Good morning!

Welcome to another edition of The Matt Viera Newsletter.

The newsletter with the goal to inspire you to step away from your normal routine, reflect on where you are now, reexamine where you want to go next, and create more clarity in you life.

Did you know…

There are over 35,000,000 olive trees on the island of Crete!

The Cost of Ambition

The last time I published a newsletter article was Tuesday, April 14, 2026.

Let me start by saying that this newsletter is important to me. It is a passion project of mine, and publishing it is something I genuinely enjoy. But after that last article, I needed to take a break.

I just didn’t expect the break to last a few months.

So what happened?

Shortly after April 14, I was hit with an incredible sense of anxiety.

I had what I can only describe as an impending sense of doom.

It felt as though something was about to go completely and utterly wrong in my life.

Thankfully, nothing terrible happened. There was no “doom.” Everything is fine.

But the feeling was real and it forced me to take a closer look at what was happening in my life.

What I believe it all boiled down to was simple:

I was overwhelmed.

I was overwhelmed by the accumulation of dozens of things I wanted to accomplish.

Much of that came from the fact that I now have more control over my time than I did during several earlier periods of my life.

There were three periods when I had very little time to do or enjoy anything else: serving in the Army, attending law school, and practicing law as an attorney.

During those years, nearly every waking hour was focused on one primary objective.

The Army dictated my schedule. Law school dictated my schedule. Practicing law for more than 60 hours per week dictated my schedule.

There was very little room left for anything else.

Now that I am no longer spending every waking hour focused on one demanding pursuit, part of me believes I have all the time in the world.

And because I believe I have so much time, I convinced myself that I could accomplish an endless number of tasks and projects:

None of those things is unreasonable by itself.

The problem is that I have been trying to make progress on all of them at the same time.

And I kept adding new projects to my list until it became so overwhelming that the circuit breaker in my head would shut off.

And what would I do when that happened?

I would take the path of least resistance and I would watch television.

A lot of television.

Then I would tell myself, “I’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

Tomorrow would arrive and I’d repeat the same pattern.

The ambition never disappeared.

In fact, while I was procrastinating, I’d often think of even more things I wanted to accomplish.

The list would grow. The pressure would increase. The overwhelm would become worse.

And all of it was entirely self-imposed.

That may have been the most uncomfortable realization of all.

No one was demanding that I complete all these projects. No one was giving me impossible deadlines. No one was standing over my shoulder waiting for results.

I created the pressure.

And eventually, I created a no-win situation in which I was so focused on everything I wanted to do that I struggled to do anything at all.

During the past few months, as I reflected on how to work through this, I kept returning to my experience in law school.

Law school is an incredibly challenging endeavor.

There are classes, assignments, exams, deadlines, and countless competing demands on your attention.

But I completed it.

Successfully.

I was focused. I was determined. And I made no excuses.

Failure was simply not an option.

The difference between law school and my life today is not that I was more capable back then.

The difference is that law school came with structure.

There were deadlines. There were consequences if I failed to do the work. There was a clear path and a defined objective.

Today, most of the things I want to accomplish are self-directed.

There are no meaningful repercussions if I postpone something until tomorrow.

And for someone like me, that can be a problem.

Because when everything is important, nothing is important.

So what am I going to do about it?

Well, I dug myself into this hole.

And I am giving myself no other choice but to dig myself out of it.

Successfully.

Over the course of a few days, I created a Daily Operating Procedure, a Vision Statement, and a dynamic Life Plan.

Together, these three documents form a simple system I can refer to every morning.

They remind me where I have been, where I am now, and where I want to go professionally, personally, and financially.

They are designed to help me decide what matters now, based on my values, instead of allowing every possible goal to compete for my attention at once.

And that is the lesson I want to share with you:

Overwhelm is the result of refusing to decide what matters most now.

If you find yourself repeatedly procrastinating on things that matter to you, the problem may not be laziness, a lack of discipline, or a lack of ambition.

You may simply be trying to pursue too many priorities at the same time.

You may discover, as I did, that your biggest obstacle is a lack of focus.

Make a plan. Keep it simple. Write everything down.

Identify your values. Establish your goals. Choose start dates and create deadlines.

Then determine your priorities (or one priority) each day and complete them

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I accomplish everything?”

Ask yourself, “What deserves my attention today?”

Because progress does not require you to do everything.

It requires you to identify and complete what matters most.

I am excited to see where this new system I developed takes me.

More importantly, I am excited to publish this newsletter consistently again.

Publishing one article may seem like a small step, but it is proof that I am moving forward.

And just like I told myself throughout law school:

Failure is not an option.

Where I Currently Am…

As I write this, I am currently experiencing my sixth mini-retirement on the island of Crete.

After spending a few days in Frankfurt, one of my favorite cities, we arrived in Crete on July 11 and will be here until August 8. From here, we plan to spend a few days in Athens before returning home.

Close friends joined us in Crete for a few days, and we loved spending that time with them.

Next week, family will be joining us as well.

This time is important to me for more than the opportunity to explore a beautiful part of the world, spend time with loved ones, and enjoy some excellent cuisine.

Like my past mini-retirements, this one gives me the space to step away from my normal routine, reflect on where I am, reexamine where I want to go next, and create more clarity in my life.

Quote that caught my attention…

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

—Edmund Hillary

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