11 Principles for Living Good Days While Making Life Progress by Ozan Dagdeviren
Being human is hard. We have to continuously learn, grow, improve and achieve. But we also have to acknowledge that endless wanting is the perfect recipe for emotional disaster. These two felt to me, as if they are the opposite ends of a stick.
Let’s say we accept we can’t have both, which one do we give up?
Now this is the impossible question. How do we live “good days” which also add up to a “good life?”
Good Days of Past, Present and Future
Biggest luck of my childhood was the chance to freely play outside. Hands dirty from playing marbles all day, bloody knees full of scars, salt encrusted white layers radiating on my sun washed shirt, staying out until the sun went down… Ah… childhood, the pinnacle of enjoying the good days, without a care for the future.
In 1998, things have radically changed for me. I moved to a bigger city and found myself in a highly competitive environment where I felt my level of success would determine how much I would be loved my parents.
This is how a new story arc for me had started where disciplined work, seeking success and status were the primary goals. I enjoyed success, but also sacrificed a lot. No regrets. If anything, I am thankful.
But I knew another change had to happen. I was building a good life story but did I live my days fully? Wasn’t life, really, actually, about living your days in way that makes you happy and healthy? Why are we so obsessed with trying to live up to the stories we imagined 10, 20 years ago?
In 2023, after 25 years of this, it became clear as day that I had to change gears if I wanted to be physically and mentally healthy. I took a work break and practiced doing nothing productive for 6 months. It was hard!
Unless you have generational wealth to support you – which I don’t – there would always be an end to this break. Towards the second half of these 6 months, I have realized that my mental occupation had shifted to imagining the near perfect life. Good days would also add up to a good life with a sense of progress and purpose.
Principles of A Good Life
For those of us who have to work, here are the principles I have noted that can help bridge the gap between good days and a good life.
- Work should be indistinguishable from play. (At least in the way you approach to it with curiosity, problem solving, novelty, growth…)
- Your real self can’t be somewhere else while you are working on something. (Your mind and your hands need to hang together.)
- Life is a holiday.
- Boring work is slow death. (Better if work is high demand – high reward, as opposed to mediocre reward – braindead work.)
- Difficult work is not a chore. (It can be stimulating, satisfying and fun, especially the more difficult it is.)
- Feed what excites YOU. (You are different than others.)
- Take 5 minutes every day for visualizations of success. (Do this as habit as you would take a supplement.)
- Don’t set short or mid-term goals. They cause stress. Set directions to ULTIMATE DESTINATIONS.
- Embrace YOUR OWN character. (Do you prefer a variety of interests or a singular focus?)
- Have absolute clarity on things YOU enjoy. (Writing? Talking? Analyzing? Presenting? Researching? Helping? Caring? Forecasting? Storytelling? Coding? Interviewing? Teaching? Designing? …)
- Have non-negotiable absolute standards. (Bare minimum targets that you nurture into lifelong habits such as 10 pull-ups everyday, focused writing for 30 minutes everyday…)
- 12 is left empty for you. What would you add?
Remember this is a list geared towards a specific purpose; to bridge the gap between good days and a good life. It is not a list for maximizing traditional achievement. With this approach, it might take you 10 years to reach a goal that could take 7 years if you went all in. But wouldn’t you rather have lived 10 good years AND have felt you built a successful life story rather than just have the latter but have tortured yourself for 7 years? What is the rush? You will most likely live healthier and add that 3 years (or perhaps more) to your life anyway.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life, yet, it might also be your last day alive.
So yeah, that’s the point. If you are rushing to your goals, slow down. Enjoy the ride. If you are living in the moment without any future direction, that won’t work either. Learn to find enjoyment in work and ambitious goals, but set the pace that is right for you. This list has worked for me, hope it works for you