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Some housekeeping before we begin:

If you've felt suffocated creatively and don't have a skill or a hobby that could potentially change your life and you feel like your job isn't paying you what you deserve, you might wanna join the waitlist for The Modern Creator. I'm 80% done with the first draft and I'm aiming for the early launch on March 1st.

Join the waitlist here.

PS:

You need to click the link from the email to get added to the waitlist not from the website/online version (unfortunately Beehiive isn't that smart).

So if you clicked on the waitlist before but did it from the website/online version, please do it from the email so you get added to the waitlist.

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Suffering is a reality check.

You're suffering because your preconceived beliefs about the world don't match with reality.

You're suffering because there's a gap between where you want to be and where you are now.

The gap exists because there's a lack of knowledge, skill and leverage.

Because if you already know where you want to be and have the knowledge, skill, and leverage to get there—you'd already be there.

But you're not, that's why you're suffering.

The good news is, suffering—the moment of pain—is a moment of truth.

You're forced to face reality the way it is. Only then you can make meaningful progress.

Most people think the secret to making progress, creating wealth, and changing their lives is by hustling 12 hours a day, asking no questions, checking boxes, pleasing their boss, and selling their soul to a corporation that sees them as a number on a spreadsheet and will fire you as soon as you don't make sense on a spreadsheet.

But there are people who are working less, earning more, and enjoying life.

The difference is knowledge, skill, and leverage.

However, most people choose to close their minds to anything that doesn't align with their pre-existing beliefs—their ego.

I always knew where I wanted to be with my brand:

• Work with creators I look up to

• Inspire people to improve their lives

• Talk about ideas I'm passionate about and teach them to millions of people

But for a long time, I didn't make any progress.

I was lying to myself that I was good enough and that the other creators who were making progress were somehow "cheating".

But that was just my ego getting in the way of things.

Facing reality is hard. It means you need to let go of your ego. The smaller your ego is the less pre-conditioned your mind will be—which leads to less suffering in the end.

I made the most progress with my brand when I stopped obsessing over how long I worked.

I quite literally slashed the time I spent working and writing by 90% and started writing for one or two hours.

How did I make so much progress by working less?

Because I realized that progress is more about what you work on and how you're doing it than how hard and how long you work.

I realized that writing threads was my highest-leveraged task.

So I stopped doing anything else and for the next 60 days, I obsessed with improving my thread-writing process.

In 3 months I went from a no-name creator to someone people who look up to and aspire to be like.

In 3 months my newsletter went from having 70 people reading it to more than 1,300.

In 3 months I went from overworking myself and barely making $500/mo from my writing to making multiple 4-figures working less and having more fun.

My prediction is that everything will skyrocket for me in a few weeks as well (and I'll show you can do the same in this letter).

I'm not saying this to brag, rather what I'm saying my friend, is that changing your life only takes 3-6 months (of intentional, focused work).

Close-minded people will think it's impossible and I don't blame them. After all, older generations dominate social beliefs and condition our minds through schools, work, and politics.

Your Education Shape Your Beliefs

Education does 1 thing really well:

Conditioning your subconscious mind to think about what's possible and what's not.

This is something I realized when I started writing online.

The traditional education system programs you to be obedient.

It programs you to think that the only way to be someone of value is if you study really hard, be obedient, ask no questions, and checkboxes that don't make any sense and always work for someone else and please them so they can give you enough money for you to survive till the next month (basically be an employee for the rest of your life).

Unfortounately, that's the life of most people.

Now they can change their lives if they educate themselves, but they think education stops as soon as they graduate from college. So the only life they get to experience is the one that was designed for the masses—a boring and empty life.

But the internet has massively broadened the possibility of wealth creation, career opportunities, and lifestyle—you just need to be willing to educate yourself broaden your perspective, and challenge your pre-conditioned beliefs.

The first time I saw there were people who write on social media about their interests, attract an audience, and are making more money, I couldn't believe it—because it went against everything I knew about business and life.

"There had to be a catch," I said to myself.

But there weren't any.

Creators are making a living by improving their lives and talking about it.

Creators are exploring topics they find interesting and they're getting paid for it.

This is only possible because, on the internet, you can learn any skill, teach people at scale, and start a business without having any fancy degrees.

Because most people don't actually care about what degrees you have and what college you studied at. They only care about how you can help them achieve their goals.

My prediction about the future of work?

AI and automation will replace labor jobs and the future of work is going to be creative work. We'll have more time to think, create, and teach. After all, no one likes to work. So it's only natural that technology will evolve to replace our jobs.

It's only after 10-20 years that we'll see a major shift in our work culture and the 40-hour workweek will be a relic of the past.

Then, being a creator—someone who is useful—will be the only career option.

How To Change Your Life Drastically

In this letter, you'll see me talk a lot about education for a reason.

Education determines your beliefs, perspectives, and what you think that's possible and what's not.

When you're first born, you know nothing.

Anything your parents, teachers, and schools told you, you believed them to be true—because they're older, have more experience, and have "perceived authority".

So the more you educate yourself through books, masterminds, courses, learning new skills, building and launching projects, and failing, the wider your perspective becomes, and the fewer pre-conditioned beliefs you'll have that hold you back from doing what you want in life.

What I'm about to mention now is a process I run through every few months.

I use it whenever I feel like I'm in a down period of my life or just getting frustrated with the lack of progress I'm seeing or simply to see if I'm still on the right path or not..

Time and time again, it's been my saving grace.

At first, I was doing it unconsciously but as I've been running more and reflecting on my life I've developed this system.

1) Change Starts With Your Mind

Your subconscious mind can't differentiate between what's real and what's not.

So what you think about yourself manifests in your life.

If you think that you're sick when you're not, you will feel sick.

If you keep telling yourself that you're tired and stressed, you will feel tired and stressed. The opposite is also true.

But your thoughts don't only affect you and your body. It also affects how other people treat you.

If you see yourself as a loser, other people will treat you like one.

But if you see yourself as someone charismatic, funny, charming, and smart, people will treat you like one.

This is because your energy seeps and other people can pick up on it (subconsciously).

So the phrase "fake it till you make it" has never been more true—because you must first cultivate the idea that you are the person who can achieve what you want to achieve before actually getting it.

Most successful people saw themselves as successful before they made it.

Change. Real change starts with your thoughts.

Your thoughts influence your actions. Your actions repeated over time become a habit. Habits determine your life.

So the first thing you want to do is grab a notebook and start braindumping.

Write about what you want to achieve, hate, love, dream of having, think is impossible.

Put your thoughts on paper.

Identify the unconscious parasites that were holding you back (and stealing your time and energy).

Then…

2) Educate Yourself

By now, you know how important education is.

Education determines what kind of life you'll live because it tells you what you can and can't do.

So if schools conditioned you to think you should always satisfy your boss, never question the system and checkboxes that don't mean anything—self-educating is the answer to undo all the years of programming and conditioning that have been done to you and install new beliefs that allows you to live life the way you want. Not beliefs that hold you back.

If you don't know where to start… start educating yourself on what you find most interesting.

Develop a child-like mind when it comes to learning and be curious about everything.

Because when you chase your curiosity, you'll be internally driven, not externally. You'll wake up excited every day to learn/work on yourself because it brings you joy. When you're internally driven self-discipline comes naturally to you because there's nothing you'd rather be doing.

When you're reading, take notes—unlike how schools taught you—learning is an active process. You ask questions, you experiment and tinker, you connect different dots, you come up with your conclusions and hypotheses, test them, and teach them to other people (I'll come to teaching shortly).

When you start learning, start by learning the principles.

Because when you have the principles, you can go to any level and derive their point of view and make the rational decision to either accept or reject the piece of information you just read.

Because even when you read facts or books around a certain topic that aren't principles, they're biased information. They reflect the author's beliefs, perspectives, and viewpoints on life.

You can bring 2 different researchers, give them the same literature, and both will come to 2 different conclusions. Sometimes, their conclusions might contradict the other.

When you educate yourself, you widen your perspective. You have more clarity than most people and see reality for what it is because you've exposed yourself to different viewpoints and experiences.

From your newfound perspective, knowledge, and clarity, you'll know what feels like play to you, and when you do…

3) Create Your Goals

Humans are a goal-striving species.

And because humans are built that way, you're most happy when you do what you were designed to do, chase goals.

We love goals for many reasons my friend

1. Goals help reduce uncertainty: We hate uncertainty for many reasons. They make us feel anxious, and overwhelmed, and when the overwhelm becomes too much to bear it turns into depression and feeling bad about ourselves

2. They help you focus: When you have goals, you only need to focus on taking the next step and that's it. Every step (goal) you complete you get a sense of accomplishment which motivates you to keep going and gives you a sense that you're making progress.

There's also a positive side effect of chasing goals.

When you're chasing goals, you become successful. Not in the sense of prestige, status, wealth, and possessions (although that comes as a byproduct of chasing your goals).

But in the sense that you'll feel happy, fulfilled, and satisfied. Because when you're chasing goals you made, you're chasing them because you wanted to. Not because someone else told you so.

For me, the real beauty of chasing goals you made, is in the chase itself.

It's in the creative pursuit of achieving it.

You're doing the work for the sake of work. Not for anything else—and as a byproduct, you gain money, status, and prestige.

4) Create Your Anti-Goals

This isn't what you think it is.

Anti-goals aren't just having about the opposite of your goals.

Anti-goals are the things you're not willing to lose in pursuit of your goals.

They are there to make sure you don't "lose" yourself.

Many people reach their goals but they do so at the expense of everything else.

They become successful but miserable. Famous but lonely. Rich but don't have any time to enjoy it.

Anti-goals are there set boundaries and limits.

Here are some of my anti-goals:

• Sleep for 8-10 hours a day

• Never wake up with an alarm

• 4 gym sessions and 5 running sessions per week

• 2 hours a day dedicated to reading, learning, writing

• Only work with people and projects I believe in and want to be involved with

• Be able to take a day off whenever I want

• To be able to go out with friends whenever I want and worry about work

These are things I never want to lose in my life. They bring me the most joy and fulfillment.

So no matter how busy or successful I become, these have to stay in my day.

If you ever get put into a position where you have to drop one of them to chase your goal, you drop your goal or increase the time horizon for which you can achieve your goal.

Instead of pushing yourself to achieve your goals in 6 months, you might give yourself 12 months to do it.

There's also another hidden benefit from anti-goals.

They force you to be more effective and efficient with your time.

And on that leads me to my next point…

5) Use Your First Hour To Build

This is something I didn't believe in for a while, but has cost me months worth of effort and progress:

If you can spend 8 hours building someone else's dream you can spend 1 hour building your own.

If you can spend 6 hours doomscrolling on social media, you can spend 1 hour learning.

I'm now convinced, the key to making 6 months of progress in 6 weeks is by using your first hour working on yourself.

This can be reading, learning new skills, building a project, or writing about what you've been reading.

Cuz you can't convince me that you're more productive after you've finished work, fried your brain doomscrolling on social media and watching Netflix.

There's a concept I stumbled on yesterday, it's called Attention Residue, but most people haven't heard about it.

In short, attention residue is when you switch from Task A to Task B, but while you're working on Task B, your brain is still using some of its computing power thinking about Task A.

So the longer you spend doomscrolling, the longer it will take for your brain to completely immerse itself to the new task at hand.

However, if you use your first hour to build, you won't have to deal with Attention Residue, rather, you'll be kicked into a flow state effortlessly (the state of effortless effort).

Steven Kotler, author of the book The Art Of Impossible, saw that the state of your brain, as soon as you wake up, is extremely close to flow state.

So what I've been doing for the past month is as soon as I wake up, before I do anything else. I sit on my computer and work on whatever my goal for the week is for at least 1 hour.

Recently this has been either working on my product or newsletter.

"But Hussain, 1 hour isn't enough to get any work done"

1 hour is more than enough to change your life drastically. You just need clarity on what to work on and leverage.

This leads me to my next point…

6) You Need To Build Leverage

The difference between where you are now and where you want to be is because you lack knowledge, skills, or leverage.

The first 5 steps help you gain knowledge (clarity and education) and skills. But they don't help you build leverage.

So why is leverage important and how do you build leverage?

Leverage is how you get more done with less effort.

leverage is how you earn with your mind and not your time.

Leverage is the secret between someone making $5,000/mo and someone making $50,000/mo.

There are 4 kinds of leverage.

• Labor

• Capital

• Code

• Media

I'll only speak about media (content) because that's the most accessible form of leverage for anyone starting out.

Media leverage has 2 components:

1) An audience

2) A product with no marginal cost of replication (a digital product)

Audience is just social leverage.

And as a writer with an audience the more you write, the more you earn. So now you're living the dream as a writer/creator getting paid for your ideas and not your time.

When you have media leverage all you need to focus on is finding, consuming, and writing about high-quality ideas with your perspective on it.

"But Hussain, how do I build an audience?"

Audience Building 101

I still remember last year.

I bought almost every course from big creators promising me to reach 10,000 followers and have financial freedom in just 90 days.

Most of them had the same outdated pieces of advice: "Niche down. Stick to one topic. Never talk about anything outside your niche."

It suffocated me (creatively).

It made me hate writing.

So instead of going the typical route of niching down—I want you to write about what you find interesting.

From the notes you have written (from your little self-education journey that you're on now), you can talk about them. You get to teach what you learned but this time it's from your own perspective.

When you have your notes written, all you need to do is simplify them, make them understandable, and write them persuasively and from your perspective.

After all, it's not like you are doing any extra work. You already have everything written on your notes and now you're just sharing them with the world.

I've seen many creators on X who are smart but struggle to stand out because:

1. They're too far advanced and use complex terms

2. Don't know how to convince people that what they're talking about is important

3. Don't know how to get people's attention (so now they're stuck posting to the void)

When you're starting out, this is what you should spend your first hour doing—attracting an audience.

The bigger your audience is, the more leverage you'll have.

The more leverage you have the easier it is to sell.

Inside The Modern Creator I'll show you how to attract an audience writing 30 minutes a day.

Once you have an audience it's time to get paid to play.

Building Your First Product

Most creators are starving artists.

In 2022, Linktree published a report showing that 46% of full-time creators make less than $1,000 per year.

This is because most creators think the only way to make money is from ad revenue.

But relying on platforms to give you money isn't a smart way to go about monetizing—because now, social media platforms are your new employer (which means you're at risk). Social media platforms can demonetize you and you'll go from making multiple six-figures to 0 overnight.

Not to mention you get paid pennies to what you can actually make.

So it's better for you to have something you own and make your income.

But what product should you build?

Build what you wish that has existed in the world.

Build a product that would've helped you the most in the past.

Build a product that you use daily in your life.

The internet allows you to build whatever you want and find people who are interested in it.

That's the beauty of the internet.

It has leveled the playing field where anyone can go, create, build, and make a living while enjoying life.

The best products to build are those that cost you nothing to replicate—digital products, courses, ebooks, etc.

But to make sure you nail the product, you need to test it on a few people first.

I've seen far too many people spend hours building a product only to see it fail (I was one of those people).

Start a mentorship, and work 1:1 with people to see where you did good and bad. Improve what's bad and double down on the good.

Once you've worked with a few people and they're satisfied with your system, turn it into a digital product.

Once you have a digital product you just need to keep focusing on attracting an audience and driving them to the digital product.

And that my friend is how you can drastically change your life in 3-6 months.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your day.

— Hussain <3

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What happened this week:

• I started working with a mentor who recently crossed 7-figures selling digital products and he'll be helping me build The Modern Creator

• Saw far too many people copy my threads lol

• Yesterday I wrote my first thread in 2 months—need to get the rust off and get back in the process of writing 2 threads per week

• Finally picked a topic for my master's thesis (exciting times ahead)

• Currently in the process of publishing a paper in one of the best journals about environmental engineering

• Today, I finished running a half-marathon from Burj Khalifa to Burj Al Arab and hit a new PR which I'm very proud of (did it in under 2 hours)