In the first 2 months of 2026 I've been able to complete more high-leverage projects than I did in the entire calendar year of 2026. I didn't find extra hours, I'm still clocking into a 45+ hour/week overnight shift. I didn't "grind harder."
What I did was increase my operational density.
2025 was a year of friction for me. While I was busy and committed, my efforts weren't in sync with my goals and capacity. I knew what I was capable of, but I felt like a high-performance engine idling in traffic. Like most struggling solo founders, I fell into the classic trap I call "the bottleneck of the self."
The bottleneck of the self is the state where one's skillset is thwarted by a lack of organization and clarity, turning what should be high-value execution into friction and frustration. It is the point where the operator's own mental drag and search tax become the primary ceilings on their progress.
I realized the overnight gig wasn't the problem - it was me. Countless others have accomplished more with less time and resources. My mental focus had to shift from hustle to architecture.
This shift wasn't just tactical. One of my more recent areas of study has been how deepening your connection with the Most High gives a greater clarity on what endeavors you should pursue. Going into the New Year I spent some time on a particular concept within Islam title "The 3 Dimensions of Islam."
These dimensions outline 3 levels of depth of the religion.
- Islam (Submission)
The outward submission through acts of worship (the Five Pillars) and Sharia.
- Iman (Faith)
The inward belief and conviction in the unseen (the Six Articles of Faith).
- Ihsan (Spiritual Excellence)
The perfection of worship; worshipping Allah as if you see Him.
Before we continue, I want to point out that I am not a Muslim in the traditional sense. If you mean "one who submits to God", then yes. With that said I've found that principles in the Quran (as well as the Torah and Bible) are easy to build on top of. What more foundational of a structure to bring things into existence than the "word" itself - the very thing mystics say that matter is composed of?
On the business side of things I was in the process of crafting a framework to boost my efficiency going into 2026. After hitting a few dead-ends I realized what my issue was...I wasn't aligning my business with my "philosophy." In the midst of traversing my own rights of passage, one thing became clear to me:
"Who you are should always be in alignment with how you make a living."
This statement combined with the 3 Dimensions of Islam birthed the ironclad foundation for my framework: Capacity, Destination, Philosophy.
Capacity = Islam (Outward Action & Submission): Islam is the physical execution of duty. Your Capacity represents your tangible constraints and physical actions in the material world.
Destination = Iman (Inward Belief & Conviction): Iman is the firm belief in the unseen. The understanding that your provision (destination) is guaranteed if you do the work and stay on the path.
Philosophy = Ihsan (Spiritual Excellence): Ihsan is worshiping as if you see the Creator. Being guided by the idea that God is always sitting right there on your shoulder.
Now I had to define these things for myself. This is how I eventually created the first version of the* 1|ME Assessment*, which has become the 1|ME Clarity Engine, but more on that later.
Answering these questions wasn't an easy task. it was a rigorous audit of my reality. I had to look at my overnight shift not as a burden to be escaped, but as the Capacity of my current season. It was a fixed constraint that demanded a specific, disciplined submission until I reached a clearly defined threshold. I had to define my Destination with mathematical precision, identifying the exact "escape velocity" number that would fund my sovereignty. Finally, I had to codify my Philosophy. Within that was the realization that my work is an act of worship, and any moment spent in "overthinking" or "disorganization" was effectively a lack of faith in the gifts I’d been given.
The result of this assessment was a single, living document, a "Core Operating Context" that makes me permanently harder to misalign.
This single document created a "No-Fly Zone" for Distraction.
By consolidating my Capacity, Destination, and Philosophy into one reference point, I created an asset that guarded me against misalignment. This document serves three critical functions that have fueled my 60-day sprint:
(1) Internal Alignment: It offloads my "mental RAM." I no longer wake up wondering what to build. The document has already identified my priorities. If an opportunity doesn't lead to my Destination or fit my Capacity, it is discarded.
(2) Human Collaboration: When I speak to collaborators or mentors, I'm an entity with a clear thesis. This clarity attracts the right partnerships and repels the "noise" of who doesn't align with my purpose.
(3) AI Context Refinement: This was perhaps the most significant breakthrough for me. By formatting this single document into custom instructions my AI agents use as their "System Prompt," the AI stops being a generic chatbot and starts functioning as a Strategic Co-Founder. It knows my constraints, it knows my standards, and it knows my ultimate destination. It catches my logic loops and halts my overthinking before it starts. It calls me out if I'm doing busy work that isn't in alignment. This solves a real problem within the AI market - "vanilla outputs from AI." Random custom instructions don't do enough.
These 3 functions have allowed me to
- get back into writing
- recreate my business homepage
- create a fully-functioning app for a Patreon community
- build internal tools for personal workflows
- create a private LinkedIn tool for myself and a few colleagues
I realized that the "bottleneck of the self" is only solved when you stop trying to manage your time and start managing your systems. By aligning who I am with how I make a living, I exponentially increased my productivity and found a level of peace that makes "the grind" obsolete.
Peace & Light