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

Here’s something I learned this week from one of my favorite newsletters: Sahil Bloom’s Curiosity Chronicle. I read it every week, and I definitely recommend you do the same. It’s consistently one of the most value-packed 5 minutes of my week.

The 3-3-3 Method

It’s a way to structure your day so that you make meaningful progress but not burn out at the same time. The 3 parts can be broken down to:

• 3 hours on your most important thing.

  
  Spending focused time on your most important thing helps you make consistent progress in what you believe is most impactful for future you (could even be tomorrow you).
  
  For me, this can look like spending 3 hours a day building & marketing my products since my medium-term goal is to have a portfolio of passive income.

• 3 shorter tasks you've been avoiding.

  This helps prevent your backlog of to-dos from haunting you suddenly. We all have things that we are constantly putting off, I know I do (to-do lists are designed to fail anyway; more on this another time). But when we look deeper, these tasks would’ve taken no longer than a few minutes each.
  
  It also helps keep your mental space free for more important things like creative thinking, or even resting.

• 3 maintenance activities to keep life in order.

  Productivity and progress are great but are unsustainable without balance. Maintenance activities refer to other focus areas of your life that keep you functioning properly, which can include relationships, health, house chores, etc.
  
  For me, I make space for quality time with my loved ones, work out more often, and review my finances at the end of every day.

By structuring your day this way, you won’t end every day feeling like you’ve “failed”. Instead, it’ll leave you feeling that you’ve shown up without forgoing too much of what you enjoy in life.

Entrepreneurship & Finance

Last week, I wrote about an easy business idea you could get started on ASAP. I took my own advice and launched DIY Discord.

It’s basically a detailed documentation of what I’ve repeatedly done for peers and clients. When I first started setting up Discord servers from scratch, getting everything right and functioning how I would like took hours because the resources are scattered; changing all the right settings, formatting the names, organizing everything, setting up the bot, etc. But with this detailed guide, you would just have to follow the steps, with no real effort involved.

The best part about this new product? It’s not even ready yet but I already have a handful of signups (including a pretty big Web3 gaming KOL 👀). This brings me to my learning for the week: ship faster or just ship first.

I have a few friends who have brilliant ideas (they’re probably reading this newsletter), but those ideas will only ever be ideas if they stay hidden from the world. So what’s the solution if you don’t have capital to fund your idea, or don’t have the next steps figured out? Just create a landing page with why users would benefit from it, and publish it publicly to test the market. It’s way more efficient than spending time and money on an idea you don’t know has demand or not, that you may end up shutting down.

This is the template I use to do exactly that, and it’s free: Carrd Website Template.

Freedom

“…gradually, then all at once.”

This is how someone described achieving success. I forgot where I read it but it made me think about freedom.

Freedom is now, it doesn’t have to be a 180-shift to your picture-perfect lifestyle. The idea of reaching a point in your life (e.g. retirement) and finally being “free” is unrealistic for today’s generation (the “arrival fallacy” concept covers something similar, look up what it means).

Freedom is gradual and the first step is to recognize your freedoms. Freedom to have longer lunch breaks. Freedom to work remotely. Freedom of responsibilities & decision making. Freedom of traveling. Freedom of staying put. Freedom of being bored. Freedom of doing what you enjoy even if it’s for a little while.

Every day is a chance to score one extra freedom. One day, you’ll look back and realize that freedom came gradually, then all at once.

Side note: Make sure to pay attention to the trade-offs you make for the freedoms you choose. e.g. choosing to travel full-time means trading off a familiar place to come home to at the end of the day since nomads typically aren’t in the same place for too long.

Homework

Secure a fulfilling day by reflecting on your top priority. Ask yourself, what is the most important thing you'll dedicate 3 hours to?

Then commit to doing that before Netflix, doom-scrolling on social media, heading out to a mall, or whatever that gets in the way. You’ll surprise yourself with how far 3 hours a day can get you.

Till we meet again next week.

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

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