How To Get Ahead Of 99% Of People
In 90 Days
Let’s talk about how you can get ahead of 99% of people in 90 days.
No fluff, just practical advice.
You need 3 things:
What to do (vision)
How to do it (gameplan)
Actually doing it (execution)
It won’t be easy. But it is simple.
Most people lack at least one of these. That’s why they stay stuck.
So in this newsletter, I’ll show you how to fix all three. Let’s begin.
Before we dive in:
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The Inner Human Motivators (Heaven & Hell)
We get most of our positive emotions from seeing ourselves move closer toward a goal. The more meaningful the goal, the more motivated we’ll be.
– Jordan Peterson
If you want to get ahead of 90% of people, you need clarity on two things:
1) Something to move toward (vision)
2) Something to move away from (anti-vision)
This leverages the 2 human motivators (moving toward pleasure and away from pain).
I call this your Heaven and Hell.
Your Heaven = what you want to achieve
Your Hell = what you want to avoid
Both need to be realistic. I don’t mean small. It can be massive. But if it’s not likely to happen, it won’t motivate you. Here’s an example of my Heaven and Hell:
My Hell isn’t some extreme scenario where I lose my limbs and become homeless.
It’s slipping back into my bad habits, getting depressed, failing in business, and ending up in a factory job I hate again.
I’ve experienced parts of that before and I never want to experience it again.
That’s what makes it powerful.
This gives you something to move away from.
Your Heaven gives you something to move toward.
It wouldn’t be realistic if my vision was to become a professional basketball player because I’m 27, only 6ft tall (average male length in my country), and I have zero experience. So even if I start working out like Kobe, that’s not happening.
Your Heaven should be something that could happen if you commit long-term.
For me, that’s becoming a bestselling author, financially free, and one of the best educational creators in the world.
Those are massive and difficult goals, but possible with years of focused work.
So define both:
What you’re moving toward
What you’re moving away from
Make it specific.
What do your days look like?
What skills do you need to learn?
What habits do you build and avoid?
The more specific you make it, the more motivating it becomes.
It doesn’t need to be a perfect plan. It just needs to be as good as you can make it right now. You will improve it later. But you can only improve something that exists.
As Jordan Peterson puts it, you aim at the highest possible good you can conceive right now. He calls it ‘aiming at a star’. Then you move toward it and adjust as you go.
Each goal (star) gives you more clarity on the next one. You keep improving and eventually, you discover your true north star (your purpose).
Write down your Heaven and Hell. This will motivate you to take action.
That brings us to step 2. You now know what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. So now you need to get clear on how you can achieve it.
Reverse Engineer Your Ideal Future
If you do not know to which port you are sailing, no wind is favorable.
– Seneca
When an engineer wants to recreate something, he takes it apart to understand how it works. This is called reverse-engineering, and it’s extremely effective for goal-setting.
Here’s how you can use it:
Aim at the highest possible good you can imagine
Turn this into a practical long-term goal (10 years)
Break it down into smaller goals (3y, 1y, 1q, 1m, 1w, 1d)
Define clear daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly actions
Execute three key actions every single day
This aligns your daily actions with your long-term goal.
And because that goal represents the highest good you can imagine, it aligns your actions with what you value most.
This gives you the strongest motivation and dopamine while you pursue it.
Now you know what to aim for and how to get there.
Let’s talk about how you can do more work in less time now.
Lion Mode: Achieve More In Less Time
The way people tend to work most effectively, especially in knowledge work, is to sprint as hard as they can while they feel inspired to work, and then rest. It’s more like a lion hunting and less like a marathoner running. You sprint and then you rest. You reassess and then you try again. You end up building a marathon of sprints.
– Naval
High performers don’t work all day.
They work less, but they work harder and smarter when they work.
They get clear on what matters
They go all-in for a few hours
They recover and repeat
That’s how they get more done in less time.
I call this Lion Mode.
It has 3 phases:
Plan → what work is worth doing
Hunt → deep, focused execution
Rest → recover so you can go again
It’s not about working more, but it’s about getting more done when you work.
High performers work like lions. They switch between 0% and 100% intensity.
But most people work like cows. They live at 40% all day and don’t get a lot done.
To work like this, you need to design your work environment for success.
This comes down to two things:
Make it easy to do what you need to do
Make it hard to do what you shouldn’t do
Here’s what works for me:
Keep your desk empty
Turn off all notifications
Hide bookmarks and minimize tabs
Don’t multitask or switch between tasks
No phone, email, or social media before noon
Stay fasted and caffeinated during deep work
Use earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones
This will make it easier to focus.
When you’ve done that, you need to work in a few blocks of 60 to 90 minutes.
This allows you to enter flow state.
Flow is a state of deep, focused work where you’re fully locked in on one task.
To get into flow state, you need to pick a task that’s just outside of your current skill level, push through the initial resistance, and don’t get distracted.
So set a goal, remove distractions, and focus on one task at a time for 90 minutes.
Then repeat this a few times per day for maximum productivity.
This will cost a lot of mental energy, so let’s talk about how you can rest properly.
How To Maximize Your Energy (Active Recovery)
After flow, you have to recover. Flow is a high-energy state — it’s neurochemically expensive. Without recovery, you build allostatic load — the body’s stress systems stay activated, performance drops, and burnout follows. Active recovery is any deliberate, low-intensity activity that helps the body and brain return to baseline after high performance.
– Steven Kotler
Most people think recovery means relaxing.
But relaxing ≠ recovering.
Relaxation = passive. It feels good but doesn’t fully recharge you.
Recovery = active. It can feel hard but it actually recharges your body and brain.
That’s why you can “rest” all weekend and still feel drained.
It’s simply not enough.
You also need something called Active Recovery.
Active recovery doesn’t always feel good during, but it makes you feel much better after. It clears stress, recharges your nervous system, and prevents burnout.
Here’s a list of the most important (active) recovery habits:
Sleep
Massages
Social interaction
Walking (in nature)
Yoga or light exercise
Sauna and cold showers
Breathwork and meditation
Journaling and practicing gratitude
Also eat healthy, work out regularly, and limit cheap dopamine consumption.
If you do these habits, you’ll actually recover mentally (instead of just relaxing).
You don’t need to do them all, but the more you do, the better you’ll recover.
Pick the ones you enjoy most and make them part of your routine.
For optimal recovery:
10 minutes per task
1 hour per day
1 day per week
1 weekend per month
1 week per quarter
This keeps your body and mind in balance.
So in short, this newsletter can be summarized in 3 words:
Goal → Plan → Execute.
Goal → create your vision and anti-vision
Plan → reverse engineer it into clear steps
Execute → use Lion Mode to do more in less time
This is how you get ahead of 99% of people by working less.
Quick Updates:
I made some big changes recently. Here’s what you need to know:
1) I’m testing a new schedule: 2 newsletters per week (Thursday & Sunday, 14:15 CET). One will focus more on self-improvement, the other on making money.
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2) I’ll turn my newsletters into video podcasts starting next week. I will upload them on my 2nd YouTube channel. Click here to subscribe so you don’t miss them.
3) I’m bringing back simple self-improvement videos on my 1st channel. Mostly short animated videos but also some deep dives. Click here to subscribe.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please like this post, restack it, and subscribe to this newsletter for more. Talk to you on Thursday!
– Stijn Noorman
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