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The Future Versioning Model™

Sprint toward your future Self

Seven stages. Real timeframes, not motivational ones. Every stage this site has ever quoted a duration from — 21 days, 6 months, 2 years, 7 years — comes from this model, in full, for the first time in one place.

This is not a metaphor for how change feels. It is a specification for how long each stage of change actually takes, stated plainly enough to remove the guessing that makes most people quit exactly when the next stage was about to arrive.

Each stage below carries four things: the name, the act that moves you into it, the single quality it runs on, and the honest duration — not the duration someone wished were true.

IntentionActivate it
Has to be kept in existence, or it will disappear
Take 100% responsibility for the condition your life is in. Clean up broken agreements. To be — start of day. To have — end of day.
BehaviourBegin it
Attention
An ongoing process from the moment intention is activated — the visible shape intention takes before it has repeated enough to be anything else.
HabitDo it
21 days to build
Focus · make promise, keep promise
Use discipline or group structure. Neural sequences plus gratitude are what actually build it — not intensity.
PracticeGet it
6 months to lock it down
Imagination
The key is consistency. Nothing else on this list substitutes for it.
Second natureKeep it
1 year to crave it
Results
Growth is now automated. The practice no longer needs to be remembered to run.
Who I amBe it and have it
2+ years to make it part of who you are
Effortlessness
An ongoing process. There is no finish line here — only the point where the question stops making sense.
Who we areMultiply it
7+ years to integrate into organization without loss of individuality
Greatness
An ongoing process. This is the individual result becoming a field others can stand inside without you disappearing into it.

The six ways there

The stages name what you become. A separate scale names how it feels to be moving through them — and the honest version of that scale runs from Babying up through Sprinting, not the other way around. Babying is initiating your future Self. Crawling, walking, jogging, and running are each exactly what they sound like — graduated speed toward the same destination. Sprinting is being your future Self in actual reality, not moving toward it anymore.

Nobody starts at a run. The model does not reward pretending otherwise.

Intention = downstream flow, generated reality.
Counter-intention = upstream resistance, given reality.

Where the ladder actually starts

This model begins at Intention because every model has to begin somewhere. It is not, in fact, the beginning. What produces an intention worth activating — frequency, thought, feeling, decision, and the honesty underneath all four — happens before this ladder's first rung, not on it.

Seven stages.
One direction.

Want what happens before the first rung? Read Before Intention. Want to start climbing? Read The Sovereyn 7-Day Challenge.