The Plan (Scratch/WIP)

DEEP WORK: Sprint on this plan until complete. Do nothing else. And I mean, what else do I really have to do, eh? Find your muses, lay out simple visions, and break it down to actions. Or like Tony Robbins suggests with RPM, take the time to ideate on a massive action plan within a category. Once you have the ideas down, you can pursue them. Ask better questions.

Dichotomy

1. You're so young in your 40s-- but you could die at any moment.

Robert Greene On Strategy

From Daily Laws, September Intro

"The mental commitment to being a strategist in life is half of the battle."

What is strategy? "The moment you step back and realize you can choose any number of actions instead of just reaction." A life of continually reacting is tactical hell. Get out of reacting. Ask yourself, "what is the rational response?" --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroQcPHkhW0

"You have a sense of a larger purpose for your life, where you want to be down the road, what you were destined to accomplish. This makes it easier to decide what is truly important, what battles to avoid."

"In strategy, all of life is a game that you are playing. The game is exciting but requires deep and serious attention. The stakes are so high." "Strategy is the only answer... it is a matter of grave importance, the difference between a life of misery and one of balance and success."

It's been tactical hell so far. Now is the time to elevate above the battlefield.

"The great danger is that we give into feelings of impatience or fear"

The morning routine is the disciplined pursuit of the goals. And the daily sheet is... a guided meditation of clarity, of strategy.

If, according to Robert Greene's Mastery,
my 20s were an "apprenticeship"
and my 30s were enjoying, coasting on some level of success (goal setting, gratitude, hard work) & the pandemic (free colin pt. 1)
then my 40s are DISCIPLINE.
leveraging discipline to achieve the levels of success that i know i'm capable of.
for myself and for those depending on me.

In fact, can I commit to making 2026 the highest achieving year of my life?
In that I make real progress on all critical fronts
and get seriously closer to the new Free Colin,
to the true me,
to everything I am supposed to be.

And what is it that I'm supposed to be in my 40s?

Something landmark did happen today!

My thinking went from negative to positive.

Never forget the proof you've seen time and again so far, that you will find the answer if you keep looking. Seek truth diligently through your behaviors and it will arrive. One night when you awake, you'll realize you've turned the corner, and your mind is active with positivity and ideas instead of fear. I wasn't put on this earth to be small, to not solution.

Leverage this positive momentum to propel yourself to the stratosphere. Diligence will win the day.

How did I even make progress toward this spot? Listening to what really matters to me, and not ignoring it forever. The document style provides the space to document.

My Purpose

While I am here— to be happy, and to help others be happy. Where does happiness come from?
From seeking to understand logos (the nature of the world)
And using that understanding to play my part within it,
To assume formlessness; to not be in opposition to its flow;
To be and to do completely what I am, and have been, supposed to.
This is being true— and in it, there is nothing to fear...

He who postpones the hour living right is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
—Horace

If goal setting, stoicism, and gratitude were what made my 30s, then discipline will make my 40s.

In this decade, will I become everything I am supposed to be? Only if I am disciplined enough to live by the principles thoroughly.

The work begins with the daily sheet in the morning. After philosophical preparation and review of desired outcomes, a distillation and prioritization of tasks for the day.

Coulsell Investments (Selr8)

Reggie offers to make PNDLM the software development partner for new company Selr8 to launch in 2026. PNDLM should accept on the following terms.

• Executives
  • Actually, health comes first— the project will increase life expectancy for principles instead of reducing it. Daily schedules or stress levels will not be significantly impacted by the project. (Janeé was crying about the state of my health recently and risks to my longetivity I am ignoring at the cost of her worry; in good faith I cannot make this worse.)
  • Colin will perform only high-level technical architecture and design, and generally manage PNDLM.
  • Reggie will perform only product ownership and executive/investor communications.
  • Any task that meaningfully consumes time or strategic space will be delegated off to another partner, a hire, or AI. The critical example is running sales and marketing.
  • An expert marketer or sales lead will be hired to increase the liklihood of monetarily successful launch.
• Month-over-month revenue will contribute reasonably to the 2026 HEI plan. TODO run cost-plus calculation
• Tech Architecture
  • Allow PNDLM, Reggie, and other contributors to write services in their preferred languages.
  • Services will communicate via HTTPS or bus according to protocols which are formally documented and published on an Intranet.
  • Prefer Lambda deploy for scale and maintenance ease; allow containers when beneficial.
  • Use Vanta and other third-party tools and services to severely reduce compliance burden.

8 nov, 9 nov daily laws Straddle AI/ Anti-AI on healthcare problem Hubris check Advantage– We build this tech platform but can’t pivot it. This we can. Someone killer on sales/marketing $1B company— Find this B2B problem most of the world doesn’t know about We’re not far from realistic voice/video Ai attacks It is a bit distopian

Plan to pay for IG & The House in 2026. 4 hours to sharpen. Update plan outcomes. Making this money will just mean I did my job. Update daily sheet with 19 Oct findings, October 22 Daily Laws Remember you are dark and there is still work to do. Add to daily sheet from Journal entry & daily sheet

“No, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth concentrating on today. It’s worth focusing on now. Because like Beethoven, none of us know how many good years we have or how long our faculties will last. We must use them while we can.”

What all am I doing too poor of a job at?? How could I change things to not do those poor jobs (including not doing them at all…)

November 1/2 Daily Stoic quotes IG Plan also before partners’ meeting Meet Dana work on HEI + PNDLM Plan MAKE ENOUGH TO OFFSET CONSTRUCTION COSTS Forecasting spreadsheet …? “Close harvest hours for previous week” push on PNDLM projects or something else to achieve the goals? Raises Thad Financial Plan 2026 business & personal with goals and budgets In 2026— net $1M to be comfortable. Use this time/space with the cash buffer existing in 2026. 20 Years of PNDLM?? Yeah that seems about right. To be the investor. Be more disciplined to run Iron Gate and PNDLM like real businesses. Does it ever end? But no, you don’t want to be bored… $10M in the bank Rise above the ground level as a strategist, Free to strategically move about Staying at the W in Taipei The world is lopsided by AI right now, there must be opportunities Formless. Rise above. There is no safety anywhere. It’s all about strategy. We still need our strategy and our executors. Stillness is key. To exist freely without stress. That’s where the real ideas will show up. Freedom to let your mind & body do their jobs. Here you are worried about $20. You’ve got to see the greater picture. “Growth Mindset”… Read Larson’s DM on ETFs, add to financial plan, Oct 10 Brett’s response and finance meeting Cragin & Pike Brett Call Iron Gate Union Erectors

I have the month in Taiwan to come up with a plan. The plan will have an outcome. It will take stock of the resources and relationships I have, the tools that are available to me, the time and the money. Like Apollo 11 where we have a finite number of resources to build something so someone can breathe. A very clear mission. And the constraints are known. I learned before I can solve any problem, but I am realizing now I only do that when I understand the outcome and the resources available to me deeply. And everything superfluous to that is noise.

“Watching our physical health,” he would write later, specifically referring to sleep, “is an act of character and can enormously help with our ability to perform.”

What can you endure? “Fortitudine vincimus. By endurance we conquer. Fittingly, this was the name of his ship as well: the Endurance.”

Secondary Projects

Health Category

• Secondary Outcomes: Cardio Plan, Fitness Plan, Preventative Medicine Plan, Clothes Plan

Environment Category

Finance Category

• This is about maintaining & growing what is there, and mitigating loss risk— not more work projects
• Secondary Outcomes: $10M Liquidity Plan & Tracker
• HEI Business Plan, Risk Plan

Risk

• End of Life Plan
• Incapacitation Plan & Key Man Insurance
• Recurring Admin Task Management, Finance backups, Banking security review, protect against SIM locking...

Business Category

• IG biz & options plan
• A new business plan for the next decade accounting for AI

Study Category

• MVP Document System, Index Card System

Scratch

• Strategy vs. Tactics

Vanguard will soon crush fees for even more investors https://economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/07/03/vanguard-will-soon-crush-fees-for-even-more-investors from The Economist

Check timesheet hours as part of admin work. Reconsider unlimited PTO? https://apple.news/ApLZPfhNGQbCvYhF0qJbNfA (open with iOS)

• Become Disciplined—  Maintain daily routine
  • Daily study and journal— Everyday, set your thinking straight
  • Wake up and be strategic— Plan your day, avoid tactical hell, focus on long term goals
  • Remember to practice temperance— rejecting impulses
  • Clean environment
  • Health, Appearance, Exercise
  • More Study— stoicism, AI

What other practice could be greater? The practice of living optimized. Discipline to choose essential tasks and avoid non-essential. Strategy. Tactical Hell vs. Strategic Thinking— Greene. Detachment & Perspective.

How "Essentialism" applies to the plan—

• Chapter 10 "Clarify"—

  • An actually useful mission statement
  • "Clarity of purpose so consistently how people do their jobs"

• “Buffer”

• “Subtract”- remove obstacles, remove constraints. The Goal. (Strategy vs Tactics). Find and fix the slowest hiker. Not band-aid solutions. What is the essential (goal) and what is getting in the way of achieving it? Aristotle Poietical work: bringing forth (by eliminating instead of doing more). We can’t know what obstacles to remove until we are clear on desired outcome. Otherwise all change is arbitrary. The Theory of Constraints

• “Progress” acknowledging the small wins is the great motivator

• Chapter 18 Routine - make it look easy, with the right routine yield exponentially greater results . Autopilot the essential activities

• chapter 19 Focus.

• Chapter 20— to “be” the essentialist— you don’t have to subscribe to anyone else’s (complex) way of life. Distinguish the necessary and real. Inverse the major and minor- first be the essentialist, at the expense of and prior to the minor. It will be better… being a full essentialist is a being on a different plane, compared to just embracing some of the principles. A state of such clarity and efficiency. The Way of the essentialist.

• Ryan Serhant

(2025-10-17T08:58:14.422Z "All is full of love" Björk / Ragnarök / "Ask Seek Knock")

The word "logic" derives from "logos". Logic is the explanation of the nature of the world.