My Messy Start: Too Much Noise
Look, I’ve been reading cards for myself for years, right? I know what the King of Swords is supposed to mean: pure logic, absolute honesty, no BS. But let’s be real, translating that slick intellectual energy into actual action in your chaotic life? That’s a whole different beast. For months, I was stuck. Totally paralyzed.
I was trying to launch this new project—you know, the thing I talked about last spring? It was supposed to be easy. Just sell a few digital guides. But every day, I was hearing a thousand different voices telling me what to do. One guru was screaming, “You gotta master TikTok!” Another was pushing hard on SEO keywords nobody was searching for. A third told me my email list needed a 37-step automated sequence.
I was doing it all. I was posting daily on three social media platforms, running two different email newsletters, trying to learn YouTube editing, and even messing around with some paid ad stuff. I was busy. I felt important. I felt like I was “hustling.”
But the reality? I was just spinning plates. Every single metric—traffic, sales, sign-ups—was basically flatlining. My output was 100%, but my results were less than 10%. I was exhausted. I was spending eight hours a day managing the project instead of actually working on the things that mattered. It was a classic “jack of all trades, master of none” situation, and I was about to walk away and dump the whole idea.
Unsheathing the Sword: The Brutal Clarity Phase
That’s when I finally got fed up and decided to pull out the metaphorical King of Swords. I didn’t pull a card; I just decided to act like him. I threw all emotion and self-pity out the window. My goal wasn’t to feel good or feel busy; it was to find the absolute, brutal truth of what worked.
Here’s the step-by-step process I forced myself to follow. It was uncomfortable as hell:
- I grabbed the data. I didn’t look at “likes” or “followers.” Those are vanity metrics, pure fluff. I looked at the spreadsheet showing the last six months of actual, measurable money and lead generation.
- I identified the 80/20. I forced myself to ask: What three activities brought in 90% of the few leads and sales I actually got?
- I made a short list. For me, it boiled down to two things: one very specific type of long-form blog post, and one simple weekly email (not the complex sequence) that just asked people a direct question. Everything else was a massive time-suck for zero return.
- The Great Cull (King of Swords in Action). This was the hardest part. I decided everything that wasn’t on that short list had to die. Not “I’ll do less of it.” I mean, cut, delete, and abandon.
I deleted the accounts. I told my VA I was cutting her hours to zero. I archived four huge folders of half-finished content ideas. I basically took a logical sword and cut the fat, the muscle, and even the bone. It felt like I was burning down the whole project, but that clean, sharp feeling of focus was instantly better than the anxiety of doing everything badly.
Why It Took So Long: The Real Backstory
You might be thinking, why was this so hard? Why didn’t I just look at the numbers in the first place?
I’ll tell you why. Years ago, I worked for this huge corporate company. I had one job, and it was so meaningless—I literally just moved numbers from one sheet to another. But I got praised constantly because I was always the “busiest.” I worked late, my desk was always a mess, and I looked perpetually stressed. My boss loved it. He called me his “dedicated worker.”
Then one month, they had a sudden budget cut, and they let me go without a word. Just cleaned out my desk on a Friday afternoon. My work was useless, and my busy-ness didn’t save me.
That experience screwed me up. It hardwired my brain to believe that if I wasn’t doing a dozen things at once, I was going to fail, that I was going to be seen as lazy, and then I’d be disposable again. I was chasing the illusion of security through complexity.
That’s the exact emotional garbage the King of Swords doesn’t tolerate. He doesn’t care about your past trauma or your fear of looking lazy. He only cares about the clear, verifiable evidence.
The Outcome: Sharp, Focused Action
The moment I used that King of Swords energy to cut off the noise, everything changed. I suddenly had six extra hours a day. I poured that time only into the two activities I identified. I didn’t waste time worrying about what the TikTok gurus were saying. I didn’t even open those emails.
The result? My sales doubled in eight weeks. Not because I worked harder, but because I worked smarter—or more accurately, because I finally stopped doing the nine things that wasted my time and focused only on the two things that actually produced results.
The King of Swords isn’t always about being mean to others. Sometimes, the most powerful logical action you can take is being relentlessly honest with yourself and slicing away every single unnecessary thing that makes you feel busy without making you feel successful. Try it. It hurts, but the clarity you get is worth every bit of pain.
