On top of that I've been using a file on my computer to list what I want to do each week and month. I've been using this system for about 5 weeks now and for half of it it's been amazing for me! I got an unbelievable amount of stuff done. During the first week of September for example, I did almost everything I had planned for the first 2-3 weeks of the month!
On the other hand, there have been weeks where, although I still got a decent amount of work done, I wasn't particularly motivated, felt a bit sluggish and wasn't all that happy overall. So I set out to find out what was causing it.
First I blamed sleep. I have been sleeping less than the 9 hours I used to, but by now I've realised this is not the issue. The 8 hours of sleep I get each night are enough, because there were also weeks where I did completely fine sleeping 8 hours a night.
Next was the lack of exercise and healthy food. I hadn't been to the gym in 2-3 months, due to 2 injuries, spending time in Europe and moving to and getting settled in Japan. I had also been eating out the vast majority of my meals for the past 6 months. So 3 weeks ago I finally started going to the gym again and eating superclean and healthy 90%+ of my meals. But regardless of the 6x2 hours/week I've spent in the gym and the healthy food, I still have had the same periods of sluggishness and unhappiness since then.
At this point I started to question what it was I actually want to do. I figured, maybe I am not enjoying what I'm doing. I am very confident that entrepreneurship suits me. I've never had a regular job and always made my own schedule. On top of that I really need to be challenged.
However, I did start to question exactly what kind of business I want to build and asked myself: "What is it you want to do with your life?". I still don't have the exact answer to that, but I do know that I'm very excited about my Language Link project. Especially building out the website and the millions of different marketing possibilities excite me to no end!
Another project I was working on was an affiliate website for Udemy.com. Udemy is a website where you can take a wide variety of courses ranging from 'Learning How to Build a Website' to 'Learning Photoshop' to 'Photography' and 'Management' courses. I completed a course on building websites, which was fairly interesting and should prove useful in the future, but I found myself not so excited about building the actual affiliate website. Especially when the affiliate program turned out to work differently than I originally anticipated. So I've pretty much decided to drop this project.
{However, if anyone reading this is planning to sign up for Udemy, hit me up! Got some referal links and I'm happy to share the money with you that Udemy pays me for refering you!}
I was also planning on playing quite a bit of poker, but after playing 1-2 sessions, I've noticed it's just not gonna happen. I may play every now and then if I really feel like it, but mostly for fun. I don't expect to do any serious online poker playing anymore.
In the end I decided that it'll come to me eventually. I'm only 24, so I have plenty time to figure it out. And for now I'm very excited about my Language Link project, so I will be working on that whenever I can.
This still left me with the periods of sluggishness and lack of motivation. So I started to ask myself a few slightly different questions. "What excites you?", "What do you want to do right this instant?" and "What if this was your last day alive, how would you spend it?". Worringly enough I still wasn't able to come up with any clear answers and I began to realize not much TRULY excites me at the moment.
Sure, there's things I really enjoy such as good food, movies, socializing and certain parts of the Language Link project I'm really looking forward to. But the food has to be really outstanding and there's only a handful of movies out of the 1000+ I've seen that truly get me to jump out of my seat.
Possible causes are for one the remaining effects of having been a professional poker player. I developed a lot of skills that'll serve me extremely well throughout my life, but I also feel like I've surpressed my emotions quite a lot. Secondly, I've already experienced a lot of pretty big things for a 24 year old, which has been great, but it makes it harder to find newer and bigger things to be excited about.
Last but not least, I've always liked to be challenged. The issue with that is that I may be overconfident in some ways. I feel like there's almost nothing I can't do, everything seems so possible and within reach and thus not much of a challenge and less exciting...
I think lacking a true passion is definitely one part of the problem, but on top of that I've definitely spent time doing some things I was clearly unexcited about. Mainly the affiliate project and poker I wasn't that excited about. So I've decided to make 2 main changes on top of dropping the projects I'm not excited about:
1) Change the entire way I schedule my days.
Throw out most of the to-do-list as is and instead after I finish up a few things that have to happen that day, I just do whatever I feel like. No joke! Usually these are useful things like working on Language Link anyway. I think I'll be focussing a lot more on Japanese studies again aswell. I haven't progressed that much as of late. I've especially been speaking Japanese very, very little despite living in Japan.
2) Get out of the house more and meet more new people.
Take my laptop with me and do work from coffee shops more, so I don't spend too much time at home behind my desktop just like I did in London for 2 years playing poker.
And since I rarely have a bad time when I'm socializing, I've decided to go out of my way and try to meet more people. Which I was sort of planning to do anyway for networking purposes.
For now I think making these 2 big changes, should have a big positive impact on my life, but we'll see how it pans out for real in a month or 2.
I have a LOT to update you on regarding my Language Link project, life in Tokyo, my totally furnished apartment, some movies, some dinners and possibly upcoming trips too. However, I think this blog is long and dense enough as it is, so I'll promise to update you on all of that as soon as I can. Hopefully within a week or so, although this week is really busy so don't expect it before the weekend!
If you actually got through all of this, I'm impressed. Maybe my writing isn't as boring as I thought it was! Leave me a comment if you did, especially if any of this resonates with you I'd be interested in hearing from you!
No comments:
Post a Comment