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Matt Hogan's Blog Posts

Living Your Dream Life

Published on December 21, 2021

Living your dream life won’t happen accidentally, just like becoming a black belt won’t happen accidentally.

It won’t happen just because you want it to.

It won’t happen even if you beg it to.

Living a life of your dreams—becoming a black belt—only happens on purpose.

And not just after being on purpose for one day, one month, or even one year.

Trying to balance the entire weight of your lifetime on such a small foundation of purposeful action isn’t realistic. Solid foundations take time.

And unless there’s a solid foundation, a quickly-realized-life-of-your-dreams will quickly collapse.

So, rather than trying to hack your way to a six-figure passive income—commit to the long-term game you’re playing and learn how to love playing the game.

Because what you’ll eventually realize is that loving the game is more closely related to living the life of your dreams than “winning” the game ever will be.

Breaking Ceilings

Published on December 20, 2021

Feel like you’ve reached a ceiling?

Rather than trying to push upwards, try digging downwards.

For the height of your ceiling is directly dependent on the depth of your foundation.

Fired Up

Published on December 19, 2021 
Sometimes,
experiencing the emotions
that come from messing up

lights a fire

that accelerates improvement
faster than contentment
ever could.

Complain Less. Paint More.

Published on December 17, 2021

Life is a piece of art that we slowly create over time.

We don’t get to choose the paint, but we get to choose what to paint.

Choosing not to paint, to complain about your paint, to curse your paint, to hate your paint, to compare and mope about your paint vs. other people’s paint—to expend energy doing anything that involves not painting your masterpiece—is a waste. Period.

Complain less about what colors you’ve been granted and focus more on how you’ll create a masterpiece with those very colors instead.

There aren’t any colors or color combinations that can’t be turned into masterpieces.

Never forget it.

Hard Stops vs. Soft Stops

Published on December 16, 2021

Time management trick: define whether each task of your day should have a “hard stop” or “soft stop.”

  • Hard stop: Non-negotiable end to a task. e.g. 11pm is a hard-stop because sleep is a top priority. I don’t allow myself to work at even 11:01pm.
  • Soft stop: Flexible end to a task. e.g. Usually, I write between 2pm – 3pm. But, if the writing is flowing smooth and I’m in the zone, I allow myself to ride that momentum until it ends.

The problem with getting these confused is that it mostly hurts your top priorities.

Top priority tasks should be treated as “soft stops,” but are often treated as “hard stops.” Things like sleep, family time, exercise, writing, reading, connecting with friends, etc.—you should be able to spend whatever amount of time feels right. But, either you force yourself to cut it short or you don’t have enough time to allot.

Which leads to the second confusion: treating tasks that should be “hard stops” as “soft stops.” Things like TV, video games, social media time, etc—you can easily end up spending entire days doing these types of things if you don’t take control. And when you don’t, that excessive time gets taken from—that’s right—your top priorities.

And it turns into a vicious cycle.

Not enough time to do what’s most important because you spent too much time doing what’s not. And because you have less time, you’re constantly playing catch up.

So, what’s the solution? Give what’s less important tighter “hard stops” and then you’ll finally get to enjoy “soft stops” while doing what’s more.

What Hustle Culture Doesn’t Say

Published on December 15, 2021

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is nothing at all.

Hustle culture tells us otherwise.

Hustle culture says:

  • Beat the rest by outworking the rest.
  • Give 110% all of the time—no days off.
  • There will be plenty of time to sleep when you die.

But, what hustle culture fails to tell us is:

  • Burnout is real.
  • If we don’t take optional rests, we’ll experience forced shutdowns.
  • 100% can only ever come after a full charge. What might feel like your 100% might actually only be your 48% max because your battery is drained.
  • Consistency is more important than intensity. And trying to consistently give more than your 100% max effort on a daily basis is about as asinine as trying to sprint a marathon.
  • Sleep now or die sooner.

Turn down the volume on hustle culture. Turn up the volume on the whispers of your body.

If there’s anything you should prioritize in the new year that will best help you reach your goals, it should be more blocks of nothing.

Space where you can deliberately recharge, check in with your body, and adjust your pace.

Not more ways you can work at a suboptimal levels for the sake of getting diminishing returns only to end up rebounding back to where you originally started.

No. This year, don’t add more hustle to your resolutions—add un-hustle.