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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.

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Workpost 35: Naps

Byjack

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

Byjack

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

Byjack

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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Workpost 32: The Power of Belief

Byjack
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

Byjack

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

Byjack

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

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Workpost 29: Health

Byjack

Today I woke up feeling really tired. I felt undermotivated to do the things that I want to do: take walks, write in my journal. I think I’ve also been finding it hard to retain purpose for some reason, or motivation or energy to power that purpose.

I realized this morning that a big reason as to why is simply health. I felt too much discomfort in my stomach in my head, too tired.

Today’s goals are simple:

  1. Clean up my apartment to a level that I could invite people over and feel good about it
  2. Focus on my health and wellness, drink lots of water and take naps, eat good food
  3. Move around a lot, I have a lot of todo list items, and I can take them different places

I’m really excited for the last one, to get outside my apartment a little more. I have more money now to do these sorts of things, so I would like to explore austin a little more, go to the library, parks, coffee shops and just have a good time while I’m working through all the different to-do list items. I have some truly excellent protocols for figuring out how to work on the move and I want to use them.

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Workpost 28: Taxes & Art Therapy

Byjack

Today I feel very tired but at least better rested than normal. I really want to finish my taxes today and I also want to experiment with art therapy and exercise to help get through the stress and effort of finishing.

My initial thoughts about art therapy is that it is all about reconnecting with your body…to do flow theory or follow what you feel. Art is about touching the forms with lines and paint, music is about creating sound, dance is about moving your body.

I’m doing more research. Here is a video that talks about using art to find a safe place:

Here is another video:

Current art therapy ideas:

  1. Express what you feel kinesthetically
    • Scribbling
    • Banging on the piano
    • Flow theory dance
    • Free writing
  2. Create a safe space, express what feels safe
    • Drawing
    • Writing
    • Music
  3. Repetitive motions
    • Shapes
    • Chords
    • Motions

But how does this translate to greater art creation? How does this create a world?

Thinking about this more, art creation is about the following:

  1. What you want to share with others
  2. What you find beautiful
  3. What you feel wonder about
  4. What stories you want to tell
  5. What is quirky, unique, and creative
  6. What worlds you want to live in and provide others

I have a couple ideas of how to transition from therapeutic art to art art:

  1. My therapy exercise (take a problem and solve it in the story by making the main character face a problem 10x more painful)
  2. Express what emotions you are feeling strongly
  3. Capture a memory
  4. Start with a characters
  5. Start with world
  6. Do a fanfic
  7. Daydream

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Workpost 27: Business Inspiration

Byjack
  1. Start with what you love
  2. Learn how to do what you love doing better
  3. Find a partner to fill gaps within your execution
  4. Come up with simple execution plan
  5. Figure out where the revenue comes from
  6. Start with purpose, later you manage purpose not employees
  7. Delay gratification
  8. Culture has to be client centric
  9. Hacking luck is about persistence
  10. Taking risk increases luck
  11. How to deal with failure
    • Don’t let things own you
    • Do not let short term ego go (enjoy looking like a loser)
    • Learn to embrace getting a D
  12. Take your time
  13. Don’t ask yourself what you will do when you grow up, ask yourself what problem you want to solve
  14. Write down in detail what person you are looking for in a cofounder
    • Opposite of what you love to do
    • Same moral code
    • Post it everywhere
  15. Sell the sizzle, not the steak
  16. Build sales relationship
    • Do they need you?
    • Do you like them?
  17. Marketing is about experimenting and connecting with people over time
  18. Marketing is all about the process and the system
  19. Marketing is about having fun
  20. Write press release like its the actual story, do all the work for the journalist (high res photos)
  21. Lean into marketing for other brands you like and they can lead to brand sponsorship

Something I was thinking about in this video is how I love challenges, but I don’t like failures. But maybe the most important thing to do, or a really good outcome for a challenge is failure, and I can focus on failure if I want to. I think maybe a big part of failure, is unexpected outcomes. It isn’t important that you didn’t succeed at what you originally went for, but how you grew in the process of trying and discovering what unexpected things were on the other side.

The cofounder part is also really interesting in writing down what I want so I can recognize someone when I see them.

Sales relationships makes me think about reaching out with all my goals and involving people on a journey because that is the thing that interests me the most, it is the thing that I can connect with people on very easily and naturally.

Marketing is making me think that failure might also be about the story you can tell afterwards. The story is not about success, it is about the exciting hook and premise. Failure is one of the most interesting ends to a story, although it can be depressing.