The Most Focused I’ve Been In 2 Years

This Week:

The progress I made this week on my new software website for YouTube creators.
How this week has differed from the last 2 years of my life.
Sharing little moments of what it’s like to live in a van.

July 2024

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
30	7/1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31	8/1	2	3

Where In The World Was I?

Asheville, North Carolina

Live Travel Map 🌎

Metrics From The Week

Business Progress Update

Ohhhh boy has a lot changed since last week. I’ll stick to the concrete up here and get into how later.

So to recap, last week I had made a pivot for substantially increasing and focusing in on the value of generating new videos/titles as the core of this. That led me to somewhat scrapping the basic UI I had put together and recreate it with this focus. By last Sunday I had the new /videos page working.

This week I finished that /videos page. Each video is inspired from a video in your niche that outperformed, but in your video style, and it lists related YouTube comments across your whole niche that you could address specifically in this new video.

Added a new /niche page that lists and ranks all the channels in your niche. Here you can see who in your niche is most relevant for you and who has content most similar to you. You can see their channel’s details, top recent videos, and last uploads and their performance to further get video ideas.

And then migrated my CommentCompass.co code over to create a new /audience page that shows all the comments in your niche that can directly be used for new video ideas and topics. If you find a comment that you like, you can generate a new personalized video title inspired specifically from that comment.

Besides those main things, I got a lot of new little things working too. Some of them to note: filtering results, saving comments and videos, and saving the state of the page so that navigating to each page pulls in the data from the same creator (a faux-logged in state).

And again, these results (for me) are better, but still not up to the accuracy that I want.

There’s still plenty more I want to do, but I decided that I’d done enough and need to move to revamping my landing page and then focusing on gathering feedback.

This is all live and working on my real server, but it’s still not ready to be made public. I need to apply to up my quota first. This app uses a LOT more quota than CommentCompass.co does so this is one of the biggest constraints I’m dealing with right now.

How We Got Here…

This past week (or 2 weeks) has been THE most focused and hardest I’ve worked in the last 2 years…

I wrote this note back in 2021.

202106170842 Less time in partial states, more time in full states

Spend less time in partial states and more time in full states. 

Don't multitask, focus on one thing and complete it.

Clearly I was thinking about this a while back. I feel as though the last 2 years, I’ve been in these partial states, half-in half-out, trying to live a balanced and sustainable life. Not that I haven’t liked or resonated with that, but I had always wondered what it’d be like to focus in completely on one thing.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to that and I’m finally starting to understand.

I can only characterize this week as “motivated single-minded focus on progress.”

Many nights this week as I was falling asleep, I was having new ideas and would get up, grab my phone, and write them down so I didn’t forget (video from this week: The time of day I unexpectedly came up with the best ideas).

And every morning the literal first thing I’d think about after opening my eyes is sitting down in a coffee shop to make more progress on this.

It has been this combination of tasks easy enough that I can complete them, with some tasks that are still challenging enough that they take me some time to complete, plus doing things that make visual progress. Making progress and being able to see it is fulfilling and motivating. That then motivates me to continue making even more progress, repeating the cycle.

Then you layer on that the urgency of wanting to complete this and start reaching out to people for feedback before I leave for Spain in less than 2 weeks…

Many, many, of the mornings from this week I worked 4, 5, sometimes 5.5 hours without getting up a single time, checking my phone, or walking around.

Sit down. Open the laptop. 4 hours pass by. Get up and leave. My phone is on DnD when I work (from 3mo ago in Thailand, Why I now keep my phone on DnD all day)

In fact, I track my time spent working on my laptop…

Sunday: 3 hr 41 min
Monday: 4 hr 24 min + 47 min (afternoon) = 5 hr 11 min
Tuesday: 5 hr 4 min + 2 hr 26 min (afternoon) = 7 hr 30 min
Wednesday: 5 hr 26 min + 1 hr 36 min (afternoon) = 7 hr 2 min
Thursday: 4 hr 51 min + 1 hr 21 min (afternoon) = 6 hr 12 min
Friday: 5 hr 22 min + 2 hr 13 min (afternoon) = 7 hr 35 min
Saturday: 2 hr 23 min + 5 hr 39 min (afternoon) = 8 hr 2 min

To claim this is anything close to sustainable is somewhat laughable to me, but that hasn’t been my intention. The strategy has been sprint, then rest. This is the sprint.

Friday afternoon I was reflecting on the progress I made in just 7 days, as the previous Friday was when I had decided to pivot and focus heavier on videos and titles. And just 4 weeks before that was the day that I bought the domain…

I’ve learned a lot from these past couple weeks, like how much things can change in just a week (or 4 weeks), and learning how much I can really work if I set my mind to it (video from this week: My beliefs are breaking about what is now possible). This has really opened my eyes to a lot of things.

Another thing I’ve started to notice is that as I’ve put working on this project as the top priority, many other parts of my life have been pushed to the side. I noticed this sense of losing myself (again) lingering in the background because I hadn’t been taking the time to decompress, journal, address minor tasks and stressors (video from this week: Losing my sense of self in work). Those admin tasks are starting to pile up…

I wanted to end this section by calling out something that I realized last night. Because I’ve put in so much time and effort into this (without building WITH direct feedback from customers), I started worrying about the situation if I got negative feedback or feedback that pushed me to pivot, if I’d resist because of the sunk cost fallacy that I’d invested mentally into this so far.

I’ve hedged a bit against this scenario (video from this week: What if it doesn’t work out and I fail?) by building this to solve MY problem and from the feedback I’ve already gotten, but I still worry that I should be getting feedback as I build this…

That’s why I’m starting to pry myself away from these other things I want to add and start redirecting towards the things that will get me closer to getting this in the hands of other people.

Balancing this “building for myself” and “building for others” thing I haven’t quite figured out yet, so we’ll see how it develops.

Thoughts From The Week

I wanted to share one other thought I documented (literally the only other note I documented from this week besides the sunk cost fallacy thought from above).

Urban van life is fun and exciting for maybe a couple of days as you explore a new city, then it gets hard and makes you question why you’re doing it…

In my opinion, van life is best when you’re camped out in nature or road tripping and exploring. Urban van life is this weird and awkward “trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.”

The last time I was doing urban van life without moving/traveling every couple of days was spring 2023 in Denver as I was selling my 4Runner and packing up everything to drive east. It was another situation where I was doing urban van life when I wouldn’t have really chosen to.

So last night I captured this:

202407202129 Remember that you GET to live this life

I was just brushing my teeth and caught myself with something.

See, I've started to have these thoughts or mindset lately that yes I'm living van life, but urban van life here in Asheville isn't really what I want. What I _want_ is to be camping out west and/or be making money from my business so I can do what I want.

And so I've noticed this delta form, this desire for something different, almost producing this negative mindset towards the present.

As I was brushing my teeth I had one of those zoom-out moments where I thought "man, what the hell am I doing here, standing in the back of a van in Asheville North Carolina brushing my teeth. This is wild."

And thought about how the decisions of my past self put me here.

And that made me think something like, that I'm "having to deal with" this situation my past self decided.

And I stopped and caught myself.

No, you GET to live this life, remember that.

What's the alternative? He didn't quit his job and start traveling, still working the same job in his apartment, wishing for more, wishing for that "one day," wishing to travel and explore and build something meaningful for himself.

You GET to do this...

One of the biggest things van life has taught me is how to adapt to non-ideal circumstances. And that, it continues to do.

Van Life Realities

Little moments and quirks of living in a van:

Picking the closest park to drive to for lunch and then realizing there’s no cell signal at the park (video from this week: When life gives you the answer you’re looking for)

Finding a picnic bench in this big forested park and bringing my laptop stand, keyboard, and mouse out from my van to work. Peak #vanlife (… until it started raining 5 minutes later and had to pack it up… 😢)

Driving 30 min south to the nearest dump station and paying $16.01 just to dump my grey water
Pulling in to one of the few businesses in the area that allows overnight parking at 9:15pm ready for a nice sleep to see a fresh new “No Overnight Parking” sign posted. Forced to adapt.
Your oil change light coming on and trying to find a place to do a good quality oil change in a city you’ve never been to before.
A thunderstorm rolling through and absolutely BUCKETING down rain to find water dripping between my roof fan and the wood paneling. Noice.
Pulling in to a beautiful park to eat dinner at and seeing a gorgeous sky out the back of the van after eating.

Feeling relieved when the temperature inside the van finally drops to a beautiful cool… 81ºF as I get ready to sleep (compared to 91ºF+ in the past week)
And spending a LOT of time in coffee shops (I’ve been to 203 coffee shops so far! https://petermeglis.com/nomad-workspaces/)