My Daily Schedule during the Lockdown

Hope all of you and your loved ones are safe during this pandemic. I admit that lockdowns are very boring, yet they are an opportunity to learn and do things that you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have enough time for.

(Follow me on YouTube- RaihanRiad)

My schedule during this lockdown can be divided into three different parts:
i. Morning rituals
ii. Work
iii. Rest
Here is my schedule:

……………..Morning Rituals………………

1. Meditation: I meditate for 15 minutes the first thing in the morning. This prepares my mind to be disciplined for the rest of the day. I know this because whenever I miss my morning meditation I struggle with my will power.
Currently I am using this guided meditation video from Eckhart Tolle as my meditation aid.

2. Listen to an Audiobook: The next thing I do is to connect my earbuds to my phone and start an audiobook. The two next items in my schedule (i.e cleaning room and working out) can be done while I am listening to an audiobook so I take this opportunity to learn about something new.

Currently I am listening to Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. It’s an amazing book that goes deep into all the cutting edge research on sleep. I highly recommend it.

3. Cleaning Room: A clean and well decorated room makes me feel good and aids in my determination to have a great, productive day. So, I take 10 minutes to make my bed, wipe some furnitures and sort scattered items.

4. Workout: While still listening to the audiobook, I get into my workout clothes and open my workout app. I am a huge fan of this app called-“Home Workout “. (They are providing free access to all premium features due to the pandemic, so definitely check it out). Each workout session takes 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Put my phone away: After completing my workout session, I stop the audiobook, disconnect my earbuds and put my phone away in a drawer. I don’t touch it untill my deep work session of the morning (which I will talk about below) is done. This aids in my deep work and keeps me from procrastinating.

5. Take a shower: Elon Musk did an AMA(ask me anything) on Reddit. Someone asked him to share what habits has the largest positive impact on his life. He answered: showering.
I live in a humid country and daily shower definitely helps me feel good for the rest of the day.

6. Wim Hof: I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Wim Hof method. It’s a breathing exercise that has been researched extensively in the recent years . What researchers have found is, it strengthens your immune system through making your blood slightly more alkaline. I highly recommend you try it out! Here’s the link to the official YouTube channel:
Wim Hof method helps me to feel calm and focused. Have you ever kept yourself from breathing for a while when feeling sleepy? It makes you more alert right? That’s how I feel after going through each session of the Wim Hof mehod.

………………………..Work…………………………

7. Deep work: Ok now we’re onto my favorite session of the day. This is what I look forward to everyday. But let’s talk about what deep work is first:
Cal Newport, a brilliant professor and bestselling author of many books, published ‘Deep Work‘ in 2016. Here he talks about the brilliant skill of working distraction free on a cognitively demanding task.

Deep work enables you to learn complex topics and perform your best work. Barbara Oakley, the brilliant professor behind ‘Learning how to learn’, talks about how distractions hampers your ability to learn. She, being a big advocate of chunking, encourages students to minimize distractions while studying.
After three sessions of the Wim Hof method, I sit down to study. I study for 4 pomodoro sessions, each being 50 minutes long. Currently I am studying ‘Tensorflow’ which is a machine learning library. The course I am taking is called: “Introduction to Tensorflow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning “. (If you are interested in taking this course, I recommend you read the Keras documentation first).

8. Nap and Lunch: As I’ve learned from listening to ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker, napping is a good habit to get into. It reinforces what I learned in my study session and refreshes my mind and body for the rest of the day. I take my lunch after waking up from my 20 minutes long nap. This is the first meal of the day for me, my latest being only 8 hours later, which makes me fast for 16 hours everyday. This is called intermittent fasting and it has been linked to many helath and cognitive benefits in numerous research .

9. Some More Work: After lunch, I work for 6 more hours. This is when I write in my blog, or make a YouTube video. If I am feeling particularly lazy that day (which sadly is most days), I work on finishing one of the courses that I’ve enrolled in Coursera. Currently, I’m doing ‘The Science of Success’ by University of Michigan. This is a great resource if you want to learn about how successful people are different form others and how to incorporate those traits in you.

………………………Rest……………………..

10. Entertainment:

Mob Psycho 100

After I am done working for the day, I pick up my phone and watch an anime or watch something on YouTube.
Currently I am re-watching Mob Psycho 100 and my absolute favourite YouTuber to watch is B-rad.

11. Sleep: I try to get 8 hours of sleep every night.

So there you go. That’s the routine I strive to live up to everyday even though it’s a struggle to maintain it perfectly, specially because my sleep cycle is all over the place at this moment.

I’d really like to know how your schedule looks like during this lockdown. Please share in the comments below.

Fear of Failure: Are You Lying to Yourself?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman

Why do some people accomplish great feats like Elon Musk whereas, most others lag behind? Its true that the law of averages dictate that most people will have average lives and only some will live a truly outlier life. Yet, it remains true that almost all of us have the necessary tools to make our lives better. Then where does it go wrong?

(Follow me on YouTube- RaihanRiad)

Have you ever wanted to help someone else? To turn someone else into a proper human being? Probably your own children, or someone else you are responsible for? Well, no matter who that is, you are at most 50% responsible for how their lives turn out to be. You know who you are 100% responsible for though? That would be you, yourself. Yet why is it that we find it hard to conjure up enough motivation to do something about our own lives?
It’s becuase of fear of failure. It would suck if you tried to do the right things and then failed. You’ll be 100% responsible and you will feel miserable. Fear of failure is one of the worst internal enemies that each of us battle with regularly. It lies to us and makes us work on projects where we can shift the blame on other people.
For example: how many people would say they want to solve humanities biggest problems? Better yet, how many people think that they could actually do better than the people currently responsible?
Yet when you look at their personal lives, maybe one of their parent is fighting with depression. Don’t you think that person should try his/her best to solve that problem first? What about your big aspirations that you gave up on when reality became unbearable? Don’t you honestly think, if a human can climb Mount Everest, walk on the moon, make a space shuttle company with only 100 million dollars (i’m thinking Elon Musk) then a human, namely you, could also break into the music industry or learn about Artificial Intelligence, or become a heart surgeon (or whatever your dream was that you gave up on)?
You are a very special being with incredible powers of neuroplasticity, adaptability and resilience. Don’t sell yourself short. Fear of failure will make you shift focus to other people’s problems and justify that by saying that its nobler. But the reality is, deep down you are just afraid.
Tackle the problems that would immediately make your life better. Stop cowering behind projects that would either take an eternity to complete or where you can easily shift the blame of failure to others. That’s how you beat fear of failure.

Life is precious: Do what you love.

How improbable was human life on earth?

First, our universe had to come into existence out of nothing. Then laws of physics had to be sufficient to create us. Stars and galaxies had to form so that earth and other necessary materials get created. Almost nothing in our body is created by our sun. Heck even water is thought to have come here from outer space. Countless supernovae burnt to forge the elements we see all around us and is crucial for forming human bodies. Then evolution had to occur in such a way that humans were formed. And after all of these miracles, here we are. Singing, dancing, forming tribes and fighting, exploring, building relationships and dreaming about outer space. How sacred and precious existence is!

When I consider how improbable our existence is, it astonishes me. It also makes my heart fill up with gratitude. For a brief moment in the space-time continuum, we get to live. To listen to music. To laugh with each other. To explore, learn and share.

How to follow your passion and succeed

In this post I will share how to make money from your passion. So, let’s get started.

You can make money doing almost anything

The main problem when it comes to following your passion is money. I get it. Us humans are obsessed with earning a living. And it’s not for nothing. Money determines the quality of life we will get to live. In some societies, money determines status.

But the real problem is not money. It’s herd mentality. It’s FOMO, the fear of missing out. We don’t want to be left behind while our peers are getting promoted in their job. We don’t want to look back at our life and regret. We don’t want to waste our youth. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that either.

I don’t want to bullshit with you. Let’s be honest, the proper way to pursue your passion is to do it from your childhood. No one becomes a football star by starting to play at their 16^th birthday. Most of them get professional coaching since their childhood. Same goes to musicians and filmmakers. Even popular programmers like Bill Gates or Elon Musk had an early start.

That’s because a craft takes time before you master it. So, if you want to be a professional, this post isn’t for you.

Then again there are people who would leave everything they have to pursue their passion in their 20’s and find success in their 40s (or later). Stephen Pressfield have done it, Harland Sanders did it. But this post is not for them either.

I am talking about the amateur artist. The service holder with a soft spot for a certain sport. The programmer who just started with the basics at his 20s.

People who have a full-time job already, or students who don’t have much time to practice anything- you can still build a career in the field of your passion.

And this is all possible because of how the economy have shifted after the rise of social media. Attention is the new currency. If you can serve an audience, you can build a career.

The only questions that need answering then are these- how do I build an audience and how do I monetize my audience?

Well, building an audience is hard. But it’s possible if you are willing to put at least 10 hours every week behind that. If you can do that, then read this post to know about people who make a living doing things they love.

The monetization part is easier. There’s no shortage of ways in which you can monetize an audience. There’s Ad revenue, Affiliate marketing, donations, merch sales, selling courses, selling 1 to 1 coaching, building email lists and many other ways depending on the industry that you serve.

The bottom line is, if you are a writer/musician/teacher (etc.) at heart, you don’t have to keep doing office work till your 60s. You can retire early if you play your cards right. Use your time and resources wisely and be willing to work for 5-10 years silently. That’s how you will get out of the rat race and fulfill your potential.

You should read ‘The War of Art’

For the lazy, unmotivated people, ‘The war of art’ is a must. For any aspiring artist, ‘The war of art’ is like a bible. For an up and coming entrepreneur, ‘The war of art’ is the missing piece of the puzzle. Steven Pressfield is not only a bestselling writer; he is a father figure to anyone who dares to dream.

‘The war of art’ is the type of book that hooks you from the first page. After finishing the book, it will become a lifelong companion, whose wisdom will guide you through most hardships.

‘The war of art’ is practical, yet spiritual. It deals with psychology, while it preaches a philosophy. It’s a non-fiction book, yet it has a hero, a villain, a father figure and a prize. – just like any typical adventure story.

‘The war of art’ literally portrays your life as an adventure story. Where you get a call for something great, a prize that you really really want. But, the villain (named resistance) keeps you from it. Only after character development does the hero get the prize ( turning pro).

On the other hand, it is the farthest from a fiction. It portrays reality as a harsh, crude place… stripping any glamour off of it. It promises no rewards without hardship. It is not even concerned with the rewards. Rather it tells you to show up, no matter what. It tells you how to turn pro.

You are a pro when you work at Starbucks or Walmart. Because, you show up every day. Are you a pro in your own business? In your artistic endeavours?

Wake up you gotta make money

In every person’s life there comes a day when he or she realize that they have to make money. This realization taints all our future planning and it works as a paint brush that colors all our decisions. And not only our own decisions but advices from all around us come with this fact in mind. Because we know for sure, just like death, the necessity to make money for ourselves is inevitable. And at some point, or another we have to start it. The amount of money we make will determine the quality of life we get to live to some extent, the status that we get from our peers to some extent. Thus, somehow it creeps into everything a person does. When we see the adults, we realize that there are not very many of them that will not like some more money in their life. So, we start racing with everyone else to get into a better school, to get a high paying job and after we get the job we are in a race to get promotions etc. Some of us ditch that race and become entrepreneurs. There they fight even more and work for longer hours if they want to make their business successful. In all this process, we lose life. We lose the childlike explorer mentality in us.

 

The one fact we can’t avoid is death. All of us are gonna die. We are doomed to fail as an organism. It makes little sense to me to play it safe. What is safety for a life form that has yet not found any ways to avoid death? But these philosophies are not practical. The practical reality is that we live quite a long life. And in this long life, money makes all the difference. It’s something worth striving for. Money doesn’t only make our own life better, but it also makes the life of our loved ones better. It makes the life of our children better. It gives them a good platform for the future. It is then very practical and rational to chase after money.

 

But the this we got stuck on from the last century is that, we still think there are a set fields of works, set types of works that we are supposed to do to be rich. This is not true anymore. The economy is changing. The world has become a very different place than it was 10 years ago. People can make money from so many different paths that it sounds almost too good to be true! It doesn’t matter what exactly is it that you do. What matters is, how many people can you serve and how well can you serve? If you manage to serve a lot of people well, then there’s really no barrier on what you can or cannot do. Some of the youtubers are a great example of this. Take Nick Nimmin for example. He is in the business of teaching youtuber, how to do YouTube! And in this process, he has amassed almost a half of a million subscribers. Then again, he works from his own studio, and is effectively his own boss. I think this is an amazing achievement. Just search for making a chair or make a table on YouTube, and you will see how some carpenters are attracting hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their channel.

 

In the new economy, attention is the new currency. If you can capture eyeballs, you can be rich. Facebook has built a fortune by capturing people’s attention. In this new era, all you have to do, is to create a following. Yes, you may have to work 3 to 4 years unpaid and possibly alone in your own room, to amass subscribers or followers etc., but after that, there are no shortage of ways to monetize those eyeballs. You can sell directly to them, like many of the biggest social media influencers are doing. They sell merch such as T-shirts and coffee mugs etc. You can sell other types of product that you produce, like Nathaniel Drew selling Photos of his travelling in his website or Nick Nimmin selling end screens to new youtubers. Heck, you can even sell other people’s products by getting affiliate links from Amazon, Clickbank etc. I guess you have seen YouTubers linking the camera or gaming gear that they use with amazon links in the descriptions. Those are affiliate links. If you are big enough you may start landing sponsors like Squarespace, audible or G-fuel. And then there is obviously ad revenue.

 

It is a great time to be alive for the dreamers who want to rebel against the cultural norms and live unique and different lives. Take Nathaniel Drew for example, a 21-year-old photographer, who travelled different places of the world and now sells his photos on his own website. He has amassed almost 300k subscribers on YouTube and is showing no signs of stopping soon! Then there is Matt D’avella. He is a filmmaker that is on a self-improvement journey. And people donate him on ‘Patreon’ to watch him in his journey. In short, it doesn’t matter if you a love making chairs or making movies, you could love making music or maybe you want to travel the world. Do whatever you want to do, live your dream life and you can find a way to monetize that lifestyle.

 

Do we realize how lucky we are to be born in this generation? Huge systems have been built to work as our platforms for communicating with the world. Potential customers are only one viral post or one good ad campaign away. These platforms took the smartest people of our planet and millions if not billions of dollars to build. Take YouTube for example, the artificial intelligence of YouTube works day and night to bring creators to the type of audience they might connect with. This as a software would be invaluable to anyone and we get it for free. You can now reach millions of other people who might be interested on what you are saying. What other generation could boast giving such power to each individual?

 

There is very little reason now to conform, to not pursue a dream, to not go after the lifestyle you want. I’d rather argue that conforming to the existing trends of carrier choice is the wrong way to go. First, there is too much competition. If everyone is trying to be a doctor or a lawyer, it just gets so much harder to become those. Then there’s the fact that, you learn better when you are interested in the topic. It is a well-documented phenomenon. If you look for it you will even find research paper citing 152 sources that claim that learning is easier when the subject has interest in it.

 

Life is cruel. It is very hard. To succeed in any field, you will have to learn a lot, work hard and basically outwork all your competition to make a name for yourself in the industry as a newcomer. And it’s very hard to learn complex ideas or tools in large quantity, when you are not interested in the topic. And it is also very hard to work longer hours and give your best output if you are not passionate about your work. But, when you are interest in the field of work, you learn better naturally, you work more, stay longer and get the best out of you naturally. I am still not saying that the journey won’t be hard. It will be, no matter what you do. But the hardships will be more bearable. Casey Neistat starts one of his videos with the quote: If you compromise and you fail it hurts, it hurts more than failing at what you love.

 

There is another very very practical reason for pursuing your passion. This reason is illustrated in great length in the book called “The Dip”  by Seth Godin. It is exponentially more rewarding to be the top of any field than to be just average. As Seth Godin says, Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. When You Pursue a career that is saturated, it is very hard to be the top of the hierarchy. But when you pursue unique paths, the game changes to your advantage. There are many people who play the piano for a living on YouTube. But the top guys don’t do the same things. There is Vinheteiro who does skits using his crazy keyboard skills and has got almost 4 million subscribers, then there are the people who cover popular songs as soon as they come out. The latter group of people have it hard as they have to compete with each other for each pop song that comes out. But Vinheteiro does his own thing and thus avoids competition in the first place. My point is, you don’t have to be the best piano player, just do unique fun things that you love to do, that other people may want to see too.

 

Now consider my last argument in favor of following your passion- what if you put your 100%, what if you worked as hard as Elon Musk does, if not a 100 hours a week maybe 80 hours a week, or heck, if you have school or a job to attend, maybe even 30 hours a week into one field of work. What if you stop taking breaks in the weekend? And work with focus and everything you’ve got? For 3-5 years, don’t you think you’d be making enough money from that field, to justify your efforts? If that’s not a fair price in exchange of the type of life that you want? With that thought in mind, I’d like to stop. If you enjoyed this don’t forget to like and follow.