Transcription
My name is Ali Aluli. I'm a post-doctoral fellow at the NASA Propulsion Lab. And this video, I'm going to show you a 12-month system that can help you make 2025 a year you're absolutely proud of.
Now, I know 2025 already started. I'm recording this video as of January 19th. No worries at all. That's actually a really good thing. That's kind of intentional because I want you to break out of the perfectionist, black-and-white, like, all-or-nothing type of mindset, which the rest of society and self-help gurus seem to propagate. I show you that, no, it's actually totally fine to start late, start, uh, when things are broken, and just go ahead and get things fixed up.
So, I'm, we're going to go ahead and do, just to give you an outline of the video. We're going to first talk about this 12-month system, why I would recommend it, why there are three different phases, what to do in each phase. And I'm going to even show you a different alternative approach where you can integrate the phases together. But before we basically go ahead and talk about that, we need to first discuss, um, the, the idea of this 12-month system. First, it's going to involve a lot of productivity. It's going to involve doing a lot of work. So, we first need to understand where do you fall on the ADHD spectrum.
Now, this is relevant because if you're someone who is like time-blind and distracted, you're basically higher up on the ADHD spectrum. You're more likely to have ADHD tendencies. You're going to be more likely to procrastinate. You're going to have like some other, uh, issues related to timeliness. You won't be able to stick to a schedule unless it's done a certain way. Versus if you're like closer to being more a neurotypical person, you'll be more time-aware and more, uh, focused. But you're going to lose some of the advantages that ADHDers have, such as the creativity, the ability to hyperfocus, and things of that nature.
Now, the reason why it's important to figure out where you are on this spectrum is because that actually determines the length of the first phase. That's because phase one is execution. Now, there's a model that I came up with basically a long time ago. I didn't invent it entirely from scratch. I basically adopted a few ideas that I learned from other models and I integrated this thing together. And this is basically like how to achieve any goal. This is basically like your, you yourself and the world. And this is your ideas and you coming up with things that you want to achieve and visualize them. And this is actually you, you seeing them come to fruition. Let's say, for example, your goal is to buy like a really, really nice house. And you, and you think that in your head. And then you want to actually reach the point where you own the house and you have the keys in your hand. Or you have the nice car, or whatever. Obviously, these are material things. Let's say you have more things like, I don't know, meeting the right partner, having amazing friends and family, having great relationships, uh, becoming someone you're really proud of, growing a business that changed the world. Independent of whatever goal it is you'd like to achieve, there are four steps that you need to focus on.
Okay, very first step starts is awareness. You need to first be aware of your goals, desires, and dreams. You need to be aware of your own patterns and tendencies. You need to be aware of your traumas. You need to be aware of the things that make you you and why you do certain things. Only once you break, once you cultivate that awareness, only then you're really awake and in control. And once you develop that, then you need to work on your mindset. Your mindset is basically your beliefs, what you think is true about yourself and the world. This especially if you've, uh, been struggling with, I don't know, like things happened earlier on in life. Let's say you've gone through a really brutal breakup, you were abandoned, uh, you started a business and it failed. Like, basically any type of thing that goes wrong that causes a lot of emotional pain, if not resolved and dealt with properly, that can lead to poor limiting beliefs, which may sabotage your progress and cause self-sabotage. We're going to talk a little bit how to address that and why you should address that.
There's a third layer, which is cognition, which is like how to strategize and think and make decisions. Uh, this is extremely, extremely important. This is like what makes quote-unquote smart people really, really smart, and someone who's quote-unquote not as smart, not as smart. What I mean by that is like, this is what society calls like IQ or pattern recognition or your ability to strategize and think for yourself. That exists in the cognitive. And then basically, once you, like, you're aware of, you know, you're aware of yourself, what you want, you develop the right beliefs and attitude to go get it, you develop the right strategy, roadmap, and plan to go and and do it, then now you need to actually execute. You need to take action into the real world.
This is where it gets really, really tricky. Because execution, if you're higher up on the ADHD spectrum, uh, the higher up you are on the ADHD spectrum, the more you tend to struggle with the execution step. Execution is something that is very, very hard for ADHDers because your brain has something called executive dysfunction. Your brain is basically unable to perform very simple things due to some of the circuits in your brain being fried up. That comes with advantages such as again, high-end creativity. Unfortunately, for ADHDers, the most immediate, uh, thing to work on, the most urgent thing to work on, is the execution. A lot of people have ADHD, they're very aware, they, they have the right beliefs and mindset, they're very smart, they can, they can think, uh, and solve problems, do all that, but they just cannot bring their ideas to fruition, uh, to the real world. So execution is such, such an important thing. That's why I have an entire group called ADHD Entrepreneurs with over 1500 entrepreneurs where we focus on solving the execution problem using this program called Four Steps to Focus. I'm not going to cover that too much in this video. I'm going to put a link to it in the description if you want to learn more about it.
But anyway, let's go back to this diagram. Why does this pattern make sense with this in mind? Well, think about it. If you're trying to make, uh, like, let's say 2025 an exceptional year, and you're trying to build a system that you really, really like. Well, the very first thing you need to know is you need to learn how to take action. Like, any kind of action. Most people spend too much time researching, trying to find the right strategies, trying to find the right thing. Like, they're trying to get it perfect, trying to get it right. Well, you just need to get in the habit of taking action. And like, action produces information.
I'm going to give you an example. I'm, I'm going to give you a couple of personal stories. Like when I was in college, I switched my major four times. And a lot of people like who were with me in high school, they would try to think like, like, I'm going to plan the 10, 15 years of my life and I'm going to figure out, I'm going to go to medical school, do that. And I said, screw that. I don't know what I want to do. I'm going to try something and learn how to take action, learn from it, get that feedback, implement it into the next thing, and so on. I ended up switching my major four times. I settled on electrical engineering, then I went to grad school, focused on systems, I got my PhD when I was 26. But basically, the very first thing I worked on, even though I had beliefs, um, like my, my, my other areas were, were, were not as strong, execution was something I was really focusing on from the beginning. Is you just take action, you do things, you figure out what needs to happen, and then based, based on that data, you go and implement it.
I would say spend at least four months building execution systems. What I mean by that is, especially if you're an ADHDer, like spend some time working on developing a relationship with your calendar. That's because you are time-blind, and your time-blindness causes you to miss things. So you need a calendar in your face all the time so that you don't miss things. Now, you also need to trust your calendar, meaning the things that are on there, you need to trust it being your calendar. And you can use it as your to-do list as well. And I, and I talk about that in other videos and my program as well on how I, for example, personally use, use the calendar as a to-do list. And I integrate the Google Tasks, which is the to-do list within the Google, uh, the Google, um, calendar. And that's something that's very, very important. That's an example of one system you should work on. Tweak, like a goal-setting prioritization system. You need to understand what is it that you're trying to do, and always know, know how to not lose track of that.
Other execution things relate to environment design, like having things ready and in order, having a desk that's organized and inviting for you to sit down and do the work, having things like in your way that you need to do, having them in your vision. One thing about ADHDers is that, uh, you need to rely on external systems. Like your internal systems are kind of fried up, especially when it comes to memory and time. You don't sense time very well, and your memory is all sorts of messed up. So you need to have like almost like an external hard drive and you need an external clock. And that's basically your calendar, which acts as both a time reminder and, and, uh, a tracker. So you would spend the first four months again, just focusing on execution systems, optimizing your execution systems, iterating on things that work and don't work. And the right way to do it is to not get so fixated on outcome, not just like beat yourself up on things going wrong. Like, you just try things, and when things break, that's fine. You just go and fix them or you try something, something new. But the very first thing you need to do is task initiation, task completion, action. Without solving that problem, like you cannot do anything. You can have all the greatest ideas in the world, but without being able to put it into fruition, again, there's not much you can do.
Once you go ahead and fix the mindset, I'm sorry, the execution problem, then you move on to mindset. And the reason I say that is because there's a lot of content on YouTube that's like self-help gurus, I don't know, manifestation gurus, what not, talking about like beliefs and things like that. And they don't, they don't really view it from the lens of like psychology or neuroscience. They kind of just make it this kind of spiritual woo-woo thing, which I, nothing against that. I'm open to that. I'm open to spirituality and what not. I like to look at things from the lens of physics and the lens of neuroscience. I'm, I'm a scientist. I have a PhD. So I really like to just like, these are kind of, that's kind of my, my hammer, where, where to me, like these problems are like nails. The hammer is that I like to look at it from a scientific perspective. And I think mindset is incredibly important because once you get yourself in the habit of taking action and you have the right execution and environment, you'll notice that you may have solved like the overwhelm issues or kind of the logical procrastination or the executive function. But there's still going to be some different types of procrastination, and that is called avoidance.
Avoidance is basically when you are emotionally, uh, like not inclined to to do something, and you really, really don't want to do it, and you're avoiding it at all costs. That's basically going to cost you a lot. It's something that's very, very harmful. So, uh, in order to avoid things like avoidance, you need to work on your mindset. You need to have healthy beliefs. You need to have the right beliefs that you can do it, that, um, you need to avoid self-sabotage. Self-sabotage happens when there's some internal fear of failure or fear of success. Usually fear of success, which is really just fear of failure in disguise, because fear of success, uh, is just you, uh, fearing that you won't be able to handle the success. So it's actually fear, fear of failing at handling the success. So it's fear of failure. So that's another thing that's that's kind of deep down. But you should only really focus on that once you have gone your execution systems, you've, you've, you've forced them to their limit, they're unable, now now they start breaking, then you focus on your mindset.
Only then do you start working on things like mental models and, and cognition systems. What I mean by that is like learning how to think and make decisions and, and, and probabilistic thinking and nonlinear thinking and systems thinking, how to think in systems, how to compartmentalize things, how to build things like assembly lines, all, all the kind of things that, for example, I use in my business and I teach in my business content as well. Uh, you can really only make the most out of that once you have systems for execution and you have systems for mindset. Honestly, like that's just, there's just no other way around that. Because if you're not able to take action, and if you have the wrong beliefs around your business and everything in the world, what not, like no amount of mental model or anything is going to help you. You're just not going to do the right things. You're always going to sabotage yourself. You're going to beat yourself up. You're going to have negative self-talk, and you're just going to hit yourself for it, and it's just not going to be really fun.
Now, another alternative way to do it is you can try to like build all the systems at once and alternate. Uh, I personally would not encourage that. I would only encourage that if you're someone who like gets bored very, very easily and you just kind of feel like you want to integrate them through building the systems and, and, and integrating the big picture together. I would say you, you should only do that if you have a natural tendency to be a to think in systems. And what I mean by that is, for example, I run my company Next Level Systems in addition to my company Dazzling Engineers, in addition to my full-time job at NASA, in addition to a project I'm working on at Northeastern University where we're trying to launch the world's ever first ever terahertz quadcopter. And the reason I'm able to do these things in parallel is because I have a tendency to think in systems and to use things in parallel to maximize my learning. For example, when things break at Dazzling Engineers or when I learn something, I'm able to take it and put it over there and put it somewhere else. And, uh, that's like, that's that's that's kind of something that you should like assess your own ability and skill to do. If you can do it, great. If you cannot do it, then I would not encourage that.
Then I would strongly encourage you focus on the execution. Basically, if you're not able to execute and take action, and you have systems that are constantly getting you to take action, and you have like, if you haven't solved the execution problem, literally makes no sense to move on to the other problems. Maybe, maybe mindset would make sense in the case of avoidance, but still, like execution is like your number one responsibility. Like without execution, without action, especially if you're someone higher up on the ADHD spectrum, like you are your own bottleneck. You can't do anything right.
So once you go and do that, uh, then like you fix the execution, you fix the mindset, you fix the cognition. Basically, in 12, in, in 12 months, you will have transformed your mind. You will have, you'll have been able to go from just like what your ideal self really wants to be, to gaining the awareness, mindset, cognition, execution, completing all the four layers. These are the ones like really beneath the iceberg. This is the one that you can use external systems for. And then only then can you actually achieve your results and, and, and see things happening in the real world.
Um, so again, kind of a bit of an overview, just to really drill this idea. I know this may cover, like, the concepts may sound a bit, a bit more intense, but this is a model I've been working on for a while. If you're interested in following my work, again, I'll put my community down in the link below. Would be happy to have you. But yeah, that being said, I'll see you guys, uh, in the next video. If you have any questions, please go ahead and use the comments, and I'll see you there. Peace, love.