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Valorant Higher Elo Insights

Byjack

Yesterday I played two 10 man customs with my brother. It was interesting because everyone was higher elo (high plat to diamond, and immo peak).

I realized something while playing with them. First, they aren’t much better skill wise, but take much fewer risks when they place. I often take a lot of risks and rely on my aim.

However, something occurred to me recently while watching profession Valorant play.

Diamonds and even immortal are not the best Valorant players and I know even from my own Valorant games that playing defensive is not always the best move.

The point is the take risks when you need to, like when your team is down numbers, or if you have a read. In those moments, you need to believe in yourself, trust in your aim and play aggressive, not afraid.

Often times, when I play aggressively, it is out of fear, confusion, and pressure to make a play. When I play defensive, I’m always afraid, confused and defensively hide.

I wonder what it would be like to play in a more yin yang balanced approach. As you would in tai chi, be soft when they are hard, hard when they are soft. What that might me in Valorant is to be gone from places where the team is holding strong map control, and be present in places where they are weak.

I don’t exactly know how this will work as a technique, but I’d like to try it out today.

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Knee Strength 8: Strength Side

Byjack

I’ve been feeling the need to add much more intensity to my knee workouts but I don’t know what. I sought out some outside help from one of my favorite youtube channels that I discovered: Strength Side.

1. Foam Roll Lateral Leg, 2-4 min. each leg
2. Single Leg Hinge Stretch, 20 sec. hold x 3
3. Knee Circles, 20 each direction
4. Poloquin/Peterson Step Up, 15-20 (beginner) or 8-15 reps (full range)
5. Single Leg Calf Raise, 10-15 each leg
6. Sidelying Leg Lift, 8-12 reps with 6 sec pause at top
7. Split Squat, 8-12 reps, pause 5-10 sec on last rep before knee touches ground
8. Squat to Seiza, 2-6 reps *only if knees feel healthy

Hamstring Leg Curl, 5-10 reps

I also found a free version of Knees Over Toes:

Workpost 10: Shortpost

Byjack

Today I want to write a short post because I want to strike a better balance today between work and indulgence, between freedom and routine.

Yesterday I did have fun, but my need for productivity left me feeling stressed because I didn’t get much done. At the same time, I want to fully enjoy what I did yesterday which was play and watch a lot of Valorant.

If I’m able to do that, go outside and be more active, as well as go to sleep at a good nice, I’ll be pretty happy.

Right now, I feel like shit cuz I went to bed at 1am but that’s ok…I needed to unwind a bit!

So this is going to be a short post because I’m gonna get started with work right away. I want to get enough work done, that I can start trying out this working while walking outside and going to the gym and working on art.

I did this yesterday for a very little time and it was absolutely awesome. I drove to go get food and while I was walking I was asking chatgpt about a coding problem I had and thinking about it.

It felt really good. Productive, free, and fun! Now I need to take that code, implement it, make it work so I can be active again and solve the next piece of the puzzle.

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 8: Crawling

Byjack

I did not wake up feeling good. I went to bed at 11:40 (much earlier to my credit! I ended up not working on one of my projects and didn’t play Valorant). However, I couldn’t fall asleep because I just showered and my body was too hot.

This morning, I went for a walk and I crawled for about 30 minutes. Crawling feels EXTREMELY good. I found a way to do it very naturally. I think it is funny how great hardship yet again provides so much value. I know how to crawl because I had to learn how to walk properly after messing up my knee so much that it hurt to walk. In learning how to walk I have a clear idea of how to shift my weight and do the same thing when I crawl. I’m going to try to crawl more throughout the day.

Other than crawling, I did feel extremely happy last night driving around but again in the morning I feel kind of lonely and depressed and I wonder again what I can do to soothe that.

Perhaps, I will play some Valorant today, do some art and music, and more crawling because those things all make me happy. I also reached out to a lot of friends yesterday and a lot of people wanted to talk today so maybe I will talk to them too. I am excited to go on the trip to California with my brother and sister!

As for the different projects, here are my thoughts:

  1. AI Consulting: I’m happy with the new direction, but nervous about shooting the videos
  2. Art Coaching: Really excited about my new ideas, interested in creating the materials that I’ve been planning for
  3. Art Coaching Product Research: Feeling pretty anxious about this since this is what I dropped yesterday due to time constraints
  4. Demo work: feel bored by it
  5. I also want to revist my knee challenge for my spar with my friend coming up and my knee challenge for the same reason
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AI Consulting Ideas: Y Combinator Podcast

Byjack

Major takeaways from video:

  • 50% of YC focused on AI, but not because they focus on AI, but because they focus on smart good founders, and many smart people are focusing on AI
  • Tarpits are things that seem really exciting for a lot of founders, but actually isn’t that great…might be hard to solve the real problem
  • Example tarpits for AI: copilot, chat interfaces
  • Use UX and software, and instead of chat interface, add in LLMs in background
  • Boring is often good
  • Example of boring: AI that is able to search government contracts and apply for relevant ones
  • If someone doesn’t want to buy your AI product, try to compete with the market itself
  • For example: if you develop a product for a industry and they won’t buy it, see if you can build your own company in that industry and see if you can beat them
    • I think this is KEY for consulting for big ideas like I want to do (solve their biggest issue) I need to think of ideas that would run them out of business if I made a company enhanced with AI
  • Specific is important: don’t do a catchall, include a lot of business logic
  • Prompting and GPT wrappers is the future: SAAS is basically a MySQL wrapper
  • AI security is the future
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Workpost 7: New AI Consulting Plan

Byjack

Okok. After working on my AI Consulting Plan for a few days, something is really fucking clear to me (excuse my French).

I need more than 10 days to make a name for myself. I am going to need 3 months. Videos are the absolute best way to make a name for myself. However, videos take absolutely forever to create.

So let us give us enough time to make them.

Goal: Be known, give preview of consulting

UNIT ONE (1 month): Build a crowd who will engage with anything I put out

  • Shoot 3 simple videos
  • Shoot 3 complex videos
  • Write 6 LinkedIn posts
  • Involve people every step of the way

UNIT TWO (1 month): Get people to start reaching out to me with AI questions

  • Create reaction videos to comments
  • Create videos based off on comments

UNIT THREE 1 month): Get big enough following to invite famous people on my videos

  • Figure out the platform I can get big on
  • Post on it consistantly

BONUS (1 day): Look for automation/outsourcing, try to make as low effort as possible

Ok let’s dive in deeper.

UNIT ONE (1 month ends March 22nd)

  1. Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)
  2. Executing, shooting and editing (10 days ends March 12th)
  3. Feedback and editing for bigger videos (10 days ends March 22nd)

And even deeper….

UNIT ONE | Part 1 Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)

  1. Create plans for each of the videos (4 days ends Feb 25th)
    • What videos I want to shoot (already done)
    • What those videos will look like in the intro (partly done)
    • What clips I need
    • What research I need
    • Who I need to talk to
    • When I need it by – figure out shooting schedule
    • How to break down each of the ideas into smaller content
  2. Figure out how to shoot each video (3 days ends Feb 28th)
    • Break down as much of the video as I can
    • If needed, come up with an imaginary best case scenario story just to know what shots I need
    • Solidify shooting schedule
    • Reach out to the people I need to reach out to
  3. Shoot preliminary non-essential parts of video (3 days ends March 2nd)
    • Shoot any part that I can that don’t require other people
    • Essentially get started with filming
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Workpost 6: Revelations About Coaching Part 1

Byjack

My first day of meditating and brainstorming ideas for my coaching.

UNIT ONE: Focus on my craft – become a coach I would hire for 1000 per month | Create plans

Here are my initial ideas:

  • Do a strengths assessment (maybe something inspired by other strengths assessments such as Clifton strengths, Myers Briggs, DISC or Enneagram)
  • Do a values assessment (similar to strengths assessment)
  • Do a ikigai assessment?
  • Do an assessment on how well balanced in different areas of life
  • Create an agreement document
  • Look up some of the documents from my coaching with John Polestra
    • Agreements, assessments, and my own goals structures
  • Networking
    • Social media experts?
    • Network with other clients
    • Sales people
    • People who have a band?
  • Create a meditation shortcut
    • Dedicate a significant amount of time (time = results)
    • Act like it is forever
    • Live in the land of sensations
    • Be patient
  • Create method for capturing thoughts from coaching session
    • Breakthroughs
    • Million dollar issues
    • Emotions
    • Needs
    • Sparks of inspiration
  • I would want to hire the following coach
    • Intelligent
    • Warm, loving
    • Insightful and deep

I wonder what it takes to be that loving person. I feel that I need to enjoy life, and go on more adventures. Perhaps I need to be more accepting myself. All I know is that practicing some sort of radical acceptance and understanding towards myself and my clients, being vulnerable and loving is worth $1000 per month in itself. That takes a lot of work and I’m not entirely sure what I need to do next. I feel a bit stumped to be honest, but I suppose that is something I can meditate on more tomorrow.

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Workpost 5: Panic Attack

Byjack

I was just on the border of a panic attack when I went to go exercise.

My Head Hurts

Eyes are swimming in a pain in the back of my head

Heart beating like its a race

And no matter how fast it beats

It isn’t fast enough

To catch up

With the work I want to do

After hanging for a little bit, I decided something. I need to go back to basics. As the level of work, my ambition, my organization go up…so have my stress levels. It is beginning hard to relax, hard to feel in the moment. It feels like I’m in an endless race with no chance to catch my breath.

So here are the basics:

  1. The planning I’m doing in these blog posts give me a huge edge in terms of direction and thought process in a huge number of goals at the same time. However, I now need to do the opposite. The basic I have in mind is this – focus on one thing at a time. Make a todo list. Create prioritization. Make it emotionally make sense (choose what emotionally feels important to focus on first, not logically). Clear all distractions and focus on one thing.
  2. Use the taoist approach to achieve fulfillment. Work until you feel empty.
  3. Use the coaching mindset…let the world come to you, have patience.

I also realized I did not work on the product research goal.

So here it is:

Goal: Create free products in 1 month | UNIT ONE: Complete research | Part 1 Transcribe and think, what is the million dollar problem or breakthrough?

  • One interview per day