Why It Feels Good To Do The Same Thing Over And Over

This Week:

• How I feel about having the exact same routine for 12 days in a row.
• Why was I the only one here?
• A picture of every single meal I’ve eaten from the past week.

November 2023

Where In The World Was I?

• Canggu, Bali, Indonesia

Live Travel Map 🌎

What Does Life Look Like Now?

I’ve now had the exact same routine for the last 12 days in a row.

Weekends look like every other day, because I’m living every day the way I want to live. (I feel incredibly grateful to be able to type that)

The changes since last week’s daily routine post (The Life Of A Digital Nomad In Bali):

• 6:30am wake up now instead of 6:45am
• Work
  • Waking up earlier has meant ~15-30min more of work
• Post-lunch down time:
  • I’ve been doing a lot more reading (more on that later)
  • I’ve also started integrating some shallow work during this time on my laptop some days (1-1.5hrs) – journaling, writing in my Obsidian journal, sending some emails, doing some admin-y things
• Post-dinner down time:
  • I’ve been listening to more podcasts while eating, reading more here, and trying to stay off my laptop unless I need to follow up on an email.

My Whoop (whoop.com) Wearable Data:

YouTube screen time:

So, here are some highlights…

Morning Walks To The Beach

The tide has picked up lately so every morning there’s a group of surfers out catching some early morning waves.

Long (Podcast) Walks On The Beach

Some podcasts/videos I’ve been listening to this week:

👇 This Chris Williamson x Alex Hormozi podcast was so incredibly good…

On one of my walks, I was walking along the beach path with my headphones on, listening to that Chris Williamson x Alex Hormozi podcast.

I kept nodding, smiling, and randomly laughing as I was listening and walking.

There was something about that moment, about randomly smiling with a huge cheek-to-cheek grin as I walked through and around people, and along the beach.

I can’t quite put words to it. It just felt good.

S w e a t y Workouts

Also I finally weighed myself for the first time in 3 months… One day was 82.06kg (180.9lb) and another day was 82.78kg (182.5lb) (~5pm).

Finally feels like I’m crawling back up from this summer’s weight loss slump. I wish I had the data to back it up, but it felt like I dropped to the mid-170s this summer.

(Context: April 2023 Lifting Progress Update)

Also, I’ve been running to and from the gym (~8min). One day I turned the last corner of the backroads and saw this little kid.

He looked over at me, and without skipping a beat, immediately put his hand up, waved, smiled, and said “helloooo!” (maybe “halo” – Indonesian, I didn’t hear)

I waved back and said “halo!”

Put a huge smile on my face.

And that same day on my run back, at the same corner, there were some guys doing construction.

I smiled at them and nodded as a “hi.” Both of them smiled back (huge smiles) and said “halo!”

It doesn’t get old…

Getting Back Into Reading

I finished $100m Leads by Alex Hormozi last week.

• THAT was a fantastic book. Gonna keep coming back to this on my business venture path.

I read The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida this week.

• I felt like I didn’t have as much relationship experience to be able to really relate to, analyze, or apply what he talked about. That said, it was still an interesting perspective.

AND also The Way of Men by Jack Donovan this week.

• This felt less applicable that I would’ve liked, although it was an interesting overview understanding of the landscape of men and WHY there’s so much confusion and friction in today’s day and age.

And started Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive by Robert Cialdini

This content is not ready to be made public yet.

Enough Socializing To Fill My Cup For A Week

After that initial chat with the photographer I wrote about last week, I thought of some ideas and questions for his business and working with bigger brands.

I kept looking for the right moment to bring up some ideas to him, but never got the right opportunity.

Until one morning…

It was like 6:50am, I had woken up maybe 5 minutes ago and was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when he walked in and said “oh hey what’s up!”

We had a little exchange, and despite feeling like I couldn’t think straight, I went for it.

I felt good about sharing what I wanted to share, but felt like I may have leaned a little too far into the “you should do this” territory. I left the chat feeling like “ehhh woops.”

But the next day or so, I was working on my laptop when he came down and sat next to me as he had breakfast. We ended up chatting for probably an hour or so.

He had some great ideas and questions about the market research I’m doing for this interactive travel maps space.

I then asked him about his business and what he’s been working on.

We ended up getting into what I thought was a fantastic conversation – about sharing his journey publicly, fears he has, accountability, strategy, etc.

And man that’s where I feel I’m meant to be. I really enjoyed talking, but also asking questions to get deeper, to challenge his beliefs, and guiding/sharing ideas that worked for me. I really resonated with what he was saying.

I love that space, that flow. I just felt totally present and in problem-solving mode.

I’m super curious to follow his journey and see how he goes about solving this leads problem.

Where Is Everybody?

This happened again this weekend…

Walking down on Saturday and Sunday, setting up my laptop, and just seeing… no one else…

Nothing but the birds chirping in the trees, the leaves rustling from the ocean breeze, and feeling the warmth of that early morning sunshine.

To be factual… the hostel staff is around, and typically there’s 1-3 people also up and working, but nothing compared to the same time of day on a Tuesday or Wednesday here…

There was a specific and particular moment… a moment at about 8:30am on Saturday when I looked up from my laptop and saw no one but me out here working.

There was something fulfilling about that, something special, something pleasurable about that moment.

Just knowing that I chose to be here, that I was there getting better, and putting in the work when others weren’t… That’s a really special feeling.

It was the exact same feeling later on Saturday when I was at the gym (~5pm).

There were 2 guys working out when I arrived, who left together halfway through my workout.

I was the only one left.

2 days ago on Thursday, the place must’ve had 12 people working out.

So again, I felt a push, a drive that I haven’t felt in a while. I’m here working out on a Saturday and everyone else isn’t…

Cheers to growth.

Food From The Week

Nope, still haven’t ventured out of the hostel… LOL

This is every single meal from this week (minus some double espressos and cold brews):

Which, speaking of… I’ve started getting these little comments from the staff lately.

One night after a light lunch and a big workout, I ordered a bit more than usual to get in extra calories and protein.

The woman at the register said with a smile “you eat a lot!”

I laughed and wasn’t sure what to say so I just said “I’ll take that as a compliment” 😂

It was hard to know if she intentionally was making a generalization that “You always eat a lot!” or if it was a translation quick “You ordered a lot!” but I still thought it was funny.

But then it came up again…

Another night as one of the servers (different one) dropped off my food, he went “that’s a big portion!” 😂

And then another lunch, a third different server dropped off my food and she goes “for one person?!” 😂

I think they all know me now 😂

I mean hey I’m trying to bulk up and the food here is delicious, healthy, and not expensive, so why not.

Also, I’ve felt incredibly stuffed from these meals, but I couldn’t help but think “if you think this is a lot, you should see what us Americans eat for a meal” 😅😳

Post-Lunch Dip Experimentation

I’ve also been experimenting with my lunches lately, trying to get rid of that post-lunch dip in energy where I feel super tired and all the blood is caught up in my head.

Some days I’ve been getting a smoothie bowl before I finish working as a little pick me up, that’s been helpful to tide me over for another 30-45min of work.

I’ve also been leaning more towards lighter lunches like salads lately, which I feel like has helped.

What HASN’T helped is their amazing pain au chocolats (or “chocolate croissants” as they call them here). Man they look good, they taste good, but I think the sugar just tanks my energy after lunch… 😢

Business Progress Update

This week has been all about just gathering emails, reaching out to bloggers, and gathering feedback.

We’re up to about 132 contacts, I’ve reached out to 23, gotten responses from 8, and gotten meaningful feedback from 4.

In fact, I had a phone conversation with a content creator couple this morning (Sunday) who uses Proxi, a big competitor/leader in this travel map space.

My focus right now is really on scaling up data collection. We’ve gotten some mixed feedback so far, nothing that screams “help me help me.”

This data may not be 100%, but it’s about accurate (excluding conversation emails and followup messages):

• Sunday: 2 emails
• Monday: 1 email
• Tuesday: 2 emails
• Wednesday: 4 emails
• Thursday: 4 emails
• Friday: 0 emails
• Saturday: 5 emails

I want to be up there in the tens, or hundreds of emails sent per day…

I’ve more-or-less settled into a bit of an email template which has made things faster, but my time-to-email is still at ~15-25 minutes per email because I try to give some kind of personalized value (relate to their story, find a bug in their website, etc.).

I want to get to a point where we can look at data and say “okay X problem is the biggest opportunity here, now, is this worth pursuing?”

What Have I Been Thinking About Lately?

Lesson Learned

I’ve noticed something VERY different about this business venture path (at least so far) compared to our Twitter growth path this past spring.

See, Alex Hormozi has 4 indicators when he looks at markets,

1. Massive Pain
2. Purchasing Power
3. Easy To Target
4. Growing

And this past week, finding and emailing travel bloggers has felt less hard than I imagined it would.

This is partly because I’m also a travel blogger (just not exactly in the same way) and I generally like/relate to the types of people that are travel bloggers.

But more so, the fact that I can FIND a specific target avatar, “travel blogger that uses interactive maps,” not “content creator” or even “blogger,” AND I can literally get their email and send them an email… THAT is “easy to target.”

I now understand the value of “Easy To Target.”

Reflecting on the previous path of diving into applying data+AI to Twitter growth, I think we didn’t niche far enough.

I felt like I was posting tweets to “people who want to grow on twitter” which is SO broad… Like who the heck is that customer? Where do I find them? How do I get their email?

It also didn’t feel controlled. Relying on an algorithm feels outside of my control. Finding and sending is an email is 100% controllable.

I think that path could still work, I know there’s money there, but I wanted to document this learning: that going forward I want to know exactly how to contact my target customer.

Constraints

I’ve had an interesting feeling in the past week or so while here in Bali that I’ve maybe only ever noticed one or two other times.

The only thing holding me back is myself.

I never felt like I could really settle down somewhere in Europe because it was all just so expensive.

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to get to a place where I feel like nothing external is holding me back, which has been extraordinarily liberating.

• The housing is affordable
• Healthy food is affordable
• Wifi and seats are immediately available

What’s left is just optimizing my time and doing the work.

I took 20 minutes one morning to really think about what’s holding me back. Because at this point, it’s all things that I can control.

That raw journal entry is here:

# 202311070822 What are all my current constraints

What are all my constraints in my life right now?
- For exercising, my left toe not being healed fully, feeling swollen and hurting when curling.
	- I can still exercise, run, work out but I worry that it's doing damage.
	- **ACTION:** More low-impact activities?

- For meditation, the flexibility of my hip flexors and rounded shoulders to sit still in a correct posture.
	- While this doesn't affect my mind, it does continually come up and my mind _does_ go to it when I'm meditating.
	- **ACTION:** Stretching my hip flexors daily.

- For work, my ability to get started.
	- It's really most about just getting started, once I'm in it, I'm in flow and working well.
	- **ACTION:** Lean into my startup routine more. I already have it: garden, gratitude, daily plan, start. I just need to remove my mind from the equation and literally just go through the motions.

- Also for work, my desire and tendency to ideate, to journal, and write about ideas instead of working (read as "output").
	- Literally right now is a great example. I'm writing about constraints and not sending emails, lol.
	- **ACTION:** Try adding a block of time in the afternoon or evening for this.

- For reading, my ability to focus and not get distracted by the people around me.
	- I've been doing lots of reading lately, but it hasn't felt fully present. I keep looking up at people - playing pool, girls walking by in swimsuits, checking girls out, etc.
	- **ACTION:** Use noise cancelling headphones instead of earbuds, wear a hat, and face away from the hostel. You can check the girls out later ;)

- For my afternoon focus, my lunch - maybe carbs?
	- I hit a dip and basically have always hit a dip after lunch. Wondering if there's a reality where I can get enough sustenance but also not have a crash after. Maybe have no carbs? And eat less at lunch and more at dinner?
	- **ACTION:** Experiment, try a couple lunches that reduce carbs and increase protein+fiber, try two small lunches instead of one big one, try taking a walk right after eating.

Why can't I work more?
- Focus is difficult in the afternoons and evenings, it feels like it takes away from my recovery and thus my ability to focus in the mornings
- The constraints here? Post-lunch dip. And examples like yesterday where I was working through end of year financial planning and really had trouble concentrating.
	- I can fix the post-lunch dip but I'm not sure about the concentration.
	- [[202210080748 Alex Hormozi]] tells me: just keep working.
	- [[202301161334 Deep Work by Cal Newport]] and my experience tells me: don't force it, do shallow work instead, save your highest concentration for the morning.

Now what can I do to make a small incremental improvement towards releasing these constraints?
- See ACTION: under each.

What’s Next?

“The work just needs doing.” – Alex Hormozi