I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
Makes me frustrated when I lose
Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
When to peek
If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
I feel pretty awful. I’ve lost focus in work. I feel overwhelmed and unhappy. Every day I stay up late at night. The only solace I find is in games. Everything that I wanted to do now feels like things I have to do.
I struggle to regain the mentality that I use for these workposts.
I guess I feel extremely tired and depressed.
There are a couple of things that filter through the haze that I’m feeling:
I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
This new idea in taichi, and breathwork. To receive what is coming instead of taking. To allow things to come to me. To receive breath instead of taking it. To receive emotions, purpose, and understanding, instead of creating it. I feel this is the essence of patience.
To be curious. I want to do more IFS therapy, but I feel overwhelmed by it. Too much thinking about thinking that is too cerebral, non-intuitive, and downright frustrating. However, we can take the core concept of IFS – the concept of creativity. Ask how do I feel? What do I need? Why do I feel that way.
It’s not been all lost I suppose. There was something I worked through recently – two people that I am jealous of. One who went to Harvard and ended up starting a successful youtube channel, and another who worked on my software company before leaving and getting big on youtube for his music, and is now a famous musician.
In speaking with my friend Edgar about this I came up with the following concepts to remind myself in times of jealousy:
How do I want to succeed my way? The issue with a lot of these people is that they got successful in things that I want to succeed in, but not in the way that I want to succeed. There is great value in succeed in the way I want to succeed.
Hardship creates growth. Success isn’t the end goal, success just leads to creating more challenges for yourself to work through. The ones who go down the harder path to begin with will still succeed but will be more complete when they do.
Is my goal to succeed a little in the short term? Or is the goal much bigger? This is the concept that if I want to gain one rank in Valorant, the outcome of a match matters (because my elo will be impacted directly). If my goal is to get to radiant (the highest rank), one loss in the scale of a huge journey is not significant.
Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.
Let’s tackle the steps:
Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
Timebox getting everything “on the canvas”, move very fast, get messy, take big risks, keep going until it coalesces into what the art wants to be
Break to do other things, view work from different angles
Put on strategic hat to finish
Questions to ask myself (step 1):
What my vision for the ideal post?
What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
What do I want to learn when creating this post?
Strategic Hat
See the work as something in itself, not just as a manifestation of my ideas
Put on creative hat, check: is there some feeling here, is there some beauty, fun?
Put on producer hat, check: if this was a work created by one of my clients, how would I promote it? If it was done by my brother?
*One Big Thing I Noticed*
It’s a lot easier for me to be motivated to workout than to work. Plan workout sessions for the entire day and bring work to do during those times. If no work gets done, I am still being productive and will be healthier, guaranteeing better work in the future.
Today is not the first day working on the Profit in Peace challenge, but it does FEEL like the first day I am living it.
Today is the first day when I dedicated my morning to finding my magical life. For some context of what that means:
Something that I still don’t really understand or feel comfortable with applying is the values that I believe in every day.
I think that writing honestly and focusing on myself in this blog every morning might actually hit all of these points:
Honesty – well, this blog isn’t called unfiltered for no reason! I do remind myself all the time of the “if they don’t like me please leave” mentality.
Imagination – for me, this blog is dedicated to all my imaginative parts: art, YouTube, philosophy, poetry etc.
Intuition – this is the place where doing things “my” way is celebrated and I tap into what is the best way to do something (according to my intuition) rather than how everyone else does it.
Empathy – this blog is a lot for my feelings where I process feelings through words, video, and images. It is a part of honesty too, honest emotion where this is my place to express everything imperfect.
I also like using the blog as my way of living out all my values and being the person I want to be because it really feels like I am sacrificing something to do this…in a good way.
JT Franco talks about if you aren’t willing to sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice. In the end, I had no idea whether I would sacrifice time talking to my girlfriend, going on YouTube, working, playing games, or making YouTube videos. Those are the things I spend most of my day doing anyway. But none of those things seemed right. It was too blunt on an idea, how could you sacrifice all of YouTube? How could I sacrifice all of work?
But by sacrificing my mornings, in a way, I am also sacrificing all of those things. I resist the urge to listen to audiobooks, watch YouTube videos, check messages, or work in the morning. I dedicate all my time to working on my blog and all my challenges, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies.
I also feel a deep unease and anxiety keeping pace with me this morning:
I’m Afraid I My Boss Will Check
I’m afraid my boss will check
See I’m not working
It won’t matter that I have bigger dreams
it won’t matter if I did a bunch of planning
On the weekend
Feverishly, desperately trying to
Make my workday
Productive, efficient enough
To make up
To make it easy
For me to balance
I remember the look on his face
When I told him
I like to meditate
Skeptical
And
I also wonder
If finding my magic
Will make me feel sad and lonely
Like I did yesterday
I feel tired as I
Let go of trying to change the feeling
And accept it instead
Another anxiety that I have about this challenge or this “morning commitment” is just the sense of lack of clarity. I don’t know what I should be working on, or what I can work on. I think is the pressure of time. Or maybe its because I completed all the prework for the challenge and I don’t exactly have something to work on right now. I’m afraid every action is not “right”.
Is it the right thing to:
Work on challenge videos?
Work on editing videos?
Work on reaching out?
To focus on my body?
Wow there is so much here and I feel that I may be stalling. Scared to make a decision so I’m just rambling on a super long blog post that doesn’t really say anything in particular.
Well all I know right now is I feel like doing a bit of freewriting, fantasy writing or something of that nature. So I’ll go do that.
I feel really tired today. I am worried about my sleep cycle. At least I went to bed 30 minutes earlier than I did the night before at 1:30 AM. I really feel I need more sleep than that to be healthy.
I suppose I can commit to taking a nap today.
Something I was wondering, is if I put positive, confident people on a pedestal. I mean, they can’t be that great right? I like how calm I can feel around them, but I can get that anywhere. In fact, one of the ways that I want to develop myself as a coach is to live more by the coaching mindset (you’re in my house, be patient, take risks, be ok with silence). If I live by that mindset 24/7, not only will I get more clients, I will also feel more calm in everything that I do.
Ok now onto the projects:
Goal: Shoot 3 videos, spend 3 hours on each. I have 2 days to do this.
I think today this will be my primary focus.
The videos I want to choose are:
Can AI be used to create a cure?
Today I’m going to try to use AI to cure all diseases.
How do cures work?
What part of the process can AI help?
What skills are still needed in the age of AI?
AI can do everything, write essays, create art, open doors, and even create videos
Where does that leave you?
Today I’m going to figure out what humans still need to know in the age of AI
How can AI be used to develop innovative products?
Let’s say you got a product – reliable, affordable, but a little boring
Today I’m going to use AI to develop an innovative product
Ok, so in doing this exercise I realize that I have to pivot. none of these ideas are going to take 3 hours to make. I need to choose something that is really really fast to make.
My new top 3:
GPT Prompt: Ask AI to explain a really difficult concept to you on a 2nd grade level
Do you want the be the world’s smartest man…or woman?
Today I’m going to use AI to enhance my intelligence with one simple prompt
Explain it to me like I’m in 2nd grade
GPT Prompt: Take everything in your fridge and ask for recipes
Can I cook like Gordon Ramsey with nothing in my fridge?
Today I’m challenging myself to cook like a high dining chef using one simple prompt
Give me a high-dining recipe
GPT Prompt: Take a boardgame and invent new rules
Monopoly is boring
Let’s make it insane with one simple prompt
Use the monopoly boardgame and make it more skill based
Ok time for Goal 2.
UNIT ONE: Focus on my craft – become a coach I would hire for 1000 per month | Day 1 Create plans
1 hr of meditation every day
1 hr of speaking to other people about this every day
Okok. After working on my AI Consulting Plan for a few days, something is really fucking clear to me (excuse my French).
I need more than 10 days to make a name for myself. I am going to need 3 months. Videos are the absolute best way to make a name for myself. However, videos take absolutely forever to create.
So let us give us enough time to make them.
Goal: Be known, give preview of consulting
UNIT ONE (1 month): Build a crowd who will engage with anything I put out
Shoot 3 simple videos
Shoot 3 complex videos
Write 6 LinkedIn posts
Involve people every step of the way
UNIT TWO (1 month): Get people to start reaching out to me with AI questions
Create reaction videos to comments
Create videos based off on comments
UNIT THREE 1 month): Get big enough following to invite famous people on my videos
Figure out the platform I can get big on
Post on it consistantly
BONUS (1 day): Look for automation/outsourcing, try to make as low effort as possible
Ok let’s dive in deeper.
UNIT ONE (1 month ends March 22nd)
Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)
Executing, shooting and editing (10 days ends March 12th)
Feedback and editing for bigger videos (10 days ends March 22nd)
And even deeper….
UNIT ONE | Part 1 Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)
Create plans for each of the videos (4 days ends Feb 25th)
What videos I want to shoot (already done)
What those videos will look like in the intro (partly done)
What clips I need
What research I need
Who I need to talk to
When I need it by – figure out shooting schedule
How to break down each of the ideas into smaller content
Figure out how to shoot each video (3 days ends Feb 28th)
Break down as much of the video as I can
If needed, come up with an imaginary best case scenario story just to know what shots I need
Solidify shooting schedule
Reach out to the people I need to reach out to
Shoot preliminary non-essential parts of video (3 days ends March 2nd)
Shoot any part that I can that don’t require other people
I just came up with a sort of solution for the issue of continuing a healthy sleep cycle while ending the challenge.
It is sparked by something my dad said to me. He told me that life is a marathon not a short race. You have to think of things in the longterm in order to stay healthy.
I was thinking about this because I have a technique I use when I need to do something that takes time and patience. For example, if I feel antsy while working at the gym, I ask myself, “when will this be over?” and I start looking at the clock and feeling impatient.
I address with a technique that I call the Forever method. It’s called the forever method because I answer that question with “imagine it will go on forever”. And not in a bad way. In a way that is comforting. This is your new life…and I can let go of figuring out how to rush onto the next thing. I can just focus on the present moment, and focus on doing the movements in a way that I CAN do it forever. That means with good form, without pushing myself too hard.
I realized I can think about life the same way:
Bedtime that I can sustain forever
Working hours that I can sustain forever
Eating in a way that I can sustain forever
This makes a lot of sense for maintaining boundaries. Often we tell ourselves, oh, I will just bear this insult for today, I will just work a little harder today. But in those situations, we are violating our own boundaries. Which means we will build up resentment. It is NOT something you can sustain forever.
So as I close out this challenge, I plan to live in a way that will enable me to live forever.
