 I'm wondering how you relate to deadlines. Do you tend to avoid maybe have some anxiety toward deadlines and therefore procrastinate? Or some people relate very well to deadlines. They set deadlines, they meet their deadlines, even including the ones they set for themselves, especially the ones they set for themselves. But as I said, many others tend to resist deadlines and therefore either not set deadlines for oneself or feel badly about the ones we set. So I think this is a really important conversation to have with yourself to ask, what is my relationship to deadlines and how would I like to have a relationship to deadlines, if any? Well, there are actually three ways of being that I would like to share with you. And I'm hoping that by the end of this video, you'll be equipped to reflect on these questions and be able to move forward with your goals, with your life in a much more accepting and optimized way. So let's get going. All right, the typical mode of being for probably some of you who are watching this, artists, deeply spiritual people, more sensitive folks maybe, is to avoid deadlines and to really value this idea of go with the flow. All right, follow your bliss, follow your desires, go with the flow. And go with the flow basically means do whatever flows. So if I don't feel like making this video right now, I should just shut off this video and do something else, which in my case is too often something like surfing social media or getting some junk food or something like that. That tends to be my flow. And so I know that in my experience, if I go with the flow, quote unquote, I become quite unhealthy. I don't achieve any of my goals, certainly not within the timelines that I've set. And I tend to become quite miserable and depressed and anxious after a while. So I know that for me, go with the flow doesn't work. Now you might say, George, you are misapplying go with the flow because if you think about the originator of go with the flow, who was that? Was that Laozi from Daodejing Daoism, okay? The main book. That's probably where a lot of people got it from. Alan Watts, I don't know. Who did you get go with the flow from? I'm really curious to know. Well, so if you were to look at the father of Daoism, Laozi, he said, oh, be in harmony with nature and non-action, Wu Wei, which actually means if you really look into it, there's the story he told of the butcher. I don't necessarily like that vision, visual of a butcher, but someone who is just so flowing with his activity, but it's interesting that the story of Wu Wei or non-action or effortless activity was not someone just sitting under the Bodhi tree and meditating, which is also non-action. But the traditional story from Daoist philosophy of non-action is someone who's very active. And so non-action is more about emotional equanimity in doing things. And it's like one part is emotional equanimity and the second part of it ideally is lack of mental strain in doing something, but there can be quite a lot of activity happening in an effortless or non-action type of way. So I've agreed with that idea of go with the flow or in modern times, we might say it's psychological flow. Which is like elite athletes or performers, they're so good at what they do that they've, guess what? They are so practiced at what they do that it becomes one with their nature. They're no longer straining mentally to play that piece of music or to hit the ball or whatever or give a talk. It is so well-trained and refined through experience of doing that activity again and again that it's no longer effortful. But that doesn't happen by saying, I don't feel like practicing. And so I'm not going to practice. Do you see the difference between the normal way someone goes with the flow and the actual wiser go with the flow is totally different. So there is go with an unconscious untrained unwise flow, which is essentially, if you're not conscious about the flow, you essentially end up going with your past patterns, you know, your untrained patterns, habits and baser appetites. Like I said, I would go with the flow, I'm sure I'll go get some junk food or whatever. You know what I mean? Go with the flow and I'll be lazy now. I'm sorry to use that word lazy. I know it's triggering for some of you, but let's just say the word lazy is knowing better for what is purposeful to us and giving into the resistance, the emotional resistance, the emotion, giving into fear, essentially. Isn't that what laziness is? Well, we could say that sometimes people need a nap, need better sleep, need better self-care, which I talk a lot about, probably not enough, but I take four naps a day, people, I do. One nap is shortly after I do some morning activities when I first wake up, feed the pets, et cetera, get some things ready in the kitchen and then I take a 20 minute nap or so. So that's about an hour and a half after I wake up. I'm already taking a nap. And then about two and a half to three hours later, I take another nap and then two and a half to three hours later another nap and then two and a half. So I take four naps a day. So you can call that lazy or you can call that self-care and optimizing my performance, essentially. So when I say lazy, I don't mean to disparage you. I think you probably need better self-care, but even self-care, it sears the irony. Even self-care takes discipline, doesn't it? No matter how you look at it, and please do chat below if you have a different opinion, because I'd love to know and I'm learning all the time too, but it's like no matter how you look at it, disciplined is probably required for you to have a healthy, joyous life. You can't get away from disciplining yourself, self-discipline, reparenting yourself gently with gentle, joyful self-discipline. So if you want to really go with the flow in a truly spiritual and wise way, I'll give you the model for that, which is peace pilgrim. Have you heard of peace pilgrim before? She's one of my heroes. And if you look at the link to the blog post below, I give you the link to her audiobook, which is free to listen to online. And it always gives me peace when I listen to the audiobook. But if you don't know her story, basically, she decided, I think in her 20s, maybe early 30s, to just stop taking money for anything. And she decided to just walk as a pilgrim from one end of the country to the other, and she was American, so one end of the US to the other end of the US. And she did it at least seven times on foot, the entire length of the country on foot, at least seven times. And along the way, she didn't just keep walking fast. Along the way, she would go with the flow, truly. In a very wise and Taoist type of manner, she was Christian, but she kind of applied the Taoism principles. Along the way, she would just help whoever needed help. She'd come alongside somebody is having an argument or whatever or somebody's scared. And she would, you know, if that person seemed like they were open for help, she would need someone needed something. She would try to find something to help that person. She would just go along through a length of the country, just helping as many people as possible. That's it. And she would not take food or shelter unless it was given to her. So she didn't actively go for it. She went with the flow. So if she just kept walking, eating blueberries on the side of the road for food, sleeping on the concrete, you know, on the highways or whatever, until someone decided to give her a shelter. So, why don't you come and stay in my barn, stay in my house, whatever. Or someone decided to give her a meal at a bus stop or whatever like that. Yeah, she just kept walking. That's go with the flow. But she was homeless and she had not a penny to her name. And no goals, actually. She did end up being well-known enough where she would have like people booked her for speaking. She didn't take any money. But she said, okay, by this month, I need to be in Pennsylvania for a speech. So she would just be aware that she would walk all the way, you know, whatever. But so even Peace Program had goals with timelines, with due dates and more, but mainly go with. Now, if you don't want to be homeless, I don't know, how many of you would enjoy being homeless and walking until given shelter and food. But if you don't want to be homeless, then you can't really go with the flow in that kind of truly with nature harmony way. And you would have to be self-disciplined in modern society and earn money and be able to buy your way through life. Okay, so what is the complete opposite of go with the flow? Let's explore that. So the complete opposite, going to the other end of the spectrum of go with the flow is what I call scheduled performance. Scheduled performance. What I mean by that is imagine like Michael Phelps, you know, one of the greatest Olympians of all time, Michael Phelps the swimmer. What he, when he was training for the Olympics, when he was in the Olympics and training for it, every minute of his day was scheduled. Yes, okay, eight minutes of doing this exercise routine, maybe not eight minutes, maybe like more like, you know, 48 minutes or whatever. And then take a break and eat your, you know, three bowls of pasta and we're given 14 minutes for that. And then we're going to go and do that. Like every minute of his day was scheduled during the training because it was high stakes. You know, he wanted to win the next gold medal and or five gold medals or whatever. And so that's what elite performers do is scheduled performance. Every moment of the waking day is scheduled to the tee. And this is also what financially successful people do. You look at the great, you know, the CEOs of, you know, big companies, they're so busy. Every, their whole entire day is scheduled to the five minute mark. Their assistant would say, okay, now we're going to go do this. Okay, now we're going to go to this talk. Now we're going to go to this meeting. Now we're going to go sign these papers. Now, you know, so it's like, that's the opposite end of the spectrum is scheduled performance. It's high stakes. You schedule everything down to the five minute mark and you're expected to show up with optimal state to do that activity. And the results matter a lot because you are running a big company or you are going for the gold Olympic medal or whatever. Okay, that's the opposite end of the spectrum. Now that's probably not how most of us want to live anyway. Many of you watching this are like myself building an authentic business, which essentially is a lifestyle business. Let's be honest with what we're doing. We're building a business that is going to give us a lifestyle that we really enjoy. That's a big part of authentic business. So is there a middle way between either being homeless or having untrained go with the flow or being like an elite Olympian? Is there a middle way? Yes, of course there's a middle way. And that's what I'm going to recommend to you. This is what I do and I call it scheduled flow. So let's talk about this. Scheduled flow is going to take the best of kind of elite performance and the best of Taoist wise go with the flow. Psychology go with the flow type of, you know, mode of being. So what is scheduled flow? Scheduled flow means that during my waking day, I do schedule my entire working day, work day. I schedule my entire work day down to the 30 minute increment. So not down to the five minutes, like elite performers and elite businessmen do, but to the 30 minute increment. So everything on my calendar is either 30 minutes or an hour or an hour and a half or two hours. So my entire work day is scheduled like that. This is something that I teach in my time management class and my TLC program. I kind of show you my calendar and talk you through why I did things this way and kind of help you do that. But anyway, that's what scheduled flow is. I do schedule things down to the 30 minute mark. However, and this is the main difference between me and Michael Phelps, okay? The main, besides the fact that I swim like a turtle, but actually turtles probably swim quite fast. That's what I heard. They, did you know this? They're aerodynamic bodies, shells making, allowing them to swim really fast. So I swim like, I don't know what I swim like, definitely not like a fish or a turtle, okay? All right, so the difference is, even though I scheduled my day down to the half hour mark, for example, I scheduled time to make this video. Right now I'm making this video as a live video, okay? So that's all my calendars is make video. All right, let's do it. Let's go ahead and do it. But I show up for the task to do that specific thing I scheduled. But once I show up, I flow within that task. So for example, it says make video, okay? Now, do I show up with anxiety and having to perform at my very best? And this better be one of the best videos and I better, you know, I better be like fully high stakes performance here. As you can tell, no. I show up, for example, for this video, just like I show up for any task with a gentle, calm, joyful focus, lenient about the results, but continually gently refocusing me back on this task. Let me give you another example. On video, on live video, of course you expect me to continue talking and not just suddenly end the video in the middle if I don't feel like doing it. But let me give you another example. Writing is a great example. A lot of you might not realize or have heard that I don't enjoy writing. I really resist it. I really don't like to write. Some of you enjoy writing and you should count yourself deeply blessed because I don't enjoy writing. Every time I show up to write, it's a struggle. At least for the first five, if not 15 to 20 minutes, I struggle. Now, there's a difference and part of the reason why is because in my early years, as I was learning language, we immigrated to another country. I, you know, when I was six and a half years old, we immigrated from Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan, to the United States. And so I was still learning language and now I suddenly have to learn a new language and elementary school in the U.S. I was one of the minorities, one of the, you know, we were in a very, you know, white neighborhood, so I was one of the few Asians. And because of how different I was and not knowing the language, I was kind of bullied for not being able to speak well and not being able to write well or just communicate well basically. And I was, so therefore I was kind of traumatized by early language learning and writing and speaking. And I was very quiet for much of my school years because I was embarrassed. I didn't wanna be bullied and I didn't, you know, whatever. So still to this day, I don't like to write. And but yet on my schedule, that says, let's say 2 p.m., write blog post. Now, to be honest with you, I used to really dread that, oh my God, I gotta write a blog post later today, I'm dreading it. And still to this day, I'm a little bit nervous about it. I'm a little bit anxious about it, but I catch myself and I go strict about showing up, lenient about the results and gentle about refocusing on the task, strict about showing up, lenient about the results and gentle to keep refocusing on the task at hand. So this says 2 p.m., write a blog post. Okay, I'm gonna show up. I'm just going to do my energy reboot if you don't know my energy reboot, you can Google it, energy reboot and you'll find my video about it. So I do my energy reboot. And then I just start to try to write. I just do some free writing perhaps. I just pull a point maybe, outline a little bit what I might say about this topic. You know, whatever I can do to get something on the page. And then after 15 minutes or 20 minutes of struggle, real struggle, I then see something coming together and then it's a little bit less of a struggle. Now it's more like ordering ideas, expanding on ideas, et cetera. So there's a difference between struggle and suffering. So even though I struggle a lot with writing, I have learned to not suffer. I have learned to step back. It's almost like I'm the witness consciousness. I'm kind of stepping back and looking at myself and go, oh, I see this person that's struggling and I'm just going to help this person to joyfully struggle through this. Yes, even struggle can be joyful if we're able to step back with the witness consciousness. I made a video about witness consciousness. You can find it on YouTube if you search my name and witness consciousness. Anyway, step back and kind of watch ourselves, watch our mental process, our emotional process, give ourselves plenty of compassion and just like reparent. It's like basically I considered reparenting myself in the moment to say it's okay, just keep trying. Just keep trying, it's okay. Just why don't you try writing a few ideas? So a lot of reparenting or self-talk you might say during that struggle process and I can be joyful as the parent, as the self-parent. I can be joyful, God, and compassionate, right? So anyway, that's what scheduled flow is. It's showing up for whatever my schedule tells me to do, especially when I don't feel like doing it, which means, by the way, to design a good schedule. You might have a schedule that's not well-designed because you work too long. You work too, you have too many difficult tasks back to back. Of course, that's not a well-designed schedule. I have, if I have a difficult task, it always happens after a nap. So I nap first, maybe eating nap or whatever I need to. And then I do that difficult project like writing. And then after the writing, I don't do any difficult project. I do something more mindless or something that's easier for me to do, something I don't have a resistance for. So it's about designing your schedule well and then showing up for your schedule with a gentle reparenting of yourself and just joyful action, knowing that the results don't matter in the short term. This is very important. I don't care about how this video turns out. This video could just be a mediocre video of mine. And by the way, statistically speaking, most of my videos, probably the vast majority of them are mediocre or just average. It's just so-so. Ah, it's fine. Now it might help one person here or there, maybe in the future. But what I know is that if I just keep showing up time after time after time, guess what happens? I naturally grow my skills, especially if I keep noticing each time or occasionally I will notice, how can I do this task better? How can I practice doing this task a little more skillfully? And so I really value this idea of practice. Practice is so important to me. I'm practicing all day long. I show up to the task and I'm just practicing. How can I practice doing this 1% better, 1% more skillfully? That's all I'm trying. That's just a little bit, tiny little bit more skillfully or to repractice some skill that I was practicing before. And if I just keep showing up, scheduled flow, just show up. So the key is schedule flow. I show up for the task, especially when I don't feel like doing it. And during the struggle period, right? I know that it's a struggle period that you will eventually pass and I don't let myself go and schedule, serve social media for half an hour. Now I do sometimes even during my struggles, I will let myself serve social media for just a few minutes or like a minute or two, but I'm very conscious of it. I go, okay, that's enough. A minute can now gently do myself back to the task. I step back and realize, okay, this is the struggle period. Reparent myself gently, just try it out. Just try something just right. And so this way, if I keep showing up again and again and again and again and again for hundreds of times to a task, every couple of times, I'll try to make it 1% better, then basically I get better and better over the years. And I get better and better over the years, my results naturally will get better and better over the years as well. You see? So that's really my mode of creativity. That's the way I accomplish things in my business is with scheduled flow. So I hope that this is encouraging for you. I hope that this is inspiring for you. And I welcome you to comment below and let me know what are your thoughts on this stuff? I mean, do you think you could try this out? Do you have a different way of doing it that works for you? Because I know that there are other ways that work for different people. So I'd love to know that as well. I'll end with this quote that has always inspired me but from the Bhagavad Gita, which says, to action alone has thou a right and never at all to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, neither let there be in thou any attachment to inaction. Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty. For by working without attachment, one attains the Supreme. So whether you want to say the Bhagavad Gita, which comes from the Hindu philosophy, religion, or Taoism, okay, or Christian, the Christian value of doing it all for God and letting God determine the results, whichever take you want or a secular take of just psychological flow and scheduled flow, whichever one works for you, let it inspire you to find a truly, deeply optimal way of working with your purpose, activating your purpose in the world. I hope this is helpful. My name is George Cao, that's KAO and I look forward to seeing you in a future video perhaps or I look forward to seeing your comments below and I wish you a joyfully productive day. Take care.