Last week I posted a story on social media that may have confused a few of my followers. For my entire life my solution to every problem has been simple: WORK HARDER.
I posted a photo of a sunset I took on this current motorcycle roadtrip across Thailand over the Andaman countryside and declared of the old me and this old philosophy. I stated in no uncertain terms that I was done working harder and that this philosophy was no longer meant to serve me. Instead, I am planning to think a lot smarter.
In case you don’t understand what I’m talking about, allow me to clarify: I have always that many of us are living a life we didn’t choose and waking up to a reality we don’t enjoy.
Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you. I’ll go first. It has happened to me more times than I care to admit. You have to summon a massive amount of willpower just to get out of bed and face a day full of things you don’t want to do, working at a job you hate.
Now, many people naturally think that the solution is entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurs are as guilty as anyone. You get to be your own boss and stick the proverbial “middle finger” to the man. And then they quickly realize the dream isn’t so rosy, that the path is covered in thorns. Most businesses fail and many entrepreneurs become trapped in a business they can’t escape, with too many obligations and responsibilities to leave.
We become addicted to our struggle, simply because it’s more comfortable than embracing more uncertainty. During this motorcycle trip I visited a friend who owns the Salsa Hostel in Chumphon, Thailand. I’ve visited his place several times over the past ten years and a few years ago he told me was bored and tired of the business. During this last visit, I remarked how I thought he might have sold his business by now. He immediately went into the same spiel: he was bored, lost passion for the business, but couldn’t find a buyer.
I believe that there’s a better option than to wake up to work and life that we hate, and it doesn’t have to necessarily be hard or require a ton of willpower. I believe we can engineer our lives so that success, abundance, healthy relationships, and wealth don’t feel like a grueling uphill climb—but instead come to us effortlessly.
A “Game of Inches”
When I talk about thinking smarter, I’m talking about the “margins.” Our lives can be dramatically enhanced and upgraded simply by paying more attention to the little small details that we take for granted.
There’s a saying in American football that it’s a game of inches. Those tiny, seemingly insignificant inches make the difference between winning and losing. Life works the same way. The tiny details we take for granted are exactly what dictate whether we have the life we want or stay stuck in one we don’t.
Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is a large matter — it’s like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Small tweaks — a tiny touch of attention to a seemingly minor detail — can create profound differences.
If you ever find yourself wondering why someone else seems “lucky” while you can’t catch a break, it usually starts with an honest look in the mirror. You have to understand where you are setting limitations that stunt your own growth.
Fortunately, the opportunities to think and do things differently are all around us, all of the time. It’s never been easier to make any change or to do anything we choose.
Questioning the Programming
Most of our limitations stem from stories we tell ourselves. We repeat them so often that they start to feel like absolute truths. But when you finally question that programming, you gain the freedom to install an entirely new operating system. Or you can upgrade your existing one: to make it faster, leaner, more efficient, more energetic, and more vibrant.
“Thinking smarter” isn’t about surface-level advice you read in generic blogs. It’s about the unseen things:
- The internal narratives — the “mindfood” that you feed yourself.
- The micro-decisions you make daily without thinking about them.
- The actions (and consequences) that follow.
Ten years ago, when I was writing my first books in Bangkok, I had a daily ritual of drinking Thai tea in the afternoons. Then I stepped and took an honest look at what I was doing: the tea was full of sweet condensed milk and sugar. Whenever I had the craving for something sweet, I replaced the daily Thai tea with a coconut instead, a much healthier option which better served me.
As a youth, I used to eat a lot of junk food like Cheetos and drink soft drinks. Then one day I told myself that these items have “no nutritional value.” Whenever I saw any of these items again, I repeated those same three words, “no nutritional value” and they never had any appeal to me again.
Recently, I identified the biggest leak in my current life and boiled it down to two words: “START EARLIER.” Now, I’m working from 5am onwards and making efficient use of the hours of the day when I am the most productive to effortlessly get my biggest priorities done. This new routine gives me plenty of free time during the day to do what I want and less guilt about not doing what I’m supposed to. It also makes the harder things much, much easier.
We hold ourselves back whenever we are unwilling or afraid to be honest. We avoid facing certain truths because they are tied to our identity—to who we’ve “always been.”
The “Autopilot” Trap
We take so many for granted because they were installed in our lives on autopilot.
For example, why do we assume everyone is meant to work five days a week? Why do we believe the optimal window for productivity is 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.? Because someone else made that decision a long time ago, and now it runs millions of people’s lives. Only recently, some societies have begun to question this model and try something different, and test the results.
Iceland, for example, reduced hours from 40 to 35 per week—with no reduction in pay. They ran trials between 2015 and 2019 and found that productivity remained the same or increased in almost all workplaces. Workers reported significantly lower stress and burnout, and the economy actually grew by 5% in 2023—one of the highest rates in Europe (according to Autonomy.Work).
Take a moment to look at the “QWERTY” keyboard you’re using right now. You might be surprised to know that this layout wasn’t designed to help you type faster—it was actually designed to slow you down so old mechanical typewriters wouldn’t jam!
Take a look at the “QWERTY” keyboard you’re using right now. You might assume it was designed for speed, but the truth is the exact opposite: it was designed to slow you down.
Back in the 1870s, the first mechanical typewriters had a major flaw: if you typed too fast, the metal keys would clash and jam together. To fix this, the inventor deliberately placed the most common letters far apart to force typists to slow down their typing speed.
Even though we haven’t used mechanical typebars for a very long time, we are still typing using a system created over 150 years ago that was designed to make us type slower! We are literally typing on a ghost of a problem that no longer exists.
The story gets even more FASCINATING.
In 1936, a faster, more ergonomic layout called the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard was patented. It put the most common letters on the “home row” to minimize finger travel. But despite being objectively better, it failed. Businesses didn’t want to retrain their staff, and manufacturers didn’t want to change their hardware.
Most people don’t want to change the automatic systems running their lives, even when presented with a newer, better and faster solution!! This means a tremendous opportunity for those who DO adapt and innovate.
This week, take a moment and ask yourself: what other slow, inefficient operating systems are you running in your life? Have you become “stuck” with certain habits that don’t serve you simply because they are familiar?
Using the Margins
It’s very important to understand our automatic programming and automatic responses to things, because these are the margins where we can make the changes that can lead us to a more fulfilling life. This understanding is powerful because you can shape your life in a different way.
- Disrespect can be used as fuel for the best workout of your life.
- Rejection can be seen as a necessary prerequisite for success, rather than a wall. If you get rejected once, 10x your attempts. Before long, you’re doing things at scale which others cannot match.
If you get rejected once and quit, you’re done. But if you get rejected 100 times? Your chances of progress increase exponentially.
Recently, I was rejected as a speaker for the Da Nang NomadFest, despite being friends with both of the organizers. The reason cited was my overstay in Vietnam during the Covid-19 pandemic (I was stranded in Vietnam for two years until the borders reopened). It wasn’t necessarily a rejection of me, but I decided to use it as my new fuel to begin 2026 regardless. Going forward, I’m going to use this rejection as rocket fuel to be voted as the best presenter at every single event I speak from now on.
The valuable thing to remember here is that we can use every event, every stimuli and input in our lives in a way that serves us, carries us forward, and propels us to new momentum and heights.
Conversely, if you feel stuck: remember that things can feel heavy and difficult because of how we feel about them in the moment. When you look at your life objectively, the obstacles aren’t nearly as big as you’ve made them out to be.
Don’t try to do difficult things when you’re tired. Identify the things that make you feel unstoppable, and identify to use the things that have been holding you back in a way that serves you and helps your growth.
Remember that if you are currently running on a faulty system, then it often doesn’t matter how hard you grind. And in fact, the harder you grind on a broken system, the more likely it is that it’s going to stay broken.
From now on, take a moment each day to look at the automatic habits and routines running your life, and identify the leverage points to make the changes you need.