The power of your personal calendar
For employed people who are juggling personal growth and work. I now have a tool belt for advice on things I wished I knew.
1) Mind your calendar
2) Produce content online.
Fundamentally, these two acts alone are the only thing you need to juggle work and personal growth. I had to learn this by quitting my job and taking a risk. Learn without that risk. Learn from me.
In regards to Mind your calendar, people who are working know exactly when their next meeting is as they have a ‘work calender’ they manage. Depending on the individual, they also add a unit of focus works into their work calender or deadlines. However, this calendar only has your work information. Therefore, the source of truth for work is their work calendar. Thus their source of truth for their personal time is their personal calendar, right? NO.
Because work takes up the majority of people’s time. They tend to ‘mind’ their work calendar instead of their personal and thus their personal life gets put on hold.
My solution:
Your work calendar has its own system and regulation. Don’t do anything about that. Use your own calendar and put a work calendar on there.
This means your personal calendar is now your WORK + PERSONAL items. Depending on the company you might have ‘tight’ regulations for automatic syncing. It doesn’t have to be automatic syncing. As long as you check your personal calendar for your next meeting in regard to work you are golden.
This is because your personal calendar is a representation of your time including personal and work. Suddenly you can put ‘yoga class’ in your personal calendar and not forget your agenda of personal tasks. The juggling of 2 calendars and then the prioritization of the work calendar being the source of truth is what courses individuals to not make progress on both!
Your personal calendar suddenly then becomes the compass to move your personal goals and also work. Thus, if you choose to stay late at work. You can then see that you won’t be going to the gym session you promised yourself at the beginning of the week. Is that the trade-off you are willing to make? I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
When everything is accounted for and suddenly time appears (random cancellation of a meeting or running late to a meeting). That’s an opportunity. Opportunity to do something/anything if you KNOW what you wanted to do today/week instead of ‘thinking’ of what to do. A calendar should be a representation of everything you want/need to do and a tool to let you prioritize different things based on real-time information.
I personally think everyone should have a calendar. Do they? The answer is no.
Same reason that not everyone exercises and has a budget. It’s their belief that they don’t need it and have been fine without it.
But most importantly, I’m not here to preach what works for you. I can’t answer that. You have to answer that yourself. This is what worked for me. Do tell me what solutions worked for you.
My advice: Ensure your beliefs aren’t stopping you from trying. If you tried it and don’t like it today. Fine. Try again after a few years for I used to hate mushrooms and now they are gourmet. You might be missing something based on your beliefs which were created by trauma and past experiences.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? -> Mushrooms have been a good addition to my life.
Produce Content Online
Before self-employment, very little of my work was produced online.
You can make a video on youtube today, sharing what you are grateful for and now the ‘world’ can see it.
Don’t flatter yourself, to the world we are nothing but noise.
The other reason I quit my job was because I couldn’t see myself hitting big ever. If my goal was to make money online, I couldn’t possibly fathom doing it with my employment. Was that my employment fault? Hell no.
“You miss every shot you don’t take” – A CS:GO player
The shot in today’s day and age was to keep producing work online.
If your work is not a link away, it’s already too far away. Not everyone has the capacity to see you guys individually but I know you guys all have a voice.
Some people are afraid of what other thinks -> In essence it’ll break your status.
Some people are afraid of their work not being good enough -> Change your metrics, are you breathing and living? Doing pretty well. In the game of life, losing is death. Live.
Today, the act of hitting big only requires you to post online. Take a shot. Most of it will be missed anyway. But one might hit. I rather have 0.000001% chance than zero.
“You can buy a house but you can’t buy a home” – unknown
I’ve started to build my own family with me and my fiancee and this came back to reflect on my own family.
For the readers that don’t know, my mother and father are both entrepreneurs in their own right and have 4 beautiful children.
I have been searching for entrepreneurship mindset individuals in the void and forgot the realization that my family is the most entrepreneurship-minded individuals due to our upbringing.
I miss you all individually and hope this newsletter shares some wisdom based on the entrepreneur journey so far. I hope you can do it faster and less risk-free than me with w/e you end up working on.
In regards to producing more, here is advice for you individually since I have learned more. Feel free to argue if I’m wrong:
To my big bro: Do not be afraid to be a slave to your tools. Use tools, give up on them fast, and use anything that accelerates your output/learning. The reliance on the tool will create a risk of dependence but not using anything will create zero output. You don’t see me coding in binary, do you? I use Python cus’ it’s faster.
To my twin brother: Do not worry about the perfect tool. Make do with what you have. Once you know your processes you can iterate it then. You have limited capital, time, and energy and you are spending all your resources working out the perfect tool instead of just using what you have. I believe you have a phone to record. Make the videos you envisioned. and no, you don’t need a 360 camera for the perfect POV view.
To my sister: Your problem that you are going through is luckily not unique. This means other people in the world later in life will also encounter the problems you are going through today. Document it, share your insight, and what has worked for you. Someone later, who might want to live in San Fran, or go to America by themselves will find your insights useful. It might not be today, but it might be in 5 years. Compound that insight for them and then you’ll create an audience. Your warmth and charisma will bring people anyway but the sprinkle of insight will cause you to be invaluable.