I’m very much enamored with the idea of changing the way I work in this new world of contracting, freelancing, and entrepreneurship.
In this new world, the certainty of your career and job is no longer there – leaving both an opportunity and a problem depending on how you look at it.
The certainty that was filled by your job needs to be filled in some other way – and I propose that way is via a strong system of habits, routines, and mindsets that lead to strong health (both mental and physical) leading to high energy, happiness, and peace.
I like to think about this as the perpetual retreat – my ideal vacation or workshop where vast amounts of work is done not at the expense of one’s happiness or physical well being.
What I would love this perpetual vacation to look like:
Ideal working conditions (lots of light, spaces, nice temperature, comfy seats and pillows, people with common values)
Constant personal growth (always learning and progressing in areas I care about)
Strong support system (therapists, coaches)
Physical training (swimming, running, martial arts, weight training)
Natural sleep when possible (wake up when I feel like it, nap when I want to)
Next questions to figure out:
How will I balance naps with working enough hours?
How do I balance free methods with paid assistance?
How will I find the kind of coworking/community you would find at a retreat?
What do I bring more learning type energy out of meetings and working on projects that aren’t personal to me?
The initial thought I have about paid assistance is that if it enables me to earn more, then its a no brainer to get it. If it simply makes my experience more vacation-like, then it must fit into a budget.
Today is not the first day working on the Profit in Peace challenge, but it does FEEL like the first day I am living it.
Today is the first day when I dedicated my morning to finding my magical life. For some context of what that means:
Something that I still don’t really understand or feel comfortable with applying is the values that I believe in every day.
I think that writing honestly and focusing on myself in this blog every morning might actually hit all of these points:
Honesty – well, this blog isn’t called unfiltered for no reason! I do remind myself all the time of the “if they don’t like me please leave” mentality.
Imagination – for me, this blog is dedicated to all my imaginative parts: art, YouTube, philosophy, poetry etc.
Intuition – this is the place where doing things “my” way is celebrated and I tap into what is the best way to do something (according to my intuition) rather than how everyone else does it.
Empathy – this blog is a lot for my feelings where I process feelings through words, video, and images. It is a part of honesty too, honest emotion where this is my place to express everything imperfect.
I also like using the blog as my way of living out all my values and being the person I want to be because it really feels like I am sacrificing something to do this…in a good way.
JT Franco talks about if you aren’t willing to sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice. In the end, I had no idea whether I would sacrifice time talking to my girlfriend, going on YouTube, working, playing games, or making YouTube videos. Those are the things I spend most of my day doing anyway. But none of those things seemed right. It was too blunt on an idea, how could you sacrifice all of YouTube? How could I sacrifice all of work?
But by sacrificing my mornings, in a way, I am also sacrificing all of those things. I resist the urge to listen to audiobooks, watch YouTube videos, check messages, or work in the morning. I dedicate all my time to working on my blog and all my challenges, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies.
I also feel a deep unease and anxiety keeping pace with me this morning:
I’m Afraid I My Boss Will Check
I’m afraid my boss will check
See I’m not working
It won’t matter that I have bigger dreams
it won’t matter if I did a bunch of planning
On the weekend
Feverishly, desperately trying to
Make my workday
Productive, efficient enough
To make up
To make it easy
For me to balance
I remember the look on his face
When I told him
I like to meditate
Skeptical
And
I also wonder
If finding my magic
Will make me feel sad and lonely
Like I did yesterday
I feel tired as I
Let go of trying to change the feeling
And accept it instead
Another anxiety that I have about this challenge or this “morning commitment” is just the sense of lack of clarity. I don’t know what I should be working on, or what I can work on. I think is the pressure of time. Or maybe its because I completed all the prework for the challenge and I don’t exactly have something to work on right now. I’m afraid every action is not “right”.
Is it the right thing to:
Work on challenge videos?
Work on editing videos?
Work on reaching out?
To focus on my body?
Wow there is so much here and I feel that I may be stalling. Scared to make a decision so I’m just rambling on a super long blog post that doesn’t really say anything in particular.
Well all I know right now is I feel like doing a bit of freewriting, fantasy writing or something of that nature. So I’ll go do that.
Last night I was feeling some doubts about my coaching practice and I did some IFS therapy on myself to work through some of the shame and anger I feel around people rejecting my coaching or not seeing its value.
Today, I woke up feeling really tired but now I’m feeling good.
I’m working on stuff of my choosing and I really like it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my business lately and what the starving crowd and what I want to happen.
I feel like I’ve finally cracked the code a little bit about selling high-ticket clients and expensive products.
So after listening and reading Alex Hormozi for two days here is what I learned:
Charge an obscene amount
Use that amount to create a crazy experience
Solve a really big problem (to create really big value)
I think what really big value I want to create with my coaching is to help people create a masterpiece.
If I was to breakdown Alex Hormozi’s formula for value:
The dream: create an artistic masterpiece – a breakout piece (this will make you a career in this space a breakout piece, you will feel proud of yourself, you will be able to call yourself an artist proudly, this will be the best work you’ve ever created)
The certainty: I am an artist and engineer, I have a lot of experience coaching people through mental blocks, I will give you a guarantee.
The time: 1 year
The effort: without giving up your mental sanity, quitting your job, or disconnecting from family
Value of this offer: 250,000+
10-15%: 25,000 – 37,500
2,083 – 3,125 per month
Three stages:
Explore art
Establish your routine
Create your masterwork
Objections/fears:
I don’t have enough time
I don’t know what I want to do
I have kids
I don’t want to quit my job
I don’t know what other people will like, what if people don’t like it
This is a recap of an exercise I did a few weeks ago. I was watching a ThinkMedia youtube video about how to succeed at youtube. He went through and exercise looking at 3 things in this order: passion, proficiency, and profit.
Basically, he said to make a list of all the things that you are passionate about, either things you like or things you hate, and things you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it.
My list was:
Making money
Finding leverage
Valorant
Corporate life (hate)
Coaching
Challenges
Superhuman abilities
Graphic novels
Children’s books, fantasy
Health
AI
Surface level thinking (hate)
Then, he said to take that list of things and think about what we have at least 1 year of proficiency in, where we have been doing that thing semi-successfully. So I narrowed down my list to:
Making money
Valorant
Feeling stuck in life
Deeper thinking
Coaching
Health
AI
Then, he said to narrow down that further into things that we could build an audience around, something people need or would want to buy. Here was my list:
How to get started with a business
How to aim
How to get unstuck in life
How to unlock your potential
How to repair your body
How to use AI to improve your life
I don’t know if I have any interest pursuing youtube in this way, but it was an interesting exercise to reflect on.
I love love love traveling but one thing I cannot stand is sleeping well in hotels.
Hotels rooms always feel:
Too stuffy somehow, not enough circulation (I hate that you cannot open the window)
Too cold
The mattress doesn’t feel firm enough
Blankets aren’t soft or warm and fluffy (they are thin and scratchy)
I strategized last night to get the best nights sleep and here are the things I did:
Ate dinner in the lobby where the air circulation was better and feels like more fresh oxygen
Turn the heat up as high as it would go (78 degrees F)
Made the bed as comfortable as possible moving the blankets and pillows around to create a nice nest
Took a shower, then went back down to the lobby to unwind
Feel asleep in the lobby then went back to the room to sleep
I feel like this actually was a REALLY good routine but I didn’t sleep well because the spicy wings I ate the day before made my stomach uncomfortable. I’m going to try to see if tonight I can fall asleep like in a coma.
For the longest time, I’ve thought that my job was pretty much perfect. It wasn’t the highest paying job, or the one that I loved the most, but I think it has many many good elements such as:
Good enough pay to never have to worry about money
Good work/life balance, lots of work sometimes, little work others
Lots of traveling
Get to practice speaking and work on fun projects
Obviously, I could find a job even better in every area, but this is quite good already.
I realized recently why I still feel tired and think that it is too much work so often. THE WORK LIFE BALANCE IS HORRIBLE.
Ok, I understand I just contradicted myself there, but the reason why I think the work life balance is good is because on paper, there are lots of downtime where I can do whatever I want. However, because of the amount of emotional pressure that I put on myself, I’m actually always thinking about work which means that there is actually no worklife balance at all.
I worry if I kick back and ignore work for a while:
I will not be able to focus when I really need to so I need to get all the work done that I can
I will not be able to have enough time to get my work done when I really need to so I need to be working all the time
Someone will ask me what I’ve been working on and I will be outed as someone who is not contributing anything
Some of the anxieties I have around actually working:
I worry I will create ugly applications and I will come off as bad and incompetent
I worry I will not build enough for my application and I will come off as lazy or incompetent
I worry that when I go into meetings I will look unprepared and stupid
If I am able to deal with the emotional burden of this job and turn work into something soothing and relaxing for me, I will actually be so happy in this job. This will be the easiest money I will ever make and it will free me up to make money in other ways as well.
I’m going to do this in a couple of ways:
Practice acceptance of where I am. Give myself permission to be bad
Reprogram the idea that I will be rejected if I am not perfect
Look for ways to make my job extremely easy
Find ways to meet my needs through my jobs
So Step 1:
I am lazy, incompetent, unproductive and stupid. I accept myself for it. I give myself permission to be this way as much as I want to be.
Step 2:
The Bossy Man
In the meeting
Which I spent
Almost no time preparing for
He asked me to show
Something
I didn’t want to show
I said no
The meeting
Was under my
Control
The Finicky Architect
I created something
That I didn’t think
Was good enough
To stop him from asking question
Yet I showed up not to impress
But to help
And we were both happy
By the end
Step 3:
Where are the hardest parts of my job?
1 – Learning about new technology
Takes a long time
Hard to know what to focus on
Hard to remember
Ideas on how to make it easier:
Create materials for myself to make my life easier (cheat sheets, presentations)
Look for a way to make my life easier
Timebox an attempt to learn quickly
Focus on one area that has impact
2 – Building mockups
Takes time to understand the customer’s process
Hard to formulate what I need
Hard to understand how to design it
Hard to work out the technical parts of building out a process
Ideas on how to make it easier:
Clearly articulate what I need
The interfaces
What the style is
The processes
The data structures
The priority
Get help on the UI
Get help on the build itself
3 – Presenting the product
Never know what they will ask me to explain or click on
Hard to boil down the flow to a few steps
People may want to test you on areas that they don’t understand or may be hard to show
Ideas on how to make it easier:
Get the clarity I need:
Why they are asking the question?
What are they testing me on? What is the thing I need to prove?
What do they already know or understand?
Pause
Think about my gameplan
Use metaphors to bridge understanding gaps
Walk through what I’m about to do in my head before I do it on the screen
Step 4:
The most annoying things at work and how I will meet my needs through it:
Building mockups
Contribution: Who am I helping with this?
Growth: What will I do better with this demo?
Significance: What special signature will be mine?
Uncertainty: What is it that interests me the most about this demo?
Certainty: What do I want to copy? Who can make my life easier? How long do I need realistically?
Filing expense reports, doing training and filing quarterly reviews
Love and Connection: Who can I have a working/hangout session with?
Uncertainty: What time challenge should I give myself?
Boring meetings/trainings
Certainty: Why am I joining? What questions do I need to ask? If none, make a note of what I need from the meeting and watch the recording.
Love and Connection: Reach out to the presenter and tell them what you liked
Giving demos and presentations
Contribution: How can I be the most helpful?
Significance: Why am I showing this?
Uncertainty: Don’t prepare
Certainty: What am I afraid of?
Ok, that’s it for now. I will say that writing this blog post has been tremendously helpful. I will be referencing this over and over again it is just so useful. Hopefully after using it many many times, it will be ingrained within me and I won’t need to look at it anymore.
