Making My New Self Study Plan

okay this timer over here is how long I have to come up with a new study plan research shows that having a specific time to accomplish a task helps with procrastination and I am of course the queen of procrastination so thinking right now there's a lot of different things I could put on my study plan but the overall theme for me this year is overcoming fear of failure finally doing the hard things so I'm thinking through the things I've always wanted to do but have just been too scared to I will share in a bit let's catch up a little bit and I'll also like to share with you how I finally managed to get out of the rut that I've been in for the past year or so the past year I've been kind of having an existential crisis and traveling a lot which in the beginning had been pretty fun I started in San Francisco and I went to England this was in London Hy Park Germany Munich Singapore Bangkok and Thailand Beijing Boston South Carolina Austin and then back to Beijing now but towards the end I felt like I was kind of spiraling all over the place because I was sort of just running away from myself if you get me I started a bunch of different projects that I gave up on and I gained a bunch of weight along the way and just was not in a great place Looking Back Now I think a really big reason is that somewhere along the way I lost my most important habit which is self studying so after study sessions I would also work out and because I worked out I would also end up eating better and just starting the day off by being productive was just so good it had a Rippling effect in my life a positive Rippling effect later I found out that this is what is called a keystone house it which is named after the Arches that you find in some architectural structures there's that Center Stone that Keystone that holds everything together that was my study habit it supported all the things that are good in my life but on one of these arches if you pull out the Keystone everything also comes crumbling down which is exactly what happened almost a year from now in summer of 2023 because I was traveling so erratically I ended up not planning properly and stopped doing these study sessions and because I I stopped having that dedicated productive time and then I also stopped working out therefore I started eating like and just like feeling like because I would wake up super late and then feel like I was not productive therefore go into a not productive cycle so I was like oh I was already not productive so I might as well not be productive for the rest of the day as well yeah not great anyways now I am committed that I will get my back together okay let's go back to real time and check on the progress that I've made um on researching if fur out my study plan okay I know I look like I'm folding cranes right now well yes I am which is a new hobby that I picked up origami but I promise that I'm also thinking about what I'm going to be studying there are four things on my list the first one is getting my driver's license because I am 28 years old and I should really get my driver's license plus if I ever want to go on road trips by myself um and just like you know do things and be more independent and not have to rely on Uber that would be a very good idea here I am right now trying to figure out where is the best place the easiest place to get my driver's license I could just get it now in China but the Chinese exam is notoriously difficult it's four different sections and also my Chinese is like not that good um so there's four different sections the first one is a written and there's like thousands of questions like literally thousands of questions the second one is a practical so like a driving test the third one's another written one and then the fourth one is a another driving I don't know why there's multiples um yes so I could do the Chinese one but it's just like really hard or I'm thinking of doing it in Canada and Canada's okay in terms of difficulty you first have to do the test and you get a learner's permit and then you know practice and stuff um but you're not allowed to take the test until 12 months later and then again like you have to wait another 12 months in order to take another test to get your final driver's license so that just like takes a really long time third option is to do it in the US which is originally where I did my driver's license test I did it in Chicago at that time in Illinois and let's just say like that was the easiest thing I have ever done in my life the rules are so easy in comparison um all you have to do if you're over the age of 25 is to show up um take the written test and then after you pass the written test you just have to do a road test both of these tests were really easy the written tests and also the wrot test I literally had 8 hours of driving experience and I was like you know what I'm just going to try to see if I can pass and then I did didn't even ask me how to like parallel park or like back up or anything so it was kind of scarily easy um but in these terms that would sound like a great idea however there is one problem I do not have a US residence Visa I don't have a green card I don't have anything like that which means if I do go and get my driver's license there I would be considered like an undocumented person license which would say in terms of the um actual license itself I don't know I think that in itself is not an issue just to drive in the US but I don't know if that could be a problem by try to drive anywhere else or anything like that I don't know so that's also why I am looking into it right now another thing that I want to get back into is personal finance and specifically looking into buying property and investing in property something that I really wanted to do for a really long time uh but obviously I have to go do some research in terms of what are my finances look like what do I have to do how much have what's the down payment what's the mortgage uh where is it good to buy a house you know I got to take some courses learn some things in order to figure that out third of four on the list is business stuff specifically for my current business I have the content arm which is things that you're seeing me talk about right now there's also the lonely octopus arm which is where I teach people Ai and data skills and they get to work on real company projects and they get certificates reference letters and referrals all those good things I'm looking to start another product um because the content that I produce is completely free and lonely octopus although I think it's very high return on investment it's like $1,799 so that is a price point where it's not accessible to many people so I also want to create something where people have the choice to learn things at a less supported intensive level but also at a more affordable level so I'm thinking about starting memberships which is going to be like a monthly reoccurring thing where you get these fundamental courses but every month you would also get short courses you have your fundamental courses like prompt engineering how to build AI products how to use different things like Rag and fine tuning all those good things then each month you'll have short courses and live streams as well as projects that are associated with new technologies that are coming out things like that anyways that is what I have in my brain right now I also need to learn more about these kind of subscription based models because I have never done this before and I got to you know study do some courses learn some things in order to figure out how to do that properly finally last thing on the list is screenwriting and producing because I am really focused on content this year I love content so much um and in order to get to the next level I think I really need to learn more about screenwriting and production and more like traditional media things everything I know right now is just me kind of like figuring out myself I'm never taking like a proper course where just like learn how to do things properly so I'm really excited to learn about how professionals do screenwriting and how it is they produce TV shows and films ooh looks like this Pomodoro is finishing up I really want to talk to you about the book that really kind of shifted my mind and kickstarted this you know what I call Tina V2 okay so I did my research and I have a plan so what's going to happen in the next couple of months is that on the 21st of May I'm going to go to Hong Kong uh for some business and then I'm going to go to Morocco for our team meeting then from Morocco I'm going to go to San Francisco for a conference so by the time I'm in San Francisco that's going to be around mid June is at that time I'm going to take the test for my license in California so it's going to be the undocumented license but since that can take up to 6 months to process I'm also as a backup going to go to Canada and then I'm also going to take the driver's test there so that one could um take up to like 24 months to get but it's better than not having a backup I figured so I'm going to do that and if it goes well if the US situation goes well fingers crossed then I can take that license and then go to can and switch it for a Canadian driver's license like a proper official Canadian driver's license that's the plan this is how I'm going to avoid having to do the Chinese driver's license and I can just cram everything in like 2 days cuz the US and Canadian driver's license test is really not that hard that's the plan the two other things on my study plan so the first one I'm going to focus on is business stuff like figuring out how to come up with another offering um figuring out how to launch that because now that I think about it doesn't actually make sense to research Investments and things like that into properties if I don't have the money to even buy a property so I should probably focus on actually making the money so that I can buy a property first that's the first one I'm going to do some research into other people that have launched successful membership based products and potentially do some courses as well but I'm going to start from there first deliverable is I'm going to try to come up with a proper plan and decide what a good launch date is going to be second thing I to plan is the screenwriting and video stuff I looked at some of the film courses that some universities are offering but I think I'm going to just start off with Master Class it's subscription base is pretty cheap and it looks like there's good amount of content and variety on there to get started with so I'm going to start off with that and potentially pay for a course later study times are going to be Tuesday Thursday and Friday for 2 hours each on those days that's going to be 6 hours of dedicated self-study time all right yes let's do it I want to tell you guys about the book 10x is easier than 2x which is the push that I needed to re-evaluate my life restart these study habits and then to set my new goals even though this is a business book a large part of it is psychological as well because I have an extreme fear of failure the book begins with the story of Michelangelo you know the sculptor the painter Sistine Chapel at 17 years old he decided to become an artist a sculptor and this was of course very much against the wishes of his father who wanted him to be a businessman but he insisted on this and he wanted to do a sculptor of Hercules at that time while he was trying to do Hercules he realized that he just couldn't really really do something that is remarkable because he doesn't have a good understanding of anatomy which as a sculptor he believed was necessary in order to confidently outline the muscles underneath the skin properly so this was a journey of 10 Xing his current skill set and in order to do that he became a grave robber in order to study anatomy this was of course very illegal but he was like okay I really got to improve myself um to get to this point so then he robbed a bunch of grave over the span of 6 to8 months in order to dissect them and get a really good understanding of anatomy and that's how he was able to Hercules then throughout his entire career he kept on doing these moves like these insane moves of going all in just trying so much harder than everybody else and then 10 Xing his skill set repeatedly culminating in his Masterpiece of David from the myth David and Goliath he was a representation of someone who truly tackled The Impossible at every step went all in and was successful in doing that from Michelangelo we learned that what got you here won't get you there you need to keep improving yourself to get to the next level by the way you see these little smudges around this area that is because I am left-handed so you also see the smudges on my hands that this is something that has been a problem for my entire life so I apologize anyways the thesis of the book is that impossible goals are easier because there's only a few paths there so that's why 10x is easier than 2x a 10x goal ridiculous goal is easier than a 2X goal which is an incremental goal and that is because you have a ridiculous goal you need to do something drastic in order to get to that point for example if you're Michelangelo that is to go rob Graves instead of just like trying to learn a little bit more about Anatomy trying to like experiment with different techniques or something like that anyways most people are at the 2x goal so 2x versus the 10x and they would try to study more they try to research more try to get better equipment just like incrementally get better which is actually harder than just going 10x because there's like a lot of different choices you can be doing in order to incrementally increase and then with each incremental change it's actually harder and harder because everybody is on this 2x path mostly but on the 10x path in order to get to that goal you can't get away with just incrementally increasing you have to do something really drastic so this is my ridiculous 10x goal all right I'm like kind of scared to even say it right now I am averaging around like 80 to 100K views per video and my 10x goal is to get to a million views per video which sounds crazy but if I achieve that actually language when I achieve that I would feel so accomplished so then I listed down like things that in my case what I need to do um things that don't work and then the things that would work because I can't just keep doing the things I'm currently doing incrementally in order to get to that goal right so things that don't work is what I'm doing right now for example I've been trying to incrementally get better at storytelling doing a little bit more research trying to learn a little bit more about editing and sounds and things like that and that's just like not going to cut it in order to get to there so 10 things I do need to I need to experiment with different formats of videos which is what I'm trying to do right now I also need to have more thought into each video and I need to have more time that I put into a video so the question you might have for me is like hey Tina like you clearly know what it is that you need to do why aren't you doing it and that is because I have an extreme fear of failure I need to stop hedging myself because I'm scared of failure I like to hedge myself a lot I'm like oh like in case this doesn't work I'll feel really sad so let me like work as a bunch of other things in order to like make myself feel better in case something doesn't work out so I keep doing that over and over again because I'm so scared of putting if of going all in and then still failing but first let's talk about how to 10x there's the 8020 rule U which says that 80% results come from 20% of the work this is also called the parietal principle in the 2x to 10x mindset the idea is that you have your you know full spectrum of things that you currently have in a 2X mindset um you're focusing 80% on the existing things that are currently there while only focusing 20% on the new things that are there and you're experimenting with these two get incrementally better but you need to get to the 10x mindset where you're only focusing on the most important 20% to maintain these things and spend the majority of your energy on trying new things of really putting yourself out there and experimenting so in my case what do I need to do in the book they say we divide this into continuous eliminate and addition I think I spelled continuous wrong I don't know is that wrong or not I'm not very good at spelling anyways so on the continuous front I need to maintain and Empower my team this is something I'm doing right now which is very good I should keep doing that um I should keep meeting new inspiring people every time I go to an event where I meet someone new I just always get so much out of it so I need to continue doing this and actually doing more of this and then finally I need to not give up except for a Hiatus I took for around 2 months or so I really have been making videos over the spand of 3 and 1/2 years now and that's something I'm really proud of the next part is listening out to things to eliminate this is the big Epiphany moment for me realizing I need to eliminate a lot of things in order to focus on the things that matter first one for me is side quest I do a lot of side quests because I keep hedging Myself by doing other things cuz I'm so scared of going all in and experiencing failure so yes I need to eliminate my side quest I need to not do random projects that show up not grasp different opportunities that I don't actually want to do and focus on what actually matters the second thing is intervening with other things I think this is also like kind of a hedging thing um I need to like fully trust my team I definitely trust my team but I still intervene once in a while and I need to just be like okay that is covered stop distracting yourself with other things I'll actually talk more about lination a little bit later cuz it's just like so important I think it's probably really important to a lot of you guys as well and then the third one is addition so what do I need to do now that I eliminate a lot of these things and now I have more time well firstly I need to experiment with one new video type a month this is a goal of mine this is the one new video type of this month something that is completely different and maybe it will get me see that next level the next part is to spend more time on thumbnails I'm not very good at Photoshop I'm not very good at thumbnails I don't really spend a lot of time on them even though I know it's really important and potentially also thinking about Outsourcing this entirely so that I can focus on the different video types themselves now going back to that psychological perspective where I'm like holy how can I possibly get to a million VI per video that's just like I just don't have that skill set there's no way I can do that so like that failure mindset I already have CU just inconceivable an exercise from that book which I thought was amazing is to actually look back in your past to show yourself that you have actually done this before you have actually made a lot of 10x moves in your life like for me I think back I started in Pharmacology I have a pharmacology degree which is the study of drugs completely irrelevant and then I was able to 10x myself and learn things in order to get a computer science master's degree again something that was like completely out of my realm like I didn't even have the math prerequisites but I managed and then again like I 10x again when I went to Goldman Sachs to do software engineering I only had like a year of a master's degree where I learned the fundamentals but I practiced really hard and then I was able to get into Goldman socks like that's a 10x move the next 10x move is I got to meta as a data scientist one of my first videos was talking about how I spent 11 days in order to learn SQL an important skill set for data scientists I knew zero SQL at the beginning of those 11 days but I focused myself went on glass door scraped every single question ranked them in terms of importance and made sure to learn everything I needed to pass the interview and I passed that interview that's insane you think about it 11 days and I managed to get that job like that is definitely a 10x move the next 10x move is when I started my YouTube channel I never thought I would even get to like 10,000 subscribers not like and definitely not 100,000 subscribers but now we're sitting at 650,000 subscribers to next move crazy next move Lon octopus where I designed this entire program where we teach people Ai and data skills and help them work on real company projects like I had no idea how to run a program like that I had to like figure out okay here's the courses that we need to make and we built an entire custom Discord Community like a custom Discord bot um I reached out to lots of different companies in order to get and scope out these projects it was just like completely out of my scope marketing like I had no idea how to do marketing how do you like what building a website for a product damn like 10 next move there so like putting it into this context is it really that ridiculous to say that I can't get to a million views per video and that really helped me because from a logical perspective why not right why not I really encourage you guys to also do this exercise and just to realize like the goal that you're aiming for isn't as ridiculous as it may seem because some point in your life previously you would have never imagined where you are right now but you're here right now okay so going back to elimination the author introduces the Paradigm of Kronos versus chyros the Greeks have two different words in description of time the first one is Kronos the time of clocks the sequential time of the seconds passing the minutes passing the calendar days passing the year is passing we all experience Kronos time then there's chyro times what they describe as the time of gods this is when time seems like it's standing still you're completely engrossed in that moment there is no sense of pasttime present and the future this is the experience of seeing a beautiful sunset of sharing a sincere laughter with a friend of a sudden bolt of inspiration that completely changes the trajectory of your business or your life the more you experience in a given amount of time the slower time feels that's why when you're in cairo's time something that truly matters time feels so much slower that's also why when you're like a little kid um you spend a lot more time in cairo's time and everything just feels slower because everything is so new and fresh and exciting but as you get older you start kind of not really perceiving the things around you anymore because it's become common it's become mundane you experience a whole day passing so quick because nothing particularly interesting happened during that time and that is the experience of kronos's time that is flying by what you want is to experience more of cairo's time that really matters so how to do that a lot of entrepreneurs me included like to fill up our days because it gives us a sense of progress we're like oh we're working so hard so like you know we must be able to get these results but really you can actually be less busy and experience more progress this framework splits your days into three different types of days free days performance days and buffer days this is based on theater actors would only spend a few hours and like weeks to perform and to Showcase what they're doing most of the time it's been practicing honing their craft and resting so as an entrepreneur we can also divide our days into three different types of days free days performance days and buffer days the book suggests 180 days of free days these are days that you're focus on recovery a great example is the schedule of an elite athlete there was this interview that they did with LeBron James and his um recovery coach and his trainer the amount of time proportionately that LeBron spends on court is not that much he most of the time is actually spent on practicing honing his skills and Recovery days in order to keep himself fresh and not get injuries as entrepreneurs we may not be doing these physical attacks but we're using our brains which is a similar Paradigm that's why the book has the framework of dividing your days into free days performance days and buffer days during your free days this is up to 180 days where you're focused on recovery you're focused on thinking about your business from a more objective point of you not being involved in the hustle and bustle this is also when a lot of the entrepreneurs get their best ideas like for example when Newton was just sitting underneath a tree and an apple fell on his head he was like Eureka and then gravity and then there is performance day so there's no point just thinking about stuff you all basically also have to execute this is where we're measuring ourselves on the results this would represent around 90 days of a year um if we got to take meetings during those times try to stack those meetings as well because meetings can really distract you from Deep work as an individual finally there are buffer days and these are days in which you're organizing and you're planning what it is that you're performing what it is that you are spending your free days on um and this is also when you're working with your team in order to figure out what they should be doing as well this should represent 90 days of your year so I don't know if I can really get to like 180 free is but I think that is definitely a good goal to work on and definitely this Paradigm like I kind of follow into this Paradigm where I just feel like I'm measuring myself in terms of my busyness and my productivity as opposed to the actual amount of progress that I'm making all right so that is the end of my little presentation it looks like I'm also starting to get distracted by the outside and it looks like I'm ready to finish this Pomodoro if you're interested in incorporating stem subjects into your self-study plan I really recommend that you check out brilliant the sponsor of this portion of the video thank you brilliant is a stem learning platform that specializes in interactive Hands-On learning some of you guys may not know this but a lot of top companies actually recommend their candidates review things on brilliant before their interview such as math and stats computer science and data science and that's because brilliant is just so good at learning stem subjects like their entire platform is specialized for stem subjects if you're like me and getting back into self-studying the courses make it Easy by kind of easing you in incorporating little quizzes analogies and little dopamine hits that help a lot when you ever get bored or just kind of feel stuck and discouraged I especially love their llm course if you're interested in genat it's such a fun overview and you don't even need to know how to code although they do have full courses as well if you want to dive deeper they have Timeless course offerings like math and stats programming with python which you all know I can't recommend learning to code enough as well as new course offerings to explore such as topics like gen Ai and Quantum Computing you can join a million of people already learning on brilliant by heading over to this link over here also linked in the description to get started for free if you go through my link you also receive 20% off the annual membership thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this portion of the video and thank you so much for watching until the end of this video I will see you guys in next video or live stream