It was such pleasure to hear back from you — your progress, your pivots, and the (inevitable!) challenges that arise in between.

For those who missed it, last week, I reached out to everyone recieving the Unbounbd Leader and asked how your progress this first quarter of the year has been so far — and asked what topics you’d like me to cover to help you reach your goals.

If one thing stood out it’s the struggle to close the gap between what people say they want (at the beginning of the year), and where they are now heading. That despite their best intentions, they struggle to break free from the old and familiar patterns that keep them stuck in a strange repeating loop.

And that’s not surprising, we’re one quarter into the year, which is just enough time to start seeing the gap between our goals and our execution.

Or as I like to call it, the knowing-doing gap.

This cycle, or better said, the struggle, is often caused by an overinvestment in the desired outcome, and an underinvestment in the direction that’s required to get there.

The fundamental difference being:

Desire is emotional, it’s the feeling of wanting more, but in this case, it’s also the identifying mechanism that we use to figure out exactly WHAT we want — more freedom, more growth, more fulfillment, more energy, more impact, more something…

Direction is practical, it’s the strategy, the structure, that turns that emotional fuel into consistent and progressive action. It’s knowing not just what you want, but how you’re going to get there.

No matter how clear or compelling your goal may be, if you don’t create a structure to protect your focus and direct your energy, you’ll end up defaulting to the same behaviours, the same thought patterns, the same routines — not because you lack ambition, but because you never gave that ambition anywhere to go.

And this is where I see so many high-performers go wrong — they could have the best of intentions, however, without a system — without direction — they lack a container to hold their effort.

Because when we try to break free from our deep-rooted patterns — the way we’ve done things for most of our lives — to do something new and move towards something better, we’re up against 30–40 years of conditioning.

We’re fighting against beliefs, habits and behaviours that have become second nature. And if we don’t provide ourselves with radical clarity (direction!) on what we’re going to do differently and when we’re going to do it, we can pretty much guarantee that we’ll fall back into what we’ve always done — and, by extension, get what we’ve always gotten.

And as this cycle continues, and a clear plan remains elusive, we slowly begin to destroy our sense of self-trust.

Each time we don’t follow through upon our “commitments” — or plan– we vote against the person we want to become. And over time, this deepens the spiral of inner conflict, frustration, and doubt, making it even harder to believe we can achieve the very thing we say we want.

These internal struggles make everything more difficult. They push us into a passive and often reactive state rather than a proactive one, spending our days on autopilot, being tossed around by the demands of life, rather than steering it ourselves.

Without that system, without direction, every time you break a commitment to yourself — whether it’s skipping the training session, pushing the priority project again, or just letting another week pass without taking real action.

That’s why directions matters.

Because without it, even the clearest desires eventually dissolve under the weight of distraction, complexity, and life’s never-ending list of demands.

And that’s where the work begins. Not just in setting a bigger goal or demanding more from yourself, but in creating direction and structure that supports execution, even on the days where motivation fades or energy is low.

That system starts with choosing one thing and doing it with relentless focus, daily.

That’s why I often suggest a tool to the clients I work with — a principle that demands commitment, clarity and consistency, while keeping things simple enough to execute daily.

It’s called the 90–90–1 Rule.

It won’t solve the whole puzzle. But it gives you a place to start — one that forces you to decide what matters most, carve out time for it, and begin building momentum around it.

Here’s how it works:

90 days. 90 minutes. 1 priority.

→ Choose your battlefield — the one thing you WANT to change or accomplish.

→ Use your prime time — commit the first 90 minutes of your day to that one thing.

→ Play the long game — do it consistently for 90 days.

If you can do that — even just for the next 90 days — you won’t just feel like you’re moving forward, you’ll have evidence, you’ll have momentum and you’ll have proof that this year is unfolding exactly the way it needs to.

This rule doesn’t eliminate the need for long-term planning or deeper strategy. But it helps you build a rhythm. It helps you keep your head in the game. And it gives you the one thing most people lack — a repeatable container for showing up, especially when things get messy.

And for that reason, it’s worth considering.

Let’s get to work.