Workpost 43: Resilience (17 Questions)

Byjack

My questions:

  1. How to find a good business partner?
  2. How to live an entrepreneur/unemployed life?
  3. How to approach taxes as an entrepreneur?
  4. How to approach risk?
  5. How to build a support system?
  6. How to handle rejection?
  7. How to approach financial risk in a smart way?
  8. How to rebuild from nothing?
  9. How to deal with people looking down on you?
  10. How to get hired/search for a job?
  11. How to turn off work?
  12. How to minimize work effort/stress/inefficiency?
  13. How to process awkwardness?
  14. What are different selling methods?
  15. How to sell in a way that I feel myself?
  16. How to gain from/work with/ benefit from the American system?
  17. How can I be more resilient?

My intuitive answers to the questions:

How to find a good business partner?

  • Write down what the ideal business is like
  • Imagine all your favorite parts
  • Imagine all the parts you need help with
  • Write down your values
  • Think about where a person like this (values + good in the areas you are weak + interest in your business area) would like to do/hangs out
  • Ask close friends if they know someone like this

How to live an entrepreneur/unemployed life?

  • They are different questions
  • For the entrepreneur
    • Without a company, you need to build a company around you
    • Need to hire help/services to help automate different parts of life
  • For the unemployed
    • Now is the time to look for help
    • Look into government assistance, help from family and friends
  • To decide which one you are:
    • Unemployed when you no longer have ability to make money
    • If you have savings + some cashflow you are an entrepreneur
    • If you have no savings and negative cashflow, you are unemployed
    • You can be an entrepreneur and still work a job to increase your cashflow

How to approach taxes as an entrepreneur?

  • Find a CPA that has experience working with entrepreneurs

How to approach risk?

  • Risk is actually really simple
  • Risk value = probability of success x value of success
  • The higher the risk value, the more worth the risk, compare that with the resources the risk requires 

How to build a support system?

  • The easiest way are people who want to live in a similar world as you do
  • People who’s goals align with yours
  • The easiest way to ascertain this is just to ask people
  • You can also try to go to places that are included in your vision for what type of world you want to live in

How to handle rejection?

  • Repair the ways in which you rejected yourself

How to approach financial risk in a smart way?

  • Get good at estimating risk value and investment
  • If the risk value is $100,000, and the investment is $90,000 then the risk is likely worth it
  • If the risk value is $100,000 and the investment is $10,000 then the risk is definitely worth it

How to rebuild from nothing?

  • Know your strengths
  • Know what people want
  • Sell yourself

How to deal with people looking down on you?

  • Repair the ways other people have looked down on your in the past

How to get hired/search for a job?

  • Think about the jobs that will be easiest for you to get
  • Based on the interviews and discussions, adjust closer to what makes you happy

How to turn off work?

  • Create a viable plan for when pending work will be addressed
  • Write down the plan and execute when you are ready

How to minimize work effort/stress/inefficiency?

  • Focus on creating clarity at all times on what is expected and when
  • Set boundaries around respect and time
  • Make sure that the goals are specific and small enough to complete one at a time

How to process awkwardness?

  • Find reasons why awkwardness is a good thing

What are different selling methods?

  • Relationships sales – they like you
  • Technical sales – they like the technology
  • Pressure sales – they don’t want to say no
  • Trust sales – they trust you

How to sell in a way that I feel myself?

  • Trust sales + technical sales sounds most like me

How to gain from/work with/ benefit from the American system?

  • Sell to the rich
  • Hire people who are good at what they do
  • Outsource tedious stuff to other countries or AI

How can I be more resilient?

  • Spend time getting up when you fall
  • Specifically focus time and effort on healing from painful experiences
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Workpost 42: Loneliness

Byjack

I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.

Major ideas that might help me from this post:

  1. Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
  2. Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.

This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.

Main takeaways:

  1. A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
  2. A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.

For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.

I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:

  1. Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
  2. Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
  3. Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself

Workpost 41: Enjoy Yourself

Byjack

Today I did a long breathwork meditation session after feeling extremely stressed out about three questions:

  1. Should I sign up for jiujitsu again?
  2. Should I do coaching again?
  3. Should I continue therapy?

And all the worrying stressful sub questions:

  1. What about the money for jiujitsu
  2. Jiujitsu is so hard to get good at
  3. People might not buy my coaching if I didn’t do something really big
  4. Therapy costs so much money is it worth it?

And after the meditation, one thing was clear to me. The answer to everything: take everything so much less serious. Have fun!!!

If you have fun doing jiujitsu, sign up for it, go to classes when you feel like it. Have an amazing time doing work. If you love coaching, do it whether or not people believe that you are a good coach or not.

Enjoy yourself. Indulge yourself in boba while working. Take breaks to play on the piano, to draw.

P.S. I did sign up for jiujitsu, and I intend to have fun learning tons of new martial arts.

Matches 4: To do list

Byjack

Today the matches were a bit different. I focused on checking off major things I wanted to work on in my to do list for my own life.

Match 1

Reflections:

  1. My warmup was entirely physical. Nothing was mental. Hard to understand what is the most effective warmup, but I feel like I’m going in the right direction.

Result Calculation:

  1. How much closer does this work get to me to where I want to be? This work gets me significantly closer to where I need to be, not only just for my meeting with a mentor tomorrow, but also because it helps me get back into the coaching business.
  2. How did I perform mentally (efficiency, depth, speed) from 1-10? I’d say my performance was maybe a 6. High efficiency, middling depth and speed.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 5%. Not very innovative, business as usual.

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.

Matches 2: Results From Day 2

Byjack

Match 1

Reflections:

  1. Ended up spending all the warmup time at the gym
  2. Feel amazing but felt the mental work was less exceptional
  3. Felt much more healthy and sustainable
  4. Found that walking every 5 minutes or deep breathing was extremely nourishing and helpful

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth less maybe $100-$175. The task for getting the test data was time consuming but straightforward. The coding required much more thinking, but I didn’t get extremely far with it.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? Maybe a 5. Someone less intelligent could achieve this, but they would of course, need to put in a lot of effort.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 35% percentile. Pretty interesting ideas about character count. Pretty clever overall.
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? Not many gains, but will help me a lot with future work that will be very helpful in telling the story (looking at data).

Workpost 40: Refinement of the Game

Byjack

Today I made some definite progress. Even though I have the exact same feeling of lack of motivation, no interest in working. Wanting to just play games, I felt significantly better, having done spleen chi exercises both before bed and after waking up in the morning. As a result I started working 3 hours earlier than yesterday.

Today, I want to improve upon and refine on the game that I created for myself yesterday.

Firstly, in my walking meditation this morning, some wisdom came to me.

Relaxed > Easy > Fast

This was the wisdom first introduced to me in the book, Born to Run where the author talks about how you run completely relaxed first. Then you make your running more smooth, more efficient. If you are able to make it efficient and relaxed, you WILL be fast.

This is the same thing in Valorant. In your warmups you aren’t instantly trying to one tap everyone. You aren’t trying to do it fast. If you do, you probably are going too fast and the warmup won’t work.

You want to start slow (or even in the Miyagi technique, don’t even follow through with a shot, just track the target). As it becomes easy for you to hit headtaps, then you start to gradually speed up.

I want to implement this in my warmups. First, start off doing intense workout with the aim of expansion. Then focus on some brainteasers (Miyagi, completely relaxed). After a few minutes of that, work on to do list, trying to make my relaxed thinking more efficient and clean. Finally, at the tail end of the warmup, try to go fast. My thoughts are:

  • 5 min physical warmup
  • 2 min brainteasers
  • 5 min todolist
  • 3 min buffer

Then for the actual match, I would like to break it up more often with some deep breathing every 5 minutes, like I do with Valorant between rounds.

Workpost 39: Making the Most of It

Byjack

This morning I had a very slow start. Seems to be the same for a lot of days.

I really really focused on the idea that everything could be turned into an advantage. And today, I realized that the reason why I have slow starts is because my stomach burns, aches, and has gnawing empty pain. It is so bad, it is hard to focus and feel motivated to work.

The opportunity this morning is to devise some techniques to help with my stomach and be able to test it with the worst possible conditions. In other words, if the techniques work now, they will work anytime.

I tried this video first, and it was pretty helpful.

Then I tried this video which was helpful, but too boring to finish:

Finally, I tried drinking hot tea, which seemed to help some as well.’

And then, even though my stomach starting feeling better, I ran into another problem with avengance.

This problem was simple. Absolutely no motivation to do anything, being that I still felt tired and overwhelmed. Instead, I wanted to play games and watch tv shows.

I’m going to take the same approach here: use this as an opportunity to test out some new ideas with productivity.

So I have many many techniques in this area already, but I want to innovate further today in a different direction instead of meditation, letting go, focus, etc.

I want to look at why, even in my overwhelmed state, do I want to play Valorant and Fallout Shelter, and how I can fundamentally apply the same things to the things I want to do.

Things I Want To Do

  • Consulting work
  • Linkedin posts
  • Coaching work
  • Working out

Before I forget, here are some additional mindsets I can add the useful pile:

  1. Walking to vent stress, find peace, ask tough questions, get answers
  2. Workpost is to innovate something

Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Valorant

  • Can work on a specific skill like aim, movement, gamesense
  • Want to level up really quick and be a top player
  • Inspired by demon1, tenz, oxy, and aspas – want to be the best as well
  • Like working with a team, getting clutch plays off, good vibes

Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Fallout Shelter

  • Get control of my vault
  • Satisfaction in optimizing my vault
  • Satisfaction in leveling people up, and getting new weapons

Why It Is difficult to get the same feeling with work?

  • There is no specific simple skill to work on
  • Nothing I want to level up in
  • No one to inspire me
  • No team to work with
  • Don’t feel in complete ownership of the project
  • In a hurry to get it done

What skills am I excited want to work on in terms of work?

  • Faster problem solving skills
  • Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
  • Ability to think deeper with less effort
  • Memory and recall with less energy

What do I want to level up in terms of rank?

  • Money
  • Intellect
  • Thought leadership
  • Communication and charisma

Who do I draw inspiration from?

  • Elon Musk
  • Alex Hormozi
  • Khalid Sharara

How might I work off my team more?

  • Showing off the results of my work

How might I feel more in control of my work?

  • Understand that charisma, leadership are part of what I need to own and protect my work, just because there are other players involved doesn’t mean I don’t own it

Using all this information, I want to develop a unit of work, called a “game” or “match” to simulate what I do in Valorant. In Valorant you play a match with a clear objective, and you warm up before the game, and take breaks after the game.

Game Structure

Warmup: 15 minutes

Use to do list, practice one skill at a time:

  1. Faster problem solving/solution creation skills
  2. Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
  3. Ability to think deeper with less effort
  4. Memory and recall with less energy

Main game: 45 minutes

Fights:

Capture questions and answers.

Level up in:

  • Money
  • Intellect
  • Thought leadership
  • Communication and charisma

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth?
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10?
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation?
  4. Gains in communication and charisma?

Workpost 38: Time Off

Byjack

Today I feel mentally and physically drained. I went to bed at 3 AM last night. I feel defeated, anxious, and sad about my relationship. I keep asking myself what it means to own a startup, what it means to be in charge. I think what it means is to be able to take a day off if you need to.

Let’s take a look at some of the different areas of my life right now:

STARTUP

  1. I’m disappointed in both the effectiveness and efficiency with customer projects as well as the level of sales outreach.
  2. I feel disconnected from my partner with quite a bit of friction, feeling that there is always a barrier to do what I want to do.

What might be the next steps?

  1. Identify areas my partner is strong in to involve him more on things I need help with
  2. Identify areas I feel strongly I should lead and take more leadership in that area

LIFE

  1. I’m a bit stagnated on my todo list
  2. My life systems for food and exersise are seeing big wins
  3. Huge desire to get more sleep

What might be my next steps?

  1. Fallout during the day only for leveling up people
  2. Netflix and long fallout sessions at night in bed
  3. To do list cleaning/grooming on fridays

COACHING

  1. I’ve stopped completely
  2. Undecided on whether to work on my own art projects or continue coaching
  3. I want to work on my youtube channel and an art group

What might be my next steps?

  1. Finish artist interview challenge
  2. Outreach for potential clients

RELATIONSHIP

  1. I feel misunderstood a lot, mismatching values, too much physical distance
  2. I love my girlfriend very much

What might be next steps?

  1. Journal more on the painful feelings
  2. Use them to grow and understand myself better

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Workpost 37: Fundamental Systems

Byjack

Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.

These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.

I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.

And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.

Systems in place:

  1. Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
  2. Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
  3. Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
  4. Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
  5. Whiteboards to write strategies
  6. Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
  7. Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
  8. Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
  9. Crawling to get cardio in small space
  10. Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
  11. Hanging for shoulders and posture
  12. Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
  13. Journaling to ask myself questions at night
  14. Walking with no effort

I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.

Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming

Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming

Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.

To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:

Reasons Why I’m Ready

  • I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
  • When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
  • I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
  • I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
  • I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
  • I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
  • No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
  • The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
  • Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
  • I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved