Workpost 70: Picking a Path

Byjack

Today, I have many different paths that I can walk down.

I can focus on work. I can spar with my friend, I can go to jiujitsu. I could try to do it all. But I feel weary and tired from not sleeping yesterday. I feel stressed and pressured, and so I want to focus on a few things.

I suppose, first thing is first, I need to focus on work, because without that I cannot be focused tomorrow. Nothing matters until I get that piece done, and once that part is done, all manner of things are possible.

I did indeed get that done, and I feel extremely proud of the work I did.

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Workpost 18: Addicted

Byjack

I’ve been playing pokemon go so much recently. I’ve made a lot of progress in the game, but I really worry that I’m getting addicted because of how stressed out I am right now.

I stressed out about my relationship and about my career path moving forward. I want to make sure that work does not take over my life and that it stays aligned to what I want to do moving forward.

Every time I feel stressed, I reach for the pokemon go. Holy shit, I am addicted.

I feel very tired, but no longer sick. That is a good thing at least.

I’m going to walk around the airport. And this time, instead of catching pokemon, I am going to meditate and think.

On the plane I meditated on some of my issues and I came to a big realization. The first step to feeling or processing any pain is to notice and name the pain that exists. I spend so much time avoiding thinking about painful emotions or experiences, avoiding thinking about how things hurt me it makes it hard to face the pain at all since I’m not taking the first step,

I want to focus on doing that more now as the first step to processing more emotions.

Workpost 75: Recentering

Byjack

It’s been a few days after my deadline of September 12th.

I haven’t created business cards for my art coaching business. I haven’t learned the principles of javascript or front-end development or created a game.

The other day a friend was asking me about how to start a side gig and I had so much to tell him, yet these days I’m feeling a bit down and undermotivated.

A few realizations are perking me up a little.

Realization 1: My coaching program is not overvalued.

I want to charge $25,000 per year for my coaching program to help someone create a masterpiece. Before even pitching it to anyone, I felt like this was too big of an ask, I should lower my rates etc.

But as I thought about it deeper a few things occurred to me:

  • I will be spending a lot of time with a client. I plan on spending 2 hr every other week with clients on formal coaching sessions, but that’s not it. My entire professional attention and all my skills are aimed at helping my clients succeed. So outside of formal coaching sessions (in person if I can manage it). I will be taking calls emails, and setting up times to do virtual sessions. My goal is not to be a doctor you see for checkups or an art class you regularly go to. My goal is to understand your art inside and out, and be a true partner, mentor, strategist, and guide in your process. I think $25,000 for a year is an absolute crazy steal for that.
  • I’m not focused on getting clients that are poorer or don’t really have the funds. That would be both unethical and a bad fit. I already offer another class that can satisfy that demographic of people where it is more like a regular class, albeit a somewhat vetted and serious class (and not serious at the same time). I’m focused on the people who have the money and the passion to back it up, and we can spend some time to do something special. For someone retired with several millions of dollars, this will be nothing to them as long as they want it enough.

Realization 2: The process is complicated, but I have my blog

The whole point of this blog is be a place where I can incrementally work on works of progress and get better at things over time, instead of getting the final version all at once. If I don’t use this blog, I can also use my google drive, google docs, and slides to draft out things step by step and track overall progress in the blog.

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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.

Workpost 53: Time to Kick Into Gear

Byjack

It’s time to think through the plan for each of my businesses a little more carefully.

I want to spend 3 months setting up the funnel for each of my businesses and 3 months trying out and running the funnels.

Let’s breakdown what that looks like.

Art Coaching

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM

General Aim: To make a beautiful creative world on my website, business cards, social media that reminds me of adventure, magic, and dreams

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Make a mess

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Print out business cards
  2. Have a WordPress website with basic information on it
  3. Figure out how to do scheduling with Calendly

AI Consulting

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM
  8. Branding
  9. New contract for funnel

General Aim: To create a place where business owners with the talent and potential can go to unblock their problems

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Create website

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Website that clearly shows brand and services
  2. Clear way to schedule a consultation with me
  3. Be able to talk to local meetups

Workpost 17: Sick

Byjack

I’ve been sick in the past two days. Not a terrible sickness thankfully. I credit that to the copious quantities of water I consumed as well as the zinc I took and the lymph node massage to clear my stuff nose. I can’t smell anything, I feel tired, and my mind feels fuzzy but other than that I’m actually doing ok.

Earlier my throat was hurting and I woke up many times in the night, but overall I slept pretty good. I’ve been self-medicating a lot by playing games, and I want to stop. I did go for a walk this morning and workout, and I feel that helps.

Workpost 9: Depression

Byjack

I’ve been feeling that I need to take a bit of a departure from what I normally write in these workposts because I need to write more about my emotions, and let tools like my todolist take over the structured work elements of my day.

Caged

I feel caged in the prison

Of my own ambition

Unable to do anything

But work

Mindless work

Though I know I love work

It gives me purpose

I can’t shake the feeling that

I’m not happy

Some free part of me is no longer free

I’m starting to feel like a major issue with how I’m approaching life right now is balancing between structure and freedom. I created so much structure to assist me in achieving all my goals, but now I have too much structure. I feel the need to relax and indulge myself a bit and I don’t know how to hold onto both. I suspect there are too many challenges that I am splitting my attention between and the fewer the better. I will seek to finish as much work today as possible so as to not split my attention as much.

I think something else I’ve been thinking about is cleaning my apartment and making it something other than just work. Perhaps that would create the spaciousness and happiness I need. Maybe I need to go outside more, not to do anything in particular, just to walk and think about things. In fact, I wonder if I would worry about having a huge number of things to do if I was able to just walk and think about them.

On second thought, I will try one more day with my multitude of goals, I will not try to finish one to free up my attention. Instead, I will try to find a way to work on all of these goals walking, or at the gym hanging, or crawling around my apartment. Maybe I can make art too! Use art to work through any challenge I have. I will also focus on cleaning up my apartment as much as possible.