A glance at the highlights and learnings from a week in my journey. Curious for more? Browse through my previous weekly updates.

W06 2024

2024 Feb 5 - 11 • Year progress: 12%

Highlights

• Three years back, I hit a creative wall. My mind was a whirlwind of ideas, yet nothing materialized into reality. I believed I was drowning in too much inspiration—too much input with nowhere to go. So, I made the tough decision to cut off my creative flow, thinking it was the root of my stagnation. But with time and reflection, I've come to understand the real issue wasn't the abundance of ideas; it was the absence of execution. It's clear to me now: the problem has always been output. Recognizing this, I'm ready to reopen the gates of creativity and tackle the output challenge head-on. It's time to transform those ideas into something tangible.
• I recently started working out in my small garden gym and finished three sessions. It felt amazing. But something odd happened one night while watching TV—I suddenly wanted to go back out and workout again. I didn't do it that time, but next time, I definitely will. It's funny how starting something new can unexpectedly motivate you to keep going.

During the week

• Putting in your utmost effort and every ounce of your energy counts as a true victory. This week, I reminded myself of the importance of focusing on the process rather than just the outcome. It's a tough shift, but a crucial one.
• Learning through experimentation, documenting progress, dissecting failures and learning from them... KPI is "Key Performance Indicator"... Performance is more related with process rather than outcomes, but we keep coming up with outcome goals and use KPIs to track rather we reach them or not. What if we used KPIs as monitoring tool for the process and experimentation?
• Personal experiments
• 7 rules for a journaling routine
• The Gap by Ira Glass

Review

I found out that my creativity wasn't blocked by too many ideas but by not acting on them. The balance between input and output is essential—they should match in quantity and quality to maintain equilibrium.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

— Ira Glass

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