Creating Excitement in Productivity

Byjack

I’ve been seeking excitement in my life for some time now. The excitement of walking up to random people to ask for them to vote for my non-profit, jumping off something high for parkour, or talking to a pretty girl on the street.

All those things felt like they had an element of risk but felt extreemly freeing and rewarding.

I wanted to know how to get more of this in my life and I stumbled upon a way to bring it into the more mundane parts of life, and if I can bring it into the mundane, perhaps I can bring it everywhere.

I realized that this can be used in any area where I have the desire to act but feel too afraid and that this could be any type of fear, not just social fear. For example, I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety recently with feeling overwhelmed by things. For example, I feel overwhelmed at the thought of taking out the dishes, going to the gym, doing a duolingo test or playing an online chess match against a real person.

Using the formula that I developed with talking to women (but no longer use since I have a girlfriend), here are the steps:

  1. Imagine that I am going for it, and that I can imagine myself doing so within the next few seconds
  2. Imagine the fullest extent of “going for it”, how would truly committing look like, how would feeling effortless and free look like
  3. Let the fear/excitement build up in your chest as you start to breathe
  4. Let the energy carry the action – you don’t have to act if it feels wrong, but let the energy flow through your breathing and let it move you
  5. Continue to breathe through the experience to stay connected to yourself

These steps can bring a feeling of aliveness and control over life. I should know, I used it to write this very post and shoot the video below.

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All That Matters Is Now

Byjack

I just made a little discovery about the nature of “should” and regret. What should I do, what should I have done, what is the perfect next move. They are interesting ideas but they can sometimes limit our understanding of the truth.

It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, or what will happen in the future, only how we feel about them now.

That is why everything is about processing feelings and even the permission exercise processes feelings about the future. Nothing matters but now.

It doesn’t even make sense to think about the future and the past because all we can control is the now.

Because nothing matters but the moment, we can process the past, we can process the future, and make our decision from where we are on how to feel the present. We can make decisions from the vantage point of now. We can do things now. We can feel now.

All that Matters is Now

I was scared of the past

Scared of what I might find

I was scared of the future

Scared of what I might do

But the place where I stand right now

With all the things that brought me to this moment

And all the paths that move on from here

Is all that matters

There is nothing I should do

There is only feeling what is

Only discovering

Acting

Understanding

Waiting

Focus & Slowing Down

Byjack

Most people think that focus is a heavy thing, it is an effort of concentration. But really focus is a light thing. It is something subtractive. The more things you remove, the more focused you are.

Removing distractions, removing goals, removing worries, removing clutter. All those things contribute to the feeling of focus.

The first step of any focus exercises is simply focusing on yourself. Forget your goals and tasks. Let go of everything. Forget figuring out what to let go of and what to focus on. Simply direct your attention to your feelings. Breathe. Nothing else matters. Slow down.

Slowing down is one of the quickest ways to access focus because speeding up is the mindset of the unfocused. It is the mindset of trying to juggle many things, to switch between many things at the same time.

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My Father Tells Me It’s Going to Be Hard

Byjack
My Father Tells Me It’s Going to Be Hard

As I sit on the chair and explain to him my life dreams

I was so caught up in listening to his objections

And explaining to him how it would be successful

I forgot to tell him that this is what makes me feel alive

I forget to tell it to him in a way

That he wouldn’t respond with judgement

And disgust

As if one’s purpose was something flimsy and cheap

Not the energy

That created the great figures

He admires so much

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Workspace 22: Relax

Byjack

I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.

I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.

I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:

  1. Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
  2. Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
  3. Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
  4. Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.

Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.

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New Coaching Instagram Page

Byjack

I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.

While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.

I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.

The videos were a little bit harder.

I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.

I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.

Shooting

This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.

Editing

This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.

Final Polish

I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.

A quick silly example of what this might look like:

  1. Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
  2. Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
  3. Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
  4. Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
  5. Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
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Valorant Poems

Byjack

Today I will be playing a lot of Valorant and hopefully processing a lot of the stress and feelings I have around Valorant through the use of poetry.

Pregame Stress

I’ve got knots in my stomach

What if it is another day

Of humiliation

That drop in my stomach

Feeling helpless

Like I’m worth nothing

I go down in rank

The more I play

What is wrong me

That I cannot get better

I hate this

Myself

Me

Hands Sweaty

On my keyboard

Heat on my face

Clenched stomach

It is no wonder

Valorant has such a big impact on me

I wish to let go of my fears

And remember the satisfaction of shooting

I starting to find it a challenge to write poetry because my mind always turns to thinking strategically and thinking in terms of sentanaces and bullet points. I’m going to roll with that. If that is how I feel, we are just going to write in sentences and bullet points.

I feel a bit tired like I’m walking through a haze. I’m scared to start a ranked game, and yet there is an eagerness to gain rr. Gold 1, what could go wrong? Yet I’m scared. HOW DID I GET TO GOLD 1? That’s unhead of. It gives me so much anxiety that I don’t know what is going on.

I want to remind myself of my main valorant tenants:

  1. Think of it as a 1v5
  2. Follow your feelings, peek when you are ready
  3. Keep wrist relaxed, use movement keys to aim

Some additional tenants:

  1. Find a space angle to hold, something that feels safe
  2. Peek expecting them there
  3. Notice things about aim, don’t try to change them, noticing is the pathway to the unconscious mind

Goddamn, this fucking omen can’t hit him while he’s moving . Why is Silver Movement so good?????

WHY IS THE RAZE HIDING IN THAT AREA? NO FUCKING COMMS? I hate this team. Why can I not hit shots.

I think I wasn’t aware of the danger I was in when clearing heaven. Maybe need more of that 1v5 mindset. Also, maybe need to notice where my shots are going. Scared but playing again. It is silvers I am with WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY KILLING ME. Counterstrafing, one tapping me??? WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

THIS IS LIKE GOING BACK 2 FUCKING YEARS. I guess what I thought before is that I would never drop this low because I can beat them on gamesense alone.

I feel tired. Why are the braindead idiots getting more kills? I feel a bit better now. I adjusted and I was able to get a bunch of kills in the end. I guess its just about holding better angles.

I don’t like this bullshit bottom fragging. I feel so tired and awful and I feel hungry.

It is interesting that with these reflections I was able to drop 39 kills in one of my games.