This blog post is in part related to the idea of conscious living. Generally, when I talk about conscious living I mean the state where you are always intenful about what you are doing in your life. This state is very powerful, but also very personal, and sometimes explaining your process to others might sound very weird, mostly because you're trying to put words into a internal state of your own being, and the language is simply not expressive enough.

I'll try to present my current approach to identifying and solving tasks or problems at hand in a very principled way. This could be applied to personal improvement as well as working in a team or office environment where work must be done in a relatively unchaotic way.

Basically, the first part is objective identification of the problem. Basically:

• where you are (A)
• where you want to get (B)

You need to visualize the end goal you want to reach and even try to put yourself in the shoes of a person who achieved that. Obviously, how and when it's going to happen, it will be and feel very different, but even having a mental taste of what it feels can give you a boost of productivity. For example, I visualize myself on Yosemite Valley climbing The Nose on a regular basis. I can't really know how it's going to feel, but I have a pretty good taste of what I believe it's gonna feel. Also, watching other people achieving it (if applicable) is a good starting point. On an unrelated note, this is a pretty good documentary about Yosemite valley and climbing (link).
Identifying A (where we are) is done via values and introspection. IT is about correctly and selflessly evaluating your position in the world. This means that you must not put yourself higher than you are (reality check), but also not to lower yourself too much (due to low self esteem or impostor syndrome).
For example, let's say that A is related to mountain climbing. You can asses your performance by doing some routes (either new ones, or previously done ones) and seeing how you reacted to the conditions. If other people are there, then you use them as your "local" benchmark.
Identifying B is done usually after A, aka goal/objective. The objective you set should be both realizable and bold. Realizable means that, given A, you can actually get to B given a reasonable time and effort. Bold implies it should require effort and should be a worthwhile activity, according to your values.
In general, B should be abstract, but with a real instantiation. For example, the abstract thought can be the desire to be a better mountain climber. The instantiation can therefore be to climb Mont Blanc.

Then, after A and B are set, we need to work on the "function" from A to B, mathematically speaking. This function can be seen as a route from a source to a destination, like going from one place to another. However, exactly like in real life, the method of getting from point A to point B has infinitely many possible routes, some of them being more efficient than the other.
It can be overwhelming to think about all the possible ways you can go about it. However, this is a trap. You shouldn't really think about each step, and for each step each subsequent step and so on. You don't need global efficiency. There may be failures along the way and there may be times where you need to reconsider the destination, but for the most part, looking one or two steps ahead is good enough, if the end goal is well set.

Choosing this step requires planning, as we'll discuss in the next section, however, if the end goal is well understood, and sufficiently desirable, and we try to understand and unbiased as possible where we are, then, we can use a process called backward induction to work backward from the end goal to the current state and approximate the best next steps.

This may be very high level, so let's take an example:

• Goal (B): I want to climb The Nose in Yosemite Valley on El Capitan. It is a 5.13 (7c+) route of 31 pitches. It was first done in 47 days, however the current record is 2 hours long.
• Current state (A): An average 6a+-6b-ish climber with very limited outdoor experience, having done a few small multi pitches of at most 5 pitches.
• Backward induction:
  • Climbing multi-day multi-pitch routes of at least 7a grade
  • Climbing two-day multi-pitch routes of at least 6b grade
  • Climbing 10+ pitches in one day of at least 6b grade
  • Climbing 5+ pitches of at least 6b grade
  • Climbing confidently sports and multi-pitch trad routes of at least 6b grade (this can include going to Yosemite valley itself to get a feel for the zone!)
  • Climbing sports routes of at least 7a/7a+ grade as lead climber
  • Climbing many sports/multi easy pitch routes as well as scrambling routes to get confident in my technique and climbing ability

I've definitely defined that list now, on the spot, however it was a great exercise for me to understand where I am and where I want to get. It is, for sure, a 5 year plan, however, once it is broken into smaller parts, we can start and plan each subsequent step.

This is more about the "local" planning, not the high level plan. We know that there is a mapping from A to B, and we have defined some intermediate steps via backward induction. We now need to do these annoying day to day tasks, so that we work towards our plans and dreams. For me this is probably the hardest part. Somehow it's so easy for me to dream myself at the peak of the mountain, and it's relatively easy to get there once I'm out in the woods, however, getting out of the bed and out of the house is so damn hard. Unconsciously I know that once I'm on the road, I'm committed to the thing, whatever it may be, and I think my brain just wants to save energy.
However, it's okay, motivation is inferior to drive and good habits, and, there is also a romanian saying: "appetite comes while eating".

So... planning. It's good that there's a lot of material on this topic: blogs/books/techniques/apps. Basically, I'm not pretty good at this step, so the best thing I can suggest is look for other people that define this process better than me.

Planning is the last step before starting actual steps towards the objective. We now leave the bunker and go into the wild!

Once a plan is set, it is now time to start the initial steps. This is, personally speaking, the hardest part. It's equivalent to getting myself out of the house and working towards the goal. Usually, once I get started, I get sucked into the process and it becomes actually enjoying. But the first steps are the hardest.

This part is both the easiest and the hardest one, for me, depending on how I look at it. Easiest, because it requires almost no high level planning, so you can just focus on modular/singular tasks at once. Hardest, however, because it involves labor work, be it physical or mental. This can be seen as the process where you computed all the calculations, and now you pick the hammer and hit the nail until it's in the desired/planned place.

Usually, if the planning is done well, this should enable the nice feeling of flow states, which are oh-so fulfilling! It's not about hitting that nail, it's about why you hit the nail :) It's not just a parking space in the periphery of Baia Mare, it's a climbing area on andesite rock, increasing your outdoor climbing skills, thus doing one concrete step towards that long term goal of becoming a better climber. Few tricks I learned along the way:

• Put tasks in calendar as well as write them down so you don't forget and are reminded. Good apps help you so much, let's use the technology for our advantage. Always.
• Split your day in multiple splits (90 minutes each is good enough usually), with a few breaks (30/60 minutes each).
• Streaking works! If you do something 5 days in a row, quitting the 6th day is hard. Quitting 100th day is harder.
• However, if you skip one day, it's okay, remember to not be hard on yourself, recollect where you are, regroup mentally and start from there. Again, don't blame yourself, you'll just build patterns where you don't allow yourself to fail along the way, which will, in turn, make you not want to start anything.
• Have some sort of variation, you are not a robot of doing tasks. Having 3-4 such high level big plans (+work/daily tasks) can be a good way of rotating through objectives, feeling a sense of progression, while not getting bored of them.
• Constant remembering why you started (feeling that "B is done" feeling). You can also use other accomplishments in your life (finishing university, getting the driver's license, acing your first job interview, first lead multi-pitch climb etc.)
• Remember to have fun along the way, have like minded people around and be grateful for being able to do it. Only humans can do that, so be glad you are (human, in existence, alive and able to do it, born in a period of peace and prosperity, with the right amount of technology to help you along the way).

Supposedly, we are now finished with A->B. First, we need to celebrate and pat ourselves on the shoulder. We deserve it.
However, we need not to forget one important final step. The synthesis phase. We want to make sure we learn from our inevitable mistakes and see what generalizable rules we can extract for future problems.
This is useful for future, similar, A->B mappings, fewer failures in the execution steps and better planning abilities. Basically, all the previous steps get a level up, if we learn something along the ways. Otherwise, there's no progression.
Let's remember that the A->B mapping was an anevoious one. There were many intermediate steps, which required planning, execution, failures, learning etc. However, if the synthesis is done properly, given a repeat of A->B, we should be able to do it in less intermediate steps. In the perfect situation, A->B would be done in simply one step, since we have evolved from A, thus we are much closer to B, such that we can do it in a linear step.
Something like this:

GG!