I hate the weekends.

You might think I’m crazy, and that’s fine, but I do. I hate them. The weekend has too much unstructured free time. And when I have too much free time, I have too much time to think. My mind starts asking itself questions, reflecting on ************every single************ life choice it has been a part of up until this point.

************************Should I have stopped playing baseball?************************

**************************Why didn’t I go to a traditional four-year college? Will I regret that decision forever?**************************

***************************I feel like it’s time to change jobs again. I should change jobs huh?***************************

*************************Why am I such a loser…*************************

and so on and so on.

I’ve noticed it only happens on the weekends though. The thoughts start entering in the morning, just about when I’m going to wrap-up my reading and start making breakfast and am paralyzed by the choices I have to make. Do I block off a few hours and read more of my book? There are those house projects I have to get done, maybe I should do those instead? Oh, let me check Twitter. Oh cool, someone posting about how much money they made last month or how many followers they got, that’s exactly what I needed to see right now (not).

The uncertainty of the day riddles me with anxiety. I constantly ask myself how I should pass the time, but no answer seems right. So, then I get onto a delusional rant inside my head about how much of a loser I am. What, I’m being honest?

*************************Did I waste my potential?*************************

Ah, that’s something I’ve never thought about before. My potential. Is that what this feeling is? Do I somehow think I have unmatched ambition or am wasting my potential? Maybe.

Or maybe I’m just impatient. Watching and wishing the success and grind that took every one else a decade would magically happen to me in three years. Why do I think that? Oh it’s just because I’ve seen it happen to a dozen people on the internet. One day: nothing. The next: they are retweeted left and right and getting asked to come on other people’s podcasts. Why the hell can’t that be **my** potential?


The weekend has too much free time

The life and wisdom of Albert Einstein was the result of his innate curiosity.

He had a willingness to ask questions about the strange mysteries in the world and see where finding answers lead him.

That curiosity was rooted in one thing: wonder.

This first time it happened, he was sick in bed as a kid when his father gave him a compass. He was fascinated with how the needle moved and was determined to understand how it worked. This was the spark–a simple act of wondering–that lead to a lifetime of revolutionary ideas.

The New York Times, reporting on Einstein’s death, wrote the most beautiful words that describe his approach to life:

Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad of stars and upon billowing ocean and tossing trees–and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about? The most thoughtful wonderer who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.

“The most thoughtful wonderer...”

The best thinkers are ‘wonderers’

For the past four years, I’ve gotten up at 5:00 am on most work days. For the past week, my wake-up call has been closer to 4:00 am.

Am I crazy? Why do I do this?

No, I’m not crazy. The only reason I can do this consistently is because I go to bed at 9:00 pm every night. I’m not a night owl and I hate being out late.

I’m also not getting too many extra hours of productivity in during the day, so this isn’t hustle culture advice. Someone who wakes up at 8:00 am and works until midnight every night has the same amount of working hours that I do.

So…increased productivity isn’t the point.

**I do it because there’s no better way to conquer my inner demons than by waking up at an ungodly hour and saying, “I won today.”** I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

I like how Jocko Willink famously put it: “Discipline equals freedom.”

When I wake up early, I have the freedom to choose what to work on, what to read, and who I want to become. I have the freedom to make myself 1% every day between the hours of 5:00 am and 7:00 am.

Starting my day off with a win makes the rest of the day suck less. No matter how tedious the project I’m working on is or how much Resistance is fighting me from writing or filming a video, nothing compares to how hard it is to get out of a warm bed (especially if your dog is cuddled up next to you). Doing so everyday gives me enough confidence to create, put myself out there, and say, “I can do this.”

Though productivity isn’t *the main* factor, it is **a** factor. Getting two solid hours of work in before 7:00 am makes me feel like I rule the world. It also shifts the spectrum of how bad a day can get towards the positive end. No matter what goes on in a day, if I get two hours of writing, reading, or video editing done in the morning, the worst my day is going to be is just okay.

I’ve found the hardest part about this is having enough patience to let the results of one morning compound into two and three and four and 365 mornings that all build off of each other.

If I’m working on a big project, I often won’t see “results” for a month or two. After a few weeks of chipping away at a big goal and not feeling any progress, it becomes much harder to convince myself to jump out of bed and get to work.

The trick to dealing with this is making sure there are enough small wins or “level ups” throughout the journey. Often this can be sharing what I’m doing on Twitter and sparking a conversation, or just reflecting back on where I was before I started to put some perspective on what I’ve accomplished.

On the ******really****** hard days, I remind myself of this Chinese proverb:

> No man who rises before dawn 365 days a year **fails to make his family rich.**
>

Rich financially, sure, but also rich mentally and physically. When I wake up early to read, write, and workout, I’m my best self. Being in that position allows me to be my best self for my family, friends, and everyone else.


Why I Wake Up at 5:00 am

Leonardo da Vinci on "creative procrastination:"

> Men of loft genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.


Creative procrastination

In James Clear's 3-2-1 Newsletter, he shared a thought that I've been feeling for awhile, but couldn't put to words very well. This happens a lot with James Clear and other great writers. They're able to say what you've been thinking. This is what Clear wrote:

> Powerful combination = Hate being bad at stuff + Willing to look like
> a beginner.
>
> People who hate being bad at stuff are driven to improve. However, if
> they are unwilling to look like a beginner from time to time, they
> will avoid new challenges and struggle to reinvent themselves.
>
> Meanwhile, people who are willing to try new things, but lack a thirst
> to improve will settle for mediocre results.
>
> It's the willingness to look foolish for a short time—but not for a
> long time—that leads to jumps in performance.

This reminded me of an essay I wrote earlier in the year, ["How to Be Great? Be Okay With Being Bad."](https://www.daltonmabery.com/essays/how-to-be-great) If you want to get good at something you're currently bad at, you have to be willing to look like a fool for awhile. If you're afraid to do so, you'll never be open to new challenges. And if you're not open to new challenges, you'll never adopt new skills.

As I wrote in the essay, I want to be really good at golf. My goal is to be much, much better than your average weekend player. The only way I can get better is to go out there and try. I've become much better in the last few months, but when I first started I was embarrassed to go to the driving range and shank balls, duff chips, and miss two foot putts. The paradox in this is that the only way I could get better at not shanking balls, duffing chips, and missing those two foot putts is to practice those things. Sure I can take lessons, and I did, but I still had to put in a lot of time outside of the lessons. And most of that time was spent being embarrassed at my performance and the fact that I looked like a beginner.

**Don't be afraid to look like a fool for a year in order to look like a master in ten.**


Looking like a fool at first leads to mastery at last

For a few years now, I've been a voracious reader. I love understanding how we got to where we are today and how that might forecast where we're going in the future. I kept getting frustrated that I was reading things, but couldn't remember what I read nor make connections to historical events. It took a lot of hypothesizing, experimenting, and tweaking my system, but this is what I've found works best:

<SideNote title='This is it' content="Some content here please work" />

## [1. The Blank Sheet Method](https://fs.blog/reading/)

Whenever you start a new book, podcast, article, etc., grab a blank piece of paper and write the title at the top. In one color, write down everything you know or you think you know about the topic before consuming the content. It's okay if that's nothing.

Then, write down anything you learn while consuming the content in a different color. Things that surprised you, things that made you go, "Huh, that's surprising."

When you're done, write a two-sentence summary of the content on the page and file it with the rest of your sheets. If you want, you can add tags to the top right and file it under a certain category.

## 2. Have a place to throw things and throw everything there.

For me, this is my Obsidian Daily Notes page. I have a 'Scratchpad' template that I write down any thought that I have, article I want to read, quote I heard, or task I want to get done. Then I add relevant tags to discover them later.

I also use Siri all the time when driving. If I'm listening to a podcast or audio book and they say something I want to come back to, I'll say, "Hey Siri, remind me about this idea at 23:45 in Indie Hackers Podcast." Things3, my task app, integrates with iPhone reminders and they show up in my inbox, so then I sort those out into each area.

If you want something easier, you can use the native reminders app as a widget on your phone to quickly add things. You can also email yourself links and ideas you see on your phone, want to revisit while at your desk. Mem, a note taking app, is integrated with Twilio and lets you text a number and those notes go to your Mem Inbox. It's a neat idea, but Mem is still in Beta and a bit buggy.

The key here is to create something with the least amount of friction as possible. For example in online marketing, the more times a user has to click to checkout or look at your product, the more customers you'll lose. Similarly, the more times you have to click to capture and idea, the more ideas you'll lose. This idea comes from _Atomic Habits_in that when you're trying to build a new habit, make it frictionless. If you're trying to break a bad habit, create as much friction as possible.

To Recap
Those may or may not work for you. But whatever you choose, remember, it's going to take work! I make a lot of note taking videos on YouTube and a lot of people ask for a better system and honestly, their system is just fine. It just takes time to go through your notes each week and re-discover what you wrote. But that's how you get genuine insights. I've found most people want their tool to rediscover the insights and notes for them. While that's ideal (and some apps do a good job of this), the best ideas will come through doing the work of sorting through your notes and thinking critically about what you wrote.

Every Saturday morning, I go through my Obsidian and see what I wrote about. Making relevant tags that I see necessary, reviewing book notes, and so on.

Each [note taking system](https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/) has to...
- Capture
- Organize
- Distill
- Create

Figure out the best way to do these for you and you'll be set!


2 Strategies To Help You Remember What You Read

**If you win at whatever game you're playing right now, would you be happy?**

This is such an amazing question to ask yourself. The best thing about it is that it can apply to so many contexts.

For me, I think about it in terms of content creation and the persona I'm trying to create for myself online and relates to [[Why I'm Learning how to code and not how to build an audience]]. I want to win the game by building an amazing product, creating an inspiring video, or writing a ground-breaking article.

Is that going to take time? Yes.
Will other people succeed faster than me? Yes.

But I want to win the game that I want want to play. In other words, **I don't want to win a game I never wanted to play in the first place.**
