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Matches 2: Results From Day 2
Match 1
Reflections:
- Ended up spending all the warmup time at the gym
- Feel amazing but felt the mental work was less exceptional
- Felt much more healthy and sustainable
- Found that walking every 5 minutes or deep breathing was extremely nourishing and helpful
Result Calculation:
- How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth less maybe $100-$175. The task for getting the test data was time consuming but straightforward. The coding required much more thinking, but I didn’t get extremely far with it.
- How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? Maybe a 5. Someone less intelligent could achieve this, but they would of course, need to put in a lot of effort.
- What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 35% percentile. Pretty interesting ideas about character count. Pretty clever overall.
- Gains in communication and charisma? Not many gains, but will help me a lot with future work that will be very helpful in telling the story (looking at data).
Workpost 73: Progress
I am trying some new things out to update my routines and actions from the last post.
- My morning routine: short walk outside. No computer or phone until I walk outside and get some good sun exposure.
- My reset. If I feel overwhelmed, take a shower or go into my closet.
- Practicing the transition from my chair to my door: I’m going to mark a tally on my “Active Life” tracker calendar (shout out to my girlfriend <3).

In trying out this new “Active Life” tracker, I decided the following today after trying it out today:
- I will leave the apartment as many times as I can
- If I feel tired and want to sleep, I can just go to the gym and come back after
- If I want to play Valorant or doomscroll, I can go out, do some quick work, then come back and go on my phone
I’m also proud of myself for doing some sketching today in the “woodcut” style that I plan to use for my business card.

I like it a lot but I want to continue on working on making it more clean like this:

Some thoughts:
- It helps to look at a photo reference
- Might help to sketch out a design beforehand
- Need a harder brush (sharper edges) for the image
Now it’s time to plan my day and look at yesterday’s questions.
- What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
- Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it? Yes, I am behind schedule. I think what I need to do about it is that I want to focus more on the business side of things. For coaching that means finding clients and for AI gaming I’m not sure yet. Either way, I need to start figuring out what it looks like to run the business.
- Should I extend the schedule? Maybe a little, but at the moment no.
- Am I losing money? Yes, but this is something I want to do and get better at. The best thing to do for me is to not to have a gameplan, just run with what I have until the money runs out. Perhaps I could also try to find a business partner or something to level up to the next step or collaborate with my current business partner more.
- How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working? Leaving the apartment more. Doing a deep clean of my apartment.
- What do I do about my art coaching website? Create a powerpoint for it, create a basic website.
- How do I get everything done in such a short period of time? I don’t need to. I failed at section one of the business, but that’s ok. Failure = growth. I learned that not taking faster action to get to sales doesn’t work as well. Maybe I need to get more people involved to help me or to just bounce ideas off of.
- Should I start registering for fairs? Yes most definitely, also think more about what I can give away.
- Should I pay someone to design the website for me? I absolutely could, it probably is a very good idea.
- How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently? I need to find the joy in just creating this new art style.
- How do I start going to the gym and working outside the apartment consistently? Through my “Active Life” tracker! And from being the hero, and valuing my body as a temple. And by leaving the apartment every time I want to do something unhealthy (going outside, then coming back and gaming etc.)
- How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time? We can do it piece by piece, we also don’t need to cook immediately, just work on it slowly.
- How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses? I should focus work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for a specific time period (8-5). Then trust in the process. If I leave the apartment a lot, things will get done on all fronts.
- When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time. Not sure, we have a couple of options. We can focus on coaching, switch gears to AI therapist (as greater chances of monitization), or try to create a release schedule. Or forget about getting something out as being a full stack dev would be pretty valuable and worthy skill on its own right.
Now to write some of the questions I have for tomorrow:
- How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow?
- What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu?
- What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses?
- Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack?
- Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website?
- What can I give away at the fairs?
- What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards?
- When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline?
I’m happy, I think two mentalities that are helping me are:
- Whenever I want to do something unhealthy or distracting (youtube, Valorant, etc.) first leave the apartment then do it when I come back. I usually get more done, are more in touch with my body and don’t feel the need to self medicate after.
- At the end of the day, imagine what I wished I got done, what would make me happy if I got done and turn those things into a list of questions to tackle and solve tomorrow.
Workpost 40: Refinement of the Game
Today I made some definite progress. Even though I have the exact same feeling of lack of motivation, no interest in working. Wanting to just play games, I felt significantly better, having done spleen chi exercises both before bed and after waking up in the morning. As a result I started working 3 hours earlier than yesterday.
Today, I want to improve upon and refine on the game that I created for myself yesterday.
Firstly, in my walking meditation this morning, some wisdom came to me.
Relaxed > Easy > Fast
This was the wisdom first introduced to me in the book, Born to Run where the author talks about how you run completely relaxed first. Then you make your running more smooth, more efficient. If you are able to make it efficient and relaxed, you WILL be fast.
This is the same thing in Valorant. In your warmups you aren’t instantly trying to one tap everyone. You aren’t trying to do it fast. If you do, you probably are going too fast and the warmup won’t work.
You want to start slow (or even in the Miyagi technique, don’t even follow through with a shot, just track the target). As it becomes easy for you to hit headtaps, then you start to gradually speed up.
I want to implement this in my warmups. First, start off doing intense workout with the aim of expansion. Then focus on some brainteasers (Miyagi, completely relaxed). After a few minutes of that, work on to do list, trying to make my relaxed thinking more efficient and clean. Finally, at the tail end of the warmup, try to go fast. My thoughts are:
- 5 min physical warmup
- 2 min brainteasers
- 5 min todolist
- 3 min buffer
Then for the actual match, I would like to break it up more often with some deep breathing every 5 minutes, like I do with Valorant between rounds.
Workpost 54: Processing More Emotions
I feel strongly that my client will not value the work that I did.
I feel that he will say, “yea is this what you’ve been spending all your time on??? This is not what we need”. Then I will feel frustrated because it IS what we need.
I feel unseen, underappreciated, and misunderstood.
I feel uncomfortable in this room with someone else on the phone. I feel watched, judged, and disliked.
I am now realizing this is a time that I can let go of taking responsibility for others emotions. I can have faith in their abilities to process feelings themselves.
I’m feel numb buzzing fear in my heart and stomach. I feel a little trapped in my shoulders from feeling watched.
Maybe this guy is friendly, both of us clearly like to work. We are both trying to get something done. Maybe this is a warm environment after all.
Reframe: I get to work with people near me, I can get a little sense of community without having to talk
I worry about him being uncomfortable walking behind him or listening to his calls.
I feel fear in my stomach and trapped in my shoulders. I feel I am not safe.
Maybe his calls can motivate me to work on my stuff. I feel rejected, pain in my heart, fear of rejection.
Chase rejection, it will set you free.
With the feeling for my client, I feel deep painful fear in my heart and stomach. I feel a fear of rejection again.
Reframe: if I have a fear of being misunderstood, I can take this time to understand myself.
What I do is important because clarity will give a lot of direction and power to everything you do. Noone like to buy a confused product from a confused company with confused founders. Noone is passionate about a product that isn’t clear in its purpose with a company that isn’t clear on it’s purpose.
I want to be excited about this product and company. Excitement and passionate is the lever arm for work.
Inspiration is the lever arm for creativity. Purpose is the lever arm for fulfillment. Branding is the lever arm for product value. Vision is the lever arm for decision making.
Stuck
I feel exhausted. My head feels numb. I feel hot and tired. My back aches.
My heart feels heavy. I feel angry at myself. So helpless. My mind in a fog.
My apartment is a mess. I just want to cry.
I can’t work. I just play games all day long. my eyes feel tired.
It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. All I want to do is eat and play video games. The pull is so strong in my heart like there is a strand of honey getting pulled.
I feel a numb panic deep in my chest. I’m afraid of failure. I’m scared I will disappoint myself and everyone around me. Pushing myself to make my business cards is only making me curl up even harder.
It was a long week. I’m exhausted. But the work just keeps coming.
I guess I can cancel tai chi tomorrow. Sleep in.
Tonight I can clean my apartment until I feel more peaceful.
I know I can use the gym as a way to process emotions, but I don’t use it.
I feel this pull, this overwhelm, like the honey being pulled, from my heart.
I’m capable of anything. Even rising from this challenge. This is important because as I get more successful, there will be days I feel exhausted, and in those moments, I need to find a way to find balance, to find peace.
I also want to learn to embrace failure. Failure is so scary to me. There is an image in my mind of my business cards being a complete disappointment and I feel a pit in my heart. A horrible amaturish website I’m not proud of and I can’t fix it.
Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts at the beginning. The people who are exceptional, who are savants are not people who started at the middle. They are people who enjoyed the beginning.
But how can I enjoy this? I feel so scared it won’t be good.
Makes me think of this video:
In this video, Jesse talks about how play allows us to feel pressure while still being able to learn.
That fun is the key to this.
But what is the key to fun? What would make this fun for me, regardless of the outcome, what would make designing and drawing fun for me?
What would make it an infinite game, not just a finite game focused on an end goal?
It’s true, the thought of designing business cards does not sound fun to me at all. It sounds like a slog. But maybe that’s because I’m worried about failing.
Ok, what if I tried to merge my painterly style with “woodcut” style prints. What if I created a new drawing technique that I could use to create cool stuff for friends and to sell as products?
That definitely sounds more like play to me.
So what about going to the gym, because I like it so much when I actually go, but I find it hard to go to begin with.
What if I saw it as supercharging myself – which it really is doing. Whether I go to lift weights or just to hang from the bar and stretch it really is building my body up to full potential. It might even solve my sleep problems.
And what about sleep, why do I not want to go to bed? Because if I go to bed, tomorrow, I wake up with tons of problems. Well maybe, that’s not a bad thing. Maybe before I go to bed, I fill my to do list with questions that I want to search out the answers to.
Here are the questions I have today, that if I knew the answers to I would rest easy:
- What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
- Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it?
- Should I extend the schedule?
- Am I losing money?
- How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working?
- What do I do about my art coaching website?
- How do I get everything done in such a short period of time?
- Should I start registering for fairs?
- Should I pay someone to design the website for me?
- How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently?
- How do I start going to the gym and working outsite the apartment consistently?
- How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time?
- How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses?
- When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time.
Workpost 83: Making a Gaming Video
Need to shoot a gaming video today
- “I got a bit of a dilemma”
- “This is my Valorant jacket. I got it when I watched the world championship in LA a year ago. I love playing Valorant.”
- “But this is the 21 day youtuber challenge”
- “I’ve yet to figure out how to connect those two passions together. But that changes today”
- “Hi everyone, my name is Jack, and this in the Youtuber challenge, the challenge where I post a video everyday, working not for views, but for the love of making videos”
- “There are a bunch of things I’m super passionate about, but haven’t figured out how to connect to a Youtube video yet. And one of those things is gaming.”
- “But here’s my problem with gaming. I like playing alone, I don’t like talking while I’m gaming, but I do feel like there are certain things I like to share after the game is done.”
- “Here is the plan. I have fun gaming. In between, I’ll do a little bit of journaling, and afterwards, I’ll just edit a video that is fun for me”