Workpost 82: Returning to fundamentals

Byjack

It’s been a while since I journaled on here.

I feel very tired at the moment, but I’m glad that I’m taking a step back and returning to my fundamentals.

What was the purpose of “Workposts” to begin with? It was a chance to practice being in the higher energies that I tap into with my coaching and plan out my days with it:

  1. You’re in my house
  2. Have patience
  3. Be ok with silence
  4. Take big risks

Today I am feeling into going fast and slow with two main projects.

First project, I want to move fast, with some long stretches of work, which is my YouTube video that I intend on shooting today. Here is the general structure of the video I’m pondering over:

  1. “Shorts shorts short shorts shorts” while holding up different shorts and smiling at the last one with a YT shorts logo
  2. “Ok so today, I’m taking these three viral Youtube Shorts and creating my take on them. My name is Jack and you’re watching episode 12 of the Youtube Challenge.”
  3. “Welcome back to the Youtube Challenge, the challenge where I work through my emotional blocks to find out how to make the Content Creation process fun for myself by posting a new video every single day.”
  4. “A quick update from yesterday, I was feeling very sad and depressed about my progress thus far on YouTube, and today I’m doing a little better. I noticed that in the process of shooting a video every single day, I’ve neglected the rest of my health and my day job and today I returned to the routines and systems that work for me. Like journaling in the morning and planning out my day.”
  5. “One big epiphany I has was that every time I reach for my phone for distraction, I am feeling some intense physical discomfort and that I could feel much better by not picking up the phone but instead physically self soothing myself with stuff like rocking.”
  6. “Well anyway, this video is about the shorts, so lets get into the shorts”
  7. Viral short 1
  8. React to short
  9. Broll of editing my take
  10. Viral short 2
  11. React to short
  12. Broll of editing my take
  13. Viral short 3
  14. React to short
  15. Broll of editing my take
  16. “That’s it for today, make sure you like comment and subscribe, peace”

The second project is going to be a slow thing that I chip away at throughout the entire day. Slow and steady wins the race right? This project has to do with a client I have, and I want to get them to an overall perfect state with at least no complaints for a while.

Let’s create a DOD:

Project: Undisclosed Client

Facts:

This project should improve product accuracy and usefulness
The deliverables I expect to see are new feature successfully deployed with a 60%+ first try success rate
This must be completed by today

Feelings:

When this is done, I will feel in control and confident about the product and customer relationship

Future:

When this is done, I will be able to focus fully on marketing efforts

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Workpost 9: Depression

Byjack

I’ve been feeling that I need to take a bit of a departure from what I normally write in these workposts because I need to write more about my emotions, and let tools like my todolist take over the structured work elements of my day.

Caged

I feel caged in the prison

Of my own ambition

Unable to do anything

But work

Mindless work

Though I know I love work

It gives me purpose

I can’t shake the feeling that

I’m not happy

Some free part of me is no longer free

I’m starting to feel like a major issue with how I’m approaching life right now is balancing between structure and freedom. I created so much structure to assist me in achieving all my goals, but now I have too much structure. I feel the need to relax and indulge myself a bit and I don’t know how to hold onto both. I suspect there are too many challenges that I am splitting my attention between and the fewer the better. I will seek to finish as much work today as possible so as to not split my attention as much.

I think something else I’ve been thinking about is cleaning my apartment and making it something other than just work. Perhaps that would create the spaciousness and happiness I need. Maybe I need to go outside more, not to do anything in particular, just to walk and think about things. In fact, I wonder if I would worry about having a huge number of things to do if I was able to just walk and think about them.

On second thought, I will try one more day with my multitude of goals, I will not try to finish one to free up my attention. Instead, I will try to find a way to work on all of these goals walking, or at the gym hanging, or crawling around my apartment. Maybe I can make art too! Use art to work through any challenge I have. I will also focus on cleaning up my apartment as much as possible.

Workpost 57: Moving Forwards

Byjack

My goal today is to find balance, however that looks like…feeling like I can spend time meeting all my needs and progressing at the speed that I want to progress at.

For my AI Consulting, I want to spend some time this morning thinking through it a little more and following some of the steps I took in my project.

For my consulting project, here are the things I want to get done:

  1. Draft up all the major pages in the website
  2. Create a signup experience
  3. Create a plan for all lead magnet ideas

Major pages:

  1. What it’s like to work with us
  2. What your customers will experience
  3. Mission vision and values

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.

Workpost 66: Mixed Feelings

Byjack

Today I feel tired. Coming off of a early morning and a workout, watching a lot of Valorant, I’m in a position where I still feel a bit tired. I’m excited to update my blog, but I’m not so sure about the marketing call.

I really hope to make money off of my passion and find success in the AI space finally and I hope today’s session will help with that.

I feel strongly that I want to preserve boundaries with this coach because I feel he doesn’t respect boundaries for some reason.

I feel nervous and uncomfortable with the call. For some reason I feel he has a bit of a temper and is not good at listening.

But I can protect myself, I am his client and I have a bit of a temper too if it comes down to it.

I’ll take my time and be as clear and direct as possible with him.

My main issue is that I feel uncomfortable disagreeing with him. I feel unsafe. When processing it, I decided to be very clear about what he is saying and then say my views/opinions.

I’m having trouble getting work done today. I’m going to focus on the taoist productivity – work until I feel empty. Also, I want to leave the apartment to feel more productive.

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Workpost 11: Mentalities for Happiness

Byjack

Today I woke up feeling pretty awful from going to bed at 4AM last night.

I was feeling super overwhelmed with many many things in my life.

Today, I chose to wake up slowly, get to work slowly, and here are some of the mentalities that helped me:

  1. Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
  2. What can I do for future Jack. This is the Matthew McConnehey’s idea of leaving breadcrumbs. Instead of the common idea of letting your future self deal with a problem (let future Jack deal with the dishes, let future Jack deal with talking to this person) think about what you can do now to make your future self happier. This can look like everything from cleaning, to setting up a super nice workspace, cooking yourself a really good meal.
  3. Focus on challenge and growth. I think oftentimes I get overwhelmed because I think about how hard things are. What helps me is thinking about everything in terms of challenge and growth. How can I challenge myself? What can I do to grow?
  4. Live in the hierarchy of being true to oneself. I was talking to a friend the other day about hierarchies and choosing the right one (don’t compete in a hierarchy you don’t believe in such as money). I want to compete and live in a hierarchy of being honest and true to myself.

I still feel a quite a bit of stress of the difficult conversations I’m anticipating, and the difficult tasks I have in front of me.

Unwelcome World

I feel sometimes

I am living in a world

Where every step is heavy

But the gravity only pulls on my heart

And the future feels unknown

Scary and not comfy

Workpost 70: Picking a Path

Byjack

Today, I have many different paths that I can walk down.

I can focus on work. I can spar with my friend, I can go to jiujitsu. I could try to do it all. But I feel weary and tired from not sleeping yesterday. I feel stressed and pressured, and so I want to focus on a few things.

I suppose, first thing is first, I need to focus on work, because without that I cannot be focused tomorrow. Nothing matters until I get that piece done, and once that part is done, all manner of things are possible.

I did indeed get that done, and I feel extremely proud of the work I did.