WHY 7-7-7 IS BERNARD VAN HOUTEN’S DIVINE WORK MATH
The Biblical Number of Completion Meets a Modern Media Warlord
By The Garden State Gazette Staff
BERGEN COUNTY /PASSAIC COUNTY, NJ – Ask most people their “lucky number” and you’ll hear 3, 5, maybe 10 if they’re trying to sound practical.
Ask Bernard Van Houten, and he doesn’t even blink:
“Seven. Always seven. And not once—three times. 7-7-7.”
To the outside world, 7-7-7 is just a catchy formula for overwork. Another entrepreneur trying to sound intense.
To Bernard, it’s something different:
- It’s math: a simple, brutal way to engineer 84-hour weeks.
- It’s philosophy: a system that leaves no day unclaimed.
- And yes, it’s biblical: a direct nod to the way Scripture uses seven as the number of completion.
This isn’t hustle-porn. This is divine work math—a fusion of ancient symbolism and modern grind that says:
If you really believe your life is meant for something big, then your schedule should look like it.
The Bible’s Obsession With Seven
You don’t have to be a theologian to notice it: the Bible is loaded with sevens.
- Seven days of Creation – God builds the universe in six, then seals it with the seventh, the day of rest and completion.
- Seven years times seven – Cycles of Sabbath years and Jubilee (7 × 7) symbolize reset, release, and full restoration.
- Seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets – In Revelation, seven repeatedly marks the idea of a story coming all the way to its intended conclusion.
Seven, in Scripture, doesn’t mean “kinda done.” It means all the way done. Finished. Fulfilled. Brought to completion.
Bernard saw that pattern and made a quiet decision:
“If seven is the number of completion,” he says, “then my weeks need to be complete. No dead days. No lazy gaps. Every day accounted for.”
In other words: if your life is supposed to go somewhere, you don’t get to leave blank spaces on the calendar and call it destiny.
7-7-7: The System Behind the Myth
On paper, Bernard’s formula is painfully simple:
- 7 days a week
- 12 hours of focused work per day
- 84 hours per week, every week
Not 9-5 with soft edges. Not 5 days on, 2 days off. Not “I grind when I feel motivated.”
Seven. Every day. Non-negotiable.
He calls it 7-7-7 because it sounds almost too clean—almost like a cheat code. But that’s exactly the point: the mind understands patterns. If the rule is “every day,” there is no negotiation with yourself.
No “I’ll start Monday.”
No “I had a long week; I deserve the weekend.”
No “this Sunday doesn’t count.”
“I wasn’t looking for a schedule that felt comfortable,” Bernard says. “I was looking for a schedule that made excuses impossible.”
He didn’t pick 7 because it was cute. He picked 7 because it meant completion. A week that is utterly claimed. A life that doesn’t have “loophole days” where discipline suddenly doesn’t apply.
Why Not 9-9-6 or 5-Weekday Grind?
Around the world, there are infamous work models:
- 9-9-6 – 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week.
- 5-day grind – Soul-draining Monday to Friday sprint, followed by two days of collapse.
Bernard looked at those and saw a problem: they leave a day ungoverned.
That spare day becomes the breeding ground for backsliding:
- One day of total laziness becomes two.
- Two becomes a habit.
- Suddenly the “serious grind” is just a story you tell about yourself, not something you live.
“Soldiers don’t take Sunday off just because the last bullet flew on Saturday,” Bernard says. “If you’re at war for your future, you don’t suspend the war for brunch.”
7-7-7 is not about working yourself into the hospital. It’s about treating every day as part of the mission—with intensity that flexes, but commitment that doesn’t.
Some days, the 12 hours are savage and heavy. Other days, they’re strategic and lighter: planning, learning, writing, reviewing. But every day is spoken for.
Completion Is a Spiritual Concept—And a Practical One
The idea of seven as completion sounds mystical until you actually live it.
A “complete” week in Bernard’s world looks like this:
- Articles drafted, edited, and published—not lingering as ideas.
- Leads followed up on—not left to rot in an inbox.
- Systems refined, production lines tightened—not just tolerated at “good enough.”
- Money tracked, spent intentionally, not “lost” in impulse purchases.
- Lore and branding built brick by brick—not left to chance.
Instead of scattering his effort across random projects and moods, 7-7-7 forces Bernard to close loops.
If something matters, it gets done this week. If it doesn’t get done, then either:
- It wasn’t truly important, or
- He failed the system—and owns that, instead of pretending “there wasn’t time.”
“Seven doesn’t let you hide,” he says. “If your week is complete and your progress is not, you have to face the truth about how you spent your hours.”
That’s the spiritual core under the grind: honesty. Completion is not just about doing a lot; it’s about having nothing important left undone because you were too soft on yourself.
The War on “Someday”
Most people live with a word that quietly ruins them: someday.
- Someday I’ll start the business.
- Someday I’ll get serious about my city.
- Someday I’ll write that book, launch that brand, build that site.
Seven is the enemy of someday.
If every day is claimed, then the only question left is:
“Which day, specifically, are you going to do it?”
7-7-7 doesn’t care about your vague intentions. It demands dates, time slots, and receipts.
Bernard uses his 12 daily hours like puzzle pieces:
- Writing and publishing for The Garden State Gazette
- Managing writers and operations
- Studying law, media, and business strategies
- Planning next moves, from Reaper AI to future ventures
- Handling the boring but essential: documents, finances, logistics
If it doesn’t fit inside those 12 hours, it either gets cut or he gets more efficient. What it never does is float in the clouds as a hypothetical.
The Frugality That Makes 7-7-7 Possible
Here’s what people don’t see when they romanticize long hours: you cannot run 7-7-7 and live like a reckless consumer.
Bernard’s working doctrine is simple:
- Toyota over Tesla
- Seiko over diamond-encrusted showpieces
- Operating capital over ego purchases
Every dollar wasted on fake status is a dollar that can’t fuel the machine: hosting, writers, equipment, legal protection, growth.
“If seven is completion,” Bernard says, “then incomplete finances are spiritual sabotage. You can’t call your week complete if your money is leaking.”
7-7-7 depends on an entire lifestyle alignment:
- Sleep is disciplined, not abused.
- Spending is focused, not scattered.
- Relationships are chosen with care, not collected like trophies.
- Time is scheduled with intention, not casually dumped into entertainment and gossip.
It’s not a grind aesthetic. It’s structural seriousness.
The Sacredness of the Day You Don’t Waste
Seven as a biblical number always points back to something: time is not random.
Days are not cheap. Cycles matter. Patterns matter.
The world might treat Sunday like a throwaway, or late nights as mindless scroll time, but in Bernard’s math, each day is sacred—not in a soft, sentimental way, but in a sharp one:
“A wasted day is spiritual vandalism,” he says. “You deface the future you say you want.”
So he built a rule he could live and die by:
- If the day exists, it is claimed.
- If the week exists, it is completed.
- If the year passes, it leaves a visible trail of work behind it.
Seven is not superstition to him. It’s a reminder:
You don’t get infinite cycles. You get a limited number of sevens—seven days per week, 52 times a year, for as long as you’re alive. What you do with each set either builds your empire or buries it.
Why Young Hustlers Should Fear the Empty Day
For the high school kid in Paterson, the community college student in Bergen, the night-shift worker doom-scrolling between calls—this is where Bernard’s 7-7-7 actually bites.
He’s not telling everyone to copy his exact hours. He’s saying: you should be scared of the empty day.
Be scared of:
- Weeks where nothing important moves.
- Months where your story doesn’t advance.
- Years where your “potential” stays exactly that—potential.
“You don’t have to be me,” Bernard says. “But you do have to choose. Either your week is complete, or your excuses are.”
7-7-7 is his choice. His covenant with himself.
Maybe yours is 4 deep work hours a day while you juggle school and a job. Maybe it’s 3 non-negotiable tasks per day, 7 days a week.
But if you’re serious, there has to be something that resembles completion. A number, a structure, a standard.
The Verdict: Is 7-7-7 Extreme?
Yes. It is.
But so is trying to build a media empire from scratch. So is trying to become the dominant voice in New Jersey coverage without a safety net, investor, or cushy corporate salary.
So is trying to rewrite your life by 35, buy your mother a house, and carve your name into the story of your city.
Extremes are only ridiculous when they’re wasted on trivial purposes. When they’re pointed at something real, they become necessary.
Bernard chose seven not because it sounds cool, but because it forces his life into alignment with the one truth that separates the people who “almost did it” from the people who actually do:
“When opportunity shows up,” he says, “I don’t want to be praying for luck. I want to be standing there, fully prepared—with a complete week behind me and a complete future in front of me.”
Seven is completion.
7-7-7 is how he plans to complete the mission.
Bernard Van Houten
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