3, 2, 1... action!

Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here

Have you noticed a pattern in my last three newsletters? Because I have. In case you need a reminder:

Three weeks ago I talked about not being intentional and drifting through life.

Two weeks ago I talked about trying to find a path forward when my decisions feel indefinite.

Last week I talked about my ever growing list of self-discovery questions.

Here’s what I see…

Lots of thinking.

Lots of apprehension.

And no action.

For three full weeks, I’ve known I’m lost — and I’ve just kept pondering what that means. Don’t get me wrong, these thought exercises have been helpful, but if I write one more newsletter about being lost, I’ll be admitting that I’m drifting through finding direction.

That ends today. Or more accurately, it ended Wednesday night.

While journaling before bed, I realized my dreams were starting to slip through the cracks. Somewhere along the way, I began to settle. It’s okay being comfortable with not having everything figured out, but I can’t let that comfort turn to inaction.

(Here’s an excerpt from that journal entry. You’ll have to trust that it says what I’m telling you, because my handwriting isn’t exactly legible 😂)

Thursday, I got to work. I started by doing exactly what I told myself I would — writing out how I’d spent my last 13 days to see why my dreams were slipping through the cracks.

Here’s how those days broke down (some overlap across categories):

• Social — 8/13

• Relationship — 3/13

• Fitness — 4/13

• Newsletter — 3/13

• Family — 3/13

• Life management — 2/13 (a.k.a adulting)

• Startup project — 1/13

Before I share my conclusions from this exercise, here’s some context. All my work and decisions tie back to six personal goals I mapped out while solo-traveling Europe (the cliché of “finding yourself in Europe” may have some truth). I won’t share the goals themselves (for now 😉), but they fall into these key areas: business, finance, personal journey/community, impact, family/relationship, and health.

This newsletter and my startup are stepping stones toward four of those six areas, keeping me on track.

Looking back on the last 13 days, the imbalance is obvious: I spent too much time being social and very little on the newsletter or my startup project. My dreams were slipping through the cracks because I wasn’t prioritizing them. While I love being social, I can’t spend 8/13 days being primarily social if I also want to make progress in other areas of my life.

The only thing standing between me and my dreams is me. If I want to live out my dreams, I have to prioritize them accordingly.

So here’s what I’ve done: since Thursday, I’ve started prioritizing the newsletter and my startup. To keep myself accountable, I’m tracking my time in 15-minute blocks for the next week — a small experiment to see exactly where my time is going.

Making excuses is easy:

“I can’t chase my dreams because of my job.”

“I can’t start because there’s too much I don’t know.”

“I have so much going on in life right now, I need to wait for a better time.”

But if we let excuses dominate our lives, a month, a year, or a decade from now we’ll still be wondering why our dreams slipped through the cracks.

I’m not letting that happen.

How about you?

Until next week.

Step by step,

Nathan

P.S. I know I promised a podcast recommendation, so here it is: Jay Shetty’s EMMA WATSON EXCLUSIVE: The TRUTH I Have Never Shared Before.. I listened last week and it inspired a lot of reflection. I originally planned to write about it here, but that’ll have to wait for another issue…

P.P.S. In the journal entry pictured above, I explicitly talk about thinking over my previous three newsletters. When I wrote about that above, I had forgotten I explicitly journaled about that. All this to say, you should journal. It helps you in more ways than you know…

Follow along with steps I’m taking on
Instagram, LinkedIn, X