I want to build a better life, but I do not want to lose myself while doing it.
This week, I kept returning to the space between ambition and exhaustion, between moving forward and knowing when to step back.
Here is what has been on my mind this week:
The Moment It Became Real
Too Many Options
Focus Without Perfect Conditions
I Want to Build, but I Am Tired
Accepting Your Timeline
Making Room for Play
The Plan Is Not the Point
1. The Moment It Became Real
How hard can it be to start a business?
This is a question I have been asking myself for a very long time.
Until now, I had always relied on employment as my source of income.
Every time I thought about starting a business on my own, I got stuck among the hundred ideas I had in my head.
Recently, I finished my last job because my girlfriend and I decided to move to a different city and try our luck there.
With that decision, I felt as if fresh wind was filling my sails.
The change in environment mattered, but I also felt that this was the perfect time to finally start a business.
It was a busy period: finishing my previous job, temporarily moving our stuff to my girlfriend's parents' place, and taking a holiday to reset before normal life began again.
Business ideas were all I could think about during the holiday.
And all I wanted to do was sit behind my computer for a whole day and grind my ass off to build something.
I am glad I did not. I really needed the holiday, and even though my mind usually has a hard time relaxing, I enjoyed my time there.
After we came back from holiday, I finally had the chance to sit down and lay out some kind of checkpoints for myself and the business.
I went through all the ideas I had gathered.
Picked one.
And I got paralyzed the moment I picked the idea.
I did not understand why this was happening.
For four weeks, all I had wanted was to sit behind that computer and start this process.
Why did I feel frozen and paralyzed now?
I guess that moment was the realization that this was actually happening.
Walking away from the security and peace of mind of regular employment and a monthly salary can be frightening.
But at the same time, I believe that what feels like fear can also be excitement and the beginning of something greater than I ever imagined I could build.
Let us see how it goes. I will keep you updated.
I am sharing this with you not only to document this process, but also to show you that things are sometimes difficult at first.
That difficulty does not have to stop me from pursuing this, and it does not have to stop you either.
Do you run your own business right now, or have you been thinking about starting one?
Shoot me a message. I would love to hear about your process.
2. Too Many Options
What is worse, too many options or one?
Something I get caught in quite often is decision paralysis, especially since AI entered our daily lives and gave us almost unlimited power to research things.
In general, I prefer to have fewer options to choose from, even with ice cream, because I already know myself and what happens when there are too many.
I get stuck.
I go down the mental spiral of comparison, trying to find and choose the single best option there is.
The longer you spend thinking, the harder and more overwhelming the decision becomes.
For a simple reason: you have gathered more data than your mind can process in that moment.
The same principle applies to almost any other area of life.
If you had too many partners to choose from, you would probably end up alone.
It is simple.
Our brains do not like chaos and unlimited options.
They like the most straightforward path to the outcome we want, with the least amount of resistance along the way.
This feature is a double-edged sword. Sometimes it is very useful, and sometimes it is quite limiting.
You probably do not want to spend too much time choosing your shoes or overthink your breakfast every day.
So how do you overcome this paralysis when you genuinely do not want to make a bad decision?
The simplest thing is to ask yourself which option feels closest to hell yeah.
Because at the end of the day, it is either hell yeah or no.
This approach comes from Derek Siver, and his book Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing.
His states: If you feel anything less than 'Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!' — then say no.
Funnily enough, choosing a partner and choosing shoes might not be so different.
It is either hell yeah or no. Either you are excited or you are not.
You can choose wisely without spending your life in decision mode.
What is worse, too many options or one?
3. Focus Without Perfect Conditions
How can you use the least amount of time to build something great in life?
Why am I asking this?
Because as we get older, the time we have available shrinks.
Outside of work, we have personal admin, responsibilities, meetings, and other tasks.
And on top of that, we want to stay on top of our relationships with friends and family, have hobbies, and enjoy free time.
So how can you build something great, like your own business or personal brand, in the shortest possible time?
Not everyone can quit their job and go into full monk mode for six months to reinvent themselves.
You probably do not want to ignore everyone and everything in your life just so you can build something and end up completely alone afterward.
These are some of the things that have been going through my mind lately.
As I am trying to work on my business, I am facing different challenges.
One is how to handle these tasks and responsibilities while trying to create something on my own.
There is one thing I would like to get better at in this whole process: being able to start focused work at any time.
Currently, if I do not start my deep work in the morning, I get distracted by my phone or other people in the house, and it is incredibly hard to get into tunnel focus later in the day.
No form of caffeine would help me overcome that, so I guess it is just a mind thing.
Distractions will eventually appear in one form or another.
The key is to find a way to reset yourself and avoid depending on perfect conditions.
It is obviously easier to focus on your to-dos alone in a mountain cabin than in an apartment with three other people.
But life is not always perfect.
Not every season of hard work is going to come with a perfect setting that supports you.
That is why I believe it is so important to learn how to focus when you choose, not only when your surroundings allow it.
Do you have any tricks for dealing with this?
I would love to hear your take on it.
4. I Want to Build, but I Am Tired
I have been juggling this for a while, standing at a crossroads between wanting to build and not wanting to burn out.
I end up doing too much.
There is a difference between burnout fatigue and the fatigue that comes from a bad night's sleep.
There is this drive to build, but I do not know how people keep going when their eyes will not stay open and they are still supposed to work.
It is part of hustle culture.
People talk about grinding as if you can work twelve to sixteen hours a day as long as it is for something you really want to achieve.
I want to achieve these things and build a better life, but how can I do it when I am tired?
The question comes down to this: when do I decide what to do?
How do I spread my work out and time-block it?
I do not know what else.
For a long time, we have been fed the idea that becoming an entrepreneur and building a business are normal.
It seems that way on Instagram, TikTok, and everywhere else you look.
It feels as if everyone is building a business now, and if you are like me, that can make you feel kind of behind.
I do not want to stay stuck working for someone else for a crappy salary while worrying about every dollar I spend.
I want the freedom I have talked about.
I want to live the lifestyle I dream of and the life I wish for myself.
At the same time, this can be really frustrating for me too.
Filtering these things is already a skill that I think is very underrated, to be honest.
What do you do when you are tired but still want to build something in life?
5. Accepting Your Timeline
Have you accepted the time it might take before you commit?
You might ask how anyone can accept time.
Well, before you commit to a new project, challenge, or career, you should accept that your timeline might look different from that of anyone else in the room.
It does not have to discourage you or make you feel that something is wrong with you or that you are less capable than others.
It works both ways.
You might achieve things in six months that took others two years.
Or it might take you five years to do what others did in their first year.
The key is acceptance.
Because this idea can be perceived in many ways, I want to clarify something.
Taking five times longer does not mean putting in less effort.
Expectations play a big role in this as well.
You might expect things to happen faster because you are working your ass off.
They might, and you might speed things up, but not always.
You might achieve certain things earlier, but betting everything on hustle culture just to burn out halfway is probably not your dream destination.
I believe that there are three fundamental things to understand in life. Well, there are more, but...
Everyone has a different timeline in life.
Just because a 19-year-old kid in the US made millions on YouTube does not mean the same timeline applies to everyone else at 19.
You might achieve things later or earlier than your peers, and that is okay.
Life is not fair.
As much as we want it to be fair, it is not.
Things happen in life, sometimes without any particular reason.
Bad things can happen to good people just as they happen to bad people.
It sucks, but life is life.
No one promised you it would be easy.
There is no vanilla sugar coating here.
Life will throw a bunch of bullshit at you, regardless of where you come from or whose name you carry.
So, have you accepted the time it might take before you commit?
6. Making Room for Play
How much play do you have in your life right now?
I see that as we get older, we unconsciously, or maybe even consciously, tend to have less fun in our lives.
We all focus on careers and achievements, which can leave play behind.
How often do you do things purely for fun, without expectations, a goal to reach, or any stakes?
I discovered in my own life that I had not put time and effort into finding more play in my daily life for some time.
One of the things I love to do just for fun is dance.
I have loved moving my body to the rhythm of a song since I was a small kid.
And it has stayed with me to this day.
Finding these small moments when I can dance in the shower for a couple of minutes while getting ready in the morning is energizing.
These moments, when there are no stakes and you can simply dissolve into them, create a true feeling of play.
It is not about perfection or achievements. It is about connecting with your inner self and letting the inner child out.
What is your favorite way to play?
7. The Plan Is Not the Point
Is it about achieving, or about finding the right balance?
That has been on my mind for some time, and I have mentioned it often in my writing.
On one hand, I am really trying to push back against hustle culture.
I do not think hustle culture is healthy for most people, but hard work itself seems inevitable in life.
It also comes down to how each person defines hard work.
For me, hard work can mean working from morning until evening on something I care about while still taking small breaks, going for a walk or a run, going to the gym, and actually eating.
For someone else, hard work might be a four-hour block of deep work each day.
For a third person, hard work could mean not eating at all, sitting behind a computer from five in the morning until nine in the evening, and not moving from that spot.
It can also be misleading when you see someone on social media promoting hard work, the grind, and hustle culture.
You might think, "Oh my god, if I want to achieve something, I have to be like this person," without seeing the sequence of steps and, of course, the sprinkle of luck behind what they achieved.
Nothing happens in isolation in life, and your path might look very different because you are not starting from the same place as someone else.
You might have a normal job you do not hate but do not love.
You can invest the hours before or after work, or perhaps only the weekends, into something else instead of quitting right now.
Nothing in the world is universal.
There is no universal truth saying this is the only path to take if you want to achieve something.
Yes, there are certain universal things.
If you want to be a lawyer, law school is probably part of the path.
If you want to be a doctor, studying medicine is probably part of it too.
But how this timeline unfolds and which steps you take are not set in stone.
You might finish school and feel like traveling for a couple of months before starting work.
You might want to take more time off or go straight into work.
Maybe no one will hire you because there are suddenly no open positions.
Maybe your path takes you to a different town or country.
There are unlimited possibilities for what can happen in your life.
You might not want to fixate on one outcome or plan because, to be honest, plans often do not unfold as we intended.
Let me give you an example.
I am starting a business right now, or at least I want to take the first step toward starting one.
It is very unfamiliar territory for me.
I have never been an entrepreneur, and honestly, I have never had entrepreneurial aspirations.
It all started a couple of years ago when I began reading different books.
I changed as a person. My mindset, values, and view of the world changed quite a bit.
Now, as I work on this and try to figure it out, I see that it is nothing like being employed.
Productivity, focus, and discipline mean something completely different here because no one is giving me tasks.
No one is checking on me.
No one is there to tell me, "This is the right way to do it. This is the wrong way to do it."
All I have are YouTube tutorials, online courses, and posts on X and Instagram.
I am juggling a lot, and I am not even getting into all the bureaucracy, reaching out, finding potential clients, and other things I will eventually need to handle.
What I want to say is that if I were fixated on just one outcome, I would miss out on all the other opportunities that might come with this.
My idea of the business can change significantly in six or twelve months, depending on the industry, my potential clients, and how the business runs.
Just because you have a plan right now does not mean it has to unfold step by step as you imagined it would.
I think the most important part of this process is something I have written about before: having a clear why.
Why are you doing what you are doing?
Without a strong why, you are setting yourself up for a hard time before you even start.
If you fixate on the steps and the first thing does not work out, the whole thing can fall apart like a house of cards.
If you have your why, the reason and final destination behind this, then how you get there can adjust.
It is not going to be linear or a straight path.
It will probably go up and down, left and right, horizontally and vertically.
One day you are on the moon, and the next day you are somewhere in a hole.
I think it is hard for our minds to understand this because our brains like things to feel clean.
They do not like uncertainty or fog.
The brain likes to know point A, point B, the steps in between, and how we are going to get there.
That is not how it works in life.
I think being flexible and able to adjust your course, with a clear why at the end, is going to get you much further than being fixated on just one outcome.
This all comes down to finding the right balance between achieving and taking a step back to digest things and correct the course when needed.
Would love to hear your take on this.
I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.
As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.
—Lukáš