Good morning sleepy head, or good evening if you are still awake you vampire.

I may be repeating myself a little from previous newsletters, but this is what's currently on my mind.

This is becoming somewhat meditative for me. It's a way of channeling and applying my inner self-improvement coach back to myself.

Consistency is flipping hard my peoples.

Persisting when you do not see progress can be very difficult and may even feel delusional at times.

Questions start creeping up in the back of your mind.

Why am I doing this if nothing is changing?

If I am not seeing change now, will I ever see it?

The one thing I have managed to stay consistent with throughout most of my life is my fitness. My main takeaway from this experience is that progress happens over a long period of time. It can take way longer than expected for that progress to really start showing. On my journey, I've learned valuable lessons that have helped me along the way.

I suppose this newsletter will mainly focus on my attempts to apply those lessons to my professional life.

The structure that has produced the biggest results during my fitness journey is as follows.

1. What do I want to achieve from this? - for example, "Improve my squat.”

2. Why do I want to do this? - To feel stronger, push myself, and stay consistent with my fitness journey.

3. How am I going to do it?

   ¬ Planning a 12-week workout routine with workouts and rest days laid out.

   ¬ Making the workouts not too intimidating. Having a bare minimum workout that I can do whenever I am really not feeling up to it. And having room to do some extra work when I am feeling up to the task.

4. While having a final goal is good, my main focus is simply showing up at the gym and following the plan. I am focusing only on the things I can control. This is very important because big goals can be overwhelming. By laying out a detailed plan, I can focus on only what I am supposed to be doing at any given moment.

5. I use an app every time I go to the gym to record my progress. Seeing incremental progress can be a great tool for staying motivated throughout the journey.

5.1 Bonus - I really enjoy squatting, so working out 7 out of 10 times is quite fun.

Okay, so in a short summary, I identify what I want to achieve and why. I follow this with an intricate plan that consists of a realistic workload. I give myself a deadline. I record my progress, and if possible, the thing I am improving is already something I enjoy.

The enjoyment aspect is tricky. The main reason I enjoy squatting is because I am good at it. However, I’m good at it because I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I doubt I’d enjoy it as much if I’d just started squatting. By nature, we prefer doing things we are good at. Nonetheless, we all have to start somewhere, and that usually means being very bad at the beginning of the journey.

I have failed at being consistent many times. Some of you may remember my podcast; I haven't released an episode in 8 months. Over the last 6-7 years, I've tried making videos on my YouTube channel, but I've always ended up running out of steam. I didn't have a plan to lean on once my initial motivation ran out.

In hindsight, both ventures were destined to fail because I had not implemented any of the things that I’ve written about here. There was no real direction, no real plan, and set steps put in place for me to follow when I was feeling lost. But as I grow and learn from my failures, I am hoping to change those trajectories.

So lets apply my fitness structre to my YouTube channel. (this is something that I will be doing irl. But, the structure and plan that I will be actually following is going to be a lot more detailed and I doubt you would want to read that. (unless you do, lmk on insta or by replying to this email))

Regardless, here is the main jist of it.

1. What do I want to achieve from this? - Big vision: build a channel where I can creatively express myself and turn it into a profitable business.

2. Why do I want to do this? - I believe that pursuing this path is a good way to future-proof my career and create an enjoyable and lucrative lifestyle for myself.

3. How am I going to do it?

   ¬ Consistent uploads are important, regardless of the quality of the videos. Create 15 videos with a pure focus on just creating them and trying to improve each one by 1%.

   ¬ Research and study those that are already doing what I am trying to do.

   ¬ Set aside times throughout the week that are dedicated to my YT channel. Time for idea generation, time for video prouduction, editing, thumbnail and title.

   ¬ Set deadlines

4. Only focus on turning up and doing the work to begin with. Not focusing on analytics/metrics too much.

5. Record my progress through keeping track on how much time I am spending on working on the channel.

Thats all folks.

Lots of love,

Koko

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