The Week Of Huge Reinvestments And Beach Town Paradise

This Week:

• My final days exploring the food, malls, and hiking in Penang.
• The biggest reinvestment I’ve ever made.
• The beach town vibe of Langkawi, Malaysia.

March 2024

Where In The World Was I?

• 🇲🇾 George Town, Penang, Malaysia
• ✈️ Penang, Malaysia (PEN) to Langkawi, Malaysia (LGK)
• 🇲🇾 Langkawi, Malaysia

Live Travel Map 🌎

Metrics From The Week

Everyone loves to show when things are going well. It’s not as fun to share when things are NOT going well… (Feels like when finance YouTubers post their investment portfolios and returns).

Business Progress Update

I took a little break from making progress while exploring George Town. Towards the end of the week I started on adding/update my Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to get compliant with YouTube’s Terms of Service.

Exploring George Town (Part 2)

Mornings in coffee shops journaling, went on a run around town, went to Gurney Plaza (shopping mall), ate at some new (and same) restaurants.

Hiking Penang National Park

Beautiful, hot, and humid! It’s been a while since I’ve just been completely enveloped in nature. Peace, quiet, no cars, no loud motorbikes, just the sounds of birds, frogs, cicadas, and whatever the heck else is lives in these jungles. I ended the hike and my entire body was soaked in sweat. It was literally as if I had jumped in a pool. Underwear, shorts, long sleeve, socks, all of it completely soaked 😄

Saw some monkeys! Gosh they’re so… dexterous. And smart… I put my bag and camera down at the entrance to the park to put on my sunscreen and get set up. Two of them walked over and sat down about 5 or 6 feet away from me. I moved my camera to the other side of my bag, then just picked everything up and said “nope nope nope you’re not taking my camera” and walked away 😅

Food From George Town

The Biggest Reinvestment I’ve Ever Made

Kris from 1stMan/1M released a new business/community called 1M House (https://1mhouse.com/) this week.

I haven’t bought into any paid communities yet, but on the back of resonating a lot more with his content, seeing the type of guys that leave comments on his videos, and hearing the vision for 1M House, it actually intrigued me… a LOT.

I briefly mentioned how I was thinking about joining in this video and how I’ve missed the accountability and growth from being around high-level people like in Bali.

This decision frankly tore me apart… I kept going back and forth. Reinvest in my network, nah it’s too expensive I can’t afford that, but look at the upside, nah what’s the rush, the back and forth went on and on.

After a couple loooooong videos to myself and weighing out all the pros/cons, the upsides, downsides, and worst case scenarios, I pushed myself to do it and join.

And boy… The houses haven’t even launched yet and I’m glad I joined.

I’ve already had conversations with a handful of guys, jumped on a Zoom call with one guy in the SaaS/digital marketing space, and learned a whole lot from people sharing knowledge in the group. The guys in here are pretty insanely successful and love how everyone is about improving their lives and progressing. I’ve been yearning for people to share esoteric research and ideas with and this is exactly the group.

This may not get much “coverage” on my Life Update or videos, but this is probably one of, if not THE most impactful decision I’ve made in years…

Frankly I already feel like a completely different person, someone who intentionally reinvests in the people he surrounds himself with and reinvests in his growth.

I won’t be surprised if I look back on this as one of the biggest turning points for me.

Cheers to growth.

✈️ Off to Langkawi!

I’m getting Bali vibes here, except without all the traffic 😅 The beach came alive with people Friday evening – people and families hanging out, fire twirling shows, drinks on the beach, jetskis, parasailing, boating.

It’s a cool vibe, one big main street with all the shops, markets, restaurants, food trucks. There’s 1 main indoor shopping mall and lots of little cafes and restaurants along the beach. It doesn’t seem to be as popular as Bali, so there aren’t as many western healthy food cafes yet… Maybe give it a couple years? But because it isn’t as popular, it also feels a lot more chill and enjoyable.

Back To Routine

I struggled with my sleep routine in George Town. I didn’t even have any good reasons why, just staying up later because I had no reason to sleep earlier. You can see the dip in my sleep here…

But honestly (to an extent), I’m grateful that I got to have that experience, struggling with sleep routine. It’s something I haven’t really experienced in a while. So I got to re-learn what it’s like, what obstacles come up, and WHY I value my sleep so much.

The loss of sleep really affected me mentally though – in my ability to think clearly and articulate my thoughts. When it got to be Thursday I bailed on making my topical video. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Instead, I had the thought that I know I’ll get back to a routine in a couple days and get my sleep scores back up. If I know that’s coming, then why don’t I focus on literally just showing up until I get to that point in the future when inevitably my future self will feel good and can take back over. I captured that in this video:

I haven’t made it back up to 100% but the past 2 nights have been 90% sleep and this morning (Sunday) I’m back in the green recovery at 68%. Man it just feels good to be able to think and focus.

The hostel here is pretty good! It’s got a great air conditioned co-working space. I had some nice conversations about travels yesterday with 2 women here working.

On the flip side of reality, I think I got bed bug bites the first night here, but I didn’t seem to get any more this morning (Sunday), so maybe that’s good, I don’t really know how these things work.

And the water from the filter was kind of a yellowish color, but it may have just been the water bottle I was using. My stomach started to feel a little rumblings of being upset but I think we’re good.

Food From Langkawi

A little disappointed there aren’t any obvious healthy food restaurants here (that I can just go to on repeat)… The diet is gonna end up taking a hit with all the upcoming traveling, but I’m trying to shift my expectations more towards valuing all the new places and experiences I’ll be getting. Balance, and gratitude.

Interesting Content From The Week

Not a video but I saw a signpost on my Penang National Park hike about Tongkat Ali and the supposed benefits. I ended up diving into some research and found this study on it https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6274257/. The benefits sound pretty wild, here are a couple quotes from the conclusion section:

E. longifolia, which is used as a folk medicine for sexual dysfunction, aging, malaria, cancer, diabetes, anxiety, aches, constipation, exercise recovery, fever, increased energy, increased strength, leukemia, osteoporosis, stress, syphilis and glandular swelling; it is also used as an aphrodisiac, antibacterial, appetite stimulant and health supplement.

E. longifolia is one of the most useful and safe traditional herbal medicines.

YouTubers Brooklyn and Bailey Emasculate Their Husbands (from Men on Mission) – stumbled across this guy’s channel, it seems to be like religious (Christian) self-improvement. I found it interesting just seeing/hearing from different perspectives – what people value, what frameworks people use, what values and frameworks comes from religion.

Last phase of 2023 offensive: fierce fighting by the 3rd Brigade on the way to liberating Andriivka (from ab3army) – I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this week watching GoPro footage from literally the front lines in Ukraine. Insane… This YouTube channel (ab3army) has some intense stuff. It’s actually wild that people are recording the front line warfare and publishing it to YouTube. I never thought I’d see what it’s actually like – the drone warfare, fighting in the trenches. If you want an immediate gratitude hack and perspective shift, watch a couple of these videos then remember that nobody is trying to throw a grenade into YOUR room right now… My heart and respect goes out to all those soldiers on the front lines.

Journal Entries

The Ideal Self

Detailed out my ideal self this week, who is the absolute ideal Peter, what qualities and characteristics does he have?

It felt good to envision the person I could become, but there was a bit of disillusionment seeing the delta between where I am now and what the ideal is.

But that’s kind of the point. Without an ideal there is no succeeding, there is no failing, there is no progress.

I’d rather know where I want to go and be faced with the concrete problem of how to make incremental steps towards it than wandering for 15 years and regretting not spending intentional effort evolving.

Also, it appears as though positing ideal characteristics (who’s is my ideal self) is actually easier than knowing the career path or direction I want to take. There are infinite business and career paths, but it feels like there are finite human characteristics.

I mean isn’t this EXACTLY what religions aim to solve?

I didn’t dive into to researching, but it’s been in the back of my mind that there’s probably a LOT of overlap here with religious values.

Personal 80/20

Also did an 80/20 analysis for my personal life. I’ll just share some of the interesting takeaways or snippets rather than the whole document.

Health:

- Sleep absolutely is a 20% activity that makes up 80% of outcomes.

Personal Growth:

- Hitting another plateau again. Need to work on progressing something again.
- 80/20: Just allocating mental focus to whatever the thing is, particularly having intrinsic motivation and curiosity behind it. DM'ing, speaking with people, contributing to 1MH.

Learning:

- 80/20: Following curiosities, asking ChatGPT.

Relationships:

- 80/20: Leaning into these little exchanges and conversations bumping into people in the hostel. Practice turning off the brain and just asking "where are you from?" Lean into curiosity, pick anything that I'm possibly curious about.

Travel:

- 80/20: Ask people I meet for travel recommendations (outsource). Using ChatGPT travel planner for vacations.

Routine Struggles:

- I think it comes down to sleep and routine. I had no reason to stay up past my usual bed time watching YT in bed, nothing was stopping me. So I guess the question is, if I've "solved" the nofap/ejaculation problem (Singapore), the 80/20 will be fixing the sleep routine issue, then the rest should fall into place?

Memories/Experiences:

- I'm afraid that the things I remember the most are the activities I did, the things where I went on an exploration walk, did a hike, etc. But it seems as though that's the reality.
- So the thing to iterate and improve upon is how to value doing more activities, which seem to be a local pain/cost (it's hard, don't want to do it) but a global benefit (they contribute the most to memories.)

Sleep Routine Learnings

This was the brain dump note I made related to struggling with sleep consistency in George Town. I haven’t curated it or added to it but I thought I’d share.

Wait this is how normal people live and struggle with sleep. No routine, go to bed whenever, staying up doing stuff.

What are the fixes that I've learned?
- Routine is huge. But what's the Why behind the routine? Why should I stick to it?
- You need to value sleep. To feel the difference between an 80% sleep score and a 100%. It's actually like night and day. I feel so sluggish right now (currently on my morning walk, 85% sleep score)
- Setting boundaries. Even I haven't fully practiced this. E.g. speaking with Melinda YouTuber the other night. But eventually I did head out. Like I have the ability to utilize my routine because I don't have friends or people chatting with me, I'm alone and in control.
- Have a wind down routine, don't use phone right up until bed time.
- It helps to not be really comfortable i.e. lying on a couch/bed on your phone.
- Have something that YOU value to look forward to in the morning. Related: that note on being excited to get to a coffee shop, going to sleep early. Make it actually painful for you to get less sleep because it eats into the thing you value.
- Drinking water still helps immediately after waking.

What’s Next?

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