Hey friends, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the previous reflections. In case you haven’t read them, check them out: last week’s reflections.

Now, onto the weekly reflections for the past week:

Growth Mindset

Awareness

I made goals for myself just over 2 weeks ago to achieve in a year from now but why does it like I only have 2 weeks left to reach them?

“Given sufficient coping strategies, people will be willing to tolerate consistent levels of misery for long stretches of time.” - Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path

I resonated deeply with this quote because it gave me the words I didn’t have to describe that '“stuck” feeling I was having. So let’s break it down:

Some coping strategies have I been using:

• “rest days” after attending meetings, or spending time doing other people’s work for a day

• traveling the world full-time

• retail therapy

Some miseries I’ve been coping with:

• not having full control over my time

• my income and lifestyle being dependent on others’ impulses

• using my limited time to build someone else’s dream

I feel stuck in this stage of my life and am feeling a sense of urgency to get past it. Now that I recognize this, what next?

Action

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell

I have to let go. Let go of the ideal path I’ve laid out in my head about how I will reach my 2024 goals using my existing skillset. Let go of the comfort zone I’ve built around myself that was masking the “consistent levels of misery for long stretches of time” I’ve been experiencing.

I will be conducting A LOT of mini-experiments to test different ways I can achieve my goals that are not the ways I’ve used to get to where I am. Growth is not linear and I have to break the default perception I have that what got me to this stage will get me to the next.

The experiments I’m conducting are important despite the failures and hiccups I have to go through because I’d rather fail as an indiepreneur than succeed as an employee.

Entrepreneurship & Finance

I failed…

In last week’s newsletter, I talked about maintaining consistency with my building and layering on what I’ve been procrastinating on (marketing).

Ironically, in the past week, I didn’t build or market anything! Instead, I spent time optimizing what I’ve built, aka procrastinating, like shifting my free tools to the new website.

What I’ve realized from that is that discipline and consistency are important, but it’s also important to know what to be working on and when. If I’m in a creative rut, I shouldn’t be forcing myself to create great copywriting. That’s a waste of willpower and simply an inefficient allocation of my resources.

So what will I be doing differently? Get off my ass and keep on hustling. But hustle smart. Keep notes on the times/days you do different work best, and schedule your top priority work for those times. Work on your business-as-usual (BAUs) at every other time.

Easy business idea

This week, I’ll also be working on productizing things I already do. It’s a great, easy business idea for you to try out too. Identify repetitive tasks that people keep requesting you to do, document it (video/written), and find the right place to sell them. For example, if people ask you what workouts you do, how to set up certain software/platforms, or how to prepare for interviews, then chances are others have a need for that too. Package and price it well enough, and you’ll have a digital product/service without necessarily having to learn a new skill.

Freedom

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss introduces the idea of scrapping early retirement or waiting till you’re 60+ to retire. He introduces the concept of “mini-retirements” that spreads out the 30-40 years of retirement across your entire life. It would typically look like one to six months of trying to live the life you want (not to be confused with a vacation, where you jampack your schedule out of FOMO). Maybe you’ve always wanted to live in the countryside, or in a van, or in a new city with new cultures, or just not work full-time anymore.

He provides this exercise as a guide to designing these breaks into your life:

1. How do your decisions change if retirement isn’t an option?

2. What if you could use a mini-retirement to sample your future plans now?

3. Is it really necessary to commit fully to work to live like a millionaire?

It’s truly ridiculous that society has made it the norm to only enjoy your life when your bones are brittle and energy levels are at an all-time low.

Homework

We tend to overestimate future costs and underestimate the costs of following societal norms. So create your own mantra as a reminder to help you stay true to yourself:

I’d rather fail as _____ than succeed as _____.

Till we meet again next week.

Cheers to the future,
Ernest
indiepreneur, digital nomad, transhumanist

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