Hello everyone,

As I continue to work on my North Star project, I've focused a lot of my learning around that - but I'm still picking up some pretty interesting insights that I want to share.

To start, here's a quote from Dan Kennedy, I'm trying to remind myself of for my North Star Program:

"Any Moron can quickly come up with lots of 'reasons' to invalidate ideas. Most do.

There's genius and profit only in coming up with ways to apply ideas."

This week's email has 7 Shortcuts that can drastically improve your life - enjoy.

1) What's The Fear?

Stress is one of the worst feelings that we can feel consistently. Even when everything else is going well, feeling stressed can ruin your day - it can make you agitated, ruin your sleep, or cause errors in your thinking.

It's important to realise that all stress comes from Fear. If you're stressed about your workload, you're probably fearing not finishing all that you have to do.

If you can identify what fear is causing stress, you're in a much better position. Fear can be better analysed and even used to make you better. If you approach it with this model in mind, you'll very rarely be overwhelmed by Stress.

2) Try More.

I'm guilty of this, and you're probably the same. When something doesn't work out, we use terms like "I tried everything" or "It didn't go my way." But the reality is, we didn't try enough otherwise we would have succeeded.

Caveat here: Don't try the same way 100 times. Improve each time, try new things, change your strategy.

John D. Rockefeller got his first job after 6 weeks of hitting the pavements 6 days a week for twelve hours. He approached every business multiple times, refining his pitch each time. The result? His job led him to creating one of the largest fortunes in modern history.

Try more.

3) Know Your Desired Outcome.

Want to know why some people are more successful than others? A key factor is they know their desired outcome.

How often have you been speaking for the purpose of speaking? Learning just in case? Arguing just because you could? Working with no strategy? What are you actually trying to achieve?

If you know your desired outcome, you'll be ahead of 99% of other people - and it will make it much easier to achieve.

4) Run Experiments.

I am on a huge experiment kick at the moment. Most recently I learned how to fall asleep faster, while I didn't get down to two minutes (the program takes six weeks and I only did part) I did see a massive change from time to sleep from about 25-30 minutes to ~7 minutes.

I also made 10 cheatsheets in 10 days - which I'll breakdown next.

Experiments give you a huge advantage. They force you to take action, test your ideas, implement what you're learning, and get benefits faster. If anyone is interested, I'm putting together a Master List of Experiments that I'm planning on doing - and I love to increase the sample size.

5) Use Cheatsheets.

80% of what you need to know, squeezed onto a single page. Sounds difficult - but it can be done.

Cheatsheets are a great reference for experiments or skills you're trying to learn. You can use them to study or make decisions.

I completed 10 in 10 days on a range of topics: Rapid Learning, Studying, Stoicism, Sleep, University Papers, Copywriting, Twitter, Twitter – Tweet types, Twitter – Tweet Writing, Twitter – Great Threads, *Occam's Protocol.

Give it a try and reap the benefits - or hit me up for one I've done and I'll send it through.

*I’ll be covering this experiment in about 4-8 weeks’ time – but it comes from Tim Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Body.

6) Use What Already Works.

The subject line that got you click into this email was adapted from a template list on copywriting.

When you're driving, you don't try to make new roads or drive from the passenger seat, it's a pointless waste of time - borrow from what's already working so you can focus on the factors that you care about. I hate writing subject lines but I love writing the content - the template list allowed me to hammer out a quick headline and move onto writing this.

Find templates, scaffolds, systems, etc. for whatever you're doing. Adapt them for your own personal use and focus on what actually matters.

7) Fix Your Thinking.

The quality of your thinking and self-belief determines the quality of your life.

If you don't fix the negative thinking patterns you have attached to yourself or topics you won't improve.

You need to identify what beliefs are no longer serving you and change them.

The best way: Just start. Want to be confident, Act Confident. Want to be hardworking, Act Hardworking. Your brain can't tell you're just acting and it will slowly adapt your identity to fit these range of actions.

8) Overdeliver.

This right here is a cliché on about every self-improvement list - but its true. Get in the habit of overdelivering but start with yourself. Be a bit more disciplined than you thought you could. Do one more rep, save one more dollar, read one more page.

These will compound for massive wins in your life. Trust me.

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That's all for today. I'm working on some longer pieces that will be hitting your inbox soon - but I wanted to keep this one streamlined. Apply these things and you can massively improve your life.

Stay awesome,

Zachariah

P.S. Let me know what Shortcut you found the most meaningful or any shortcuts you've found to a better life.