Hello from Kraków, Poland…

I’ve been away for a few days now - the video issue below is from here if you want to see what it looks like - and I was going to give this week a miss. But a note-to-self piece of advice I’ve been mulling over because of recent life is better than nothing, so here you go…

For the last couple of weeks (until I came out to Poland) I’ve been working on revising for a university exam, and whilst I don’t think that what I study is boring, sitting and reading and writing about it for hours every day is. Much more monotonous than what I do normally, anyway.

Before this period, I’d been doing very well at staying focused on daily tasks like writing new issues, emails and video scripts. I was motivated and inspired when it came to building a new website for Fundamentalised and didn’t need any form of external app or website blocking (something that I’ve used for a number of years now to stay focused whether I like it or not).

However, the second I started revising, I found myself having to block websites and apps to a very strict degree to shoehorn myself into doing the required work.

I guess that’s because the nature of the online work I do requires me to be able to switch between different tasks with little to no friction. Unfortunately, this means that I don’t get on well when it’s time to use pure willpower to do the same thing for many hours.

That’s the lesson I figured out - you’re going to be a lot more fired up and focused if you find things to work on that are diverse, stimulating and mean a lot to you.

Creating things online means get to write, market and build. Every day could look different if I so wished. I think it’s a better problem to have to constrain yourself to a few different tasks to make any progress than to have to castigate yourself into directing effort into something that doesn’t push your buttons. So aim for that if at all possible.

That’s what I’ve got for you this week - this weekend’s issue will come when I’m back home after Friday and although I can’t promise anything, it’ll probably be longer and more detailed than today’s. Thank you for reading all the same and I’ll see you soon!

— Theo

Last week’s issue (extended cut)…

Read the issue - 084 • Not all worthwhile investments are money-related