Make my day!

[Filipe]

That's what I like to do - arriving in bed and feeling like I made my day after working my a$$ off for a long one!


Information is one bird in the hand, applying it is two birds in the hand; nowadays, you don't even need a stone to catch them. The information's out there for free in the Internet, as you all know - waltz into any public library and bam, there you go. Access to unthinkable amounts of resources that most people didn't even dream about just a hundred years ago. More information leads to increasing work in weeding out what's valuable. The comprehensive multi-faceted system I'm developing has the objective of developing specific skills in people, meant to handle the growing chaos of the informational singularity we're bound towards; in other words, developing real learning skills. I have some original ideas, and in dozens and dozens of books that I've read over the years on the subject I haven't seen the ideas I came up with anywhere else, so that means I'm pretty excited about contributing new value to the marketplace. It's not about memorizing, cramming, rote-learning, it's all about a *real* learning, problem-solving oriented approach to information handling, hundreds of techniques I've learned over the course of my (admittedly short) life.

To cut the chit-chat, let's get on with it! Will be looking to update this a heck of a lot:

04/01/2016

• Have my domain name bought set up with a quick under construction front page
• Allocated all my initial marketing expenses and scheduled most marketing strategies I'll be using (including the brand);
  
• Studied 10 books and 3 podcasts on entrepreneurship, finance, leadership, advertising, business law, sales;
  
• Locked in my daily routine.
• EDIT: Wrote the first 2000 words of my book. Pretty happy with them. Excited to continue

 

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[Filipe]

10/01/2016

• First-drafted another 4000 words, totaling around 6000. Not much but I feel the momentum starting to roll.
  
• Studied and took notes of another 6 books, and I'm brainstorming to improve existing concepts and create new ones. This time, the books are immediately related to the content (i realized i was kinda action-faking so i started doing the relevant stuff first)
• Wrote the detailed content tree of the book and looked up how to set up the word processor for writing without shooting myself in the foot later down the line (let's see how that works out though).
• Applied the techniques to my actual college studying (working nice so far).

Will update few times in the future in this grinding part. There's not really much point to just posting "wrote another x amount of words" every few days. Will still give the outline of what i'm currently doing differently

 

[Filipe]

Quick update.

31/01/2016
It's been finals time over here for the past couple of weeks. Since starting to commit 100% to practicing, testing, tweaking and doing what I'm preaching, my grades exploded. Even though what I'm creating isn't only aimed at improving grades, it's very nice to see it's solid as can be in that area. In fact, I've gone from a mediocre B-/B average to a very stable A average. Even more, it's barely been a month since I've really commited to my max effort. I'm impressed with such quick results.

Meanwhile, the book progress itself has slowed down - a lot of time has been swallowed with the finals (but worth it - gained part of a testimonial - myself). I'm at around 16000 words, and I'm looking to put in some serious writing time with the winter break coming up.
I've also realized my approach was a bit rash. I jumped into it and wrote away without first thoroughly considering what to do and planning the book very carefully. I thought I had, but I really hadn't. I had a general outline, but not a sufficiently detailed one. Then, when I got into the nitty gritty of it, I realized the foundation laid was pretty weak. I'm redoing that.

I've continued the research and it's going pretty well even with the finals, read 8 more books, a couple podcasts, been seeing some nice websites and programs. Also found a golden youtube channel. The guy who runs it executes. His videos are top notch.
I also found a great program for the writing itself. I've been doing it on MS Word, but it pretty much sucks. At least for what I'm aiming to do, it does. It might be good for formatting or whatever, but writing is a mess with it. I found Scrivener - it's really good. Check it out if you didn't know it beforehand.

 

[Filipe]

20/03/2016


Major plot twist. First big roadblock.

My dad was helping me pay my college expenses. Some big disagreements and a heated argument later, and no more money from parents.

I'm on my own now, back against the wall.

I'm seriously considering dropping college - even though I like physics, I think I'll benefit way more from 3 years of entrepreneurship than 3 years of theoretical physics.
I've saved a little cash over time, enough to get me through maybe a 2-3 months of living expenses. But I gotta bootstrap. I gotta do something. S**t just hit the fan. I've been pondering some options. I thought about starting a photography side-hustle, I'm pretty good with cameras, but I don't have any good equipment, which would take like 1k. No bueno, because I'd be dead in the waters if I can't find work in a month or two. So enter copywriting. There's some big advocates of copywriting in here, and I'm giving it a shot. So far I haven't gotten any jobs, but I've only been applying for the last few days. Let's get on with it.

About the book.
I'm having doubts about the book. Even though I've written a good 40k words (I'll need way more, some 100-150k words probably), I might have fallen victim of my own wishful thinking. It's a book about learning how to learn to succeed - no matter how many twists I give it, at its bare bones, it's not very different to 50% of what's out there, because there's so many resources on this. I do have some pretty original methods and concepts and an unusual background, but it's basically a matter of branding. Going into something just because I can "package it" in a different way and brand it better... I think I can do better than that. What do you guys think? I'm trying to come up with alternative ideas, and keeping the book in the backburner. Opinions would be highly welcomed here from fellow fastlaners.

EDIT: It's father's day here in Portugal... The irony of this post.

 

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[Filipe]

So I realized I was full of bullshit. All talk no action. Wantrepreneur.
I spent more time in here than doing anything productive.
I've made myself a promise to not ever write a book about success and success techniques until AFTER I look back at my life and say "I made it".
This thread is dead and buried to me.