Workpost 52: Exhausted

I feel exhausted. My head feels numb. I feel hot and tired. My back aches.

My heart feels heavy. I feel angry at myself. So helpless. My mind in a fog.

My apartment is a mess. I just want to cry.

I can’t work. I just play games all day long. my eyes feel tired.

It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. All I want to do is eat and play video games. The pull is so strong in my heart like there is a strand of honey getting pulled.

I feel a numb panic deep in my chest. I’m afraid of failure. I’m scared I will disappoint myself and everyone around me. Pushing myself to make my business cards is only making me curl up even harder.

It was a long week. I’m exhausted. But the work just keeps coming.

I guess I can cancel tai chi tomorrow. Sleep in.

Tonight I can clean my apartment until I feel more peaceful.

I know I can use the gym as a way to process emotions, but I don’t use it.

I feel this pull, this overwhelm, like the honey being pulled, from my heart.

I’m capable of anything. Even rising from this challenge. This is important because as I get more successful, there will be days I feel exhausted, and in those moments, I need to find a way to find balance, to find peace.

I also want to learn to embrace failure. Failure is so scary to me. There is an image in my mind of my business cards being a complete disappointment and I feel a pit in my heart. A horrible amaturish website I’m not proud of and I can’t fix it.

Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts at the beginning. The people who are exceptional, who are savants are not people who started at the middle. They are people who enjoyed the beginning.

But how can I enjoy this? I feel so scared it won’t be good.

Makes me think of this video:

In this video, Jesse talks about how play allows us to feel pressure while still being able to learn.

That fun is the key to this.

But what is the key to fun? What would make this fun for me, regardless of the outcome, what would make designing and drawing fun for me?

What would make it an infinite game, not just a finite game focused on an end goal?

It’s true, the thought of designing business cards does not sound fun to me at all. It sounds like a slog. But maybe that’s because I’m worried about failing.

Ok, what if I tried to merge my painterly style with “woodcut” style prints. What if I created a new drawing technique that I could use to create cool stuff for friends and to sell as products?

That definitely sounds more like play to me.

So what about going to the gym, because I like it so much when I actually go, but I find it hard to go to begin with.

What if I saw it as supercharging myself – which it really is doing. Whether I go to lift weights or just to hang from the bar and stretch it really is building my body up to full potential. It might even solve my sleep problems.

And what about sleep, why do I not want to go to bed? Because if I go to bed, tomorrow, I wake up with tons of problems. Well maybe, that’s not a bad thing. Maybe before I go to bed, I fill my to do list with questions that I want to search out the answers to.

Here are the questions I have today, that if I knew the answers to I would rest easy:

1. What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
   • Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it?
   • Should I extend the schedule?
   • Am I losing money?
2. How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working?
3. What do I do about my art coaching website?
4. How do I get everything done in such a short period of time?
5. Should I start registering for fairs?
6. Should I pay someone to design the website for me?
7. How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently?
8. How do I start going to the gym and working outsite the apartment consistently?
9. How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time?
10. How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses?
11. When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time.

I have a new structure I want to propose for my matches.

• 5 mins – pregame win conditions (set my win conditions for the match)
• 15 mins – warmup
• 40 mins – the match itself
• postgame eval (see how close I am to my win conditions)

Match 1

Objectives: Go through todo list and work list for anything quick and get it done or make progress

Win conditions:

1. Speed: how quickly I make decisions and make progress (percentile)
2. Precision: how accurate my decisions are (percentile)
3. Ease: how rejuvenated and relaxed I feel (1-5)
4. Innovation: how creative and efficient “smart” my solutions are (percentile)

Post match review:

I went through the tasks pretty fast and I was left trying to find more work to do. I thought some tasks were super tedious and it makes sense why I didn’t want to do them. I did experience some stress from the sheer speed I was going at and some breaks might have been nice.

1. Speed: 65% percentile, fast but not crazy
2. Precision: 65% percentile, accurate but nothing crazy
3. Ease: 2 I honestly feel kinda tired, maybe no breaks
4. Innovation: 20% percentile, not really innovative at all

I haven’t figure out a way to do the process of downloading statements faster before I started. I didn’t think particularly much about the upwork post before I did it. One thing I learned is a little of prep might go a long way also, some breaks can help.

These days I’m focused on increasing my leverage.

My intuition tells me that three things will unlock the money making potential that my abilities have.

1. Focus. I need to be ok with saying no to more things, focusing on one thing at a time. Lack of focus is creating overwhelm, which in turn costs me my productivity.
2. Fear of rejection. My fear of rejection holds me back from doing things that would instantly make me more money.
3. Youtube and content creation. This is a communication/art skill that has tremendously high leverage if I can figure it out.

Currently, I don’t have much time every day because I go for a run everyday and I am working on my vision and taking care of my health. That means I have perhaps 3 or 4 hours of good working time.

I originally was thinking about giving up or changing this practice I have so I’m less tired and can work more, but I’m actually gonna practice something different, which is saying no to more things.

I feel overwhelmed and exhausted today. I want to finish a lot of things today but I feel overwhelmed thinking about it. Maybe it’s time to process more fears.

I have to finish my work today.

I feel it in the pit of my stomach, my chest this numbing roaring anxiety but also exhaustion and numbness in my head.

I feel like a failure. I’m panicking about not being able to get work done.

One thing that came up for me is that working really hard can help me sleep. All I need to do is fail at creating a package. All I need to complete the deliverable, it doesn’t matter if I do it in a shitty way.

Tony Robbins said to fall in love with your customer.

I want to see my customer succeed. I want to see them happy and thriving. I can make that happen.

I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid the day will pass me by.

Not being able to sleep means there is extra energy I have to use. I can use that energy to help my customer and myself. You don’t need to sleep until you feel that release.

I’m afraid I will play Valorant or do something else to cope. I’m afraid the day will pass me by. I’m afraid my addictions will drain me of energy.

Wanting to play Valorant is a sign for massage and addressing some of the physical issues I am experiencing.

Today I feel tired. Coming off of a early morning and a workout, watching a lot of Valorant, I’m in a position where I still feel a bit tired. I’m excited to update my blog, but I’m not so sure about the marketing call.

I really hope to make money off of my passion and find success in the AI space finally and I hope today’s session will help with that.

I feel strongly that I want to preserve boundaries with this coach because I feel he doesn’t respect boundaries for some reason.

I feel nervous and uncomfortable with the call. For some reason I feel he has a bit of a temper and is not good at listening.

But I can protect myself, I am his client and I have a bit of a temper too if it comes down to it.

I’ll take my time and be as clear and direct as possible with him.

My main issue is that I feel uncomfortable disagreeing with him. I feel unsafe. When processing it, I decided to be very clear about what he is saying and then say my views/opinions.

I’m having trouble getting work done today. I’m going to focus on the taoist productivity – work until I feel empty. Also, I want to leave the apartment to feel more productive.