Workpost 73: Progress

Byjack

I am trying some new things out to update my routines and actions from the last post.

  1. My morning routine: short walk outside. No computer or phone until I walk outside and get some good sun exposure.
  2. My reset. If I feel overwhelmed, take a shower or go into my closet.
  3. 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:

  1. I will leave the apartment as many times as I can
  2. If I feel tired and want to sleep, I can just go to the gym and come back after
  3. 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:

  1. It helps to look at a photo reference
  2. Might help to sketch out a design beforehand
  3. Need a harder brush (sharper edges) for the image

Now it’s time to plan my day and look at yesterday’s questions.

  1. 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.
  2. How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working? Leaving the apartment more. Doing a deep clean of my apartment.
  3. What do I do about my art coaching website? Create a powerpoint for it, create a basic website.
  4. 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.
  5. Should I start registering for fairs? Yes most definitely, also think more about what I can give away.
  6. Should I pay someone to design the website for me? I absolutely could, it probably is a very good idea.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.)
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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:

  1. How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow?
  2. What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu?
  3. What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses?
  4. Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack?
  5. Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website?
  6. What can I give away at the fairs?
  7. What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards?
  8. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

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Workpost 36: Satisfied

Byjack

I feel tired today. Back is stiff. Eyes are blurry. Fatigue racks my body.

At least today, I tried to nap and relax in the morning. Will, try to continue today.

My goal is to feel satisfied enough by the end of the end so when I enforce strict bedtime at 11PM, I will feel good about it.

Workpost 53: Time to Kick Into Gear

Byjack

It’s time to think through the plan for each of my businesses a little more carefully.

I want to spend 3 months setting up the funnel for each of my businesses and 3 months trying out and running the funnels.

Let’s breakdown what that looks like.

Art Coaching

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM

General Aim: To make a beautiful creative world on my website, business cards, social media that reminds me of adventure, magic, and dreams

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Make a mess

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Print out business cards
  2. Have a WordPress website with basic information on it
  3. Figure out how to do scheduling with Calendly

AI Consulting

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM
  8. Branding
  9. New contract for funnel

General Aim: To create a place where business owners with the talent and potential can go to unblock their problems

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Create website

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Website that clearly shows brand and services
  2. Clear way to schedule a consultation with me
  3. Be able to talk to local meetups

Workpost 65: Work life balance

Byjack

My girlfriend is leaving soon and I want to focus on her and the relationship.

I have a pretty good work system set up, but I’m not sure how to balance work with time with her.

I think the answer is just to wake up early, plan out my day and do as much breakdown as I can, then work while she is next to me in the couch reading, and if not just work during the morning.

Workpost 58: Feeling out of time

Byjack

Recently I’ve been feeling immense pressure with the sensation that I’m somehow running out of time.

I feel a lot of frustration and anger in my chest.

I feel like I have no time anymore to work on the projects, and making progress in my own WordPress. I feel burning rage and frustration in my chest and stomach.

It might be the I am out of control wound.

I’m really angry at myself for procrastinating and not being able to get anything done.

Today I did come up with a really cool idea for an AI benchmark for:

  1. Creative writing
  2. Problem solving
  3. Research
  4. Contracts

I also feel overwhelmed. I feel like there is so much work to do, I don’t know where to start. I am overwhelmed. I am not able to deal with it.

I have a lot of projects I’m working on and it is scary to feel that I don’t know how to handle that.

I feel pressure because there are all difficult challenges that are important to me.

I failed big at succeeding in them…I’m so proud of myself!

This is a good thing. To fail big is to learn big.

The lessons are slowly being revealed.

The first question is…what did I need when I was in the overwhelmed state?

Well, I needed to feel the feelings, to be ok with just processing first.

After feeling the feelings to the fullest, what I need next is to find the courage in myself to face the challenge. To remember that I’m capable of anything.

And after feeling embracing the challenge, thinking tactically how I want to face it, and specifically, what small steps I want to take.

I want to take everything that I know as a small task and add it to my todolist. We will start there.

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Editing Youtube Videos: Rediscovering the Inner Artist

Byjack

I have been struggling with making videos for some time. I feel that a video isn’t perfect, I immediately get very stressed out. I don’t know whether to refilm or not, I don’t know what to do with the existing footage.

Here is a process that I came up with when sitting with the feelings for a bit:

  1. Acknowledge that part of you that feels that things are missing or could have been said better by coming up with ideas for a new video to shoot (that might be almost the same or different)
  2. Feel the feelings of discomfort in feeling not perfect, slow down, nothing else is important
  3. Search for what the video wants to be, just like searching for beauty in the world to paint
  4. Focus on the areas that are most clear or exciting to you.
  5. Paint in broad brushstrokes, you don’t need the best takes at first, just focus on laying down the footage so you can see the context of how everything relates to each other
  6. Develop the video around the areas that are most clear and start to fill out the details
  7. Focus on the transitions

While we are at it, maybe I can think of ideas for how I can approach filming a video:

  1. Come up with a short writeup on what feels like the right flow
  2. Come up with some concepts of what the shoot will look like
  3. Set up the shoot and lighting
  4. Do three takes, first take is a direct recitation of the script, but as the takes go on, let the video become what it wants to become

Or just do step 4 and call it a day. You don’t need a script, you don’t need a plan.

I wonder a lot sometimes on when I should make a video and when I should just restart (like in art). I think there is no right answer, but making a “mediocre” video is not for the artform of Youtube, it is because I am learning Youtube. Anything you want to learn will have many imperfect tries to succeed.

Matches 3: Tired

Byjack

Results from day 3 while tired and a little stressed.

Match 1

Reflections:

  1. My mind is kind of sluggish, but this way of working where I’m warming up, then taking breaks to walk is genuinely very relaxing. I don’t feel tired at all from the work.

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth less maybe $100. I feel like there were some programmer heavy tasks in here but not a huge amount was accomplished.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? I’d say this work was middling difficulty. Maybe around a 4. It was deceptively simple in the sense that it’s very basic information added, but takes a bit of thinking.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 5%. Not very innovative, business as usual.
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? Fair gains in communication and charisma, it is amazing to be able to show some of the information that I exposed in the data.

Match 2

Reflections:

  1. I tried to do some chess as a mental warmup, but I feel like it left me drained, perhaps next time as a mental warmup, I can try playing chess for creativity not for the win
  2. Overall I felt my energy draining in this match. I felt pretty tired.
  3. I did some extra work after the match and I feel pretty tired. I felt I needed to squeeze that extra bit out.

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? $120. It was pretty not special, some of the work I did programmatically could have been done by someone very cheap, but overall I ran tests that required a lot of deep level troubleshooting that is not easy.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? 6-7. It was debugging which can be extremely difficult, especially for someone who doesn’t know my code.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 5% I don’t know if anything got innovated here.
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? Good gains, gets me much closer to the final goal of presenting results.

Match 3

Reflections:

  1. Focused a lot on thinking smart not hard
  2. I noticed that taking a break is important, staying on the train of thought only makes you want to choose the easiest path, not the most intelligent
  3. Changed work time to 15 minutes
  4. Still need to let go of going fast in the warmup
  5. Like to dance on the breaks

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? $150. I was able to output results which is worth a ton, but to just hire someone to do this step, it’s probably less money. There was a lot of data and data manipulation involved as well as some troubleshooting.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? The output file is quite complex. I give it a 7 in intellectual difficulty. Not achievable by people of lower intelligence, but easy for people of high intelligence.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 10% Not much was innovative, the data is quite interesting though.
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? I laid the groundwork for much better result communication, I think it was great.