These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.
1
Took a little trip to old town Las Palmas this morning. It’s beautiful over there, feels all proper Spanish with the cobbled calles and pretty plazas. We stumbled into one square with almost no people but filled with sports cars. Another had a bunch of old people dancing merrily to a big band playing live music. We sat nearby and had a coffee and talked about things.
2
Good stretch of work today then headed across town to bust my AcroYoga cherry. I was the base a couple of times and got to fly quite a bit. At one point several people picked me up and spun me head over heels in the air. The feeling of weightlessness was a trip, especially as a guy weighing 85kgs.
3
Mastermind call. Putting the outreach efforts on pause to focus on video this month. Before November hits I have to do three live webinars, publish three new videos, and broadcast three live episodes of Digital Nomads Having Coffee. For each of those nine I miss, it’s a $300 penalty. So $2700 total on the line. Better get my shit together.
4
You know that old advice people give to a guy who struggles with the ladies? Just be yourself, they’ll say. Which is great advice in one sense, but in another it’s completely worthless. Being yourself isn’t automatic. It takes practice. Same with writing. Takes a while to find your voice, to sound genuine. And the fastest way to get there is to write, publish, rewrite, publish. The practice is the doing.
5
Basketball down by the beach, competitive 3-on-3. I hadn’t played for almost a year, but did okay. All that time walking on sand recently seems to have toughened up my feet, no blisters to worry about. And it was nice to get my hands on a basketball again. Reminds me of the journey I’ve been on, and how it never might have been if I hadn’t become obsessed with that sport.
6
This having a girlfriend thing gets me out and about more. 4pm beach volleyball today, something I doubt I’d have done if not for her. You don’t want to be the boyfriend who stays home all day working and not doing any fun stuff. Plus, with a partner, being lazy doesn’t feel like wasting time, because you can be lazy together, which is just another way of enjoying each other’s company.
7
There’s a fundamental thing I have that’s easy to take for granted, a kind of safety net that lets me take more risks and live this fancy free lifestyle. And that is: kind and loving parents that would welcome me home with open arms if some catastrophe struck. Worst case scenario, I know I’ll always have a place to sleep and food to eat. That’s huge. And many people don’t have that.
8
Watched a webinar today, for Authority Hacker. I’m already a member, but it was interesting seeing how they ran through everything and then made their sales pitch at the end. You could see some people in the live chat complaining about the sales part. Same people who asked irrelevant questions all the way through. Same people who were never going to buy in the first place.
9
Just after 9pm. I believe I sat down here at about 4pm. Been lost in a work session since. People talk about the pomodoro technique but that’s never worked well for me. Have an alarm go off every 25 minutes? Get up and walk around a couple of times every hour? Completely breaks the flow. Let me go deep and long with no interruptions.
10
Dinner is sliced tomatoes, each with a dab of lentil hummus and a razor blade of hard, pungent cheese. We sit outside for an hour, in low light, weather so perfect you hardly notice it. She drinks some wine and I drink my tea and we eat and go back and forth sharing small things we’re grateful for.
11
A hundred years ago, living room chairs were arranged in a circle. People would sit and talk to each other. Then television came along and the chairs all pointed towards that, everyone looking at one screen. Nowadays everyone sits looking at their own personal screens. Four of us in this living room right now doing just that. Honestly though, I don’t wish it were different.
12
I recorded a 2.5 hour webinar earlier this year, giving people some free information about working online before pitching them my course. I don’t think a single sale came from that. This evening I did my first live webinar, and I plan to do one every week for the rest of the year. Feels more natural this time. Less salesy, more helpful.
13
I’ve been accused of making money online by teaching people how to make money online. Which is true. But I say accused because some people seem to think there’s something dishonest in that. To me though it’s no different to being a professional sports coach. They don’t earn a living playing the sport themselves. They earn a living helping others play it. Nobody questions what they do, only how well they do it.
14
A friend’s been posting mostly negative shit on Facebook recently. Or so I thought. Went and looked at his wall and it was actually ninety percent positive. Maybe it was a coincidence that I caught a few of his negative posts in row. Or maybe negative stuff on Facebook gets more of a reaction and so becomes more visible. Our news feeds may be biased towards the bitchy.
15
A local man who asks no questions brought us to this remote spot on the island. We’re high in the mountains, deep in the forest, away from the noise. I go exploring while the others climb rocks. Caves, canyons, epic views all around. Across the valley there’s a peak where, apparently, more than five hundred years ago, indigenous people jumped to their deaths rather than submit to the invaders.
16
10am on a Monday and I’m at a mall shopping for short pants. I’ll get some groceries on the way home and spend the rest of the day in bed, watching 18 hours of Netflix, reveling in it. I mean, fuck it, why not? If you’re going to be a lazy bum you might as well embrace it, go all in. The alternative is to feel guilty all the while, which kinda defeats the purpose.
17
Only ten more weeks left in the year. By the time you read this, probably only eight. Then it’s 2018, another year gone, never to return, a little more of that dash carved between the dates on your gravestone. (This is supposed to be a motivating Momento, supposed to give you a sense of urgency, but perhaps I’ve undermined my own message by telling you I watched 18 hours of Netflix yesterday.)
18
Back on track with an epic work day. Up before six this morning, got some graft in before heading to the beach to get the body moving. Then spent almost seven hours editing a video, wrapped around a nap. Now it’s after ten and I’m winding down for the day, emptying inboxes and filling out spreadsheets.
19
A big thing – perhaps the biggest thing – I look for in a friend, or anyone for that matter: believability. Can I believe the words that come out of their mouth? Do they act in accordance with those words? Overheard someone today boasting that they earn $1000/day online, when I know at best they earn a third of that. Which is still impressive. But apparently the truth isn’t good enough.
20
Listening to a podcast about Stonyfield Yogurt, how they built that business. They weren’t profitable for nine years. One of the founders borrowed a million dollars from his mother-in-law. They were scraping to make payroll for years. What kept them going? They believed in the product. They knew they had something special. So they refused to quit, even when it got really tough.
21
Invited a bunch of people over to The Roof this afternoon, got talking about conspiracy theories and far out ideas. A question comes: What do you believe that most people think is crazy? A big one for me is that all drugs should be decriminalized. Like in Portugal. That seems to be a much better, smarter, mature way to go.
22
Was up til 2am last night, finishing off eighty-four lines of poetry. Now I’m a room with a mic on my chest and a blanket over my head, starting to sweat. I’ll do a few takes of the audio, get it sounding good. Tomorrow I’ll look for some music to fit nicely with it. Then it should just be a matter of going through my archive and finding the right visuals.
23
Yeah, this thing is taking a while. Spent about ten hours at it today. I usually take one hour to produce one minute of finished video, but I’ll probably end up with a 4:1 ratio on this piece. Will it be time well spent? Well, no telling if it’ll rack up the views, but working on it does get me into that flow state. That’s worthwhile in itself.
24
Alright, it’s done. About twenty hours went into it in the end. Publishing it now and then I’ll head off to lunch and not look at my phone or email for a few hours. Too easy to get sucked in and hitting refresh to see what the reaction is like. I’m always a bit nervous when I push publish on something, though less so with this for some reason. Maybe that’s from knowing I made it as good as could be.
25
Down at the beach, sun has just come up over the ocean, peeking at me through sailboat masts and container cranes. I jog a little and do some stretching, then three circuits. Wide push-ups, squats, straight-back crunches, stick jumps, lizard crawl. Twenty seconds on, ten seconds off. Skip a twenty between sets. Sun watching me all the while.
26
Another webinar this evening. Made same adjustments from last week, added a dose of scarcity to nudge people towards action, got two sales from ~15 attendees. Definite progress. There’s a lot to be said for doing the same thing over and over again in quick succession. The feedback comes fast and it becomes obvious where you have room to improve.
27
Recorded the latest podcast episode with the cousin a few days back, talking about cognitive bias. One of the things we mentioned was the what-the-hell effect. That’s when you eat one cookie and then think, “Ah, what the hell, I might as well eat the whole box now.” That was the kind of day I had today, only not with food.
28
“I’m going to call you on a transphobic sentence in the video you posted. You said that you had kissed a woman who might have been a man. On behalf of all of the gender diverse people who see the video, please don’t say that. You’re saying that you don’t believe the woman you kissed was a woman, and therefore by extension that all of us are not really the genders we identify as, and are giving up everything to live as. This hurts us.”
29
Saw someone saying today that she can’t teach English online because she doesn’t have any qualifications. Yeah, that’s kind of irrelevant. I know people with degrees in IT who I wouldn’t trust to perform a google search. And people who never went to college who I consider mentors. A piece of paper doesn’t prove you’re good. It just proves you can jump through hoops.
30
Been feeling sluggish the past couple of weeks. Probably just need a little downtime. I track my “deep work” hours every day, aim for sixty each month. This month I’m over 85 so far. Frustrating to hit a lull though when there are so many opportunities out there, so many things I can and want to do.
31
Take a minute to think of someone you haven’t been in touch with for a while. You know: that person you keep meaning to catch up with but never do. How about you go send them a message right now? Seriously, go do it. See if you can arrange a get-together with them. Or if that’s not possible, tell them something you love/appreciate about them.
