How To Discover (And Pursue) Your Life's Work - Dan Koe

Nothing worthwhile is predictable. There is not a set path. You cannot expect one, because if there were one, it would be taught in schools.

The people that get paid the most are not those that are trained into an occupation constructed by society. Anybody can do that. That is how you become a “cog in the machine.”

You’re reading this letter because you have a (good) desire for more in life. You want to bridge the gap between work and life. You want to live a life of zest, passion, and deep satisfaction for the domain you decide to pursue with full force.

You have to revive your child-like curiosity, feel into it, and let it guide you throughout life. Some people use the words intuition, your “calling,” your purpose, or anything else that refers to tapping into the intelligent voice inside you (that everyone is born with).

A good place to start is to think about your childhood. Did you have a natural affinity towards anything? Did you gravitate towards specific interests? Some people may have a slight inclination towards sound, making them want to get into music.

Diving real deep into a particular interest is how you pursue a truly unique path.

Your curiosity would eventually lead you to something that seems completely unrelated to your the interest you initially chose. This differentiates you from the sea of individuals pursuing a set path — giving you informational leverage that you can charge big bucks for.

It is the simple commitment to never rely on anything but yourself to actualize your potential.

Money is no longer optional. The need for money is encoded in the system. We don’t live in huts or hunt our own food anymore. Our psyche remains the same — wired for survival — but the environment we live in is completely different.

The first thing you should begin educating yourself on is a skill that will eventually help you make money. This can be anything really, but marketable skills are usually the best option (and beginner-level information is readily available online).

The Domain Of Mastery has you choose 3 interests: What excites you, what lets you earn, and what develops you.

By studying these and improving your skillset, you are diving deeper into the unknown. You are exposing yourself to information that schools won’t teach you.

The thing that most people don’t understand is that in order to be a Master Of One, you have to be a jack of all trades. You have to dive deep into the iceberg of awareness if you want to be creative in that domain. 

Being a specialist can be trained. We are not trying to do something that others can be trained into.

As you dive deeper into these interests, you will realize that they all lead to the same thing — which is life itself. The universe is a giant mind. A network of complex and creative systems.

When you learn Photoshop, aside from knowing how to navigate the software, there are only a few things you need to know — the principles.

Selections, masks, and adjustment layers.

When you understand those, you can pretty much create anything you would need (unless the project demands something more.

This is true with almost anything. When you understand the principles, you can accomplish 80% of the work you would need to get done in that domain.

Find a congruent voice that you can learn from.

You may or may not get useful information from someone who talks strictly about business.

Search for books, social media accounts, podcasters, YouTubers, and any other information you can find on your topic of interest. If what they teach does not register with you, find another mentor that has a congruent voice you can make sense of (and are excited to learn from).

Kickstart a personal brand to post your learnings online. That alone will force you to understand money-making skills if you want to see real progress. Copywriting, marketing, persuasion, sales, etc are all necessary to put out an impactful message and turn your interests into income.

Remember, you can only learn so much by learning. You have to apply what you learn if you want to open new mental pathways to explore.

If you keep things in your head, you will get stuck in a loop of learning the same thing over and over without moving to the next level. You need real-world feedback.

Once the principles are solidified in your head and you are actively struggling/failing with your real-world project — you will start to recognize patterns in everyday life.

Creating content brings an entirely new sense of enjoyment to life. Pattern recognition increases dopamine levels in the brain (because you are hunting for your survival). You start to recognize things you never have before — because they actually have a use case now.

You start to appreciate the depth that life has to offer when you have something to apply your everyday experiences to — writing content online.

States are temporary.

Stages are permanent.

You can have a high month in business — which is a state — but it may not be maintained month to month.

But, if you develop your business leverage to a point where it’s near impossible to dip under $20K a month, that is a stage.

You can enter a flow state, or you can develop yourself to a point of being in a perpetual degree of flow (see: enlightenment).

You can have a burst of creativity, or you can develop yourself to a point of having a baseline level of creativity.

This is true for most traits, skills, and domains of life.

As you dive deeper into your Domain Of Mastery, it will demand a certain amount of cognitive development to reach the next “stage.”

When you reach this first stage, you are ready to start monetizing.

Your job is to help people reach that stage of development faster than you did with what you learned along the way.

You do this by selling a creative solution that will help someone navigate your path in less time.

By helping others reach that developmental stage that you have (whether it’s free or paid) you are forced to organize the information and make connections.

This will open up the room to reach your next developmental stage faster.

When you have everything you’ve made sense of packaged up and hosted in the digital world — you don’t have to worry about it anymore. You get to build on top of it. Iteration.

By doing this consistently over a 2-3 year span, you will bust through new stages of development, help others get there, and gain a deep satisfaction for life in general.

If you are intentional and actively expanding your awareness in search of your life’s work, you will find it.

Here are two questions to meditate on:

• What is the BIG problem you want to solve in the world? The one that keeps you up at night.
• What is the BIG problem you want to solve in your life? The one you know is holding you back.

• They don’t take themselves or their message seriously. They are too afraid of external judgement, it dilutes their message, and they get stuck in a developmental stage.
• They are too focused on the money. This is fine at first, but given time leads to a lack of meaning and fulfilment in the work you’ve built yourself into. It becomes another 9-5 instead of your life’s work.
• They do not see the value in consistent self-development (or they refuse to develop critical aspects that hold other aspects behind). Hence limiting their personal, creative, and professional potential.

• Choose 3 interests that you are genuinely curious about.
• Begin studying them via books and online content from a congruent voice that you are excited to learn with.
• Build a real-world project and do not suppress the problems that come up. YOU will need to change at some point. You will lose some people and things from your life as your development demands.
• If you stay on the unconventional path for more than 6 months — you will understand on a deep, internal level that it is impossible to fail.