There’s a lot to be said for making a series of small changes to your life and taking your time to do it. It’s an effective way of changing your life with a minimal amount of stress. But, what if you’re impatient?

More importantly, what if you are capable of taking on big challenges? What if you don't even know what you are capable of?

Ask: Is your life such a mess that you’re unwilling to take a simple risk of being uncomfortable? What if that temporary discomfort becomes necessary for making a large change in your life very quickly?

If you're willing to get comfortable being uncomfortable, there’s another option. But you have to want it.

The A-list copywriter John Carlton says, "You just gotta want it. Not 'really, really, really' want it. But 'get off your ass and start working' want it. Huge difference."

If you want to make big changes quickly, you can do a hard reset. Doing a hard reset on your cell phone, for instance, erases everything and allows you to start over from scratch. You can do the same thing in your life … if you’re tough enough.

A hard reset can be specific to just one part of your life, or you can do it so it encompasses several aspects of your life, if not the entirety of it.

Some examples of hard resets include:

● Changing careers

● Ending a relationship

● Moving to a new city

● Losing a dramatic amount of weight

Hard resets are big, serious, and require a lot of time and focus.

If you’re ready to make a big change quickly, follow this process of proven strategies:

1. Have a vision—an imagined future—for what you want to accomplish. A big change requires a big and clear vision. What one change do you want to make to your life? For example:

● Do you want to move to the beach?

● Find someone that is a better match for you?

● Quit your job and go back to school?

● Lose 75 pounds?

● Run an ultramarathon?

2. Clear the junk out of your life. This includes possessions, people, and obligations that don’t add significantly to your life. People carry too much dead weight through life.

● To accomplish your mission, it will require plenty of sacrifices that you'll have to make. You might have to cut-off your old high school friend, quit playing darts on Saturday nights, or throw your ukulele in the trash.

3. Decide on the most important actions to take. We like to be busy. It feels like we’re doing something. But we don’t necessarily like to do the most effective tasks, because they’re uncomfortable or inconvenient.

That mentality isn’t an option if you’re doing a hard reset. You have to be tough on yourself.

● Don't lie to yourself. Cutting off your food after dinner and taking a walk is a lot more effective than eating low-fat artificially sweetened brownies on the couch.

● Approaching five interesting strangers each day is more effective than rewriting your personal ad profile for the 8th time.

● Cold calling is more effective than tweaking your website that no one visits anyway.

● Find the most effective actions and focus on those.

4. Schedule your time. You have 168 hours in the next week. If you sleep for 7 hours each night, that leaves 119 hours. If you’re working 40 hours a week, you still have another 79 hours left to use as well as you can. Even if you work 60 hours, that’s still a lot of time left over!

● Make a plan for each day.

● Each night, make an even better plan.

● Execute your plan.

● A great resource for this approach is the book, Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life by Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow with Matthew Rudy.

5. Realize the truth. If you’re spending all of your available time taking the most effective actions, how could you not be supremely successful at what you’re trying to accomplish?

● Success isn’t a secret. It’s just that the obvious path to success looks miserable to most people.

So, the only issue you really have is yourself. With time, intention, and courage, it’s possible to make dramatic changes to your life very quickly.

But, a hard reset isn’t for everyone. Many people are going to have better luck making small changes over the course of several months.

On the other hand, some people are capable of moving faster and handling more pressure.

Which type of person are you? Go for it, in the way that works best for you. Either way, you’ll see success.

As always,

Brian

P.S. — As far as time management goes, we have a small resource page at briandoleary.com/time where we have some strategies for you.

I also put together a video series last summer based on what I've learned from Organize Tomorrow Today by Jason Selk. I need to do some final edits, so they won't likely be available until next week, but if it is something you're interested in, respond to this email by 11:59 pm PST, Friday 3/7, and I'll get you the videos before I put them behind a paywall.