Arcs of Aspiration – A Peaker's Strategy For Cultivating A Life of Worthy Pursuits

On Scaling Beyond Bucket Lists, Cultivating Aspirational Gardens, and Organizing High-Altitude Pursuits within Universal Life Realms

In this essay we embark on a new epic series of vertical life sculpting — a call to higher productiveness. Over the next few weeks, I’ll guide you through the whole fractal spectrum of personal accomplishment, top to bottom, then integrate it into a single concise framework.

Brace yourself, because what’re about to read, may change you.

Here’s how to quickly capture tasks.

Here’s how to time-box them in your calendar.

Oh! And here’s how to review them at the end of your week.

Did you ever notice that fighting through the jungle of productivity advice can feel like climbing a mountain?

At the base, the vista’s sprawling—plentiful, and high-caliber words have been written on what we could call small-scale productivity. Often, what you find is taken out of context, but at least it’s there; the air’s crisp at the base of our monumental mountain. But then you try to ascend, and as paths become steeper and the air rarefies, so goes the advice. The further you venture, the thinner the air gets. And not even midway there – at the base camp of annual goal-setting – when your most trusted counselor proclaims: no further!

You soon realize that it isn’t just them. The landscape’s just dauntingly sparse beyond this point. Your steps carry more weight at these altitudes, and few guides are experienced and courageous enough to lead you ahead. Why? Simply because they haven’t figured it out themselves. So they stop. Granted, that’s way better than shortcut charlatans claiming you can summit by helicopter. And it’s also better than the countless hypocrites who sell fancy gear just to make money. What you want to have is exceedingly rare. You want an authentic guide who follows through, someone who doesn’t play pretend and, at the same time, is adventurous enough to leap ahead.

Let me be that guide for you—the guide that follows through. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I promise to do my best to get you from base camp to summit. I’ll be the first to tell you it won’t be easy, that your system won’t be able to survive in isolation. That, if you want to summit that mountain, you must connect everyday action to some higher purpose (and the other way around). Because otherwise, you risk growing the mundane. You risk chipping away at infinite bullshit and end up trapped in local optima.

Now, there’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that I’ve assembled an epic new series to share how over two decades of exploration and research have led me to a successful, fulfilling, and highly practical model of life sculpting. I’ve built a model for vertical life design that is more balanced than anything I’ve ever seen. And I have consolidated and perpetuated all of this in a series, where we’ll traverse from mundane footings to the lofty exalted mountaintop — where we align the granular action and the grand pursuit.

We must, however, undertake this journey in the opposite direction. We have to start at the very top and first connect with the why of things. Only then can we start our descent and connect the higher altitudes with the lower ones. We’ll do it this way because our aspirations — our peak pursuits— give us substance to work with.

By definition, aspirations are vague and distant, which may lead you to believe a simple list will do to manage them. Yet, as every mountaineer knows, the higher we climb, the harsher the conditions get; this necessitates more equipment, not less. As we approach the mountain peak, almost no air will be left for you to breathe. Practical advice on how to organize yourself up here is as scarce as it can get. A cheap bucket list won’t suffice; it neither cuts deep nor reaches high enough.

I’m here to change that. In this pilot essay, I’ll teach you about universal life realms, an overall filing system for aspirations, and how it connects to vertical life design and life sculpting. I’ll show you how you can construct a coherent system for organizing your life's worthy pursuits and, in turn, become a peaker.

Just one word of caution, and here comes the bad news you’ve been waiting for so desperately: This is not everyone. It will take a serious amount of work. It requires you to sacrifice a substantial part of your life force. And chances are you’ll falter. Because, in the end, you and only you are responsible for the ascend. I can’t walk the path for you. I can’t open Pandora’s box in your stead. That’s your job. What I can help you with is guidance. I can share how I found that missing piece of advice I’ve been seeking for way too long. I can provide you with a mountain of experience that resulted from my personal attempts at the ascend. If you let me, I can be the guide who follows through.