Stop Wasting Time - Design the Life and Career You Want
- Mark Johnson
- Mar 7
- 6 min read
Vision, Planning, and Execution = Happiness
(These were addressed in yesterdays wisdom quote and blog post - Meet Your Most Powerful Self… review that post if this concept is new to you.)
Look at your life for a moment…
Not the life you talk about.
Not the life you imagine.
The life you are actually living.
Your life and your career today are not accidents.
They are the result of the decisions you’ve made, the actions you’ve taken—and just as importantly—the actions you didn’t take.
Your reality is the cumulative result of thousands of days that came before this one.
Which means something important.
If you want a different life…
If you want a different career…
If you want more freedom, income, impact, or fulfillment…
Then you must stop hoping something will change and start designing the change yourself. In other words, stop wasting time / life! Because the life and career you want will never appear by accident.
They will only appear through planning and construction which happens through execution.
In a recent post I introduced the idea that intention is far more powerful than method (see “Goal Achievement = 99% Intention + 1% Method” — review that post if this concept is new to you). Once intention is clear, the methods to achieve it appear.
But without intention, nothing moves.
This also connects directly to another idea I explored recently: happiness emerges when your inner vision for life aligns with the external reality you are actually living (see “Happiness Is Not Overrated — It’s Everything” — review that post if necessary).
When those two things are aligned, life feels powerful.
When they are not aligned, frustration begins to grow.
The bridge between those two worlds is intentional execution, or action.
But sadly, most people never build that bridge.
They drift.
They react to circumstances.
They respond to other people’s priorities.
They spend their days solving problems that belong to someone else’s plan.
And then they wake up ten years later wondering where the time went. You cannot build a meaningful and happy life that way. You cannot build a powerful career that way.
—-
Newsflash! There is a 10 year span between the two images above and I can honestly say without hesitation that those ten years have been the happiest in my entire 68, both professionally and personally. And that is not by accident, it’s by design!
—-
If YOU want something different, you must start where every great achievement begins: with intention, right now, today!
Start by looking into the next 12 months. One year.
Ask yourself a brutally honest question:
What is one goal I could accomplish in the next twelve months that would meaningfully transform my life or career?
Not ten goals.
One.
One bold, meaningful, uncomfortable goal that will move my life forward.
Once you define that goal, break it down.
Divide it into twelve monthly milestones.
Each month becomes a measurable step toward the goal.
Next, break the next month into weeks.
What must actually happen each week to move the month forward to accomplish the milestone you set for the month?
Now break it down to the level where transformation really happens: the day.
Each evening before tomorrow begins, take five minutes and decide what tomorrow is going to accomplish and write it down on your planner or calendar.
Do not wake up wondering what to do. Wake up with a plan, knowing, so you can hit the ground running!
Now, I already know this is where most readers bail out. 96 out of 100 people will see this ask as just too hard, and will go back to scrolling on Insta or X or TikTok, killing time / life - distracted in a state of amusement. Here’s something interesting about that…
“The Hidden Meaning of Amusement…
Originally, to amuse someone meant:
to capture their attention in a way that keeps them from thinking about anything serious.
That’s why the word evolved to mean entertainment.
Entertainment occupies the mind.
It fills attention.
But it doesn’t necessarily advance thought.
This leads to a powerful distinction:
• Amusement → occupies the mind
• Reflection → expands the mind
Or said another way:
Amusement distracts attention. Reflection directs attention.
Why This Matters
Much of modern life is built around amusement:
• social media
• streaming
• endless scrolling
• short-form content
All of it is designed to capture attention without requiring deep thought. Which means a person can spend hours amused but never move their life forward.”
It’s what Wallace D Wattles said in his 1910 classic book, The Science of Getting Rich - “There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world.”
But if you keep reading, and more importantly do the work, you will open the door to an amazing future! Of that I am confident!
In another recent post I discussed how casually people say they are “killing time,” when in reality time is the most valuable asset we possess (see “Time = Life” — review that post if you missed it).
People who build extraordinary lives understand something simple:
Days are where destiny is built.
Your days build your weeks.
Your weeks build your months.
Your months build your years.
And your years build your life.
This is the essence of intentional life curation—the idea that the life you are living is the accumulated result of the decisions you’ve made across the eight major areas of life (see “Re-creation, The Discipline of Gaining Perspective” — review that post if necessary).
You are either consciously shaping your life… or your life is being shaped by default.
There will be adversity for sure… but when adversity appears—as it always does—your strength can show up to meet it in ways you didn’t know existed (see “How to Meet Your Maximum Strength…” — review that post if you want to revisit this principle).
But strength alone is not enough.
Strength must be directed.
That direction comes from a plan.
And that plan begins with a single decision:
What life and career are you actually trying to build?
The Planning Cascade
Every major life achievement follows a simple structural pattern.
Big goals are not achieved all at once.
They are achieved through a cascade of smaller, intentional milestones and actions.
Think of it like this:
Year
Your bold, life-changing goal.
↓
Months
Twelve measurable milestones that move you toward that goal.
↓
Weeks
The operational steps required to achieve each monthly milestone.
↓
Days
The daily actions that create progress.
This is the Planning Cascade.
Year → Months → Weeks → Days (repeat)
Your life is not built in years.
It is built in days.
If you design your days intentionally, and in the context of week, and month, your weeks begin to move forward.
Your weeks build your months.
Your months build your year.
And your years ultimately build your life and your career.
Now it’s Time Invest 5 Minutes to Snap Yourself Into a New Reality!
Take five minutes right now and do this simple RWA exercise.
1. Reflect
Look honestly at the next twelve months of your life.
If nothing changes—if you continue doing exactly what you’re doing today—where will you be one year from now?
Now ask yourself a more powerful question:
What is one goal that, if I achieved it in the next 12 months, would transform my life or career?
2. Write
Write this sentence down and complete it:
“In the next 12 months I will accomplish __________.”
Now take the next step.
Break that goal down into 12 monthly milestones that would logically lead to achieving it.
Don’t overthink it.
Just create the path. You will have to alter it anyway.
3. Act
Look at the first monthly milestone.
Now ask yourself:
What actions must I take each week to move that goal forward?
Write them down.
Then think about the coming week. Write down up to 7 tasks that will accomplish that action that must be accomplished during that week. Schedule them on your calendar before you go to bed in a plan for tomorrow.
Then first thing in the morning, read that plan and commit to making it happen during the day. Execute! Then rinse and repeat for the next day.
Because the moment something is scheduled, it stops being a dream.
It becomes a commitment.
And the moment you begin executing that commitment, something powerful happens.
You stop waiting for a better future.
You start building one.
You snap yourself into a new reality.
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Here’s an idea…
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Namaste 🙏🏾
—
Mark Johnson
March 2026
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