One Year of Execution: How to Go Monk Mode and Transform Your Life

Let’s talk about something simple, yet life-changing.

Execution.

In the last article, I talked about how your life is already being decided by your past actions. That might sound basic, but it was meant to lead into this topic.

So if you haven’t read that article yet, go back and do so.

If you have, this one’s for you.

This article is available as a podcast episode:

Where Are You Now — And Where Will You Be?

Let’s start with a question: where are you right now?

Meaning, where are you at this current point you’re reading this?

You know, after all of the things you said you were going to do this year. Did you do them?

If not, there’s no shame here – this is just an inquisitive question to get you to reflect.

If you did, what actions got you here?

If you didn’t, what held you back?

When you strip away the excuses, most outcomes come down to one thing: execution or lack of it.

Sure, there are other factors, but the truth is most of what happens in your life is a result of what you did or didn’t do.

And this truth, while simple, often escapes people whose minds have been conditioned to overcomplicate everything.

Most of us in the modern West make the simple complex, and the complex simplistic.

We oversimplify things like economics, politics, or environmental systems.

Then we overcomplicate things like getting in shape, communicating, or making money.

Our priorities are inverted, and our egos love it that way.

The ego thrives on control. It wants to turn simple, actionable truths into over-engineered puzzles.

But the truth is this: life rewards execution. Nothing else. Discipline architecture makes execution much easier.

Because after all, it’s not about what you SAY you want to do. It’s not about what you INTEND to do, it’s about what you do.

The Only Thing That Matters

We play games to justify our lack of action.

We say we’re waiting for “the right time.”

We tell ourselves that next year will be different.

But you know how that feels inside.

That quiet frustration when you’re watching TV late at night.

That restlessness when you lie in bed knowing you could’ve done more.

You can’t fool yourself.

Execution is everything.

The ONE Thing

Over the years, I’ve read countless self-improvement books.

Some were great, others forgettable. But one that’s stayed with me is The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.

The premise is simple: extraordinary results come from identifying and focusing on one key action — the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary.

The focusing question is this:

“What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

When you find that one thing, do it almost exclusively until it changes your life.

This one thing becomes the sun. Everything else in your life becomes the planets that orbit around it.

All decisions, habits, and routines should feed it.

Relentless Focus on the ONE Thing

I was talking with my mom recently about the idea of self-care.

Most people treat self-care like luxury — candles, bubble baths, retreats.

But real self-care is maintenance of the vessel.

Without you, nothing moves.

There is no father, no mother, no son, no daughter, no brother, no sister, no cousin, no whatever — without you.

And a lot of people don’t think about this.

A lot of people go here, there, and everywhere trying to please other people without first pleasing themselves.

And at the end of the road? They find that they have nothing to show for it.

Your “one thing” operates the same way. Without it, nothing else works.

For many people, that one thing is their job…but that’s survival.

To escape the grind of survival, you need a creative one thing.

You need a pursuit that builds your independence, your freedom, and your future.

Why Focus Matters More Than Ever in 2025 & 2026

If you are awake and aware right now in 2025, I don’t really need to explain to you why you need to focus.

But if you somehow aren’t, here’s a quick version:

Our world is a very complex and noisy place only getting more-so by the day:

• Algorithms – designed to cater to your every unique whim and desire
• Social Engineering – through people and institutions designed to manipulate your opinion on certain topics
• Ambiguity – as to right and permissible conduct based on the changing trends of society
• Ubiquity of Internet-based and electronic media – where everyone sees a different version of reality because of the things they interact with online.

And more. So much more.

If you can’t focus, you become a product — a human ATM in the attention economy.

You’ll be used to spread someone else’s ideas while yours die in the background.

I wasn’t put on this earth to be a puppet dancing on a string and neither were you.

The Marketing Parallel

To explain this further, I’ll take a cue from my work life.

I work in digital marketing, helping companies expand this area of their business.

I do quite a bit more than that, but I’ll explain this side.

In the world of marketing right now, many companies are having a tough time for several different reasons:

• Organic visibility on social platforms has declined, forcing more people into the pay-to-play ad market
• Organic search volume and clickthroughs has also decreased on search engines because of Google AI mode, ChatGPT, and other AI tools
• Buyer behavior is getting harder and harder to predict because the path to purchase is not linear

And lots of other things that I’m mentioning here.

Most businesses fail not because of bad ideas, but because of scattered focus.

They try to reach everyone and end up reach no one.

The new rule: one buyer, one message, one product.

Your life is no different.

Your mission is not for everyone, and that’s fine.

The world is too complicated and noisy of a place and to have your hands in “everything”.

You will never see it all, hear it all, do it all. There’s just “too much” out there.

So what do you want to see? What do you want to hear? What do you want to do?

What do you need to check out before you “check out”?

That should be the most important thing you think about.

What do I want to cash in on in this one short life I have?

Opportunity Cost (Again)

You can do anything, but not everything.

Your attention is like sunlight — diffused, it warms nothing; focused, it burns.

To create meaningful results, you must withdraw energy from what doesn’t matter.

When your goals are big, sacrifices become non-negotiable.

Bill Gates stopped watching TV and listening to music for five years when he started Microsoft.

Arnold Schwarzenegger left Austria with no money and no English. For five years straight, his life was the gym, his acting classes, and bricklaying for income. He didn’t go out, didn’t drink, didn’t party. Everything was bodybuilding and self-reinvention.

Michael Jordan refused vacations to master fundamentals.

Eminem wrote for 12 hours a day in a trailer to come out with his first album.

They gave up comfort for concentration.

That’s the price of greatness.

For most of my 20s, I wasn’t all in. I wanted progress without sacrifice.

But the truth is, you have to be ready to give up who you were for who you’ll become.

Executing on Execution

Let’s make this real.

Here’s how to structure one year of execution — your personal monk mode.

1. Decide What You Want

Pick one major goal. The one thing that, if achieved, changes everything else.

Maybe it’s getting in shape, relocating, or building your income.

Once decided, every other part of your life should serve that goal.

Money, sleep, diet, relationships — all aligned.

If it doesn’t feed your mission, it’s noise.

2. Minimalism and Essentialism

Keep your life as bare-bones as possible.

No unnecessary subscriptions.

No expensive habits.

No outrageous novelty.

Feeding yourself with simple yet tasty meals – there’s a ton of them you can find online.

Doing enough gym or physical exercise to keep yourself healthy.

Having an outing once in a while with friends to keep up with them or to celebrate a birthday or something.

Don’t go spending a ton of money on food or doing a 6-day 2-a-day workout routine or go partying every weekend.

Again, keep it basic.

That’s it.

You don’t need to live like a monk in the mountains…but you need to eliminate everything that scatters your energy.

Simplicity creates force.

When your life is streamlined, everything compounds faster.

3. Kill Distraction

Distraction is the modern man’s plague.

It’s the biggest wealth leak, focus leak, and energy leak there is.

If you’re serious, you’ll need to install systems that protect you from yourself.

The more friction you build between you and your vices, the easier focus becomes.

Don’t rely on willpower, rely on structure.

Here’s where something like The Freedom App comes in.

Freedom is an Internet filtering software you can use to block social media, YouTube, and dopamine traps at certain hours or at all hours of the day.

It’s really customizable too. You can select different categories such as news, politics, sports, entertainment, and mix and match them so you can have a custom daily flow that blocks certain things at one period of time in the day, others at another period, and a complete blackout like when you go to bed.

I use Freedom on a daily basis and I love it. I can’t even see how I functioned without it several years ago, to be honest.

Now is a perfect time to get Freedom, they have 25% of their premium yearly plans if you sign up today.

4. Eliminate Side Quests

Every man has a main quest and a hundred side quests begging for attention.

Those side quests feel productive — but they’re not. They dilute your energy.

I used to be the king of side quests because I have a lot of interests.

I like cars.
I like sports.
I like coding.
I like history.
I like movies.
I like traveling.
I like spirituality.
I like philosophy.
I like psychology.
I like board games.
I like dressing well.
I like physical activity.
I like self-improvement.
I like working with my hands.
I like discussing things with others.
I like playing and listening to music.

I like so many things that I was hesitant to miss out on all of them just for the sake at getting really good at a few of them.

And it cost me many years. Lots of activity in these things but not as much progress as I would have like.

Don’t get me wrong, being interested in all of these things actually did help me become a really well-rounded person overall but I would have been so much further along had I just focused really on a few of them, instead of just really pursuing dead ends for some of these things.

When you stop chasing ten rabbits, you finally catch one and that rabbit feeds you for years.

The side quests will still be there when you’ve built something worth protecting.

The difference is, by then, you’ll have earned the right to explore them.

You won’t be chasing escape routes, you’ll be choosing experiments.

5. Commit to Every Day

Adopt the “no zero day” mindset.

Every day, do one meaningful action toward your goal.

It doesn’t need to be big, just forward.

That daily forward motion keeps you in rhythm, keeps you confident, keeps you alive.

Even on bad days, do something.

Momentum beats perfection.

6. Keep Going and Don’t Look Back

I’ve always found the Bible interesting because there are so many stories in there that relate to different situations in life and the story of Lot’s wife is one of them.

The story as it goes is Sodom and Gomorrah were two ancient cities.

They had become deeply corrupt and immoral, so God decided to destroy them.

Before the destruction, two angels warned a man named Lot and his family to flee the city immediately and not look back.

They were told to run for their lives and keep their eyes forward toward safety.

They were told not to look back.

As they escaped, Lot’s wife disobeyed the command — she looked back toward the city.

Why?

Maybe out of curiosity, nostalgia, or attachment to her old life. The moment she did, she was turned into a pillar of salt, frozen where she stood and she became an everlasting reminder of what happens when you look back.

The story represents what happens when you try to move forward while still clinging to your past.

Looking back symbolizes hesitation, regret, and emotional attachment to what you’re supposed to leave behind.

When you commit to a hardline year, you’ll feel tempted to look back — to check what everyone else is doing, to wonder if you’re missing out, to question whether it’s worth it.

Don’t.

Looking back freezes your progress.

The past is gone. The distractions are gone. The old you is gone.

You move forward. Ears up, eyes forward, no rearview mirror, full acceleration.

When you make it through your year of execution, you won’t even want to go back. You’ll realize you’ve become someone else entirely.

Someone the old version of you could only dream of being.

7. Visualize the End

If you really want this year to change your life, you have to do more than work, you have to see.

Every great builder, creator, or visionary began by holding an image of the end in their mind before the world could see it.

Bill Gates saw a computer in every home.

Arnold saw himself as Mr. Olympia before he even left Austria.

Steve Jobs saw a thousand songs in your pocket before the technology existed.

That’s the power of visualization.

You can’t build what you can’t first imagine.

So here’s your bonus rule: see the end every single day.

Close your eyes in the morning, or at night, and imagine the result as if it’s already done.

Not “one day I’ll get there,” but I’m already there.

I’ve already done it.

See it clearly — where you live, what your environment looks like, how your body feels, how you move through your day, who you’ve become.

And as you hold that image, start acting from it.

Not toward it — from it.

That’s what keeps you from quitting when it gets hard.

That’s what makes discipline feel natural.

That’s what turns daily effort into destiny.

Because when you visualize the end clearly enough, your brain starts organizing your behavior to match that picture.

You become the man who’s already achieved it and then reality has no choice but to catch up.

Practical Application:

• Spend 5–10 minutes every day seeing the end.
• Keep a small vision card with your one goal written in the personal present tense:
• Read it and visualize it daily, right before bed or right when you wake up.
• Let that image become the blueprint your subconscious follows.

At first, this will feel awkward, but over time, it will feel inevitable. Like it has to happen. It must happen.

This is the essence of what people call “manifestation”.

You assume something to be true, deeply impress your subconscious with it, and in time it will be true.

There’s a reason why this works so well, that explanation would take another 2 articles, but this is enough to get you started and get going to execute.

My Own Year of Execution

I lived this in 2018.

I minimized everything.

No side quests, no distractions, no partying. Just work, growth, and focus.

By 2019, I was a new man.

I’d gained 10 pounds of lean muscle, quadrupled my income, and transformed my life.

That was one year of sacrifice set me up for the next five years of success.

You can do the same.

Closing Thoughts

The rest of 2026 (and beyond) is in your hands.

You are what you do with this time.

Ask yourself — what’s worth suffering for?

Five more years of drifting, or one focused year that changes everything?

In Gladiator, Maximus said,

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

May your next year echo for the rest of your life — and beyond.