Today, I am going to talk about lifestyle redesign versus the hustle culture and other obsolete life paradigms to help you break free from autopilot mode.

If you understand that the currently popular life and work concepts don’t serve or benefit you, you’ll naturally become motivated to change what doesn’t work in your current lifestyle and redesign it.

Unfortunately, most people take a far shallower and more comfortable approach to their life and work, leaving no room for positive change and the Good Life.

Isn’t it odd that people who follow popular life scripts that promise success and happiness end up far less successful and miserable?

I’ve watched dozens of people focus their lives and work on conforming to specific societal demands and life models, only to realise that they no longer make sense.

I’ve watched people who aspired to become solopreneurs never take that step because it felt safer to stay as they are in a dreadful 9-5 (or later) job.

I’ve watched current solopreneurs struggle with business and life day in and day out because they follow a path that doesn’t serve them.

I’ve watched highly talented introverted people stay in the shadows because society persuaded them they are not cut out for it (anything that is falsely regarded as primarily extroverted), and they live in a way that doesn't feel natural.

They all share some things in common:

• No intentional living

• No alignment with their true selves and values

• No freedom

That’s because their lifestyle is one they didn’t choose. They were “forced” to adopt it. In a world that promotes personalisation in everything, people miss out on personalising what matters most: their own lives and work.

Here are the 3 principal life scripts you need to discard if you want to live with more meaning, purpose and enjoyment:

• The Work-Retirement Model

• The 4-Course Life Menu

• The Hustle Culture

Let me briefly explain how each fails miserably to achieve the purpose for which they were initially developed and why you should discard them.

Why the 3 most popular life scripts failed

There’s something common among those 3 scenarios: security and certainty, although in different forms.

The Work - Retirement Model suggests that people should prioritise work their whole life until they retire. During their first long life stage, people are urged to focus on work and saving enough money for retirement. Essentially, you postpone most other enjoyable things further in life until you retire. That is supposed to be when you can enjoy life without the burden of work. 

That’s crucial to understand. Why does work have to be a burden or something people should want to avoid in the first place? And, more importantly, why do people have to stop enjoying life and have a mediocre - often dull - life? 

With this script, people live their whole lives (from 0 to 65 or more) on autopilot until they retire (if they manage to reach that age). Work, success (to secure a high income for the future), and financial planning for the retirement era become the focal points; anything else is saved for the 65+ life stage.

This life script projects everything into the future, essentially focusing on what happens after 30, 40 or 50 years down the line. There are two assumptions with high uncertainty here:

• Will you be able to reach the retirement age? Life is unpredictable.

• If you do, will you be in good health to enjoy all you’ve missed?

This model was developed for security but is founded on two highly uncertain conditions. It doesn’t make sense.

The 4-Course Life Menu, as I like to call it, is a predetermined life path consisting of the following four steps (in this order): formal education, stable employment, marriage, and home ownership. It urges people to follow a specific sequence of events and work toward them to secure a stable life.

I understand that this model was developed based on the -often grim- experiences of past generations who then raised their own children. When those past generations were young, they and their families struggled with most of those “happiness factors”. Due to wars and harsher life conditions, education was not the norm (mainly rich people could afford that), jobs were mostly underpaid manual labour, and most people could not afford a home. Marriage was the only sure thing because of social institutions like the church and the state.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong per se with any of those four things. This model’s problematic part is the obligation to follow a predetermined life if you want security. 

The thing is that formal education (as it is today) fails to prepare people for real life (and good jobs that make sense and help you afford a comfortable life). 

There is also no job security (nor should there ever have been), despite the undoubted security workers and employees enjoy today. You can simply be fired in the next restructuring round, and if you survive, your job may become obsolete in a few years due to the advancement of technology. 

Buying a house has never been more challenging, too. Prices get higher and higher, and people struggle so hard to finally afford to own a house (often to the detriment of everything else in their lives).

Essentially, this 4-course Life Menu gives people minimal freedom of choice. There are only four options, and you have to try them all in the order our society and economy serve them.

That doesn’t serve you, and the promised security it provides is a myth. Life is so rich, and there are endless combinations of choices that can make your life enjoyable, rewarding and fulfilling. 

Now, let me touch upon the third life model, the popular Hustle Culture of our time. This is a vast topic with varying perspectives and implications. I will dissect it to show that it also fails as a life choice.

According to the Hustle Culture enthusiasts, success is defined by relentless work, long hours, and extreme productivity. Professional success is prioritised over everything else in life (at least until one finally makes it and becomes a millionaire or billionaire). Health and personal life are not that important. 

What matters is achieving extreme productivity to make the most in the least amount of time. Overworking is glorified and celebrated. There’s nothing wrong with striving for higher productivity levels, but when that becomes a goal in itself and an obsession, it stops being healthy or productive (how ironic).

If we zoom out, we can also notice that this life script focuses on competition. How else can you be motivated to outperform everyone else with your high productivity? Collaboration is not discarded, but it’s not encouraged either. You have to be extremely competitive to stand out.

This constant struggle for the most success in the least time possible is fruitless. Burnouts are the norm (do you really want that?). Success is also not guaranteed, as this system is inherently elitist. Only a few can make it that high; the rest simply struggle to reach unattainable productivity levels and success (manifested mainly by money, expensive houses and cars, and luxurious lifestyles).

The Hustle Culture life model offers such limited options that it strips away any enjoyment from life and work. Your only choice is a relentless hustle to get to the top fast, but that doesn’t come with any guarantees that you will make it. In fact, most fail miserably and realise they’ve lost precious time, energy and enjoyment for essentially nothing.

Those 3 life models or scripts are inherently flawed. However, they serve the system that created them in the first place.

Today, people feel more lost than ever despite the abundance and apparent freedom of choice (there are choices, but few are willing to make the more meaningful and rewarding ones).

Not all hope is lost. Whatever life model you currently operate in, there’s room for positive change and personalisation. This is where Lifestyle (Re)Design comes into play.

Can you redesign your life to become more fulfilling and rewarding?

Yes, you can. Despite what many people believe, you can shift life models (or, better yet, stop following one) and change your lifestyle at any stage of life and age. Living and working with meaning, purpose, and enjoyment is not a privilege for younger or wealthier people.

Some reach breakthroughs in their 20s after experiencing multiple burnouts and feelings of dead-end working in corporate. Senior people finally realise that what they were promised (security and happiness) was a lie - or, at least, a misconception they were psychologically manipulated into. Also, it’s not about what they call “the middle-life crisis” either. 

You may decide to redefine your lifestyle in your 40s, and that’s a very common timing. However, you are entitled and even encouraged to do so whenever you experience those profound “aha” moments triggered by the realisation that your current lifestyle no longer serves you.

Essentially, Tim Ferriss’ book “The 4-hour Workweek” introduced the concept of Lifestyle Design to the world, normalising living with intention, aligning with your values and freedom of choice.

Since then, the concept has evolved significantly but without losing touch with the very foundations that make it work in the first place.

It all comes down to personalisation. There is no longer a life script or model to follow or subscribe to. The new way of living with meaning, purpose, and enjoyment allows you to choose whatever serves you as an individual, both short-term and long-term.

5 common misconceptions about lifestyle redesign

Now, let me highlight this: as with any previous model, lifestyle redesign has also been misunderstood or misinterpreted. 

We often tend to take a positive aspect of one thing and take it to the extremes, deviating from reason and modesty that should guide our thinking and behaviours.

• Myth #1 - Travelling the world. Although many people choose to travel more or travel a lot, lifestyle redesign does not necessarily mean you need to binge-travel or become a digital nomad. It’s about conscious choices. You may or may not want to travel extensively (although travel is highly recommended as an extremely beneficial and rewarding activity). If you find meaning and enjoyment in the area where you live and with the local communities, it’s totally fine to go for it.

• Myth #2 - Becoming an entrepreneur. Starting your own business as an entrepreneur is also no prerequisite. Although 9-5 jobs admittedly suck and will soon become obsolete to a large extent, it’s perfectly fine to choose to master and thrive in your current employment consciously. However, as we now live in a new creator economy, building your brand, creating value with your skills, knowledge and experience, and monetising it (often independently from your salary-based work) is highly recommended. You can do both. Or simply become a solopreneur. You have many options to evaluate.

• Myth #3 - Becoming a millionaire. Money is not success. Wealth is no longer a modern luxury. Being able to define your own lifestyle is. Linking happiness and contentment to money is not a sustainable option. Money can come and go. Designing your whole life on monetary terms may put you in the same position as the previously failed life models. Having material comfort and financial freedom is another thing. As we live in a material world, being able to afford a comfortable life, make ends meet and have the capacity to choose without the risk of going into debt or ending up homeless is essential. You don’t have to become a millionaire or set such a goal. But you may become one, and that’s fine. It’s also incredibly rewarding if you choose to live more modestly. You decide the level of comfort that makes sense for you (but opt for abundance).

• Myth #4 - Rejecting the system altogether. That’s a very common false belief, but let me explain why redesigning your lifestyle and avoiding traditional options is not about rejecting the system altogether. Making conscious unconventional choices that resonate with you but may fall outside what most people choose is healthy. There’s no one-size-fits-all, and that’s why the three prevailing life models failed. You can still be an active citizen and a part of society and your local community while working and living in a way that makes more sense to you. Becoming isolated is not a healthy option, nor do you have to feel or become an outcast. You just choose what aligns with your values and serves you and discard what doesn’t. It's as simple as that.

• Myth #5 - It’s just a trend. Trends are usually short-lived. Redesigning your lifestyle has been around for long. Furthermore, a trend is something that the majority of people embrace. I don’t see billions of people redesigning their lives (or even being willing to do so). Lifestyle design is a conscious and profound process. It starts with deep self-reflection and awareness and, in a way, ends with taking intentional action to set up your life in a new, more meaningful way. This process is not easy or pleasant at all times. At its core, the process is about fundamental mindset shifts and changes that not everyone is comfortable with. People still get stuck and frozen and remain so because they are afraid of embarking on this intense but ultimately rewarding journey. Lifestyle redesign is not a trend but a necessity.

Avoiding these misconceptions or myths about lifestyle redesign is crucial for setting the right intentions and expectations.

Let me show you how to start the process and what to expect from each of the 5 steps.

Redesigning your lifestyle in 5 steps

Before elaborating on the steps, let’s clarify that this process is not linear or one-off.

It’s a continuous process that requires iterations (especially in the experimentation stage), continuous learning, and flexibility to adapt.

The changes may be small or fundamental, but you cannot be 100% certain about the outcome until you experience it. This is why it’s imperative to be flexible and adapt to how you experience those lifestyle changes.

Step #1 - Radical self-awareness

To start the process, you must embark on a deep self-exploration journey. The end destination is radical self-awareness. You need to honestly assess all areas of your current lifestyle and identify the gaps, which are the distance between your current situation and your desired situation. 

You need to determine what parts of your lifestyle you dislike and why. This is crucial for ensuring you make conscious choices. Ask yourself why three times to explore the root cause of your discontent. You also need to identify what you like or desire and what you dislike and want no longer in your life. 

Remember that it’s okay to focus on negative feelings. We can actually use negativity to produce positive outcomes. Discovering what we don’t like can indicate what you like and want, and that is often not that straightforward. The result of this step is radical self-awareness.

You may not feel 100% certain about what you discovered at this stage. It’s also common to feel uncomfortable or scared. “What if I make mistakes and fail?” “What if I am wrong and those changes don’t make me happier with my life?” or “What if this doesn’t work out as expected?”. They are all very common among people who start the lifestyle redesign process, and it’s normal.

Your survival instincts take hold, and fear of the unknown triggers doubt. Trust the process and your intuition. If your gut feeling says, “Go for it!” it’s good to go.

Just watch out for self-biases and limitations. I’ve seen people get stuck with societal expectations and struggle to open up to their true selves and see what’s inside. Trust your gut feeling again. If something is off, restart the self-exploration process.

When I first went through that process years ago, before making radical lifestyle design choices, it felt off. I felt that the result was pretty much biased by how I was raised and what society expected from me. So, I iterated the process twice to unveil my actual wants, needs, and desires.

Deliverable: a list containing

• Things you like and dislike (passions or softer versions, anything goes)

• Values (no more than three)

• Strengths (no more than five)

• Your Why (a clear statement of why you want to redesign your lifestyle)

Step #2 - Visualise your new lifestyle

Now that you are aware of what you like and don’t like, it’s time to dream big and visualise what your ideal lifestyle looks like.

There are 5 distinct areas to help you visualise your new life in detail without missing essential elements: 

• health (physical and mental), 

• work (whatever that includes in your case), 

• personal life (relationships of any kind, from romance to family and friendships),

• leisure (things that please you, like hobbies, interests and activities, to name a few), 

• growth (learning, creativity, growing as a person, self-development, investing in your skills and knowledge)

Most lifestyle design models ignore the fifth element above. Personal growth and its components are essential for building a new Good Life. It’s not only about work and personal life.

Such an approach fails to achieve its intended goal: creating a holistic new lifestyle for the next many years. The five areas above are crucial for making that happen.

The outcome of this visualisation should be a complete description of what your new ideal day will look like. Dive into the details; don’t stay generic. Describe it in the same way you would describe your current daily life.

There are two great tools to help you visualise:

• Journal

• Make vision boards (similar to mood boards; if you don’t know how they work or are made, do a Google search)

The goal is to make it as detailed and tangible as possible. 

I prefer journaling because I have found that vision boards may distort your visualisation. They are based on pictures or photos that may not represent what you feel 100%.

Note that you can still change anything during this step. For example, you may need to refine the deliverable from the previous step. This is not only okay but also essential to ensure that what you visualise represents what you truly want. Authenticity is crucial.

Deliverable: a detailed one or two-page description of your Ideal Day. Title the document “A Perfect Day in the New Life of [your name]”. That’s powerful and creates strong emotions.

Step #3 - Set intentions and build systems with heatlhy habits

I am not into goals that much, to be honest. I prefer intentions, systems and habits.

Goals are static, linear, and usually projected far into the future. On the other hand, intentions are more actionable and remove a lot of friction between conceptualisation and action. When you set an intention, you may not know exactly all the details of your next steps, but you do know you need to act swiftly and improve on the go. That’s where systems and habits come into play.

This stage is all about restoring order and structure to one's life. Most people feel unhappy, frustrated, or disappointed with their lives because they have let entropy take hold and bring disorder and chaos.

Restoring structure with systems and habits can help you realise the extraordinary new potential you visualised in the previous step. 

If you just set goals, you lose motivation. A goal is about the process's result and may be vague or too far into the future, so you may lose all motivation to start working on your new ideal lifestyle now.

In fact, you don’t need motivation because (as explained above) it’s usually linked to feelings, emotions and moods. The latter can ensure you don’t take the proper action, or you don’t act quickly enough, or don’t take any action at all (=procrastination).

Instead, build adaptive systems and healthy habits. Habits are the components of systems. A system is a long-term framework within which you realise the desired lifestyle redesign, and it consists of smaller, short-term habits (even daily ones). Planning for both the short and long term is essential, or you will lose traction.

If you want to discover how to restore order and structure to help you implement the changes in your lifestyle design, check out my FATE 1-7-30 Method.

Over the past 365 days, I’ve been practising and fine-tuning a system to help me organise, plan, and schedule my life and work as a solopreneur, restoring structure and order.

After a whole year of experimentation and testing, I have finalised the frameworks, steps and details of the new system, which includes:

- 4 North Star Principles (hence the F.A.T.E. acronym, folks)

- the Daily High-flyer Circle

- the Weekly Go-getter Circle

- the Monthly Champion Circle

Discover more here.

Deliverable: a simple but effective 3-part system with daily, weekly and monthly action circles, each consisting of new healthy habits that help you implement the changes in your lifestyle.

Step #4 - Experimentation

Change and uncertainty come hand in hand. And their connection works both ways. You will never be 100% certain about your next steps and their results, so you must be open to adaptation and change. And vice versa. When you implement changes, you will never be 100% sure they will work as expected.

Embracing change and uncertainty builds a mindset of continuous learning and experimentation. In the context of lifestyle design, you will need to experiment until your new ideal lifestyle crystallises (in the visualisation or implementation stages).

There are 3 distinct areas you need to experiment with:

• Work. As work takes up a big part of our daily life, it’s an area most people start with. They change jobs, careers, or their whole work orientation (for example, they become freelancers, solopreneurs or entrepreneurs). You must experiment with different job positions, functions (I had a client who moved from HR to consulting), or work models (work from home, create a one-person business, or build a start-up).

• Environment. A good idea is to experiment with your immediate environment. People can get stuck in their lives because they get stuck in houses or locations that don’t feel natural and don’t help them bring out their best. Moving to a new home, city, or country is an option, but it’s not a prerequisite. You may as well remain where you live. However, chances are that changing your environment will help you make a fresh start. The environment affects our lives significantly, so don’t underestimate its role.

• Hobbies, interests, and activities. This appears to be the less fundamental area of lifestyle design. However, it’s quite the opposite. When you visualise and implement significant lifestyle changes, you need new healthy daily habits to help you create a more adaptive mindset and sustain your curiosity. Changing city and job is fundamental, but if you don’t pair it with new hobbies, interests or other pleasurable activities, you may soon find yourself in a rabbit hole of doubt and fear. Many people revert to their old lives because they feel they can’t sustain their new ones. No wonder that’s impossible without a healthy dose of curiosity, pleasure and creativity.

Deliverable: a list containing 3 experimentation options for each of the three abovementioned areas.

Step #5 - Financial planning

This is crucial. In fact, I was wondering if I should include it as a step in the process or just a helpful tip. However, I thought of many examples of people I know whose efforts to change their lifestyle radically were fruitless because of poor or a complete lack of financial planning.

We live in a material world. We, therefore, need material comfort and financial freedom to “finance” our life choices. I’ve seen people make bad or necessary choices because they hadn’t planned for the monetary resources needed for the changes they would implement.

Put simply, if you plan to redesign your lifestyle and start making changes with 0 dollars or euros in your bank account, chances are you will be forced to make decisions and choices out of necessity. Those are usually not aligned with your values and lifestyle aspirations, thus creating friction and disappointment sooner or later.

Financial insecurity creates stress and anxiety. The latter are detrimental to lifestyle redesign as they are antithetical to the curious, confident, and mindful approach needed to implement significant lifestyle changes.

The goal is to ensure you have enough money in your bank account to make ends meet for at least 6 months (or take on a few side projects to generate a minimum income while redesigning your lifestyle). During the big changes, you need to settle for a more modest life as you need to focus on implementing the changes. No pain, no gain. You can’t have it all. That’s the reality of life.

By engaging in realistic financial planning before embarking on the experimentation stage of the process, you gain greater control over your future, avoid tough decisions and choices that don’t align with your new lifestyle, and feel more empowered and peace of mind to do what’s necessary.

Deliverable: a financial plan with minimum savings or income for at least the next 6-12 months, during which you will implement your lifestyle redesign.

Wrapping it up

As I mentioned before, this process is not linear. Because it is interconnected, you can combine any two steps. Like in a feedback loop, the result of one step impacts the next. You may also return to previous stages and deliverables to refine a few elements. 

Beware, though, that while you are allowed to come back and refine a few things in your new lifestyle design process, you should not let doubt or fear make you change it altogether. If it felt okay - more or less - with the first two iterations, it’s good to go. Refine and move on to implementation and action.

One of the most common mistakes people make when redesigning their lifestyle is a lack of clarity and self-awareness (referring to Step #1 of the process). You must watch out not to subconsciously succumb to societal expectations during the self-exploration stage. Be brutally honest and question everything to ensure it holds true and is not influenced by your environment.

Another one is constantly comparing yourself to others. That’s a big NO. Your new lifestyle design is not the same as others because they may have different values to align it with, as well as diverse backgrounds, experiences, and aspirations. The only comparison you need to make is between your past self (when you were unhappy and discontent with your lifestyle) and your current self (where you stand now while implementing changes). Any other comparison is not only unhealthy but also creates obstacles and friction.

If I had to give you the most valuable tips, they would be these.

• Be honest and authentic about where you are and where you want to go.

• Be flexible and adaptive to the circumstances that come your way during your lifestyle redesign - not everything will be or go as planned or expected.

• Plan before you kick off the process, otherwise randomness and entropy will take over.

What’s next?

It’s all about the mindset. As the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers taught, we can only control our minds, thoughts and actions. Focusing on that can help you avoid unnecessary struggle, get unstuck, and move forward faster.

Let me step in if you need support getting unstuck in your life or work and redesigning your lifestyle. I can be of help if

• you want to quit your 9-5 job and create your one-person business but are too afraid (or don’t know how) to redesign your lifestyle

• you are a currently struggling introverted solopreneur (stuck in a wrong lifestyle)

• you are an introverted person struggling to leverage your introversion and unique superpowers and create the ideal lifestyle (that feels natural)

DM me on LinkedIn, and let’s explore how Mindset Coaching can help you move forward and claim what you desire and deserve for a life with purpose, meaning and enjoyment.