years of such a life, you already want to at least live a little normally. I got a salaried job again, finally closed my debts, got myself in order, started eating normally. And two things that didn’t let me go all this time, what I basically started doing long ago with that first business attempt — self-development and everything related to it.

    I voraciously consumed all the content I could find online, all possible books on business, psychology, self-development, some specific skills. Mostly it was all about business and entrepreneurship, all the classics of the genre: Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” about investing, all the books on self-development by Tony Robbins, Donald Trump (strangely enough), and so on. In general, I consumed all this with enviable greediness, and it all became part of my self-education.

    And the second part — my freelance career. All this time, I earned my living by making websites for other people, setting up various automations, automating business processes, building and describing systems. This was interesting to me, it was something that I could do easily and effortlessly, and therefore I could combine it with my main activity, or rather, with attempts to make it. And in principle, it brought some income and allowed me to exist and pay those very loans to banks, my housing, my food, that is, my lifestyle. Although it was not as far from what I wanted for myself, but still.

    The Missing Piece: Why Products Without Customers Aren’t Businesses

    Here’s the truth no one tells you: 42% of startups fail because they created a product nobody wanted. This isn’t just some random statistic. This is the single biggest reason businesses crash and burn according to major startup studies. Not running out of money. Not technical problems. Building something people don’t need. Lack of market need was “the single most cited reason for failure in those studies – far more common than running out of money or technical issues.”

    I searched endlessly for why my ventures weren’t working while my freelance work kept bringing in steady income. The difference was obvious in retrospect: my freelance clients came to me through word of mouth. They were past clients who recommended me to others. I never actively looked for them — they found me. I had an audience, even if it was small and informal.

    I didn’t realize this was the key all those years. I was building products and hoping people would come. But here’s what I’ve discovered: if there are no customers — both potential and current — then there is no business.

    What was interesting to me through all these attempts was that while I created products that failed, my freelance work creating websites for clients kept growing. Over time, I started charging more and earning more from these projects. I did less work myself, having a team that I subcontracted work to immediately, and they did 100% of it independently, paying me a share for the clients.

    All this time I called my business a digital agency, which is also a common business model for beginning entrepreneurs on the internet. Because it’s a business you can start literally from scratch without initial capital, requiring no special costs. You just need to find a client, agree on a deal, and then you either independently or through subcontractors complete the work that needs to be done for them or their business.

    Everything sounds wonderful in theory, but the problem is that the first part — finding a client — I never managed to do, no matter how much I tried. I tried advertising, tried sending cold emails, sending messages, networking, making websites, writing articles, posting cases on the internet, running social media, running a YouTube channel — everything you can imagine. In fact, none of this led to results.

    The result was exactly zero, except for wasted efforts. Probably accumulated experience — it’s hard to say how useful it was, because it seems that so far, I haven’t made any adequate conclusions from this, all because there’s no adequate feedback from this whole process. You understand that it just doesn’t work, and what to do with it — is unclear. You’re playing a numbers game, and you just need to take quantity, and the more attempts you make, the more probability that someone will respond to them. That is, you need to send not 200 letters, but 2000 or 20 thousand letters.

    Maybe that’s how it works, but there’s no guiding beacon in this sea. I get a new client, again through acquaintance. They are brought by my former client. And this is a very large order, which basically covers all my current expenses, lifestyle. And I do it in parallel with my remote work.

    And I realize that I can’t drag it out any further, because the longer I drag it out, the more I immerse myself in this abyss of comfort, salary from month to month, and I rely only on it. And since I basically already have an order, yes, this is not a business, this is still a freelance project, and it takes up most of my time. And here I do part of the work myself. By the way, at this time I have already gathered a team for myself, which covers about half of the labor resources that are required.

    And I decide to quit my job and completely immerse myself in developing my business. But this time I don’t want to make the previous mistakes. And everything that permeates my previous attempts to do business and earn money online, while remaining independent and not turning the business into my second job, which I, by the way, currently get.

    So I now have not just bosses on the side, I am not my own boss, my boss is my client. And essentially I do what my client tells me. No matter how it sounds from the side, but freelance work is still not a business. It’s the same job, only now you don’t have one boss, as it was at work, but several, if you have several clients. They tell you what to do, and you do their projects, not yours.

    All the time you spend goes to making them richer and realizing their dreams, their projects. And what about my dreams, desires, interests, my projects? How do I get closer to them? That it should be a business, I have no doubt. This is the only way I can provide for my life and make it the way I want. I need money for this, since we live in a modern society, there is no other way yet. And even if we didn’t live in a modern one, humanity hasn’t come up with another way yet.

    So, what am I going to do now? I’m going to earn my audience, gather people who are interested in my way of thinking, with whom we have something in common, with whom our thought processes align, with whom our desires and goals are similar, with whom values coincide, and who find close and resonant what I share on the internet.

    And yes, this opens up a whole rabbit hole for discussions that all the audience is gathered in order to make money on it. But:

    1. First, I don’t see anything wrong with this.
    2. Second, that’s how every business works.

    For example, any luxury brand similarly gathers its audience, an audience of its fans, those who love beautiful things, living well, and then sells them its luxury items. Similarly, any consumer product does this, publishing information about its brand in the form of advertising, inserting it into films, inserting it everywhere possible, gathering its fans, a whole army, with whom they share interests or the lifestyle that the brand promotes, and sells them its product.

    In fact, this is done by absolutely every business, because that business that sells either to end customers or to other businesses, sells it to people too, because people work in business. And, selling to business, you close the needs of some specific person or an entire group of people that they have.

    Building Your Digital Nomad Freedom: The Audience-First Approach

    It’s becoming clear to me that for any business, finding customers should come before creating the product. This approach completely changes the game.

    The internet has created a global marketplace where anyone can put their voice out there to reach a worldwide audience. This is your true leverage. You don’t need permission to create content. You don’t need anyone’s approval to build an audience. The tools are all there, ready for you to use them.

    When I look back at my flower shop venture, what made it successful? We had a physical location in a busy area with foot traffic. We didn’t create flowers in a secret laboratory and then wonder why nobody was buying them. We put ourselves in the path of customers first, then developed our product offerings based on what they wanted.

    Similarly, my Bali guesthouse succeeded because we leveraged Airbnb’s existing audience. We didn’t build rooms and then scratch our heads wondering how to find guests. We went where the audience already was. As Entrepreneur Eric Ries puts it,

    “The big question of our time is not ‘Can it be built?’ but ‘Should it be built?’”

    The market decides what’s worth building, not our egos. This echoes what lean startup advocates emphasize: “We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

    This insight revolutionized my thinking. When I consulted my audience first through my freelance work, I succeeded. When I built products in isolation, I failed. It seems so obvious now.

    The Flip That Changes Everything: From Consumer to Creator

    The first step is to flip your perspective. Stop being a passive consumer of content and start creating. This mental shift changes everything.

    Most people consume social media, products, entertainment. The path to freedom is switching to creator mode. When you create content that resonates with others, you build connections. These connections form the foundation of your audience.

    For years, I was like most people — consuming rather than creating. I read books, took courses, watched videos. But the breakthrough came when I started sharing my journey, my insights, my struggles. That’s when people started to follow along. That’s when potential customers appeared.

    Look at successful digital nomads who have built sustainable businesses. They didn’t start by creating some revolutionary product. They started by sharing their expertise, documenting their journey, solving problems in public.

    Companies that understand this principle thrive. Glossier, for instance, didn’t start as a beauty company. Founder Emily Weiss ran a popular beauty blog for four years before launching products. By the time Glossier debuted its first moisturizer, they already had 15,000 Instagram followers waiting to buy. The audience came first, product second.

    Platforms and Channels: Where Your Audience Lives

    Your next step is choosing where to build your audience. Not all platforms are created equal, and your specific expertise will determine which ones make sense.

    The internet gives you unprecedented reach. With platforms like YouTube, Twitter/X, podcasts, newsletters, and others, you can reach millions of potential audience members with zero gatekeepers. This is revolutionary when you really think about it.

    I’ve experimented with many platforms, from blogs to YouTube to Telegram. Each has its strengths. What matters is consistency and delivering value on the platforms where your ideal audience already spends time.

    For digital nomads and aspiring location-independent entrepreneurs, platforms that showcase expertise, lifestyle, and knowledge tend to work best. This is where you can display both your freedom and your expertise — the two things your audience desires most.

    The challenge is not in accessing these platforms — anyone can create an account. The challenge is in creating content that resonates with a specific audience. Generic content attracts nobody. Specific, value-driven content attracts exactly the right people.

    Deliver Unmistakable Value First

    This step is critical. You must provide genuine value before asking for anything in return. This builds trust, demonstrates expertise, and ensures your audience actually wants what you eventually offer.

    When I first started building websites for clients, I often did small improvements for free. This unexpected value made them willing to pay for bigger projects later. I was delivering value before asking for money — and they kept coming back.

    In the online space, this means creating content that solves problems, answers questions, or entertains in a unique way. You’re essentially proving your worth before asking for a sale.

    The mistake most make is trying to extract value before providing it. They launch products to crickets because they haven’t built an audience that trusts them. As marketing legend Seth Godin advises,

    “Don’t find customers for your products; find products for your customers.”

    The beauty of the digital world is that value delivery scales. A helpful article, video, or social media post can reach thousands or millions of people without costing you more than creating it for one person. This is the leverage of audience-building online. As investor Naval Ravikant explains,

    “Building an audience can give you leverage. Media scales.”

    A strong audience lets you launch products (or even multiple different products) with far less friction than starting from zero. It’s a form of insurance too – if your first product isn’t perfect, loyal fans might give you a second chance.

    Start Selling Immediately

    Here’s where I’m going to contradict conventional wisdom: once you have even a small audience, start selling immediately. You’re already operating in the market, and you have the leverage to reach an audience even without a massive following.

    Many creators make the mistake of building an audience for years before monetizing. This is unnecessary. The key is to have a clear offer that genuinely helps the audience you’ve started to attract.

    Look at what happened with my freelance work. I never actively sought clients — they found me through word of mouth. The projects grew larger, the rates grew higher, and eventually I was earning more while doing less of the actual work myself.

    You don’t need a million followers to start monetizing. As creator economy expert Kevin Kelly explained in his “1,000 True Fans” theory, you only need about 1,000 people who love what you do to make a comfortable living. Kelly argued that “To be a successful creator you don’t need millions; … you need only thousands of true fans.” A creator who earns $100 per year from each true fan can make a decent living with just 1,000 such fans.

    Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover didn’t wait for years to monetize. He started with a simple email newsletter that grew to hundreds of subscribers in the first week. Seeing this demand, he quickly built a minimal website, which attracted significant funding and grew into a go-to platform in tech.

    The lesson is clear: start small, but start selling. Don’t wait for some magical audience size threshold. Test your offers early and refine based on response.

    Listen and Adapt to What Your Audience Actually Wants

    This is the step that most product-first entrepreneurs miss. Once you have an audience, even a small one, pay close attention to what they’re asking for, struggling with, and willing to pay for.

    Your audience will tell you exactly what to build if you listen closely enough. This eliminates the guesswork and dramatically increases your chances of creating something people will buy.

    I learned this the hard way. In my startup attempts, I built what I thought was brilliant without validating demand. With my freelance work, I succeeded because I was directly responding to what clients requested.

    Buffer, a social media scheduling tool, illustrates this principle perfectly. Before building their product, founder Joel Gascoigne created a simple two-page website: one page described the product concept and pricing, and the next page (when visitors attempted to sign up) simply said they weren’t ready yet but collected email addresses. This quick experiment showed real interest before a single line of code was written.

    When I launched an online store years ago, I created products I thought would sell. When I did freelance work responding to specific client requests, I made money consistently. The difference? One was audience-led, the other was my untested guess.

    Test Before You Build

    Even with an audience telling you what they want, it’s crucial to validate specific ideas before going all-in on development.

    This approach is core to the Lean Startup methodology. Instead of spending months building a complete product, create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or even a simple landing page to gauge interest. This can save you enormous amounts of time and money. As Eric Ries explained,

    “The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build – the thing customers want and will pay for – as quickly as possible.”

    I’ve watched countless entrepreneurs spend their life savings building elaborate products that nobody wants. Meanwhile, those who test concepts first — even with rough prototypes or pre-sales — know exactly what will work before investing heavily. Research shows that “startups which pivot strategically (changing course based on customer feedback) grow 3.6× faster and raise 2.5× more money than those that stick stubbornly to their original plan.”

    The most successful digital nomad businesses tend to start small and specific, testing concepts directly with their audience. They expand only when they have validation from real customer interest or, even better, sales.

    This is exactly what happened with crowdfunded products like Pebble, the smartwatch that raised over $10 million in pre-orders from 85,000 customers before producing a single watch. By the time they finished crowdfunding, they had customers waiting and $10 million in revenue booked. They didn’t have to guess if there was a market – they knew it, because tens of thousands of people paid in advance. Compare this approach to failures like Quibi, which raised nearly $1.75 billion to create a streaming service that shut down in just six months because they built a product without validating that an audience wanted it.

    As I build my own audience now, I’m testing different content types, topics, and potential offers with small experiments before going all-in. The response to these tests will guide exactly what products or services I develop. As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen noted,

    “In startups which succeed, ‘the market pulls the product out of the startup’ once product-market fit is achieved – customers are basically dragging the product out of you because they need it so badly.”

    Your Path to Freedom: Start Building Today

    You feel the weight of that conventional path. The corporate ladder. The mortgage. The retirement plan that may never materialize. I felt it too, and I’m still fighting to create my own path.

    What I’ve discovered through years of trial and error is that building an audience first is the missing key to successful entrepreneurship, especially for digital nomads and location-independent professionals. Without customers, there is no business. No matter how brilliant your product, service, or idea might be. As management guru Peter Drucker famously said,

    “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

    When you truly understand your audience’s needs, your product will practically market itself because it’s exactly what they’re looking for.

    The good news is, you can start building your audience today, right where you are. You don’t need permission. You don’t need credentials. You just need to start creating valuable content that resonates with the specific group of people you want to serve.

    My path forward is clear: I’m building my audience by sharing what I’ve learned, my successes and failures, and valuable insights for others on a similar journey. I’m doing this through content, through my newsletter, and through genuine connection with the community I’m building.

    Your path can start today too. Flip that switch from consumer to creator. Start sharing your unique perspective, your journey, your expertise. Focus on providing value first. The monetization will follow, probably sooner than you think.

    As I explained in my article, “The Freedom Equation: How To Develop The Skills That Create Location Independence”, this path to freedom isn’t just about making money. It’s about creating a life where you control your time, your location, and your future.

    I invite you to join me on this journey toward your true path. The path of audience-first entrepreneurship. The path of freedom.

    Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all my attempts, successes, and failures, it’s this: the audience is everything. Find your people first, then build what they need. That’s the real key to business success that nobody told me. Until now.

  • A Hidden Superpower You Possess: How To Use Your Subconscious To Solve The Hardest Problems In Your Life

    A Hidden Superpower You Possess: How To Use Your Subconscious To Solve The Hardest Problems In Your Life

    It’s 11 PM and you’re still staring at your screen, surrounded by unfinished tasks. Your brain feels like overcooked spaghetti. Deadlines loom. Client problems multiply. And that algorithm you’ve been wrestling with for days? Still broken.

    You’ve been there before – that feeling of complete mental saturation. Tasks piling up throughout the day, more getting added, and suddenly you realize there’s no way to complete them all. Your brain feels like it’s hit a wall. The solution seems distant, maybe impossible.

    I’m not the type of person who prioritizes tasks over my well-being. I have a routine that I maintain, one that I value more than arbitrary deadlines. I understand that my physical and mental state is infinitely more important than checking boxes on my to-do list.

    The most fascinating thing? Science backs this up. Research shows that an astonishing 95% of our brain activity happens completely outside our conscious awareness. Your mind processes an incredible 11 million bits of information per second, while your conscious mind can only handle about 40-50 bits. The rest? It’s all happening beneath the surface, in your subconscious.

    Think about the last time you were stuck on a coding problem, designing an algorithm, or making a critical business decision. You stared at the screen for hours, feeling your productivity drain away, only to have the perfect solution spontaneously appear while taking a shower the next morning. That wasn’t magic – it was your subconscious delivering exactly what you needed, exactly when you weren’t forcing it.

    “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking,”

    Albert Einstein once admitted. Even one of history’s greatest analytical minds understood that breakthrough insights rarely come from brute-force conscious effort.

    This isn’t just philosophical musing. It’s a real, practical method you can use to solve even your most challenging problems – whether they’re technical obstacles, business decisions, or personal dilemmas. And it’s surprisingly simple.

    In the next few minutes, I’ll show you this reliable three-step process that leverages your brain’s natural problem-solving capabilities – a method that’s been used by entrepreneurs like Larry Page, scientists like Dmitri Mendeleev, and countless others to create world-changing breakthroughs. A method I’ve personally used time and again to solve complex problems that seemed unsolvable.

    The Subconscious Powerhouse You’re Ignoring

    The human brain is astounding when you look at the raw numbers. Your conscious mind – the part you’re aware of right now as you read this – processes around 40-50 bits of information per second. That might sound impressive until you learn that your senses are bombarding your brain with roughly 11 million bits of data every single second. Where does all that information go?

    Into your subconscious – that vast, mysterious part of your mind that works tirelessly without your awareness or direction. It’s like having a supercomputer running in the background of your life, constantly processing, analyzing, and making connections while you go about your day.

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate,”

    said Carl Jung. Yet most of us never learn to intentionally harness this incredible power. We keep trying to solve complex problems using only our limited conscious resources – the equivalent of trying to move a mountain with a stick when you have a bulldozer parked in your garage.

    Scientific research has proven just how powerful this subconscious processing can be. In one striking study by Wagner and colleagues published in Nature, participants who slept on a difficult math problem were more than twice as likely to discover the hidden solution – 59% of the sleep group had breakthroughs compared to just 22% of those who stayed awake. Their sleeping minds continued working on the problem, connecting dots their waking minds couldn’t see.

    I’ve experienced this phenomenon countless times in my own life. Recently, I was faced with a complex algorithm design challenge. I needed to create something for my client’s ERP system we developing that could handle dynamic variables that changed throughout calculations, preserving necessary information while still running efficiently and calculating correct results. I could have spent all night banging my head against this wall, forcing my conscious mind to keep grinding away.

    Instead, I gathered all the information – input requirements, expected outputs, current algorithm steps, test data – and documented everything clearly. Then I simply stopped. I shifted my attention completely, went for my evening walk, and went to bed at my normal time. The next morning in the shower, without actively thinking about the problem, the solution appeared in my mind, fully formed. I understood exactly how to structure the algorithm – something that might have taken hours of frustrated effort the night before.

    Man taking a shower with a calm expression, symbolizing subconscious problem solving through relaxation

    This isn’t unique to me or to programming. This same approach has led to some of history’s most significant breakthroughs.

    Larry Page conceived Google’s revolutionary PageRank algorithm during a vivid middle-of-the-night insight. After waking from a dream where he had “downloaded the entire Web,” he immediately jotted down the idea of ranking pages by analyzing their backlinks. This midnight revelation – a product of his subconscious – led to one of the most successful companies in history.

    The chemist Friedrich August Kekulé struggled for years to determine benzene’s molecular structure until he dreamed of a snake biting its own tail, forming a circle. This subconscious image gave him the revolutionary insight that benzene forms a ring, not a chain – transforming organic chemistry forever.

    Dmitri Mendeleev, after days of struggling to organize the known chemical elements, fell asleep at his desk and dreamed of a table where “all elements fell into place as required.” Upon waking, he immediately wrote down the first Periodic Table – one of science’s most important organizational frameworks – with only minimal corrections needed.

    The Beatles’ Paul McCartney famously woke up with the complete melody to “Yesterday” in his head – a song he hadn’t consciously composed. The tune was so fully formed that he initially believed he must have heard it somewhere before.

    But you’re probably wondering: “Why does this work? What’s actually happening in my brain?”

    Research in neuroscience has revealed that when we step away from a problem, especially during sleep, our brains enter different modes of operation. Without the constraints of conscious, linear thinking, neural networks can reorganize and make unexpected connections. During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep particularly, the brain replays and recombines information in novel ways. REM is the stage of sleep when you see dreams.

    This is why studies like Dijksterhuis’s experiments on decision-making found such surprising results: when people were distracted and unable to consciously analyze complex decisions (forcing them to rely on unconscious processing), around 60% chose the optimal option. Meanwhile, those who deliberately analyzed the same choices performed no better than chance (25%).

    The implications are clear: your subconscious is often better equipped to handle complex, multi-variable problems than your conscious mind. Yet our productivity-obsessed culture keeps telling us to push harder, stay up later, and grind through problems – exactly the approach that science has shown to be inferior.

    Yes, and your subconscious doesn’t just work on predefined problems. It’s constantly regulating your bodily functions – temperature, blood pressure, digestion – completely without your conscious input. We don’t consciously think about how to digest food after eating. Your body just handles it automatically, using computational resources separate from your conscious awareness.

    If your subconscious can coordinate something as complex as your entire biological system, imagine what else it can do for you – if you learn how to use it properly.

    The 3-Step Subconscious Loading Method

    “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious,”

    Thomas Edison once advised. This wasn’t mystical thinking from the world’s greatest inventor – it was a practical recognition of how our minds truly work.

    The method I’m about to share isn’t just theoretical. It’s been proven through both scientific research and countless personal experiences – mine and many others’. It’s a systematic approach to harnessing your subconscious that’s as reliable as any other tool in your problem-solving arsenal. Some have called it a superpower, and rightly so.

    Step 1: Information Collection & Comprehensive Input

    The first step is gathering every piece of relevant information about the problem you’re facing. Your subconscious needs raw material to work with – just as your digestive system needs food to process.

    When I approach a complex algorithm design problem, I start by documenting everything: input parameters, expected outputs, constraints, existing algorithm steps, test cases, and any relevant patterns. I create a comprehensive registry of input data.

    This step is critically important because your subconscious processes information differently than your conscious mind. Research shows it excels at pattern recognition and holistic analysis, but it needs complete data. I’ve found that visualizing the information – writing it down, creating diagrams, or modeling it in Excel – significantly enhances subconscious processing.

    “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,”

    Sigmund Freud observed. While I’m not suggesting dream analysis specifically, this quote highlights an important truth: your subconscious communicates through many channels. By providing multiple forms of information input (visual, auditory, tactile), you engage more of your brain’s processing capacity.

    For decision-making problems, write down all factors, pros and cons, and emotional responses without judgment. Be radically honest with yourself – there’s no need to hide anything from your own subconscious. Your subconscious has no hidden agenda; its interest is aligned perfectly with yours.

    A key insight: information enters your subconscious through all your senses, not just visual processing. This is why I recommend engaging multiple sensory channels when possible. If you’re working on a technical problem, try explaining it aloud as if teaching someone else. The combination of visual organization and auditory processing creates multiple pathways for your subconscious to access the problem.

    Remember: comprehensiveness matters more than perfect organization at this stage. Your subconscious doesn’t need a beautiful presentation; it needs complete information, honestly presented. Studies on memory encoding show that information with emotional significance gets prioritized for processing – so don’t be afraid to note your feelings about the problem alongside the facts.

    Step 2: The Conscious Disconnect

    This next step is perhaps the most counterintuitive – and the most important. Once you’ve loaded all the necessary information, you must deliberately shift your attention away from the problem. This isn’t procrastination; it’s strategic disengagement.

    When I encounter a challenging task late in the day, I don’t force myself to stay up solving it. Instead, I acknowledge that my routine and mental state take priority. I go for my evening walk, take a shower, and go to bed at my normal time. This isn’t laziness – it’s recognizing when conscious effort has diminishing returns.

    “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover,”

    noted mathematician Henri Poincaré. This insight captures why disconnecting is so crucial: logical, linear thinking can verify solutions but rarely generates breakthroughs.

    The research is unequivocal on this point. The famous Wagner study I mentioned earlier found that sleep doesn’t just help a little – it creates a 2.6x improvement in problem-solving capacity. Similarly, Baird’s 2012 study in Psychological Science showed a 41% improvement in creative idea generation after an undemanding task that facilitated mind-wandering, compared to no improvement when participants continued focusing intensely.

    Your subconscious works best when your conscious mind isn’t interfering. The challenge is not thinking actively about what you need to do. This isn’t easy in our hyperconnected, productivity-obsessed world, but it’s essential.

    Some effective disconnection strategies include:

    • Physical activity: Walking, running, or working out shifts your brain into a different mode and engages your body, making it harder to ruminate on the problem.
    • Sleep: The ultimate disconnection tool. Sleep researcher Dr. J. Ellenbogen found people were 33% more likely to connect distant ideas after sleep than after an equal period awake.
    • Social interaction: Engaging with other people forces your attention externally, giving your subconscious space to work.
    • Different context: Sometimes simply changing your environment – working from a café instead of home, or vice versa – creates enough mental shift.
    • Meditation or mindfulness practice: These techniques train your mind to let go of fixations and create mental space.

    The key is comprehensiveness of disconnection. Don’t just mentally step away – physically remove yourself from the problem space if possible. As I emphasized it’s better not to just switch to another intellectual task. You want a complete context shift.

    In practice, I’ve found that sleep is the most reliable disconnection method for complex problems. The most effective approach I’ve noticed is to sleep on the task. For the majority of challenges, one night is sufficient; for the most complex issues, two nights at most are typically needed.

    This approach may feel uncomfortable initially – like you’re avoiding responsibility. But remember: your subconscious is still working diligently on your behalf. You’re not abandoning the problem; you’re processing it through your most powerful problem-solving system.

    Step 3: Capture & Implementation

    The final step is being ready to receive and act on the solutions your subconscious delivers. These insights often arrive unexpectedly – during a morning shower, on a walk, or in those first moments after waking.

    When I apply this method to algorithm development challenges, the solutions frequently appear during my morning routine – sometimes in the shower, sometimes during my sunrise walk. These aren’t vague ideas but fully-formed approaches that I can immediately implement.

    “Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up,”

    advises author Stephen King. This perfectly captures the mindset needed for this final stage.

    The neurological research explains why these solutions often appear during low-mental-load activities. EEG patterns (electroencephalogram, which measures brain waves) show that moments before insights occur, there’s a shift in brain activity. The brain briefly reduces visual processing input (you might notice your gaze unfocusing) and increases activity in areas associated with connecting distant neural networks.

    When the solution arrives, it often has a distinctive quality that we call the “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moment. These insights are characterized by:

    1. Suddenness – they appear all at once, not gradually
    2. Confidence – you immediately recognize their correctness
    3. Positive affect – they come with a burst of satisfaction or pleasure (hello, dopamine)

    Why the “shower effect” works so well? I guess it’s the combination of warm water, relaxation, solitude, and dopamine release creates ideal conditions for subconscious solutions to surface.

    Your job is simply to be ready. Some practical approaches:

    • Keep capture tools handy: Edison famously kept a notepad by his bed. I recommend having some way to record ideas near your shower, on your bedside table, and during walks.
    • Create morning space: Don’t immediately jump into email or social media upon waking. Give your mind a few quiet moments to deliver its overnight work.
    • Trust but verify: When solutions arrive, they’ll feel right intuitively. Implement them, but then verify with conventional analysis. Your subconscious is powerful but not infallible.
    • Patience with timing: While I’ve found most solutions arrive within 24-48 hours, more complex problems may take longer. Trust the process.

    For technical problems like the algorithm challenge I described, the solution might be a completely different approach to structuring the code. For business decisions, it might be a novel strategy that wasn’t on your original list of options. For creative blocks, it could be an unexpected combination of elements you hadn’t consciously connected.

    If no solution appears within your expected timeframe, it typically means one of two things: either your subconscious needs more information (return to Step 1), or you haven’t fully disconnected (revisit Step 2). I’ve rarely encountered problems that didn’t yield to this approach eventually.

    The power of this method lies in its reliability. This thing works like clockwork, never failing. While that might sound like hyperbole, the consistency with which solutions emerge after proper loading and disconnection is truly remarkable.

    Your Personal Oracle

    That very loaded state after a day full of tasks, with even more added along the way. You suddenly realize you can’t possibly complete them all today because you need to sleep. You feel the weight of incomplete work, the pressure of deadlines.

    But now you understand: that feeling isn’t a sign to push harder. It’s a signal to engage your hidden superpower – your subconscious mind.

    The three-step method I’ve shared – comprehensive information loading, strategic disconnection, and solution capture – isn’t just another productivity hack. It’s a fundamentally different approach to problem-solving that aligns with how your brain actually works.

    The research is clear: your subconscious processes millions of bits of information per second, continues working on problems during sleep, and often produces better solutions than conscious deliberation alone. From Google’s founding algorithm to Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, history’s greatest breakthroughs have emerged not from relentless conscious effort, but from giving the subconscious time and space to work.

    “A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something,”

    said filmmaker Frank Capra. Your subconscious is constantly sending you messages – insights, solutions, creative leaps – if you’re willing to listen.

    But perhaps the most powerful aspect of this approach is that it relies entirely on your own internal resources. Your subconscious knows you better than anyone else possibly could. It contains your entire history, your unique formation through life, every experience that has shaped you.

    Whatever advice you ask for [from others] will always be inapplicable to you, as I always say, because no other person has what your subconscious has – all your history. Your subconscious is your ultimate helper, working tirelessly for your benefit, asking only that you provide it with the raw materials it needs to generate solutions.

    The next time you face a seemingly insurmountable problem – whether technical, creative, or personal – resist the urge to force an immediate solution. Instead, trust the process: gather information comprehensively, disconnect completely, and be ready to receive what comes.

    Your subconscious is waiting to solve your hardest problems.

    All you need to do is let it.

  • The Power of Systems Thinking: How to See the Whole When Others See Parts

    The Power of Systems Thinking: How to See the Whole When Others See Parts

    You feel off. Something that awakens not just your body, but your mind. That sensation when you’re facing a complex problem in your business or life — where all the parts seem disconnected, and you can’t quite figure out how to make sense of it all.

    You’re trying to build something meaningful — whether it’s a sustainable online business, a remote career, or simply a life that gives you true freedom. But everywhere you look, you see only fragments: isolated tasks, disconnected projects, and problems that seem to exist in their own universes.

    This feeling, which says that everything is disconnected and nothing fits together in a meaningful pattern, is painful to experience. However, you understand there’s some truth in this assessment.

    Research from MIT shows that professionals who master systems thinking report a 29% direct positive impact on their careers, with nearly half (48%) seeing immediate benefits in their work. But more importantly, 77% report it fundamentally changes how they manage responsibilities and lead projects. They begin approaching their work more holistically — and with dramatically better results.

    What if instead of seeing fragments, you could see patterns? What if rather than being overwhelmed by complexity, you could navigate it with confidence? This is the power of systems thinking — the ability to see the whole when others see only parts.

    As systems scientist Russell Ackoff observed,

    “A system is never the sum of its parts; it’s the product of their interaction.”

    When you understand this concept deeply, you unlock a new way of approaching every challenge you face.

    In this article, I’ll share with you a practical framework for systems thinking that can transform how you approach your work and life. You’ll discover how to identify the objects and functions that make up any system, how they interact, and how this understanding can lead to breakthrough insights that others miss entirely.

    The power of dawn. The light of sunrise. With fog not yet dissolved in your head. But a framework that will bring extraordinary clarity.

    The Awakening Power of Seeing Interconnections

    To determine the complete picture of what you’re dealing with — whether in business, life, or a specific process that needs adjustment — a systems approach or systems thinking helps tremendously. And to learn this approach, I want to share the very tools I learned from, acquired, and which now subconsciously reside in my mind. I probably use them without even thinking about it consciously.

    However, all the information I present about any process, business, or situation is presented precisely in this format or key. Therefore, my brain is likely just trained to arrange everything into a systems framework and then deliver a complete, ready picture.

    So, what is systems thinking? It’s a way of viewing or representing any situation, object, or subject from a systems perspective. We need to look for and find the system. A system doesn’t exist everywhere. If we turn to the definition of a system, it’s a set of interconnected elements whose interaction leads to a set goal or result.

    Not everything in the world is a system. However, most things we encounter in daily life are either elements of some larger system or systems themselves. So it’s at least useful to look at things from this angle and understand what we’re dealing with.

    Renowned systems thinker Donella Meadows defines a system as “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.”

    This definition highlights three crucial aspects:

    1. Elements,
    2. Interconnections,
    3. Purpose.

    Without all three, you don’t have a system.

    I particularly like the approach used in classical systems analysis. One modeling notation is IDEF0, developed in the 1970s for military purposes. Its relevance remains unchanged today. Even though the notation itself has been transformed many times, and now there are more modern notations, with IDEF0 not being used as frequently, for many it still remains a daily tool because it’s truly a universal approach that allows describing many things using a universal method.

    Let’s start with the basics

    Every system can be represented as several elements that comprise it. These elements are so-called independent atomic particles that are indivisible. We can consider them as separate objects. If we take the example of a watch mechanism, it’s an individual gear or any part.

    Of course, we can break it down to atoms or elementary particles, but when we talk about a mechanism we can manipulate, we’re talking about the parts from which we assemble these watches. And the gears themselves, even when assembled together, don’t work until we start the mechanism — that is, wind the spring. And this is already something dynamic, some process, an element in motion, or an element in the process of change, or something that happens over time.

    This something is called a function or process. In systems terminology, these are functions — some dynamic change in the state of individual system elements. Dynamic means it changes over time, whether due to interaction with other elements or not. The main thing is that it changes. The gear’s position changes over time; this gear rotates, thereby moving the next gear, which, for example, initially connects to another external system called “human” when they turn the winding gear, winding the spring itself.

    This is already an interaction with an external system, but we’ll get to that gradually. First, we’re talking about a system isolated from other systems. In this case — a watch.

    I like to use a watch as an example because it’s very simple to understand and easy to visualize. It has a simple and clear goal — to show the exact time according to settings. And a fairly understandable mechanism — a set of gears, springs, and other parts that are closely interconnected.

    Illustration of systems thinking framework using a watch metaphor — parts, interconnections, and purpose visualized through gears, mechanism, and human action

    There is not a single extra gear. If we remove even one, the watch will stop showing the time correctly. If we try to add something, the watch will also stop working as expected. These are very understandable and simple system properties worth considering.

    Systems scientist W. Edwards Deming famously analyzed organizational problems and concluded that “94% belong to the system (responsibility of management); 6% are special.” In other words, over 90% of issues in organizations are due to systemic causes rather than individual errors. This statistic quantifies the relevance of systems thinking: it implies that to solve the vast majority of performance problems, one must take a systems view rather than a narrow focus.

    According to research from the public health sector, 72% of professionals admit to having little knowledge of systems thinking tools, yet 87% express high interest in developing those skills. This mismatch between demand and current capabilities highlights the growing recognition of systems thinking’s value in navigating complex challenges.

    So, how do you start thinking systemically? We have several parts into which we can divide a system, as we’ve already discussed. These are its individual elements or objects — indivisible elements from the system’s perspective that are independent particles included in this system. Like gears in a watch.

    The next part is a function or process that occurs within the system. For example, a gear rotates, the winding mechanism moves the spring, or the spring stretches, the watch hand turns. All these are processes or functions — dynamically changing properties of the system over time.

    Connect elements and functions together and the system emerges.

    The Systems Thinking Framework: Your Step-by-Step Path to Clarity

    To start applying systems thinking to your challenges, I’ll share a practical framework based on both my personal experience and the most effective approaches validated by research. According to a study in business leadership, training senior executives in systems thinking led to significant improvements in organizational performance metrics. After applying system-wide optimization strategies, 100% (it’s hard to believe, I know) of teams in the study improved their financial performance, and most teams improved their quality performance indicators as well.

    Let me walk you through the process that has transformed how I approach every complex situation in my life and business.

    Step 1: Define Your System’s Purpose

    Before diving into components and processes, start by asking: “What is the goal or function of the system as a whole?” Every system exists for a reason. As management cyberneticist Stafford Beer famously stated,

    “The purpose of a system is what it does”

    — not what we think it should do.

    For example, if you’re analyzing your online business, the purpose might be “to generate sustainable income while providing value to customers.” For a morning routine, it might be “to prepare physically and mentally for a productive day.”

    This step ensures you remember that components and processes aren’t random; they should collectively serve the system’s aim. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, reminds us that

    “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots.”

    When I analyze any system, I always start with its purpose. This creates immediate focus and prevents me from getting lost in details that might not contribute to the overall goal.

    Step 2: Make a List of All Objects

    To compile a list of objects, you need to expertly go through all elements that you believe may be part of the system. And here immediately arises the question: how do I know if this is an element of the system or not? And here the principle of the basket of mushrooms works perfectly.

    If we go to the forest to collect mushrooms, but we don’t know which of these mushrooms are poisonous and which are edible — we simply don’t have such knowledge — then in this case, there’s one approach that works flawlessly. And it’s safe. First, we collect all mushrooms into a basket, and then, when we return home, we conduct research and check which of these mushrooms are poisonous and which are edible. And accordingly, we sort them: poisonous ones we throw away, edible ones we keep.

    We need to do the same with the lists of objects and functions. That is, we first gather into these baskets absolutely everything that may even knowingly not be an element of the system but somehow entered our field of vision, and we decide to include it. Therefore, at the first stage, it’s better to include more than less.

    It’s better to include extra elements that can be removed later because the list is, of course, also dynamic. It can be changed, it can be adjusted. And when the process of system assembly is already underway, that is, its description in its final form, some of these elements are excluded.

    So, compile a list of objects. Objects, as a rule, are something that can be described, something from the real world that can be described with a noun. That is, it’s precisely some object, some physical object, as a rule. An object can be non-physical, but it’s still an object, and it should be indivisible. That is, again, using the example of a gear — it’s a separate object. If this object has, let’s say, some internal mechanism arranged within the system that works by itself, it’s necessary to understand whether it works by itself as an independent system, that is, if, for example, it’s extracted from this system, or it’s part of it. And in this case, it can already be defined differently: either as a separate system that is embedded in a higher-order system, or as a separate element that is itself only an object within this system.

    This step creates a concrete inventory of what you’re working with.

    In a remote work setup, objects might include your

    • workspace,
    • communication tools,
    • contracts,
    • workflows,
    • and team members.

    For an e-commerce business, objects include

    • products,
    • website,
    • inventory management system,
    • marketing channels,
    • and customer database.

    Research from MIT shows that professionals who take time to explicitly list all components in a system before attempting to solve problems are 46% more likely to identify hidden bottlenecks that others miss.

    Step 3: Create a List of Functions

    For describing any function or process, verbs are best suited. These are individual verbs or phrases. Yes, as a rule, these are phrases consisting of several words that answer the question “what to do?” in an indefinite form. Yes, that is, “what to do.”

    So, the list of functions is easy to compile either empirically, that is, simply knowing how the system works and thereby describing it using the already existing list of objects, that is, the set of those elements that interact in it. And we can immediately see and note which of these elements participate in functions, that is, they are dynamically changeable over time. And those that don’t participate are already the first candidates for elimination from the list of objects. That is, looking at the list of objects, you can also compile a list of functions. And vice versa, if we suddenly see that there’s some function, and we missed some object, it can be added to this list.

    Functions are the dynamic activities or processes within the system — what the system does. IDEF0 explicitly represents functions as verbs (e.g., “rotate gear,” “display time”). Every function uses inputs and resources to produce outcomes.

    For a freelancing business, functions might include:

    • acquire clients,
    • deliver services,
    • manage finances,
    • improve skills,
    • and scale operations.

    For a content creation system, functions include:

    • generate ideas,
    • create content,
    • distribute content,
    • engage with audience,
    • and monetize content.

    In Toyota’s production system, a famous example of systems thinking in action, managers identified that improving one piece of the process in isolation doesn’t improve the whole system. Instead, they focus on synchronization between stations, implementing Just-In-Time production where the function “deliver part to assembly” is timed precisely to reduce inventory sitting idle.

    Step 4: Connect Objects to Functions

    Now, draw the lines or arrows of connection — determine which components participate in which functions and how the outputs of one function become inputs to another. This is where the “static list” of parts turns into a structured model.

    Using a notation like IDEF0 can be helpful: depict each function as a box and show components as arrows going in or out as inputs, outputs, or resources. Essentially, you’re wiring up the system: who does what? What flows where?

    Simple content workflow diagram showing systems thinking framework — from idea generation to content creation and distribution with uncertain transitions

    This step reveals the network structure — the dependencies and information or material flows. It’s crucial here to identify any feedback loops (does output of one function circle back as input to another?) and any external interfaces (does the system take input or give output to external systems?).

    By mapping interactions, you heed Ackoff’s and Deming’s advice to focus not just on parts but on their interrelationships. As Deming stated,

    “Management of a system requires knowledge of the interrelationships between all the components within the system and of the people that work in it.”

    In a hospital system, for example, administrators discovered that treating the pre-surgery, surgery, and post-surgery phases as one system led to implementing a simple checklist that coordinates functions (anesthesia check, instrument count, patient ID verification) and drastically cut complication rates — an improvement only visible when viewing the whole operating room process as a system.

    Step 5: Analyze the Whole System

    With a map of components and functions in hand, step back (zoom out) and look at the system as a whole. Ask: Is the system as designed accomplishing its purpose effectively? What patterns emerge? Are there bottlenecks where one component is overloaded with too many functions? Are there functions that don’t directly contribute to the stated purpose?

    This is the analysis phase where systems thinking really shines — often revealing that a process is producing unintended consequences elsewhere. At this stage, one might use other tools that we’ll discuss later in future articles.

    The key mindset is holistic: improvements should be made with awareness of the entire configuration. If a particular component-function link is weak, that’s a leverage point for system improvement.

    R. Buckminster Fuller introduced the concept of “synergy” to explain why we must study systems at the whole level:

    “Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system’s separate parts.”

    Finally, and most importantly, how do we get information about what is included in the system, what is not included in it, and where to get data about elements, system composition, and its functions? And here there are different approaches. The simplest is observation, that is, without interfering in the very action and operation of the system. We simply observe from the side. There’s also the principle of photographing, for example, a working day, when we research the system of any process, or an interview, when we ask. If we are not direct observers, then we can ask about it. These are all methods of researching systems.

    Your New Sunrise: Clarity Through Systems

    The power of dawn. The light of sunrise. With fog not yet dissolved in your head. Take the first steps of today. Towards the horizon, from behind which the sun will rise in a few minutes.

    You now have a framework that transforms how you see the world. Instead of isolated parts and disconnected processes, you see systems — dynamic, interconnected wholes that serve specific purposes.

    This magical state that I urge you to at least try to feel and see; perhaps you’ll experience the same effect. Since I started applying systems thinking to my work and life, I simply cannot stop — it has become my favorite approach to any challenge.

    As Donella Meadows wisely noted,

    “A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole.”

    When you begin to see the world through this lens, everything changes. The seemingly complex becomes manageable. The overwhelming becomes clear.

    Remember that in a world where 94% of problems come from system design rather than individual errors, your ability to think in systems gives you an extraordinary advantage. While others fixate on symptomatic fixes, you’ll be addressing root causes and creating lasting solutions.

    Whether you’re building an online business, managing a remote team, or simply trying to create a more intentional life, systems thinking provides the clarity to see what others miss — the connections, the patterns, the possibilities.

    Forward! Observe the glow, which is unique every day. See how the light begins to fill all the space. See the first rays of the sun rising from beyond the horizon. This is your new view — a systems view that reveals the whole when others see only parts.

  • Breaking the Matrix: How Relocation Creates the Ultimate Fresh Start in 3 Months

    Breaking the Matrix: How Relocation Creates the Ultimate Fresh Start in 3 Months

    You feel stuck. Trapped in a cycle that repeats endlessly, day after mind-numbing day. Nothing new happens. No forward movement. No improvements. Just the same fucking loop playing on repeat while your consciousness screams for something – anything – different.

    You wake up, check your phone, work at a job that drains your soul, scroll through other people’s lives, sleep, and repeat. Your surroundings stay the same. Your thoughts stay the same. Your habits stay the same. The faces you see stay the same. And that quiet voice inside you keeps getting louder, demanding change that never comes.

    This feeling of stagnation isn’t just uncomfortable – it’s unnatural. Your brain is literally wired to seek novelty. Scientific research shows that new experiences trigger dopamine release, enhancing mood and motivation. As neuroscientist Andrew Huberman puts it,

    “Our brains are plastic, and we have the ability to change and shape them throughout our entire lives.”

    Your mind craves this reshaping – it hungers for it – yet most of us stay trapped in environments that reinforce the same neural pathways day after day.

    I’m going to share one of the most powerful methods I’ve found to break this cycle. It’s extreme. It’s disruptive. And it’s exactly what you need when nothing else works.

    Relocation.

    Not just a weekend getaway or a vacation. I’m talking about physically uprooting your entire life and transplanting it somewhere new. Preferably in another country.

    If you’re feeling that mix of excitement and fear right now – good. That tension is your body recognizing truth. The most transformative opportunities always exist at the edge of your comfort zone, not buried safely inside it.

    What I’m about to share isn’t just theory. It’s a framework I’ve tested personally and seen work for countless others. The research backs it up too. Studies show that the first three months after relocation create a unique “window of opportunity” where habits are in flux and far easier to change. Psychologist Bas Verplanken, who led this research, explains:

    “Life can be up in the air and people are generally more open to new ideas… after that point habits begin to get entrenched and become much harder to break.”

    This is your opportunity to rewrite everything.

    Why Your Brain is Begging You to Change Your Coordinates

    Let me be clear about something: our consciousness craves changes. It’s a fundamental human need, as essential as food or connection. When that need goes unmet, we experience that novelty starvation – a deep sense that life should offer more, could offer more, but somehow isn’t.

    I’ve always felt this hunger for new experiences. Since childhood, I had this feeling that I wasn’t like everyone else. I didn’t want to live my life the same way as most people around me. I was fascinated by documentaries about Ancient Egypt, by pyramids and mysterious cultures. There was something magnetic about that uncertainty, about exploring what we don’t fully understand.

    This isn’t just my personal quirk. It’s hardwired into human psychology. Novelty activates the brain’s reward system, triggering dopamine release and creating positive feelings of anticipation and excitement. Research from Psychology Today confirms that “novelty is needed for humans to psychologically function and is essential for life satisfaction and fulfillment.”

    Yet we live in a society designed to keep us in predictable loops.

    Most people try to satisfy this craving for novelty through material purchases. A new car. The latest iPhone. Designer clothes. But have you noticed how quickly that feeling disappears? That rush of excitement when you first get something new rapidly fades until the object becomes just another part of your routine.

    Graph showing novelty euphoria spike after a new purchase followed by return to emotional neutral level over time

    If you plotted this on a graph, with time on one axis and feelings of novelty/euphoria on the other, material purchases create a sharp spike that quickly drops back to baseline. This is hedonic adaptation – we quickly get used to new things and return to our previous happiness level.

    Now contrast this with experiential changes like developing a new habit or moving someplace new. At first, there might be discomfort or even struggle. But then, as you begin to see the benefits – muscles forming if you’re exercising, clarity of thought if you’re reading regularly – the positive feelings actually multiply over time. The satisfaction curve trends upward rather than downward.

    In my own experience, the desire for this type of change began early. My first significant relocation happened when we moved from an apartment in a multi-unit building to a standalone house in the same town. That move transformed my life in unexpected ways. My social circle completely changed – I lost dozens of friends from the apartment building and gained new ones from neighboring houses. I suddenly had to walk 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) to school every day, creating a necessary new habit because there was simply no other way to get there. At the time, I envied classmates who lived closer to school, but now I understand it was actually a blessing in disguise.

    This is where the real power of relocation emerges: when you change your physical location, it becomes virtually impossible to maintain your old lifestyle and habits. Society is structured in a way that forces adaptation.

    A longitudinal study of German college students found that those who studied abroad for a semester or year became significantly more open-minded and less neurotic compared to those who stayed home. Researchers attributed this to broader perspectives gained from breaking out of comfort zones. Another major study across six experiments discovered that people who lived abroad had significantly higher “self-concept clarity” – they became clearer about who they are and which values define them.

    This clarity doesn’t come from staring at your navel in your same old apartment. It comes from the clash between your existing identity and new environments that challenge it.

    When I finally took the leap to follow my childhood dream of living in another country, I chose Bali – before it became the digital nomad hotspot it is today, and before Peter Levels even launched his first online business. I quit my job, sold my business, and bought a one-way ticket with only a small amount of savings in my pocket.

    Immediately, a barrage of questions hit me: What about my visa? How can I stay legally? Where will I live? What can I afford until I find income? All these questions put me in a position where I simply had to solve them. There was no comfort zone to retreat to, no familiar patterns to fall back on.

    This disruption is precisely what makes relocation so powerful for transformation. When researchers test the “habit discontinuity hypothesis,” they consistently find that major life transitions like moving create the perfect conditions for breaking old habits and forming new ones. In one study, an intervention to encourage environmentally-friendly behaviors was far more effective with people who had recently moved compared to those who hadn’t.

    Why? Because your habits are triggered by contextual cues in your environment. Same bed, same morning routine. Same kitchen, same eating habits. Same commute, same thought patterns. Change the environment, and you disrupt all these triggers at once. Your behavioral autopilot suddenly turns off, forcing conscious choice.

    The source of your stagnation isn’t lack of willpower. It’s your environment constantly reinforcing who you’ve been rather than who you want to become.

    The Relocation Framework: Your 4-Step System for Total Transformation

    I’ve distilled this process into a framework that works regardless of where you’re starting from or where you’re going. What matters is the underlying psychological principles – the way relocation hacks your brain’s operating system and opens possibilities for rewiring.

    Step 1: Recognize When You’re Trapped in a Matrix

    The first sign is that feeling of stagnation – the sense that nothing is moving forward. Life repeats in a cycle, and a very small one at that. The description of your existence could fit into just one day, duplicated hundreds of times with minor variations (Neo, are you there?).

    You do things you don’t always want to do or even never want to do. Things you need to do for survival, bringing understandable and stable income – or worse, not bringing any income at all, so you can’t just quit these activities because your survival depends on them.

    At the end of each workday, you don’t have the energy to start your own project or do what you truly love. There’s not even enough strength to properly rest – perhaps go somewhere or do something that brings pleasure and makes your brain switch contexts. Energy is only enough to mindlessly consume content that someone else created. But not you.

    This is painful to acknowledge, but you know there’s truth in it. And I know this like few others because I felt exactly the same. For a long time.

    If this resonates, you’re primed for transformation. The discomfort you feel is your consciousness sending you an urgent message: evolution is overdue.

    There are two paths to transformation: creation or destruction. Chuck Palahniuk’s characters often find themselves through the path of destruction – tearing down everything to see what remains. It’s seductive, this idea that we must destroy our lives to find meaning.

    “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything,”

    as Tyler Durden famously said.

    But relocation offers something more nuanced – a controlled demolition rather than a wrecking ball. You’re not burning your life to the ground; you’re strategically dismantling the parts that no longer serve you. You’re breaking habits and patterns that keep you trapped, but with purpose – to build something better in their place. It’s destruction with a constructive end goal.

    When you move to a new place, especially a new country, you’re essentially becoming the architect of your own creative destruction. The familiar routines, social circles, and environmental triggers that locked you in place are gone. But unlike pure destruction, relocation immediately begins the creation of something new.

    Step 2: Break All Context Cues

    Half-measures don’t work when you’re deeply entrenched in patterns. Changing a single habit while keeping everything else the same is fighting against an entire ecosystem designed to maintain your status quo.

    This is why moving to a completely new environment is so powerful – it simultaneously breaks hundreds of context cues that trigger your existing behaviors. As the research on habit discontinuity shows, this creates a unique opportunity where your brain becomes much more receptive to change.

    My second major relocation happened when I moved to another city at 17 to attend university. I wanted independence and responsibility for my life. I wanted to make my own decisions without depending on anyone else. The first year I lived on my parents’ money, but I quickly understood I needed to start earning myself. By my second year at university, I got a job as a programmer. The pay was small – not even enough to cover my rent and food – but by the time I graduated, I had four years of real programming experience building an information system for the university where I studied. This completely transformed my career trajectory and opened new doors.

    At my next job, I gradually immersed myself in the business world. When the opportunity arose, my girlfriend and I started our own business alongside my regular work – a flower shop in the city where we lived. It was a completely offline venture that gave life to everything: our lifestyle, our relationship. It was a huge challenge, an investment in our future.

    But over time, I realized I wanted even more significant changes – something that would radically transform my life. That’s when I decided to fulfill my dream of moving to another country.

    My first choice was Singapore, for many understandable reasons, but I couldn’t move there directly. Instead, I flew to Bali with a one-way ticket – before it became the digital nomad hotspot it is today. I quit my job, sold my business, had a small amount of money in my pocket, and left. The disruption was profound. I had to figure out visa requirements, find affordable housing, and create new income streams, all while adapting to a completely different culture. Every single aspect of my routine was thrown into chaos – exactly what I needed.

    The key insight here: don’t try to change your life while keeping your environment the same. Change your environment, and your life will be forced to change.

    Step 3: Embrace the Challenge Period

    Transformation isn’t comfortable. When you relocate, you will experience stress, uncertainty, and moments of doubt. This isn’t a bug in the system – it’s a critical feature.

    Growth occurs at the edge of your capabilities, when you’re stretched but not broken. This is what psychologists call “optimal anxiety” – enough stress to stimulate growth but not so much that you shut down. Relocation naturally creates this state.

    Studies show that around 25-30% of expats meet criteria for clinical depression or anxiety in their first year abroad. Up to 50% report significant stress adapting to a new culture. These aren’t encouraging statistics, but they reveal an important truth: meaningful change involves discomfort.

    What’s remarkable, though, is that those who persevere through this period often describe it as profoundly formative. A large survey in 2018 found that 80% of those who had lived abroad reported strengthened self-confidence and independence. Roughly 70% said it helped them deal with uncertainty better in later life.

    I experienced this firsthand when arriving in Bali. The initial period was chaotic – figuring out legal status, finding housing, establishing income streams. But each problem solved built confidence and proved my adaptability. The skills gained during this period have served me in countless other contexts since then.

    This challenge period typically lasts about three months – the same window researchers have identified as the optimal time for habit reformation after a move. Push through this phase, and you’ll emerge with new capabilities, perspectives, and confidence on the other side.

    Step 4: Create Your New Operating System

    Once the initial adjustment period passes, you enter the most exciting phase: conscious creation of your new life operating system. With contextual triggers disrupted and your brain primed for change, you can intentionally design habits and routines aligned with who you want to become.

    This is where the “fresh start effect” becomes your ally. Research by Hengchen Dai shows people are more likely to pursue new goals after temporal landmarks or life transitions. Relocation is the ultimate fresh start – one study noted a 32% spike in new fitness program adoption among recent movers, versus only 18% of non-movers.

    When designing your new operating system, focus on systems rather than goals. Ask yourself:

    • What daily routine would support my ideal identity?
    • Which relationships will I cultivate in this new environment?
    • How will I intentionally use this location to expand my perspectives?
    • What triggers from my old environment will I deliberately avoid recreating?

    One critical aspect: don’t immediately seek out familiar comforts. I’m always bewildered by people who move to a new country and immediately search for the food they’ve always eaten. What’s the point of relocating if you immediately try to recreate your previous environment?

    Truly embrace the newness. Learn the local language, even if just basic phrases. Try unfamiliar foods. Adopt local customs where appropriate. The more you immerse yourself in difference, the more your brain forms new neural pathways and perspectives.

    This immersion is what separates tourists from those who experience genuine transformation. A recent large-scale study found that the positive effects of living abroad were strongest for those who deeply engaged with the new culture, not those who remained in an expat bubble.

    The Choice Between Loops and Spirals

    We all reach points where we feel stuck in loops of our own making – daily routines, thought patterns, and behaviors that repeat endlessly without progress. These loops provide comfort through familiarity but gradually strangle growth and fulfillment.

    Relocation breaks these loops and transforms them into spirals – similar patterns that continuously move upward rather than merely circling. Each rotation brings new growth, perspective, and capability.

    The research is clear: people who have lived abroad show greater clarity about their identity, enhanced creativity, improved cross-cultural understanding, increased tolerance for ambiguity, and often better career outcomes. But statistics can’t capture the most profound benefit – the expansion of what you believe is possible for your life.

    As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wisely noted,

    “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

    Transformative relocation isn’t just about changing your physical coordinates. It’s about hacking your brain’s operating system – disrupting the contextual cues that lock you in patterns, creating a period of heightened neuroplasticity, and consciously designing a new environment aligned with who you want to become.

    This approach isn’t for everyone. It requires courage, adaptability, and willingness to face uncertainty. But for those feeling trapped in matrix of stagnation, it offers something precious: a genuine reset button for life.

    I’ve walked this path more than once – from moving out at 17 to buying a one-way ticket to Bali with limited savings. Each transition created space for evolution that simply wasn’t possible in my previous environment. The challenges were real, but the transformation was worth every moment of discomfort.

    Now the question becomes yours: Will you keep circling in familiar loops, or are you ready to spiral into new dimensions of possibility?

    The decision to relocate – to break your matrix – is the ultimate pattern interrupt. It forces growth when nothing else can. And it awaits those brave enough to take the leap.

    Your future self is watching your decisions today. Choose wisely.