Thoughts like Flies - Systems Thinking

Tired. It's 07:46 and I've been awake for an hour. This happened yesterday, except that I woke up at 05:45 and did manage to get back to sleep. This morning though? Nope. As soon as I awake, the thoughts that are buzzing round my head like flies see that sliver of consciousness and pounce.

Let me just say that Illy coffee though? Yuck. When I wake up early, I use my tin of Illy instead of grinding beans because the family is still asleep, so it's really an emergency supply. It reminds me of my Luxembourg days, when Maria Cristina and Leo would argue out over Illy vs Lavazza like it was the Mac vs PC wars all over again. It's a happy memory though. I loved working with them.

Once you start getting freshly roasted beans though, the prepackaged preground stuff becomes emergency only. Even Costa is nicer than that!

August Bradley's New Course

So, what's on my mind? It's actually August Bradley's new course. You'll remember yesterday that I talked about Nat Eliason and Roam Research? You obviously do, oh avid reader of mine.

Well, I asked on Twitter if there was a similar Notion course, and I got a helpful reply pointing me to August Bradley's Notion Playlist on his YouTube channel.

I watched the first few videos and honestly felt like what I was watching was potentially life-changing. And this wasn't marketing copy, although obviously this is part of August's master plan of giving away incredibly valuable content as a way of marketing for his paid course—I get that now and can also learn from how he did that.

August talked at length about systems before he even opened up Notion to show us his workflow. And that is where I'm failing. I've tried various different tactics over the last year and longer to come up with habits and productivity and none of them have worked. I understand that there is more of a psychological reason here that should be explored, but I feel like August's holistic approach will help me to understand where my points of failure are and plan for that in my system. In fact it's not just a feeling—he actually said as much in his early Notion videos.

Sounds like I'm talking myself into buying, doesn't it?

I scrolled through his page to get to the price, expecting it to be $1197 at least, and yes, it will be that ($1250 actually), but today it's mine for the low low price of $750!

Sorry, I didn't mean to be facetious there; I'm sure that it's actually really good value at that price point, but the fact is that I'm earning fuck all right now and have been earning that much since lockdown started, more or less. Affordability is the kicker.

But if I don't solve this systems problem that I have, I'll never make a successful living as a content creator, because I'll keep doing what I'm doing and that is not working.

Gratitude

I should keep a gratitude list though, right? Of course I should.

1. Lying in bed this morning before getting up. Instead of feeling frustrated at not being able to get back to sleep, I chose to be mindful of the feeling of warmth as I listened to the wind outside and felt a really nice peaceful feeling of having everything that I need.
2. I felt gratitude that my wife was lying beside me, not only because she's amazing in so many ways, but because she was actually in bed. She's dealing with incredible workloads right now and doesn't always make it to bed.
3. A sense of achievement at having started this writing project on this website and at having tidied up some old posts, particularly my book reviews—adding Amazon affiliate links to the beginning of the posts—and my weekly Last.fm chart posts.
4. Not having to get up to run the post office. That's something I should be mindful of every day. That was a period of my life that I suppose I had to go through, but fuck me was it brutal! The leg injury period was easier. Twelve years I did that.

What did I Read Yesterday

1. I finished The Elves of Cintra, by Terry Brooks.
2. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich. It's really good.
3. Four exercises from Solo Guitar Playing, by Frederick Noad, the book I'm planning to launch a course on.

Disclaimer: Some links are Amazon affiliate links.

Today's Goals

1. Decide on the Notion course purchase and own the decision.
2. Buy the next Finiko product with profits earned over the last two weeks.
3. Decide whether to add more Last.fm posts from my Hive blog.
4. Complete Lesson 8 of Solo Guitar Playing by the end of the week, so six exercises and three compositions. Let's make today's goal the six exercises. Anything else is a bonus.