silence the dumb monkey in your head - part 3

We definitely getting better

Ok as usual, if you haven’t read the previous part, I kindly invite you to do so:

Ok, we gonna resume where we left off:

• Still good with the health routine

• Still good with work routine (less overthinking, more productivity)

• Not good with sharing + social media

The two first points gonna be fast, everything is going well, I’ve my daily routine and habits, and I’m used to it and it makes me feel better, couldn’t be better.

Now let’s talk about monkeys.

Make it easy, again

To avoid forcing myself to publish content, I had to find an easy way to do it.

It was easier to focus myself doing something I like than doing something I don’t.

But I somehow find a formula that, so far, works well:

• Creating and planning content is the first task of my day. I can't do anything else before this is done.

• Doing it every day to get used to it.

• Making it easy and fast to do.

How do I make it easy and fast to do?

As usual, I removed the friction points: Ideation, Script, and Editing.

Ideation: Creating content is good, but finding ideas is another thing. Could be easy at the beginning, but with time, it could become hard and easy to drop by a lack of ideas. So I should find a way to easily find ideas.

Script: With ideas comes a script or at least a plan of the content. I hate this part because I prefer to speak freely and naturally instead of following a script. The more I follow a script, the more likely I’ll fail to record my content. The goal was to ideally, have no script at all when recording.

Editing: I like editing at the beginning but I’m not super good at it, which means that I will spend way too much time for an ok result that I will not be happy with. It’s not sustainable in time and I will quickly drop this habit. So I should make the editing of my videos as basic as possible.

With all of that in mind, after a long brainstorming and some external help, I found a way to keep the friction at a minimum:

Documenting my journey the more naturally possible.

What does it mean?

Daily TikTok videos of what I’ve done during the last day.

Just 1 minute of me talking about what I’ve done.

• No need for an idea as what I’m doing is the subject of the content

• No script, I just tell what I’ve done as I was talking to a friend

• Almost no editing, recording everything in one shot, adding background music, small cuts, and that’s done.

On top of that, I added a daily Youtube video with the exact same concept, but in a more longer format.

The result?

I started on Monday and here are some stats:

• I’ve posted 5 videos on YouTube, 1 per day. (5/5)

• I’ve posted 7 videos on TikTok, 1-2 per day. (7/5)

• On Monday, it took me around 3 hours to record the TikTok and the YT videos + all editing/planning/cover/description, etc…

• Now it takes me around 1 hour to do it all. (Around 30min for Youtube and 10/15 min per TikTok).

There are not massive views or growth in terms of followers on both platforms, but I don’t really care as the main goal is for me to get used to doing it daily.

It makes it easier to do so without taking care of the numbers.

I’m pretty sure this will come along the way if I continue to post daily for the next week/months.

Me → 2
Monkeys → 0

Fine-tuning my life

As you can see, I’m getting better and better at improving myself over the week when I see something wrong and this newsletter helps a lot to sit and think about it weekly.

There are still a few adjustments I’ve made and that I have to make, that somehow, could be useful for you.

Checking on the people I care

I realized that I did not know what would happen in the lives of the people I care and it was because, as I was not posting on socials… I was not going on socials and could not see what they were up to.

So I set 2 things :

• I set up specific times during my day (5 to 15 min) to purposely go on social to check on them and see what’s going on.

• To avoid getting lost and just scrolling indefinitely, I’ve created/used specific sections to find them → Private list of the people I want to check on on Twitter, the friends section on TikTok, private account on IG where I follow them.

This way I can be up to date with the people I really want to.

Keeping space for fun

With all these optimizations in my habits/routine, I kinda feel now that I don’t have time to do something else external to that.

I’m trying to be sure to be flexible enough to have time to go eat with a friend or sit and read when I really want to, so I’m not feeling just working all day long, 7/7 (and having a full day off, which is Saturday so far).

My own timezone

That’s something I still working on that I’ll try to implement next week. If you read it or remember it, I say in the first part that I have a shifted schedule, going to sleep around 4 am, and so waking up around 10/11 am and starting to work at 1/2 pm.

I’m used to it, but it still feels weird.

6 pm still feels like the end of the day, and even though I know I will work until probably 3 am, I feel like I haven’t done much of my day because I started to work 4 hours ago.

For that, I’ll try something that has been suggested to me which is to kind of trick my brain and totally shift my timezone.

Choosing a timezone that fits my current lifestyle and living with it. Switching my phone time to that time zone, eating and acting based on that timezone and not the real one.

I think it’s kind of funny and after a little research, I’ll try to live 4 hours behind my actual time zone.

I will keep you updated next week about this one.

Goals and metrics

Something I wanted to share here and that I will keep track of from now on every week is my monthly goals/metrics.

For this month I’ve set some numerical goals on November 1st and this is where I am at so far:

Goal: Post 10 Tiktoks
Objective: Putting myself out here and getting used to posting regularly
Current: 7 posted

Goal: Send 10 app updates for Auro
Objective: Update Auro regularly with fixes and new features
Current: 5 updates

Goal: Get 200 downloads for Auro
Objective: Getting more users to the app → More feedback and potential revenue
Current: 33

Goal: Get $100 in revenue
Objective: The main metric to focus on, money buys food and I love food.
Current: $42

Goal: Finish 1 ASO (App Store Optimization) Course
Objective: Getting better at ASO to drive more traffic + revenue
Current: Just started the course

Goal: Lear UI/UX Design for 20min a day
Objective: Getting better at UI/UX Design to be able to design better apps without relying on other people
Current: Spend 6+ hours learning so far

Will update the numbers every week, and the goals every month.

What’s next?

This week's update was shorter than the previous one, don’t know if it’s a good thing, you tell me.

So far, with all my routines/habits set up, I slowly understand and feel more and more the saying

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey”

This is my journey and I really enjoy it, without being madly focused on the destination. Who knows where I will end?

Ok for real, my goal for next week is to prepare Auro for Black Friday, already have a promo setup in the app, and I’ll try to reach my revenue/download goal next week, so it’s gonna be fun.

Hope you enjoyed this one and I see you next week, in my new time zone.