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How To Succeed At Really Difficult Stuff

Byjack

I was pondering today on the subject of doing anything really really difficult and I came across a realization.

People often go after really difficult stuff in the wrong way. By difficult things I mean anything that has a high degree of complexity and a steep learning curve. This might be mastering a new skill like the piano, playing a difficult game, getting big on youtube, or starting a new business.

People often try to get results too quickly. They immediately try to focus on success instead of having fun and its not productive. They move into what I call the “WORK” phase too fast. The “WORK” phase is characterized by the following:

  1. You are doing something “for real”. This can mean trying to make a business profitable or striking it out for real as a professional YouTuber.
  2. You want to execute a game plan for success. Success is a major focus, and failure is going to cost you something.

 

Instead of jumping into the “WORK” phase, with ANYTHING with a high degree of difficulty, you need to first go through a “LEARNING” phase.

This “LEARNING” phase is characterized by a couple of things:

  1. You have to be completely ok with failing and failing badly and over and over.
  2. You should focus exclusively on finding what you like about the thing you are doing (having fun).
  3. Exploring the thing, feeling out foundations should be the focus.

 

This is because success requires two things:

  1. Solid fundamentals borne from experience and mastery of the fundamentals
  2. Huge amounts of motivation due to the amount of hardship and failure you will experience.

 

The problem is, the “WORK” phase, when you have to perform and get results (make money off of your new business idea, perform on the piano, gain rank in the game) usually is not very fun. It is hard to build a good foundation or get motivation when you are so scared of failing.

The solution is clearly to not skip the “LEARNING” phase. Make sure you REALLY REALLY love the thing first, that you have tons and tons of fun, that you start to succeed without even trying before you start to TRY to perform when you switch over to the “WORK” phase. Maybe this means you start to make money off of the business you started, without even thinking about the business plan, or you start to rise in rank without even trying.

My visualization on the correct path for success.

The key part of the “LEARNING” phase is fun. Finding what you like about something is probably one of the most critical ingredients to success because motivation can pretty much overcome ANY obstacle.

Finding fun is both simple and difficult. Simple because all you need to do, is think about what makes you happy. Difficult because it is sometimes hard to pin down what makes you happy. You have to try many things. For me, letting yourself fail, is critical to having fun. With too much pressure, there is absolutely no room for play. I start every endeavor with the mantra, “I accept failure, it is ok/good to let myself fail”.

Back Home

Byjack

After almost 3 months away from home, I’m finally back and I’m reminded of the life I built here. Peaceful, open, free, and lonely. There are so many possibilities and spaciousness to fill my life with wonderful things.

Today I want to focus my time in building the life that I want to live in the next few months when I will be transitioning to a part time role in my day job in order to spend more time on coaching and building my life up.

Here are some things I want to do:

  1. Unpack
  2. Clean & Tidy
  3. Cut my nails
  4. Look into Gi Doctors
  5. Look into a sleep study
  6. Spend some time with the gf
  7. Cook food
  8. Plan my trip with my brother and sister
  9. Cross off any remaining things on my todo list

Basically, I want to have a clean slate for the next stage of things such as:

  1. Finding a part time gig where I can exercise without hurting myself
  2. Signing back up for jiujitsu
  3. Editing youtube shorts of coaching sessions
  4. Setting up more coaching sessions
  5. Working on sales plays for AI consulting
  6. Researching into buying a house

I went for a morning walk and I wanted to express some appreciation that I gained from my journeys.

Parents House, appreciations for:

  • Health
  • Cooking
  • Playing games with my brother

France, appreciation for:

  • Walking
  • Beauty of old buildings
  • Cuddling

My happiest times in my parent’s house were eating food, and spending time with my brother and parents.

My happiest times in France were spending time with my girlfriend and coming up with crazy schemes.

I was also stressed in both places. In my parent’s house, it was being watched by my parents. In France, I felt very unsafe. Unsafe in stores, on the streets, unsafe in the Airbnb (afraid to break or spill things), unsafe while working (afraid not to be productive).

I think safety is something I want to work on as France is somewhere I would like to feel more at home at.

Sova Fanart 4: Class Unit 2 Day 1

Byjack

UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 1 – Explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

I’ve been actively avoiding working on this challenge all day. I feel like it is because it is so damn overwhelming. It took so much for me to even just sit down and start working on this.

But now that I have sat down and am working on this, I want to create a mini lesson plan for today.

Since today is about exploring figure sketching techniques and simplification, I shall design a lesson plan to make it impossible not to get good at those things. As I’ve said before, lesson plans let me connect to the present moment, on one task at a time. This in turn helps me work through the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Mini syllabus for: explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

Total time: 90 minutes (est 30 min per unit, 10 min per part)

Mini unit 1: Research

  • Part 1: OpenAI and Bing
  • Part 2: Google
  • Part 3: Youtube

Mini unit 2: Experiment

  • Part 1: School of thought 1
  • Part 2: School of thought 2
  • Part 3: School of thought 3

Mini unit 3: Practice

  • Part 1: Simple poses
  • Part 2: Dynamic poses
  • Part 3: Foreshortened and perspective poses

Mini unit 1: Research

Part 1: OpenAI and Bing

Part 2: Google

Why You Should Start with Armatures When Learning to Draw Figures (artistsnetwork.com)

How to draw figures without a model – Artists & Illustrators (artistsandillustrators.co.uk)

Draw Heads On Any Angle, From Your Imagination (howtodrawcomics.net)

Part 3: Youtube

Main school of thought to try out:

  • Basic armature
    • Circle head, half for nose line, half of that for mouth line
    • line for neck
    • line for spine
    • line for hips perpendicular to spine
    • line for shoulders perpendicular to spine
  • Head shapes
    • circle with lopped side for skull
    • cut cube for face
  • Sketchy woodwork for finding pose
    • Keep scratching until a form emerges
    • Erase or lighten then refine
  • Advanced shapes
    • triangle tricep
    • triangle forearm
    • teardrop thighs
    • diamond calf
    • box pecs
    • triangle delts
    • pen tip torso

Mini unit 2: Experiment

Part 1: School of thought 1

I practiced basic armature and it looked pretty bad. I think I started to improve when I moved the hips a little higher.


Part 2: School of thought 2

Things started to improve a little here. I really like the method of simple shapes for the head. I felt like I understood the geometry much better.


Part 3: School of thought 3

This is when I used the sketchy woodwork carving out a pose and when I refined it, I used the advanced shaped coupled with everything else I learned. I really really like this method. Gives me dynamic poses without losing the anatomy.

I didn’t get to Unit 3 because I feel complete and it is 2AM and I want to go to bed.

Very happy with today’s progress. I feel like I killed it at the figure drawings and I feel much more confident drawing figures.

To Love and Lose Love

Byjack

A dear friend of mine who I was deeply in love with just cut ties with me. And I’m surprisingly calm.

Part of it is because I don’t think there is much left unsaid or anything I really regret about the whole friendship/relationship we had. I loved so many things about her. The way she made jokes, the sound of her voice, the patience and love she showed me at my worst. I will never forget that and I think she’s changed my life in ways she probably doesn’t even know.

I only wish she felt safe enough, trusted me enough, to tell me about how she truly felt. The worries, the emotions, the anger she was going through, I wish she trusted me enough to be open about it – so I could be as loving as she was for me and be closer today for it. In the end, she gave up on me – just like I had almost given up on her earlier in the friendship.

There are two things that still make me feel like someone is ripping apart my heart with a fork:

  • The fear that I wasn’t ever really special to her. That maybe she will turn around and say and do all of the things she said and did for me to the next person down the line. Maybe she has already found that next person. Maybe that is why she left. This hurts me somewhere so deep it’s hard for me to face fully.
  • The hope that she will come back. Hope is pure torture. I’m afraid it will drive me mad if I dwell on it too long.

There are more steps of grief, more growing I will need to do. But this is how I feel right now.

The Go For It Mentality

Byjack

There are many different mentalities that can offer deeper insight, faster learning and a deeper connection to the present moment. 

My favorite mentalities are:

  • Meditative/Let It Come Mentality
    • Be patient
    • Don’t do anything
    • The right answer will be clear if you keep feeling and noticing what comes up
    • Good for staying in the moment and being yourself
  • Self Reflection/Feedback Loop (learning) Mentality
    • Look for ways to observe yourself by recording yourself somehow
    • Use the objective, nonjudemental self observation to get clarity on where to improve
    • Good for rapid learning
  • Process Emotions Mentality
    • The action you focus on is feeling
    • Use breathing and physical activity to feel as strongly as possible
    • Very good for emotional growth

However, I recently found a new mentality that actually helps with areas of life that I had trouble with recently. I noticed in rapid active situations like social situations (parties), or sports, or dance or singing overthinking can be a major issue. Using the meditative mentality and or the processing emotions mentality is helpful but ultimately keeps you in your head. Staying in your head isn’t always a good thing because it can actually make it very hard for you to focus on the present moment (even though those exercises usually help you reconnect with the moment). 

I’m not entirely sure where this idea came from, but I think it came from daygaming (approaching girls irl). I started using it in gaming then dance and singing practice (all things where being in the present moment is part of the experience).

I call it the “Go For It” Mentality. Basically, you imagine what you want to do (the perfect action) and then just try going for it.

A couple of major points:

  • Everything is seen as practice (and is very useful when practicing in the moment type skills like language, singing, dance, sports etc where thinking is going to get in your way and you want to focus your instincts).
  • Repetition is the goal since it is practice, nothing is seen as the final end all be all.
  • As you keep repeating, you adjust every single time until it feels more and more right. This is one way that you can start bringing in the other tools and mindsets in order to have a really beautiful time.

Sova Fanart 2: Class Unit 1 Day 2

Byjack

UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies | Day 2 – Half Body

Today I was supposed to work on the upper body, but I found a really cool pose and decided to work on that instead. Unfortunately, it took a very long time to sketch out and I was also very exhausted from drawing until 4AM yesterday. I also had a lot of travel and work coming up so I was a bit stressed and overwhelmed.

I feel sometimes that I put too much on my plate for a challenge. I definitely felt overwhelmed coloring a drawing with this much detail.

This was the rough sketch:

And this was my attempt at more refined line art:

And for reference I used this pose: