Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2025.

So much to do this year, but not all at once.

This year it’s all about slowly building good habits.

Topics for this week:

• Slow Start

• Back to the 9-5

• Automating Content

• Greg’s 2024 Recap

• Winning Habits

Slow Start

Off to a slow start this year, but I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

I listened to enough New Year’s resolution videos to know that trying to completely change all of your daily routines in one day has a very high chance of failing.

What’s usually more successful is to make small changes one at a time.

Introducing one new habit into a daily routine takes way less energy than trying to completely jump into a new lifestyle and change everything.

Diet and exercise is the traditional New Year’s resolution and it’s the one that so often fails by February, but for good reason.

If you’re not already in the habit of watching what you eat and regularly going to the gym, those are two huge changes to your daily routine that take a lot of energy to adapt to.

Just the dieting part alone involves learning what “dieting” even means, figuring out your goal of getting leaner, adding muscle, or just feeling better, then learning what to eat to do that, what macros are, which foods are good sources of those macros, when you should be eating that food, how to prep or cook that food, how to store that food, when can you get away with cheat meals, and ultimately figuring out what works best for you.

On top of that, you are also trying to get to the gym, learn a completely new workout routine, doing new exercises which are exhausting by themselves, but you’re also burning all this energy finding your way around a new gym, memorizing a new schedule, and then coming home to go back to the battle of eating the proper meal.

Throw in work, family, friends and trying to make time for something you do enjoy and you can see why people burn out New Year’s resolution’s pretty quickly.

Too much energy for too much change.

Instead, add one thing at a time.

Pick diet or exercise.

Aim for 3 good meals a week, or get to the gym 3 times a week and build from there.

Once one of those is a normal habit, then it’s time to add the other, or ramp up to 5 days a week.

Luckily I’ve already been through the complete diet and exercise overhaul so I know how to handle it, but I’ll be applying the same principles to work instead.

My plan for this year is to slowly introduce new habits so it doesn’t get overwhelming and fail by January 30, even though failing is a great way to learn, but that’s a different topic for another day.

Slowly introduce one new business habit each week, then ideally have 52 new habits by the end of the year if I keep the pace.

Here’s to a slow start in 2025!

And if you are working on your diet and exercise resolution, here’s some advice from Dr. Mike:

Back to the 9-5

This week’s slow start started with considering a new 9-5.

I loosely kept with the habit Deep 30 from earlier last year, dedicating at least 2 hours of deep work each day, but I’d like to do much more.

Looking back, it’s been almost 2 years since I left a full time job, and I realized I’ve mostly been enjoying the freedom rather than really accomplishing goals.

It was a nice change of pace after 10+ years of being on others’ schedules so I’m grateful and lucky to have had the ability to take things easy for a long time but it may be time for a new schedule.

I justified 2 hours of deep work a day as “good enough” based on ideas like the 4-Hour Workweek and tropes that most salaried employees rarely do 4 hours of actual meaningful work per day, but in reality, I wasn’t really gaining any meaningful ground beyond research and exploration with those 2 hours.

The 4-Hour Workweek is something to work toward as a goal, not just adopt as a lifestyle overnight.

Living like a multimillionaire and working to become a multimillionaire are two completely different things.

So it’s time to get back to work…

For myself.

Rather than a minimum of 2 hours per day it will be considerably more.

A 9-5 of my own making.

Right now the plan is:

• 2 hours of automation work in the morning

• 2 hours of Divs

• workout

• 1.5 hour bonus block

And probably different days will have different focuses like

• Monday, Wednesday - client work / meetings

• Tuesday, Thursday - content and automations

• Friday - bonus meetings and newsletters

That’s the first big change for next week.

Back to the 9-5 grind, but my own custom 9-5.

Once things are where I’d like them to be, properly leveraged and all, then I can transition back to the 4-Hour Workweek dream.

My new 9-5 starts on Monday.

And oddly enough, one of my tech inspirations has been feeling the same way:

Automating Content

I’ve been talking about automating content for a long time and that’s what’s pushed me toward the idea of the automation agency.

And if I play my cards right, it could be something that could potentially gain clients quickly.

Design is tough to sell because, with web design at least, the value is more intrinsic.

It’s easier to look at something and say “that’s a bad design” but it’s pretty rare to see something and get the immediate reaction of “wow”.

Trying to sell that takes natural talent, or years of experience as a designer, neither of which I have.

Luckily, it’s much easier to see an automation and recognize it’s value.

“This automation will automatically repost your 5 star reviews to Instagram” is much easier to sell than “I’m an engineer that can recreate designs from things you like”.

And what’s even better, creating a recording that explains the automation and shows how to create the automation step by step provides a video that can be posted on YouTube and used for reference and for marketing.

Doubling up on the slow start next week, I’m planning to record at least one automation tutorial for the week during the morning Automation block.

Once I get that process down I’d like to ramp up that production and produce as many videos as I can.

The more the better, hopefully having at least 10 videos ready to go by the end of the month.

Depending how it goes, one-per-day would be ideal but better to start with one per week and grow from there.

Can’t take full credit for the one-per-day idea, have to give props to Cody Schneider for the inspiration:

Greg’s 2024 Recap

I’ve been following a lot of Greg’s content this year and I have to respect what he’s done.

I stumbled on his X.com account before it was rebranded to X, and of course, ended up watching his YouTube channel as well.

He does a great job of value first, giving away as much as he can, which I think is a truly winning formula that I’d like to implement myself.

And in this particular video, I really appreciate the open conversation format of his yearly recap, like he’s just chatting with a friend.

For as much as I follow him, I had no idea he was involved in so many projects, and had a baby (congrats!).

The one I was paying attention to was his YouTube channel growing from 11k to 146k which is no easy feat.

He’s also had a number of guests showcasing how to use the latest apps and services in the startup world which has been awesome to keep up on all things AI.

And toward the end he talks about simplifying some of his systems, where he got rid of Notion and started using Apple Notes instead, which I’ve been wrestling with myself.

I like Notion but for some reason it doesn’t stick as my go-to notes answer, but I tend to jump between Windows and Apple so I don’t like Apple Notes as the answer either.

Still working on that, it maybe be back to a cloud-hosted .txt file for everything, we’ll see.

But for Greg’s full 2024 recap, check out the video below:

Winning Habits

Since I haven’t talked enough about it, let’s add a few more winning habits.

Jesse Itzler is another person that doesn’t like New Year’s resolutions so he talks about his simple method of adding winning habits instead.

Every quarter, he adds a small but positive to his daily routine, like drinking 100 oz of water per day, or 10 minutes of mediation per day.

Making it per quarter gives plenty of time to adapt to the habit, 3 months to build the routine, before adding a new one.

By the end of the year, he has 4 new beneficial habits.

It’s a simple alternative to a life changing resolution that won’t make it past February.

The other idea I really liked was the Japanese concept of the Misogi.

Pick one major event to define your year, like running a 5k, marathon or ultra marathon depending on your running ability.

Something realistic, but difficult enough that you have to work toward it and feel accomplished enough that it could serve as a highlight for the year.

I haven’t committed to anything yet but I’ve been considering options.

In the meantime, you can hear it from Jesse below.

He’s a high energy and intense guy, with a lot going on so it’s hard not be inspired listening to him.

And that’s it for this week! Off to a slow but solid start in the new year. How’s the start of your new year?

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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