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Workpost 36: Satisfied

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.

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Workpost 35: Naps

I feel tired.

My body buzzing with pain in my stomach.

My eyes are sluggish.

Last night, I went to bed at 11, but fell asleep after 1AM.

I feel totally drained.

Maybe its time to go back to bed for a little.

So I wrote that at 8 in the morning. I just took a nap after cooking for the entire morning with delicious tea eggs and soup. Then I spent a few hours napping and now I feel much better.

I really think my productivity is so much worse when my health is worse.

More napping, meditation, and exercise in the future! Napping if I’m sleep deprived, meditation and exercise if I’m not.

Today, the aim I want to focus on is content creation. I want to finish my post, and workout and meditate for the rest of the day.

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Workpost 34: Refocusing

My eyes hurt. I feel tired. My face is numb and buzzing. I feel heat and buzzing up my back. I feel like I pulled an all niter when I haven’t.

Today is the time when we learn how to be successful while taking care of ourself.

This is the challenge that is brought before us today.

I’m going to be drinking lots and lots of water.

I plan on practicing some tai chi.

I want to focus my attention on the very specific work that I need to do, and just relax afterwards.

By relaxing I mean, refuse to look at my todolist until I feel desire to. Go to the gym, drink water, do art therapy.

P.S. One note I want to make is that I remembered the point of these posts, to help do the hard work to achieve what I want, to be the person I want to be. The stepping stones to greatness.

Today I Search for the Simple Answers

I walk the way of water

Of scribbles on a paper

A simple job well done

The path isn’t clear for the weary

To find your place home

I search for my slice of Eden

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Workpost 33: At the End of My Rope

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:

  1. I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
  2. Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
  3. 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
  4. Break to do other things, view work from different angles
  5. Put on strategic hat to finish

Questions to ask myself (step 1):

  1. What my vision for the ideal post?
  2. What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
  3. 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.

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I Figured Out Arm Aiming

Did they tai chi method I mentioned in the previous post. Went really slow and relaxed.

I noticed that there is a natural way to aim.

Here are the steps:

  1. Get into the mood my swishing the mouse across the screen in broad strokes
  2. Slow down and control the movement more
  3. Focus on pivoting on your wrist
  4. First focus on your elbow moving close and far away from your body
  5. Then focus on the micro adjust aim with your wrist

Voila! Amazing pain free aim!

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Tai Chi Class

Tai chi class was very interesting. I had a thought when the instructor was answering a question by one of the students. They were asking whether or not the movement called the “whip” was supposed to have a whipping motion. The instructor told him that as a beginner you always want to go slow. She also said that she teaches with words.

I was thinking that I can apply this Tai Chi mentality to some of the things that I work really hard to do such as work or Valorant or content creation.

Some thoughts I want to try out:

  1. Do things really slow and relaxed. Speed up if its easier, but as soon as it gets hard, go slower and more relaxed.
  2. Focus on the kinks, uncomfortable parts and keep working them out (my thoughts, not usually used in tai chi)
  3. Speed up when it feels really easy
  4. Speak aloud what you are doing, in order to be more intentional
  5. Follow a predetermined routine

What I want to try for my LinkedIn 50 days of posts:

  1. Write down what I know
  2. Write down what I don’t know
  3. Do necessary research
  4. Copy photoshop template
  5. Flesh out first iteration
  6. Flesh out images
  7. More research and reflection
  8. Refinement
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Workpost 32: The Power of Belief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPZj6Jp2ehE&ab_channel=Recap-kun

I saw this anime recapped last night and I felt it was really inspiring. It was about a guy who needs to create an unprofitable company in order to win money in a game. But in not fearing failure and instead trying to embrace it, he found it hard to not succeed. Obviously this is fiction, and people would find it easy to fail in real life, but there is a part of this that rings true for me.

When you aren’t afraid of failure, it is hard to stave off success. Everything is about having a strong mindset.

Today I want to just focus on the main ideas I said in my previous post:

  1. You’re in my house
  2. Take time, be patient
  3. Be ok with silence
  4. Take risks
  5. Anything is possible
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Workpost 31: On an Adventure

I feel like I’m on an adventure, even though I am only 40 minutes away from my apartment in Austin. I am in the city of Leander, northwest of Austin and I’m feeling a bit tired but excited about the solar eclipse today.

I’m in the library and I feel at home but also lonely. I think there is something about being in close proximity to books that remind me of my childhood and about daydreaming and reading about people’s lives and wanting to find close friends and conquer the world.

I feel lonely, and I wish it was easier to connect with others.

The library reminds me of elementary school when everything was pretty simple. If you wanted to be friends with people, you just became friends with them.

I’m feeling really tired because I didn’t go to bed very early last night. I also think the sleeping appliance and my sleep mask are not things I’m used to sleeping with so I don’t sleep as well with them.

I’m focusing on recentering on my house, and that anything is possible in my house.

Today there is a solar eclipse, and I’m excited for that. Maybe I will read a book really quick, then get some work done and drive over to watch the eclipse from this really cool park nearby.

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Workpost 30: Refocus

My mind feels wild

Like a disordered pair of weeds

Blowing in the wind

They seek home

Somewhere to rest their aching knots

And yet

I cannot find any purchase

The loose threads of my mind struggle

To connect into anything cohesive

Today I was feeling confused about a question:

Why do I no longer feel any motivation to do coaching? Is it because I’m scared to propose a $20,000 product? Am I scared to start a community?

And so I went for a walk. On my walk, I determined that it was because I desire to focus more than anything. Currently, I am focusing on posting for 50 days on LinkedIn and it’s taking a lot of energy. I need to be able to have fewer things on my plate.

However, when I sat down to write this journal. I realized that I’ve lost my way in these posts. I no longer do the hard work to grow and articulate how I am feeling. When I did, my poem revealed to me that I feel extremely lost and scattered in my mind. I’ve forgotten the helpful intentions I use to set myself into the mode of preparing my day:

  1. You are in my house
  2. Take your time, be patient
  3. Be ok with silence
  4. Take risks
  5. My house is a place where anything is possible
  6. Connection theory + flow theory

When I immerse myself in these intentions, I feel the distinct taste of possibility coming back to me and my world is opened wide enough to do the planning that I want to do in these posts.

Today I want to continue the work of yesterday and I want to focus on three things:

  1. AI project
  2. Linkedin post process
  3. To do list