It's 2024 and let's recap this past month.
So last time I updated you guys on my progress was December, it was around December 1st and
it's been a month.
A month has passed and I gotta admit I'm not really used to pie casting.
I'm used to being able to repeat my phrases over and over and over until I say it the
perfect way, which is what I've been doing on the YouTube channel.
But let's talk about the YouTube channel.
Like I said on the last update, I was starting to focus on the YouTube channel a lot more
now.
And over the past month I really did start to focus on it and I've been posting one
video every single week and making sure that it's better every single time that I post.
And I've definitely seen some results from that because I'm starting to make a lot better
higher quality videos and I'm also starting to get a lot more views.
So my first real video that I posted that was actually me really trying was called Mediocrity
is not your own model.
Got about 100 views from that.
And then the second one was a daily routine video about my daily routine.
And I got around 200 views.
And then the third one, the most recent one that I made was called Monk Mode is Not Enough.
And that one was my best video that I've ever made.
And in my opinion, the best thumbnail that I've ever made.
And it got 700 views.
So I'm starting to pick it up and I'm starting to learn how to be a lot better editing.
I'm starting to get a lot better pictures for my videos and my thumbnail creating is
getting a lot better.
My idea generating is getting a lot better.
And one of the biggest reasons for that is my daily routine is extremely optimal for
YouTube.
And let me just walk you through what I do.
I basically wake up in the morning, bike down to the park and hit a workout with my gymnastics
rings.
I like to use the gymnastics rings because it feels cooler and feels more extreme or
whatever.
It just is a cool vibe being out in the park in the morning early.
And then once I do that, bike home and start working.
And I go downstairs and what I'm doing is either editing or thumbnail creating or editing
my thumbnails.
So I work on that until at the latest 10 o'clock, but I usually work on that until I'm done or
10 o'clock, whichever happens first.
And then at 10 o'clock is when I go upstairs and cook breakfast and break my fast.
And on those 10 o'clock days, I probably have like a maybe around a 20 hour fast because
I don't even start eating until after I'm done cooking.
And then I break my fast with bone broth and then I meditate for 30 minutes and then I
actually start eating after that.
So it's probably not till like 11 o'clock until I start eating.
And then once I'm done eating every single day, I always go on a walk.
And the reason why I started adding walking into my daily routine is because I read in
a book Law of Success in 16 Lessons, Napoleon Hill actually went on a three mile walk every
wait no, not three miles, a 10 mile walk every single day.
The reason why I said three was because it's I asked my parents and they said it's probably
around like three hours.
So he walks for like three hours every single day.
And well, he walked.
He's not alive anymore.
But he is a very successful individual or he was a very successful individual.
And so I read that and I was like, oh, maybe I should start walking because I had heard
a couple times now at that point from different sources that walking reduces brain fog.
Walking is extremely good for you.
Like I've heard from many reputable sources that I trust that walking is a very crucial
thing and a very important thing to have in your day.
And so after I saw that I started walking one hour.
I didn't want to do the full three hours, but I started walking one hour every single
day.
And that's basically me doing a digestion walk so I can digest the food.
But it's also I always have a purpose for that walk.
So some purposes that I've had over the past week were idea generating.
So coming up with the best ideas for YouTube videos possible.
And then once I find the best idea, then or like I choose the best idea for that week,
I take time in the walk to actually brainstorm how the video should be structured.
And basically get my mind into the zone of that video.
So then once I'm done with the walk, I can go downstairs and straight away record the
video.
That's what I did with this video actually.
I went on a walk just before this for one hour.
And then I was just thinking about what happened over the past month during that walk.
And then now that I'm in the zone, my mind is basically structured into that kind of
thinking process.
Now I'm able to get into the flow state a lot easier when I'm actually recording, which
is very good for the quality of the episode.
So that's something very impactful that I added to my daily routine, which actually has helped
so much.
And then there's other things that I do.
For example, if I don't have any purpose for the walk, my purpose becomes a recovery
walk.
I just completely detach from everything work and then just be present.
And that helps a lot because then I can get deeper into the work.
And so after I'm done with that walk, like I said, I record them.
I usually record, but I really only record once.
I really only record maybe two or three times a week because I record seven episodes in a
batch so I can do the daily practice episodes for this podcast.
And then I, on another day, I record the main episode or the main, the main video for that
week for the YouTube channel.
And so on days that I don't record, I just edit or create a thumbnail.
And I have been creating thumbnails for every single practice video, which has helped me
improve my actual thumbnail creating abilities.
And so I do spend a significant time creating thumbnails, but my most time consuming thing
is editing hands down because the process that I do is I edit the video all the way
through just the raw footage and I cut out all of the non-essential pieces of it.
So basically the stuff that takes away from the video, like the silences and the like
if I cough or basic things like that.
But also if I go on a tangent or I say something that just doesn't need to be said or if I
repeat things a lot, then that's, I edit those out.
So that's like the first step to editing that I do.
And then I go through and add in pictures.
And then I add in like videos, pictures.
I basically watch it from the beginning.
And then just while I'm like watching, I come up with pictures and videos to put in while
I'm watching.
And it takes probably like on my last video, the Monk Mode video, it's, I spent like five
hours on the first minute of the video.
And it was like a six minute video, but I didn't spend nearly as long on the next five
minutes.
But I spent a decent amount of time on that.
And then once I'm done like creating the imagery, then I go back again and put in the music.
And then I'm done with the video.
And that has definitely been pretty rewarding because it's really satisfying just seeing
the final product.
And it's also satisfying seeing cool edits that I make and just actually doing it.
So I'm not sure if I actually said how much subscribers I have on the YouTube channel,
but I have 48 subscribers and about 1.5,000 views from my new videos.
And so I'm doing a lot better than I was a month ago.
And I'm definitely starting to get a hang of it.
And in my, I can't remember if I, I recorded another video similar to this right before
this podcast.
So I can't remember what I've said in this or not, but pretty much some things I'm looking
forward to in the future are I'm creating a new office.
My dad is helping me paint.
My dad painted a brand new portion in my basement and I'm going to move my office.
I'm basically going to create my own office in that area in the basement.
That's going to be extremely helpful.
And some more things that I'm focusing on is my deep work, which I had never read the
book Deep Work by Cal Newport before, but I'm starting to read it now on January 1st.
And it is definitely important.
I always knew that, all right, well not always, but over the past couple weeks, I definitely
knew how important Deep Work was because once I started getting serious about the YouTube
channel, I wanted to get deep into editing videos.
And so I can actually finish it in time.
And so I started making changes like I quit YouTube, like I quit watching YouTube and I
quit keeping up with other people.
Like my friend Franklin, I used to check on his YouTube videos and his channel analytics.
Fairly common, like maybe once a day or once every week or so, but now I haven't checked
on it since I don't even remember the one the last time I've checked on it.
And all of, I don't really check YouTube or I don't check my email anymore.
I don't check, well I do check my email, but I don't check it very often anymore.
And I don't check my phone very often anymore either, which I haven't really been doing
it anyways.
But the point is that I've started to cut out a lot of shallow work is what he describes
it as in the book.
And I've been doing that.
I've been starting to take action on getting into deeper work, even though I haven't even
read the book yet.
Like I just started it last night.
And then, sorry, I just got distracted.
That's why this new office is going to be very important because then I won't have to get
distracted by things that are outside of my control.
But I'm really focusing on my deep work ability because I know that is exactly what's going
to get me onto the next level of this YouTube channel.
And some things in my health part of my life, my physical part of my life is I'm, like I
said, I started doing gymnastics rings and I switched my workout from my normal lifting
workout, which was like push, pull, legs.
I was doing like three sets of everything.
And now I'm doing on my gymnastics rings, I am doing 10 sets of pull ups, 10 sets of
10.
So right now I'm not strong enough to actually do the full 10 sets of 10.
So what I do is I do 10 sets.
I do every single set of 10 until I can't do another pull up.
So usually I fail around like right now I'm failing around like seven or eight pull ups
and then I do cheat pull ups.
So I basically like jump kind of like help myself up the pull up with my feet by jumping.
But then I like do a controlled descent.
So that's helping me get stronger.
So I'm doing 10 pull ups or 10 sets of pull ups on my pull day.
And then I do like some chin ups too and like this body weight row thing.
And then on my push days, I do 10 sets of dips.
So basically the same process where I, if I fail, then I jump.
Well, actually I haven't been jumping.
I've just been doing 10 sets of dips as many reps as I could with the most being 10.
So like the first two sets, I'm usually able to get 10.
And then from there I get dropped down to like eight reps and then seven.
And then by the end I'm probably only able to do like six reps.
So that's actually, I've just been doing that because I feel like I've been kind of
slacking my whole time I've been lifting because I only do like three sets of each exercise.
Even though I do do a lot of exercises, I feel like the most important thing is the
main exercises like dips, pull ups and squats.
And I actually haven't implemented that thought process to my leg day.
I still do my normal leg day, which is like three sets of squats.
And then like quad extensions, hamstring curls, calf raises, all that stuff.
But three sets of everything.
But I definitely feel like it's very important to start doing 10 sets of pull ups and 10
sets of dips.
Just because I want to get stronger at both of those.
But also the reason, the real reason why I started doing that was because I read the
book called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins and that basically made me realize or made
me rethink my workout routine.
And I came up with that.
But I did start doing gymnastics rings before I read that book.
So I don't know.
That's basically where I'm at with that.
But I also started training obliques because I realized that I never trained those before
and they look awesome and mine are super underdeveloped.
So moving forward, I definitely want to be making a lot better videos.
And I also want to minimize my emails even more.
I want to unsubscribe from everything that's not essential, like absolutely essential.
And I also want to break the habit of, well, I was going to say break the habit of checking
my email, but I don't really check it that often anymore.
But I definitely want to improve my personal email inbox because I get so much emails from
that and it's just a waste.
It's like a waste of my focus.
So I'm definitely going to be going through and deleting all of, like unsubscribing from
all that stuff.
But the one issue is that my email got added to the college board newsletter thing.
So I get like hundreds of emails from colleges and just the other month I figured out how
to unsubscribe from all of them, but they still are able to send me emails if they sent me
them before.
So that's why I have to unsubscribe individually.
So it's a whole thing, but definitely want to be improving my focus, my deep work a lot
more because I know that is exactly what is going to get me on to the next level as a
YouTuber.
So one of the biggest things that I'm really focusing on, like analytics, on the analytics
side of things, one of my first goals is 1000 subscribers because at 1000 subscribers you're
able to monetize.
And for many months now, my biggest thing that I wanted was to start making money because
then it would be like really officially my job and it would be official.
So that's why 1000 subscribers is my main goal right now.
And I definitely think that I could get it within at least, I definitely think that
it's possible to get it in one month, if not two or three months because I'm, I got 15
subscribers from my one video, my most recent one, the monk mode one.
And that was probably, that was only 700 views.
And so as long as I keep improving my video quality more and more and get more and more
views, then hopefully I'll be getting a lot more subscribers.
But I know that that's not my focus.
The analytics are not my focus.
My real focus is just making better videos every single week.
And I'm already like, I can already tell that by the time I'm done, by the time I start
making the next episode, I'm already thinking of so much better ideas for it that I can
already tell that I'm getting so much better very quick on YouTube.
But like I said, I'm not worried about the analytics.
I actually downloaded a, I've already had plenty of YouTube extensions downloaded onto
my Chrome just to make it so I don't see anything on my homepage.
Like I here, I'll actually redo all the extensions that I have.
So I have view count, hider for YouTube, unhook, remove YouTube, and then I can't read the
rest.
But it's basically like a extension that removes pretty much everything from YouTube, like
thumbnails.
It basically just leaves, it removes everything except for video titles.
And it removes everything from the home screen also.
So that means that you have to manually and purposely search in the search bar what video
you want.
So you can't just accidentally watch a video.
And then I have hide YouTube viewers and ratings, and then hide YouTube thumbnails, and then
distraction free, distraction free YouTube, distraction free for YouTube.
And then the most recent one that I just recently downloaded was because I started doing a lot
better on YouTube.
So I wanted to hide my analytics and make it so I can't see my analytics right away after
I post the video because I, like I said in the last monthly update, I have been really
focusing on when I, when I receive dopamine.
And so you don't want to receive dopamine right before doing a hard thing or right after.
You want to receive it during the hard thing.
And so if you get rewarded for something hard that you did right after, for example, you
get, you just ran a marathon and you get rewarded by drinking a hot fudge sundae right after.
That will actually make it so you're less likely or at least not want to do it for free
again.
So you're only getting, that makes it so you're wanting to do it for the purpose of the reward
and not for the purpose, not for the sake of actually doing the hard thing.
So that's why I made it a rule to not check the YouTube analytics until at least three
days after the video is posted.
And then when I actually check it, I'm making sure that I'm in the middle of like, well,
actually when I check it, I make sure that I'm either in the middle of editing a video,
for example, in two of my videos I've made, I needed a screenshot of my YouTube channel
page.
So I make sure that I'm either in the middle of the next episode.
And so I'm in the middle of editing the next episode, which is a hard thing.
So then I get rewarded while I'm doing the hard thing.
Or I just make sure that I'm not doing anything and I just check it purposely.
And that's helped a lot.
And that's pretty much it for the monthly update.
So I hope that you guys are enjoying the daily practice videos.
I'm not really paying too much attention to that post production of them.
I don't edit them at all.
They're just raw footage.
So I hope that you guys are enjoying the podcast so far.
I'll see you in February.