I tweeted a few days ago that if you are better today than this time last year, 2019 was a good year. The responses I got – both in comments and retweets overwhelmingly told me that many of my followers had.
This is great news and I’m pleased others had the same experience as me; 2019 has easily been my most successful year to date. I set myself three main – although purposefully vague – goals.
Number one was to get serious about my fitness.
The second was to give myself the base to fulfil my potential.
The third was to grow my online presence in order to do the second.
And I’ve succeeded at all three.
The Journey
I wrote in my first ever blog post about my terrible fitness. I was very healthy as a kid and in my early teens, but between 14- 16 I really fell off a cliff.
As a result, the first year of my self-improvement was to try and remove all the bad habits I’d gathered since then. To achieve this this I completely changed my environment (I originally went travelling, before wholesale moving to Asia) which was hugely effective, and something I urge anyone stuck in a rut to do. Although some bad habits still linger – such is the human condition – I have deprogrammed the majority (I talk about how I achieved this in my talk for AionCon, for those of you who are interested).
The year after I attempted to introduce good habits, with a particular focus on fixing my diet. Unfortunately, I still had a poor understanding of health at that point. I was doing the usual: eating lots of fruit and veg, pasta, salads etc.
However, this wasn’t all bad; it got me back in the habit of cooking (I couldn’t cook whilst traveling around hostels) which was a huge boon, but after joining Twitter in 2018 I completely upgraded my nutritional understanding. Prior to this I had no idea seed oils were bad for you, or of the importance of avoiding refined carbs. Luckily, I never bought that meat was unhealthy, but I realised just how vital protein intake was and correspondingly upped my intake of animal products, too, during this period.
A year ago was when I took the plunge with lifting weights. You can read about my progress (from a few months ago now) HERE when I review Alexander Cortes’ Wolverine Program.
For the first time since my teenage years I feel strong and fit.
There’s a long way to go, and I’m always learning, but I’ve got the essentials of my health dialed in now.
My mind is clear, my energy is high and I’m able to manage several personal projects, an upcoming marriage and a full-time job at the same time.
Base Building
My second goal was to start living up to my potential.
As a kid, I’d been someone who breezed through school. I had a very laissez-faire attitude – but always got good grades. When I started drinking and partying and the bad habits piled up, I neutered this natural talent.
Recognising poor health contributes to low energy levels, a hugely limiting factor, my previous goal was linked to this one. As I had the belief I could do so much more, health was the base I needed to fix. I also knew getting online would be a big part of my future; hence my third goal.
Social media is an ever-present in our lives and – despite its negatives – is a tool which I intimately understood I must leverage. As a result, I started creating content. I set myself a goal of 5k Twitter followers by the end of the first year, and I’ve smashed that; I currently stand at around 7000. So thank you all for enjoying and supporting my content.
And now we move onto the bulk – and main purpose of this post.
Clarity
I believe in honesty and being open about my goals. I believe my loyal followers and readers deserve to know my thought processes as we have developed a relationship which I respect.
So, here we go.
A little over a year ago was my first ever post on Twitter – December 18th 2018 to be exact. This was the beginning of my ‘online presence;’ the inaugaration of my ‘personal brand;’ the start of being an ‘influencer’ – all terms I hate by the way, but that’s the world we live in.
Since then I’ve learnt a lot, made friends, expanded my network, supercharged my personal improvement, spoken at two conferences, wrote over 20 articles and put in a lot of work. And, whilst this journey has been overwhelmingly positive, it’s not all been good. At times it has put stress on ‘IRL’ and I’ve occasionally become too obsessed with the ‘online world’ at the expense of the ‘offline world’ – something which my long-time followers will know is not what I preach as optimal.
I’ve often given myself the reason that I’m in the early stages of building something and it requires the cost of time and effort.
And this is true.
But I’m at a point in my life where I’m still establishing myself, my family and my future.
I’m not the finished article and, online, it pays to appear ‘all-knowing’ but the simple fact is NONE of the influencers and accounts you follow are optimal humans. Yes, they are more impressive than the average cat, but they are often wrong – myself included.
As I am still building, and this is an important part of my growth, I will continue to devote significant time to it. The online is important and is only going to grow in importance, but the real world must always supercede it.
What does this mean?
Well, there are two main consequences as a result of this.
Transmutation
Number one, I’m going to optimize my time better.
Number two, I need some compensation for the time I expend.
Let’s get into this in more detail.
1. Optimizing time
Twitter has two real benefits, reach and network. This (at its most basic) is defined as followers (reach) and other influencers as friends (network). There’s more to it than this, access to DM groups and quality of content are two important metrics.
However, it is an absolute time sink.
I’m sure you don’t need telling this.
So, I’m actively trying to cut my time spent on the platform. This means I won’t be viewing content as frequently and will primarily be logging in over two time periods to both consume and put out content.
The exception to this will be drafting tweets, which I will still be doing whenever inspiration strikes.
I will continue to put out content every day, but I’m going to focus more on long-form writing which leads me to my second point.
2. Compensation
As I previously mentioned, over the course of the last year I have sunk A LOT of time into Twitter and this blog. Drafting Tweets, reading DM’s, engaging with content – and consuming it, too. I have also put considerable time and effort into researching and writing articles, articulating my thoughts and (hopefully) entertaining you guys in the process.
I’ve enjoyed this process and I get real satisfaction out of it. However, we cannot live purely on satisfaction alone. Considering the time I invest (this isn’t a passing hobby that I do once a week, I’m writing and producing content EVERY DAY) I feel it’s time to gain some compensation for my work.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to be putting out over-priced courses and releasing a new digital product every 2 weeks, but I’m going to create a couple of high-quality e-books in the future.
I’m also going to focus on producing content for my email list (Sign up HERE) more regularly than my blog.
I will still put my more in-depth, well thought out posts on www.thinkinpeach.com, but my focus will switch to my email list.
So if you enjoy my writing, I would suggest you get on it.
Part of this compensation is also an on-going semi-‘professionalization’ of my content. I’ve already set up an email-list pop-up and I’ve started automating Tweets linking to this blog. I’m very much in the infancy of this journey and I’m learning as I go, picking up tips and strategies from my friends and people I follow.
Content Creation
I primarily want to be a content-creator. That won’t change; this was always my goal as I enjoy creating things which other people enjoy reading.
Partly this is because I hope to influence culture in any way I can. I really believe we are on the cusp of something either wonderful, or tragic, and I see it as my duty to do what I can, whilst maintaining my own life in order to be prepared for whatever comes.
I will continue to provide value and I’m sure you will enjoy my writing. My emails will be a snappier, more entertaining style with shorter and more focused content.
As it stands I’m going to look to produce content twice a week for the email list. Twitter I will still be producing content every day.
But if I want to really explore an issue and write something in more depth (I have a really great article which has been brewing for a while upcoming), my blog will be the place I publish it. I’m certainly not going to abandon this space.
Some of you have already signed up, and as of yet I’ve not produced any content, but in the New Year I will start producing regular emails.
So, that’s The State of The Union for the various facets of Think In Peach – here’s hoping the next year is as fruitful as this one both for me, and you.
Thanks for reading guys, I appreciate you taking the time to do so – and don’t forget to sign up!
PS
AionCon is fast approaching. This is a great opportunity to hear some unbelievable minds at work. Get your tickets HERE.
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @ThinkInPeach and sign-up for my Email List here.
Thanks For Reading!