The two types of time that build empires

Stop wasting your potential. If you are solo, you need both the vision and the execution.

If you are solo, and you want to create anything substantial, you need to time block these two types of time.

You may have heard something similar to what I am about to say from Alex Hormozi.

He has stated that there are two types of time in the day: maker & manager time. My belief is different, but adjacent. Mozi doesn’t look at the full picture in my opinion.

It’s not about the tactical management of people or putting out fires. It’s about the source of creation. This is where these two types of time come in:

• Visionary Hours

• Administrative Hours

Visionary and Admin hours come from different places, different mindsets:

Admin hours come during times of a plan, and a set course of action. These are where the ‘hard’, disciplined work is done.

This looks like:

• Sending the cold emails

• Drafting up the offer sheet

• Doing the client work

• Making phone calls to distributors

Visionary hours come from a place of inspiration. ​Visionary hours start from inside you, but end up with something new in the world. It’s flow. It’s the vision of whatever you are creating.

This type of time looks like this:

• Daydreaming in effortless detail about where, when, and how your product is used

• Pondering about your dream lifestyle and how your company gets you there

• Mind mapping how your product/service intersects with you and your customer

• Writing a manifesto for your company’s future (even when you haven’t filed for an LLC yet)

You need both to create something incredible.

You can't be the sole visionary without administrative skills, otherwise there will never be execution on the vision.

You can't just admin or force discipline your way to world-class, you will only end up as a VP of a pre-established company.

Lost potential. Nothing new created. Only someone else’s dream fulfilled, not your own.

You must heed the two types of hours, and mix them both to create something new, unique, groundbreaking, and real.

The world is for builders.

And you must be able to execute.

And you must have a vision for the future.

You can't sit on your laurels and expect yourself to shit out gold. You must work for it.

There is no other way around it. There are times when you need administrative hours. This is my personal weak point. I have all the vision but struggle in the admin. This is how I have found success:

Find a way to make admin hours as pleasurable as possible (your future greatness necessitates it):

• Spend 3 weeks trying out 3 new pieces of productivity software to find what works best for you

• Treat it like a game. Track the time, log it, get new personal bests, and beat your previous efficiency. (I am doing this right now)

The visionary time for me comes quite effortlessly. Here is how you can too:

Those hours between 9pm and 3am, right after finishing the chapter of your book, right after finishing the docuseries, and you have a vision, you MUST act on that inspiration. Forget your sleep. If you respect yourself (and your creative energy), you will hone your vision, make a visionary plan, and find a way via administrative hours to bring it to fruition.

Otherwise, you are doing yourself & humanity a disservice.

Humanity needs greatness more than ever.

There is too much dilution with TikTok, brain rot, and the pandemic of depression worldwide. You MUST act on this vision as an act of ego, and to be ego-less.

Visionary is the predictor of needs.

Administrative is the provider of said needs.

If you heed your vision, let it envelop you, and join yourself in this experience of life, then you will reach something that serves you internally, and serves externally to everyone else.

You can only do this if you can balance those dynamics.

If you are solely a visionary like Steve Jobs, get yourself an administrative partner like Steve Wozniak. This is a gross oversimplification of Apple’s success but you get the idea: Jobs brought the vision of the Apple I, Woz was able to execute upon it.

If you only want to provide-provide-provide, you need someone with the vision to make the product special. To make something unique, something that will change everyone's life because you are too busy solving problems on your checklist in sequential order, not looking for the domino that will topple all in one fell swoop (that is the visionary to define and find the domino to top)

If you are solo, and operate in both domains like I do, then understanding visionary and administrative is necessary. You and I need to operate in both realms if we have any hope of creating something incredible.

You need to time block, or at least understand yourself well enough to know when to leverage each type of time. For me: admin work is in the morning, and visionary is in the evening/night.

Solo founders are plentiful, just as much as dynamic duos like Jobs and Woz. It’s not easy solo, but not impossible, you can make it work. Jensen of NVIDIA did, Bezos of Amazon, Sara Blakely of Spanx, and many more did.

Fund your vision with your admin skills.

Have a vision to make the admin worthwhile.

Otherwise, we will just be keyboard pushers doing menial tasks that provide our monkey brains with enough problem-solving stimuli to keep us sane.

We have potential to create something incredible. Don't waste time.

KEEP GOING.

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Here is an equally complimentary and dissonant letter I wrote about dissing time management. Give it a read to widen your perspective:

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• KEEP GOING Studio, where my team and I design to fuel your health/wellness/lifestyle business' growth.

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