Author: brianjohnson

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I Seriously Need to Focus on just Blasting Through my To-Do List

I’ve wrote about this same thing before years ago when I really started establishing my to-do list as a cornerstone of my progress. While the to-do has served me incredibly well, I think I really need to take a step back and re-evaluate how I approach it.

The main issue is that I still treating as if I have set work hours, and that my to-do should take me exactly as long as my set work hours.

There are a few ways in which this is extremely harmful:

  • It causes me to drag things out longer than they need to be if I see that I should have plenty of time
  • It causes me to get distracted with other misc. activities for the same reason
  • I have a tendency to add new things to the to-do list if I’m ahead of schedule

One of the points of working the way that I do is that I’m focusing on output and results rather than time spent working.

The way I’ve been approaching my to-do list is completely counter-productive to that.

I need to think carefully about what I want to accomplish in the day, and then do that and only that.

And most importantly, I need to be laser-focused on finishing it. No distractions, no new tasks, nothing.

I need to just blast through it.

And if I finish super early?

Great! That’s the dream. I’ll have the whole day to do other stuff.

So I need to do that, because I’ve felt frustrated lately that I seem to not have any extra time, even on days when my to-do was supposed to be easy. I think this is exactly why.

So let’s do better.

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I Should Establish a YouTube Presence Targeting Small Website Hosts

This is a very preliminary idea, but one that could actually turn into something.

I could establish a YouTube presence where I’m creating content aimed at helping small business owners who provide website hosting services to their clients.

The general idea would be that I’m posting content related to operations and marketing for these businesses to help them. But then I would occasionally mention that I’m also looking to buy companies like theirs.

If I can help people grow their businesses: great! But at the same time I’d be establishing myself as an expert in the industry. And if they already knew that I was interested in buying, then if the day ever comes where they are thinking about selling their business, I’d be the first one they’d go to. I’d be top-of-mind.

It would be a fairly big commitment, of course. And I’d need to put some work into producing some quality content. But if I started getting the right kind of traffic it could be extremely beneficial.

And worst case: it still increases the size of my online footprint and would likely still improve my search engine rankings for relevant keywords.

I’m working on some other things right now but I’m interested in picking this back up and pursuing it when I finish them.

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My Photos Website is Ranking for its First Keyword

After having allowed search engine crawlers and also adding more photos to my photo website, I’m pleased to discover that I am ranking for my first keyword!

It’s “bond falls haight township mi”. One of my photos is of this location (one of my first, actually), and I specifically targeted keywords like that.

And it worked! I’m like the 80th result for both web search and image search.

That’s not great, but that’s not the point. I’m already seeing results from optimizing to these search terms. All I have to do is keep it up and hopefully I’ll start ranking for tons of keywords, and then I’ll really start getting the traffic I’m looking for.

The whole site is sort of built on the belief that I can start ranking for local keywords like that and that soon, people will start actually buying my photos.

And it has already started.

I expect to see results improve over time as I add more photos and continue optimizing the website.

I’m pretty excited!

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My Interests are Changing Drastically & I’m Not Sure how to Handle It

It sort of dawned on me recently that my enjoyment of some of my old hobbies or interests has decreased substantially.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy anything; on the contrary. Some of my old activities I still find very enjoyable and I think I’m finding new ones to be enjoyable, too.

But it’s still sort of a weird feeling.

As an example: I purchased a new graphics card because I’ve always wanted to have a good one and play some video games that actually use it and have stunning graphics.

But I’m playing some of these games and I don’t know that I care that much. It’s hard for me to get into them. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that they are new and there’s lots to learn, or if I just am not interested in that sort of thing anymore.

I am much more interested in active, physical activities though. Playing disc golf, hiking, biking, etc. are all things that I’m very interested in.

Also, most things I’m interested in now are social. Even with gaming, I’ve tried to keep that as a social activity and I do enjoy that aspect of it.

I’ve also come to enjoy reading more. Perhaps because I’ve started actually reading fiction, and mostly in Spanish which feels very rewarding.

But the idea of binge-watching a show is not that appealing to me, but staying in and reading is.

And actually that’s one of the big categories that has appealed to me less-and-less: entertainment like movies and TV. I don’t know, they just don’t have that appeal to me anymore. I try to get into them but I’m almost always disappointed, even when watching movies I know I like.

I think it’s all… Fine though. The things I am liking more of are things that are all healthy for me and benefit both my happiness and long-term health, both mental and physical.

The things I’m losing interest in… Don’t.

So it all seems kind of strange and new, but I guess I should really just embrace it because it’s all good.

I’m not sure how much of it is just me getting older, or possibly it’s coming along with all the other healthy things I’ve been doing like sleeping better, eating right, not drinking, etc.

It’s hard to say, but it will be interesting to see how it changes going forward.

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Switching my Habit – Waking up Early

For the last… Long time, I have been trying to establish the habit of getting up when my alarm goes off. And I think I have finally established it well.

It took a lot of effort but I’ve now been without a misstep for many months.

And now I’d like to formally move on to another related habit, and that is to wake up early every single day.

For now, I am going to set that time to 7:30am. This is the time at which I MUST be awake. Ideally I’d be pushing it earlier over time and as able, but we’ll start with this and see how it goes.

Another habit I’ve been considering is to physically get up and out of bed as soon as I wake up, and not return to it until I go to sleep. It’s possible that will turn out to be a prerequisite to this one, but I guess we’ll see.

The biggest challenge I’ll face is that sometimes I’ll stay out or up late, and then if I get up early I’ll be sleep deprived. I very much dislike being in that state and my productivity suffers.

So perhaps I’ll need to make changes to ensure I get to bed on time.

The other thing is that I know I’ll probably slip up on this from time to time, especially at first. And that’s okay. The important thing is that I pick it right back up again.

I’ll try to report back occasionally on my progress.

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Watching Spanish Content Makes me Feel Better than Other Stuff

I’ve noticed that I feel a lot better watching content in Spanish vs. watching random, time-wasting content on YouTube.

Now, this may not really be all that deep. Watching Spanish content feels productive and challenging.

Watching YouTube… Is typically not.

But I think it’s worth noting that watching things in Spanish can also be extremely entertaining. There’s nothing stopping me from watching my favorite shows and content in Spanish.

So I think it’s really important to stick to watching things in Spanish and not get sucked into wasting time watching pointless videos on YouTube.

Not much more to my post today. I think the main lesson is just that I really need to focus, always, on productive activities. I can’t be wasting time on mindless entertainment.

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The Bizarre Context and Mindset Shift After Returning from Abroad

I’m not sure how much detail I’ve gone into about this in the past, but I just want to talk about one of the weirdest phenomena I’ve ever experienced.

When I live for awhile in another country, my goal is to sort of develop my own life there. And it works.

After 2-3 months, I have a whole routine. I have a gym, I have a grocery store, I have friends and people that I see regularly.

I have my own problems.

And then the moment I step through door of my house, everything completely changes.

It’s not like my experience when I first arrive somewhere outside the US, which as noted before is characterized by a period of tumultuous acclimation.

Instead, the bizarre part is that you basically open your eyes and find yourself in a state of relaxed comfort. Your problems and concerns are entirely different than they were yesterday, but there’s a broken-in familiarity to it.

It’s that lack of transition and tumult that is actually what is jarring. It’s like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror and you don’t have control over yourself. There’s a part of you in the background screaming, “why are we so okay with all this?!”

It is not inherently a problem, but it is unsettling.

Part of it may be that if we slip right back into our old life, what was the point of everything else? If we can completely disregard the people, places, and problems of our other life, are they even meaningful?

And of course they are, but therein lies the issue. They are important, so why are we simply moving on without them?

Maybe I find it a bit unsettling because it sort of feels like I’m towing all of those people and experiences in a boat behind me and simply cutting the line. And in that sense, it feels sort of like a loss. A loss of a life I once had, of relationships I once had.

So then… Why aren’t I mourning that loss?

Maybe that question is what really bothers me. It isn’t that any of it happened, it’s that I don’t seem upset.

And I’m not quite sure how to deal with that.

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There is Tremendous Value in Managing Complicated but Inexpensive Tasks

I had a bit of an epiphany today that most of the recurring profit (and probably profit of any kind) generated by my company comes from the management of relatively inexpensive services.

So in our case, that’s mostly website hosting but also applies to things like ongoing services for WordPress and even domain name registration.

I just re-read one of my old blog posts and I mentioned how, when presented with the option for even faster hosting, virtually all of my clients have declined. And I found that fascinating.

Over time, I’ve realized that the technical specs of my hosting don’t matter a whole lot to any of my clients.

What they value is that I’m managing everything. They know I’m handling it all, configuring it will, and they inherently trust that what I’m offering is high-quality. Beyond that, they don’t understand and don’t care to understand how it works.

And that’s all great, and something I have already written about.

But today I thought… What other services fit a similar description? I think anything that meets the following criteria would fit the bill for a great opportunity:

  1. More or less a commodity service but with premium options available
  2. Relatively complex behind the scenes and poorly-understood by most
  3. Recurring service with minimal maintenance required once set up properly
  4. Tech or software related and possible to perform entirely online
  5. Ideally a service used by businesses and not just by consumers

Anything that meets all four of these criteria could potentially be a great opportunity for me. In addition to the website hosting and domain name registrations we’re already providing, here are some that I can think of now:

  • Cloud-based email hosting – particularly services that will not be interacting with third-party clients, such as Google Workspace
  • Cloudflare services / DNS hosting
  • Zapier Integrations
  • Managed Google Analytics and similar tools
  • Merchant services accounts/integrations, like with Authorize.net

Of these, the last one interests me the most. I could basically just resell Authorize.net services and get it set up and maintain it, and people would love it because I would handle everything for them. I could just have a form that people sign up on that gets all of the information needed to get set up and do it all for them.

I’m sure there are lots of others, but these were just the ones I thought of now.

I just definitely keep thinking about this and try to find more examples.

A possible 6th category may very well be: “is able to be managed entirely by me without the need for a client account”.

That would be a major drawback of the merchant services stuff, because they wouldn’t see the need for me if they had their own account that would keep working without me. Ideally it would all be behind the scenes.

The value is there regardless, it’s just that if they have their own account, they would be inclined to question the value without understanding the full picture.

 

 

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I Could Reach out to Cities and Localities and Offer my Photos in Exchange for Links

I had a great idea recently relating to my fine art photography website, and that is that I could reach out to cities and other localities and offer to let them use my photos in any capacity as long as they provided me with a backlink.

These backlinks would obviously be very valuable, because they would make my photos rank highly for the locations which I’m targeting. Then, people would end up on my site and hopefully buy prints.

It would be a great way to raise the profile of my website, get more traffic, and improve rankings for specific locations.

It may be a bit labor-intensive unless I outsource it. But I think that once I’ve built up a decent library of photos, it will be a great investment of my time to really get the project off the ground.

Nothing is needed now because I’m still working hard to fill it out and finalize some things, but perhaps later in the summer I should really start doing that.

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I Need to Adopt a Pragmatic Approach to Everything

This feels very obvious but I don’t think I’ve really been living it: I need to adopt a pragmatic approach to everything.

I’ve posted many times about my idealism in the past and how I tend to think I’m going to be able to just brute-force my way through problems and achieve a level of perfection that will solve all my problems.

And that obviously isn’t a good strategy.

The only viable strategy is pragmatism.

It’s fine to want to improve, work towards goals, and imagine a future where we are better in certain ways.

But in the present, we need to be completely honest and realistic about ourselves, our opportunities, and our weaknesses.

Because none of those things change over night. If I’m weak against something now, I’m likely to continue being weak against it in the future.

The path the leads to success will take into account all pieces of information and make decisions based on that. Because why wouldn’t it?

Idealism simply ignores some data and replaces it with what you wish things were like.

Pragmatism is iterative, too. You can try something based on what you know, and alter your approach based on how that went. As you learn more, you can improve what works.

So here’s a concrete example of this.

I’m currently not drinking at all. Productivity is way up and lots of other things are greatly improved.

This is highly pragmatic. It recognizes that there are downsides to drinking and that it has very real consequences, and also that it’s difficult to just drink a small amount.

The idealistic side of me has always said, “I can limit it to weekends and it won’t affect me in the week” or, “even if I’m low on energy I’ll just power through it and it won’t affect me”.

They are idealistic and unrealistic ideas.

Whether or not I’ll one day be able to find a happy middle ground remains to be seen, but the fact remains that I definitely AM more productive now, and it is highly pragmatic and effective to give up drinking in an effort to be more successful.

But I can think of some other things that this applies to as well. Here are some of the top of my head:

  • I’m not effective on low sleep, and it’s generally better to sleep late than to try to power through the tiredness
  • I’m not motivated to work or be productive at night
  • Looking to others for help in areas where I’m lacking is probably much more beneficial and rapid than trying to do everything myself

I need to simply give up my idealism and focus on being pragmatic in all areas.

Most importantly, this means acknowledging my own weaknesses and consistent failings and altering my approach accordingly.

My goal now is to just be more aware of times when I’m being too idealistic and take a step back to figure out what I should really be doing. And perhaps writing about it there!