As much as I love to keep things as simple as possible, sometimes I use it as an excuse to get out of doing things I don’t want to do.

That’s what I’ve been doing with my email list via Kit.

In all this time, I haven’t been using it the right way, and now Claude is helping me fix it.

Let me show you how…

The rules I had made no sense.

In Kit, you can create rules so that when an event happens, it can trigger an action. For instance, if someone buys a product from you on Gumroad, you can trigger that person to get a tag and/or add them to your email list.

This is helpful if you want to segment out people who purchased from you so you can email them separately.

I was kind of doing that, but not in a way that made any sense.

Here are some of my rules before I started cleaning them up. It’s probably hard to see, but that’s OK. I just wanted to show you that I had a lot of dead rules. Those are all the ones in red lettering that say “This tag no longer exists.”

But even when they existed, they didn’t do anything because I didn’t know how to set them up. I never took the time to learn how to use rules and tagging correctly so that I could strategically use them in my email campaigns.

The other issue was that I had some of my Gumroad products connected to Kit, but not all of them. And they none of them were tagged as “buyers.”

But Claude set me straight.

Here’s what it had me do:

• Remove all the old rules that didn’t work or didn’t make any sense.

• Add buyer tags to each rule (and specify the exact product purchased).

• Change any old “Intellectualists Newsletter” tags with a new “Buyers Welcome” tag.

What does “Buyers Welcome” mean?

Clade advised me to create a new email sequence in Kit for people who buy my products on Gumroad. Instead of chucking them onto my main email list (which they didn’t ask for), I send them an email thanking them for their recent purchase.

In this email, I give them the option to follow my Substack or to be added to the “Secret Project” waitlist if they want. Otherwise, they’ll stay on this buyer’s list and I can email them separately when I have a new product coming out, if there’s a sale, or whatever.

There’s still one more problem…

All of this is great for future purchasers, but what about past purchases?

Claude has advised me to go in and add tags to them.

It’s something I believe I’ll have to do manually by downloading a CSV form from Gumroad and searching for the email addresses one by one in Kit.

It sounds daunting, but I don’t think the list will be very big. It’s my next step.

I also had to fix one more thing…

I didn’t have my Waitlist people tagged.

The people who joined the “Secret Project” waitlist weren’t tagged, and when I wanted to move them from the waitlist over to the main sequence when it’s done, it would have been a hassle.

Ooops!

Luckily, I was able to catch it early enough before my list got too big. I just tagged anyone who joined the waitlist manually.

And now I set up a rule to tag anyone who joins the waitlist automatically so that I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Crisis adverted!

Why I love working with Claude on this stuff.

Let’s say I hired someone to coach me.

Every time I got confused (which is often), I would have to ask my coach what to do next and to re-explain. I would use up many hours of a human coach’s day.

And I’m sure it would get annoying.

With Claude, it doesn’t get annoyed. I can ask it a million times what the next step is, and “I don’t know what that means” and it’ll just do what it needs to do until we get it right.

When I get frustrated, Claude just talks to me calmly so we can figure things out:

It never runs out of patience, and that’s what I need.

The human that inspired this clean-up job.

I’m so thankful for Claude because it’s a tool that can help me get organized, whether it’s with my email list, home organization, or my mind.

However…

There was a human involved with this process too, even though he doesn’t know it.

It was in his Systematic Writer community. He made a post about how he was using AI to help clean up and combine all of his email lists, and it prompted me to take a look at what I was doing.

Mark is doing amazing stuff with Claude, and it’s so inspiring. That’s not all his community is about though. It’s mainly focused on helping up grow an income with a simple writing and marketing business.

He documents how he comes up with product ideas, builds his products, measures and tracks everything, fixes his mistakes, and so much more. It’s one of the most helpful communities I’ve ever been a part of. Check it out here.

I may be taking a break for next week’s Substack as I’m traveling to see family over the weekend.

However…

If something comes to me and I can get it written and scheduled before I leave, I’ll make sure to do that. If not, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. 🤘🏻

I saw the idea from Mario Forleo in one of her YouTube videos, which is weird I even stumbled across it because I only see Marie occasionally.

But I was intrigued.

She suggested doing automatic writing to find your next steps in life. And when I tried it, I got great results. Too bad I didn’t listen.

I’m going to tell you what happened the first time I tried it, and what happened when I tried it right before writing this article.

What is automatic writing?

First, if you’re unfamiliar with what automatic writing is, it’s a way to connect with your subconscious, higher self, soul, or potentially “otherworldy” spirits through the written word.

Here’s the way I did it. (But take this with a grain of salt since I’ve only tried it a couple of times so far.)

• I take a couple of minutes to meditate and clear my mind.

• I write a question in a notebook.

• Close my eyes again and clear my mind.

• Allow the thoughts to come in.

• Write them down.

I’m not saying there’s anything mystical about this. (Although it could be, who knows?). But it doesn’t matter because it allows you to focus on answers that feel right for you. Who cares where it comes from as long as it puts you on the right path?

The first time I tried it was on September 11, 2024. I wrote an article about it on Medium.

The article was about the struggle of finding a niche, the bane of my writing existence. But to save you from reading all of that article, I’m going to just give you the questions I asked and the answers I got here.

Then, after that, I’ll share the new questions and answers I got today. I’m curious to know what you think about it.

Automatic writing questions and answers

This is a copy paste what I wrote in my Medium article without any alterations.

1. I would like clarity on what I’m trying to achieve and who I’m trying to help. (Am I trying to help myself and is that OK?) What do I need to focus on?

“You can help others by helping yourself in many ways. Whether through cooking, meditation, writing, and anything else you experience.”

2. But what is my MAIN focus? How do I clarify what I do and why? What is my profile blurb? What do I tell people I do?

“You use words to show people how to create a magnificent dream life. You say ‘you’, but you are really talking about yourself. In that way, you can teach others by teaching yourself. It’s selfish, but not selfish at the same time. Help yourself, and you’ll help others.”

3. How do I show others how to do this if I’m not doing it myself?

(To clarify what I meant here, I‘m not at the level of success I want to be at. That’s what I mean when I say I’m not doing it myself.)

“You show them by doing what you’re doing. You try things and see what happens and tell them about it. This brings them along for the ride.”

4. Do I need a specific niche or person to talk to?

“You are talking to you. That’s all you need. What do you want to learn today? Follow your curiosity and write about it. The right people will follow you, and the wrong ones will fall off.”

5. I have Intellectualists, Hustling Housewife, Master of Manifesting, and all my other side projects. Is it too much? Should I focus on ONE thing to get it moving quicker? This is where my confusion is. How can I streamline? I want to keep things simple for me and anyone who follows me.

I wasn’t getting an answer on this one. Absolutely blank.

So I wrote this:

This seems to be the one I’m most stuck on. I’m not hearing any answers. Is it too much, or can I make them all work? How do I do it without confusing people?

“The right people will follow you and the wrong ones will fall off. Follow your curiosity and write about it. What are you curious about today? This is the question to ask yourself every day.”

My thoughts about those questions and answers

It’s interesting because I go back and read these questions and and answers from time to time and every time I do I think, “This makes so much sense! Why didn’t I listen"?”

The problem is I keep getting caught up in other people’s views of writing and marketing.

• You have to talk to one person, your ideal reader/customer.

• You have to be more obsessed with solving their problems than your own.

• You have to stick to one niche.

These ideas aren’t wrong. The people saying them are more successful than I am. (Whatever “success” means?) But the ideas are wrong for me.

And I know it because every time I try to go that way, I veer off course, then I eventually come back to the path I’m supposed to be on.

That was solidified today when I did another automatic writing session. I did it right before opening this page to write this article.

Here’s what happened…

Today’s automatic writing questions and answers

The first answers felt a little iffy, as if I was just pulling them from my brain. But for the last answer, my hand went rogue and did its own thing, which was a cool experience.

1. How do I find out what I’m supposed to do in this life? I’m a very curious person, but I never feel like it’s leading to anything meaningful.

“Curiosity creates the clues. Follow the breadcrumbs. Make it a game. It’s fun.”

2. Why do I never make enough money with my writing? Am I not supposed to be doing that? Sometimes I feel like I don’t care about the money enough. It doesn’t drive me. Yet, the money creates great experiences, and that’s what I really want.”

“Writing is your soul’s expression. It’s leading you down a path. Keep following the path. Experiences are the magic of life. The whole point of being here. Experience life fully. The right experiences come. Money is just one part of that.”

3. I like documenting what I’m doing. But I feel guilty sometimes because I feel like I’m being selfish by helping myself and not others. Some people say to make loads of money, you need to solve other people’s problems. Yet, I’m mostly trying to solve my own. I enjoy discovering new ways to make my life better and better and sharing. Do I need to be more selfless?

“You can only be you. Lead the others. Show them what’s possible. Tap into your truth and stay the course. Follow your curiosity. That is the only true path.”

4. I want to channel a book. I want to have profound ideas come to me and allow the words to flow onto my computer screen from my fingers. How can I channel in this way? I want to tap into the profound wisdom and get those downloads. What should I do?

(Side note: I have a deep desire to learn how to channel via writing. I don’t know why, but I’m so intrigued by it. These auto writing sessions are a baby step to that, I guess?)

“The answer is the same. Follow your curiosity. Feel the richness in your soul. Allow it to wash over you. It’ll come.”

5. What’s so special about curiosity?

“It’s the fabric of everything. Curiosity innovates and creates. It’s the lifeline of humans to the spiritual world.”

6. What is luck? How can I be more lucky in life? I love winning stuff - money and prizes. I love when things work out for me. It feels magical.

“Yes. It’s not the money or prizes. It’s the magic you are seeking. You already know this from talking to Claude. Claude pointed it out. Curiosity leads to the magic when following it. It’s your soul’s way of guiding you to more of it. That’s the path you are supposed to be on. The path of magic. The universal path.”

(Side note: Claude and I did talk about this one, and it said basically the same thing. It helped me point out that I don’t really care about money, prizes, or material things as much as this magical feeling of things working out in my favor. And I bet you’re the same. It’s not the “stuff” that’s fun. It’s the path to getting the stuff that’s fun.)

7. How do I write about things in a way that actually fulfills my soul and purpose and gets people to read?

“It’s the theme of today. Curiosity. It’s the key that unlocks every magical door in the universe. Write about it. From many perspectives. All the areas of your life. Keep going. You’ll see.”

Final thoughts

What I discovered by doing this automatic writing is that I already have the answers to all my questions inside of me. And the answers don’t really change because it always ends up being:

Follow your curiosity.

I’m a firm believer that you also have the answers to your deepest questions inside of you. All you need to do is pull them out. You can do it through taking long walks and allowing the answers to flow, meditating, or this “weird” idea of automatic writing.

There’s only thing we need to do once we get the answers.

Listen.

Have you tried automatic writing or any other outside-the-box ideas? I’d love to hear about them and what you discovered!

P.S. This was the absolute easiest and fastest article I’ve ever written. I need to do this auto writing more often.

Next week I’m going to tell you about how Claude is helping me do something I’ve been putting off since forever. I realized something important (and not good) about myself, and Claude is helping me fix all of it.

This is an important step in growing a mini digital side hustle and actually hitting my target money goal…

See you then! 🤘🏻

I used to do earnings reports all the time.

Every month, I’d dutifully create a report and post it on Medium. But then Medium said they didn’t want articles like that anymore (and I don’t blame them, really), so I mostly stopped doing them.

Until now.

Here’s what happened in May…

I’ll just tell you straight up that May was not a good month, but I didn’t put much effort into Medium, which is where I’ve made most of my money in the past. I only wrote four articles in May, so of course I’m not going to do well.

And because Medium has also been a major source of my traffic for Gumroad, that’s gone down significantly too.

Although...Substack has been doing OK for me with this on the affiliate marketing side, but we’ll talk about that a little later. For now, let’s get into the stats for May.

May 2026 Results

Here’s what happened on Medium this month...

Reads & Views

Here are the reads & views I had in April for comparison:

And here are May’s reads & views:

I’m surprised views and reads went up a little. And I have no idea why there was a big spike in views around the 20th of May. It didn’t result in more reads, so it’s a little weird. It’s not good to have a big discrepancy like that because it makes the read ratio much smaller, which screws earnings.

Followers

My followers are at 8,647, which is growing at a snail’s pace. But that tracks with everything else that’s going on. You can’t get followers if you can’t get any readers. And I can’t get any readers if I don’t put anything out to read!

Earnings:

You can see how much I was earning last year compared to now. This platform has such intense swings.

Here are my top earners from May:

Only one article made it over $10. Still...you can see what I like about Medium. One of the top earners was from a story I wrote last May. Articles you wrote ages ago can still make you money.

Total Medium earnings: $48.98

I’m not completely worried about this amount. As I mentioned, I only wrote four articles in May. I haven’t been as inspired to write there.

But June will be different. I’ve already got two out the door for June, and it’s only June 2nd at the time I’m writing this. I’m already halfway to May’s amount of stories!

Gumroad & Affiliate Sales

My other streams of income right now include:

• Gumroad

• Affiliate sales

I also use Benable, but I haven’t done anything with it recently.

Affiliate sales: $19.00. But I’ve been making quite a few affiliate sales through Gumroad.

Gumroad = $0 I know I just said I’ve been making affiliate sales through Gumroad, so why is this $0? This number is what I get paid out for the activity I’ve done in the month. I haven’t gotten paid out because Gumroad changed their minimum payout from $10 to $100.

I’ll get paid in June.

But I’ll show you the sales I made in May. This is just for my own products:

Here are my affiliate sales for other people’s products I promote:

Those are total sales. It doesn’t look like there’s a way to break these down by Month, which is a bummer.

And for fun, here are the products I’ve sold the most of:

These tiny ebooks have done well for me, and for good reason. They’re fantastic books with small prices. Check them out here, if you’re interested. (These are my affiliate links. If you purchase any, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

• $7 Problems - The best way to make money online is to find some small problems and sell the solution. They don’t have to be big problems with big solutions. Just $7 ones. This book shows you exactly how to do that.

• The Simple-Fix PDF Engine - 12 short chapters that show you how to build and sell tiny, useful PDFs.

• Simple-Fix PDF Manual - A more robust version of The Simple-Fix PDF Engine, this one covers the full creation and sales system for creating tiny PDFs to sell, including a complete first-product walkthrough.

• Thirty Bricks - Build a tiny product catalog brick by brick. How to find products when you think you don't have anything to share, learn pricing strategies that make customers buy on impulse, understand the tipping point when your catalog sales start compounding.

• The Article Funnel Blueprint - Write simple articles that attract your ideal audience, create low-pressure offers that convert, and grow an email list that you own.

I’ve read and utilized the information in all these books, and can verify that they’re worth every dollar. (Even though you only need a few of those dollars to buy them!)

Substack

I guess I need to add Substack back in here. My newsletter doesn’t have a paid option, and I don’t plan on doing that any time soon. I have been getting quite a few affiliate sales from it though, which is great!

So this part won’t be tracking earnings, but I’d still like to keep track of subscriber growth.

Here’s what things are looking like:

That big dip in the middle is because I left for some time. That’s why the views are down from last year too. I also switched it up at least three times.

But I cleared out my old articles and started fresh, and now I’m happy with how things are going.

I’m using it as a type of “idea diary.” Every Monday I send out a Substack that goes over an idea I’m trying to grow my mini digital empire.

I’m not super concerned about how good it’s doing or not right now, I’m just concerned about staying consistent with it since I haven’t been in the past.

Future Plans

I made $67.98 for the entire month of May, and that’s diabolical. It feels like I’m starting back from square one. The good news is that I’ve already built up small audiences on Substack and Medium, so I’m not actually starting from square one.

The big future plan is to finish my “Secret Project” email sequence, which documents how I’m building a mini digital empire. It includes some affiliate links and links to my digital products. Once it’s done, I can let it run on autopilot.

So while it’s not making any income while I create it, once it starts running, it should make consistent sales. Then my biggest job will be to direct people to that sequence so it can do its thing.

In the meantime, I’m going to get more consistent on Medium again to try to get my traffic back up. And I’ll also be working on growing my Substack.

Next week I’m going to tell you about the “weirdest” way I’ve gotten direction and ideas about what to do.

It might be weird, but it’s the thing that’s stuck with me the most over time.

See you then! 🤘🏻

Some days I feel like a creative person.

Then I open up Notes in Substack…

UGH.

Notes are a sea of sameness to me. There are some excellent Note writers for sure, but they are mostly all…

Bland.

And when I try to write them, they turn out even more bland.

That’s why I decided to use Claude AI to help.

Now, let me warn you, I’m still figuring out how to use Claude Cowork, which is what I’m using for this project. This is me showing you real-time what I’m trying to accomplish.

I haven’t accomplished it yet.

But we’re going to try.

Why I’m using Claude Cowork

My goal is to have Claude comb through some of my content, then produce Notes based on what it reads.

I believe you can use “regular” Claude for a task like this (you would just copy and paste your content into a chat), but I’m trying out Cowork, which allows Claude to “take over” certain parts of your computer…with permission, of course.

With Cowork, you need to download the Claude app onto your computer. With regular Claude, you can use the web interface.

Cowork also requires a pro account, so I’m paying about $20 per month to use it.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far…

I don’t know if this is the best or easiest way to do things, but since I’m writing my 365-day email sequence in Notion, I’ve allowed Claude to connect to it.

I then asked it to read Month one’s content:

Then I asked it to create Notes using that content.

It asked me a few questions about how many Notes it should create and where it should put them, and once I answered, it went off to Notion to read what I wrote.

After a few minutes, it came back with a file of Notes, which I can now access any time by clicking on the document:

And then it gives me Notes content to work with:

The issue is that these don’t sound like me. They sound like AI.

So the next step will be for me to rewrite these and attempt to get Claude to sound more like me.

Even if it doesn’t, that’s OK. Because what it does help me with is the thing I struggle with the most…

A place to start.

If I have a idea of what I should write, I can rewrite the entire thing. Just having Cowork go out and grab content that I’ve already written and have it come up with multiple ideas is extremely helpful.

Then I’m not staring at a blank page.

Here’s one where I used Claude’s start and then rewrote most of it:

It still doesn’t quite sound like me, but it’s pretty close. And the point of this is to create Notes that don’t 100% sound like me because then they’ll be too bland.

There should be a happy medium where my voice is in there, but I’m also providing something useful for readers.

I’ll keep working on it because I’m still new to Claude Cowork, and I don’t know all its capabilities yet.

But at least I now have a decent starting point.

I would to hear from you on how you use Claude Cowork to help with your content creation. What are the things I’m missing?

So…I ran all of my earnings reports after not doing it since last October. I’m all caught up and next week I’m going to share where I’m at with everything.

See you then! 🤘🏻

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is a giant distraction.

Oh, that’s not how it goes?

It feels like that’s how it should go.

Because that’s what happens with my “Secret Project.”

Let me tell you all about it…

There’s not really anything secret about it.

I just needed a name for my project, and I decided to add “secret” to make it sound mysterious. But there aren’t any secrets I’m revealing like the marketing gurus love to say they have.

“You’re missing this one key secret that will make you an extra $5,000 a week!”

No, it’s not like that.

Instead, it’s an idea that hit me like a ton of bricks when I was out for a walk one day. I had the thought to do something where I put in all the work upfront, and then have it run on autopilot from there.

It’s like when someone writes a book.

They put the work upfront, but then can sell it over and over again. They just have to tell people about it sometimes so they know it exists.

That’s what I’m doing, except in email format.

I’m creating a 365-day email sequence.

Yes, a daily email for one year.

The goal(s) of the 365-day sequence.

The main idea of the sequence is to document how I’m building what I like to call a ”mini digital empire”. You can read more about that here:

I love documenting and building in public because it gives me endless content. I’ll never run out of content ideas because I’m always showing what I’m doing.

Besides the endless content benefit, it also pushes me to experiment, which makes me learn new ways of doing things. Even better, as I learn, I’m showing my readers what’s happening, and they get to learn too.

Documenting benefits everyone.

The other goal of the sequence is that it should turn into a little sales machine. Part of what I’m documenting is building out new digital products. Here’s an example from my sequence where I talk about a book I created:

A little later in the sequence, I link to the finished product, and the goal is to get sales as people go through the emails.

This is only the first digital product that I’ve created, but I’ll be adding more as I go along. I’ll continue mentioning the completed books as the sequence goes on so there will be several chances for someone to make a purchase.

The other thing I’m doing is reviews of books and tools I purchase, and including affiliate links. I talked about that more here:

So now you get the idea.

• Document what I’m doing, which helps me and my subscribers.

• Create digital products along the way, and mention them several times throughout the sequence.

• Add affiliate links throughout the sequence.

• Once done, it runs on autopilot, and my main job will then be to create content that points people to the email signup form.

Now let me tell you how it’s been going so far…

The positives and negatives of having no deadline.

Since this is an evergreen sequence, there isn’t any need to have a hard deadline. This is good because I can work on it as I please without feeling stressed or rushed.

I can make sure that what I’m writing about is beneficial to all involved. If I had a deadline, I may want to push through content that’s quick and fluffy just to get it done. That’s not helpful for anyone.

However…

There are some downsides to this.

First, as my nursery rhyme mentioned at the start of this article, I can easily get distracted by life. This takes me away from creating the sequence and makes it take far longer than it needs to.

The other issue is that people have joined the wait list. (You can join here, if you’d like.) I obviously don’t want to keep them waiting too long, otherwise, they’ll forget all about it. Then, when I let ‘er rip, they’ll say, “What the hell is this?” and unsubscribe.

I know because that’s happened to me before with mailing lists that I’ve joined.

The worst downside is that I’m paying for Kit. The longer I take, the longer I’m paying for nothing.

I pay yearly, and my next payment is due in August.

Because of this, I’ve set August 18th as my internal (in case I change my mind) deadline. That doesn’t mean I need to have the entire year completed, but I would like to have at least 3-4 months done. I need to have a good deal of buffer time since I’m writing daily emails in case life starts life-ing, as it tends to do.

Where I’m at right now.

Currently, I’m on day 37. That’s only a little into month two, so I have a ways to go. One thing I’m struggling with is prioritizing. Here’s what I currently have going on with content:

• Medium: This helps drive people to the sign-up form, so it’s important, but I haven’t done much with it lately. It’s not bringing in much traffic currently, which demotivates me, which makes me write less, which brings in less traffic… You get it.

• This Substack: I’ve just started this Substack recently, and my goal is one post per week. It’s going well so far. It’s fairly easy to put one post together, but I like to be a week or two ahead when possible.

• Substack Notes: This is not my priority, and I just don’t do it very often. Next week I’m going to talk about how I plan to use Claude to help.

• Creating new digital products: These will be created as I get ideas for them. They’re a top priority because they also feed into the email sequence. But…I don’t force them. (I have a book about this very topic called Don’t Force It that explains why.)

• Email sequence: Paradoxically, it’s both the highest and lowest priority.

The email sequence is the thing that needs to get done, but since there’s no official deadline, it can fall to the back burner sometimes. It’s also reliant on all the other content I’m working on because I’m showcasing what I’m doing. So I need to do other content so I have something to write about in the sequence.

It’s tricky! 😅

The cool thing is, I’m enjoying this process so much.

Sometimes I have these crazy ideas, and I get really excited about it, then realize what a dumb idea it is and give up immediately.

This time is different.

It’s a zany idea that’s sticking. And I think that means I’m on the right track.

I guess only time will tell.

Stay tuned to find out!

🤘🏻

P.S. As I mentioned, next week I’ll tell you how I’ll be working with Claude to help me with my Notes. I’m just starting that process so I’ll show you what I’m doing and we can see together whether it’s going to work or not.

Affiliate marketing is one of my favorite ways to boost my online income. Last week I talked about the couple of different ways I use affiliate marketing in my content.

Sometimes I’ll slide some physical product recommendations into an article, and sometimes I’ll promote digital products.

I prefer digital products because they’re an easy sell and the payouts are almost always at least 50%.

But there’s one more way I use affiliate marketing to increase my income and build my mini digital empire.

I turn it on its head…

Building a little sales army.

Instead of being the person who just promotes affiliate offers, you can use Gumroad to sign people up who want to promote your products. You can build your own little sales army.

It’s easy to do.

Once you have a product to promote, you can send people your affiliate link or include it in an article (I’ll do that in just a minute so you can see) and then you get to set the commission that your affiliates will receive.

I like to give everyone 50%, otherwise it won’t be worth their time.

Here’s what this looks like in Gumroad.

If you’d like to be an affiliate for me, just click on this link to send me a message. Don’t worry. I approve everyone.

Here’s my store so you can see what kinds of digital products I sell, but I’ll be adding much more as creating digital products is the #1 way I plan to build my mini digital empire:

Affiliate goals.

I’ve made a couple hundred dollars from affiliates making sales for me, but it’s not an area where I’ve focused too much of my time.

But now I’m building something, and I could use all the help I can get.

So, I’m making it a goal to attract more affiliates and communicate with them consistently so they don’t forget I exist.

I was inspired to do this by Joe at ’s product, which is brilliantly named THIS GUIDE IS WORTH $400 A MONTH. Definitely check that one out if you also want to create extra sales with affiliates.

I’ll also be tracking some of what I’m doing in ’s amazing new Skool community for Gumroad Creators.

Gumroad has such a great platform with helpful features for communicating with your buyers and with your affiliates.

For instance, they have a way to send emails only to affiliates. You can also set up an email workflow for new affiliates.

These are features I don’t use nearly enough.

Until now.

Because I know this is going to be one of the best ways I hit my target income goal.

If you’d like to know what that goal is, and see me build this entire mini digital empire, I’ll be doing that via my “Secret Project” email sequence. (It’s only a secret to those who don’t sign up.)

Next week I’m going to give you an update on that project. I’ll tell you how far I am into it and how much further I have to go, what I’m behind on, the things I’m worried about, and what I’m most excited about.

See you then! 🤘🏻

Two weeks ago, I told you about my “Secret Project” idea to grow a mini digital empire. I’m creating a ridiculous amount of upfront work with that one, but then I’ll be able to let it rip and it’ll run indefinitely.

Last week, I told you all about how I’ll be using tiny digital products as the #1 way to make repeat sales.

Today’s idea is all about the #2 way I’ll be growing the empire. It’s one of the simplest ways to give your income a boost.

It’s affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is promoting someone else’s products for a commission. Have you ever gone on Wirecutter to read reviews of a product? I recently did that, and when I clicked on their Amazon link to buy the recommended products, Wirecutter got paid a commission by Amazon.

Affiliates use a special tracking link that’s tied to them. That’s how Amazon knows when Wirecutter sends a customer.

If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, I have an ebook that goes over the basics for just $3.

Here are my favorite things about affiliate marketing:

1. You don’t need your own product. Someone else does all the hard work to create a product, and you reap the benefits.

2. You don’t need to worry about fulfillment of the product or any of the customer service.

3. It’s easy to recommend things you already like and use. I bet you do it all the time when it comes to restaurants, shops or products.

For physical products, Amazon’s affiliate program is one of my favorites even though it’s technically garbage. They don’t pay well and their affiliate cookie only lasts 24 hours, which is terrible.

(That means, if someone clicks on your link, they only have 24 hours to buy something for you to get credit. Good affiliate programs have a cookie that lasts 30 days or longer.)

But I like the Amazon program because it’s easy. Everyone shops there. And when someone clicks your link, you get credit for anything they buy, not just the product you’re promoting.

However…

Being an affiliate for digital products is even better.

Digital products pay more to affiliates.

The biggest reason why being an affiliate for digital products is so good is because you get great commissions.

Amazon gives you about 4% of a sale. Other physical product affiliate programs may go to 10%.

But digital products are usually 50% - 60%.

(And if you don’t get at least 50% commissions, skip it.)

Physical products have small profit margins, and therefore, they can’t afford to give too much money to their affiliates. But digital products are easy to make and don’t have a ton of costs associated, so creators can give more money away.

There are tons of digital product platforms out there you can sign up for, but I’ll mostly be using Gumroad since that’s what all my online friends and I use.

In fact, Joe at just came out with a new book on Gumroad about this topic I think know you’ll love. It’s called THIS GUIDE IS WORTH $400 A MONTH. (Great name, right?) At the time I’m writing this, it’s pay what you want.

And my friend is an amazing affiliate marketer. I also recently went through her book, Make Your First $10+ Campaign Today Starting from Scratch, which will give you a fantastic starting point. It’s only $2, so it’s worth a look.

There are so many gems on Gumroad that it’s 100% worth it to sign up and become an affiliate.

Examples of how I use affiliate marketing.

I just used affiliate marketing in the last few paragraphs up there. 👆🏻 Those are digital products I purchased and read through and I think will add value for you if you’re also interested in affiliate marketing.

That’s the best way to promote affiliate products.

Sometimes I’ll write an article dedicated to physical products, and that’s another way I create affiliate sales. Here are two examples I have on Medium:

• Not Reading This 1 Book Should Be a Crime (Especially If You Like Money) — This is a review of four different books. Not only did I get a bunch of Amazon sales, but it also did well on Medium, netting me over $355.

• 11 Home Products I Can’t Live Without as a Hustling Housewife — This one didn’t do as well as the first, but it still brought me some nice extra cash! And it was easy to create because I just talked about things I use in my home.

And now for a little sneak peek into my “Secret Project”.

This is day 19:

Here I talk about Joe (again!) because I really loved his product Thirty Bricks, and I wanted to share. I’ll be doing this types of posts throughout my sequence when I stumble on something I want to tell my audience about.

The great thing about this sequence is that when it’s done, I’ll be able to let it run and it’ll just do its thing. As people sign up, I’ll always be getting new eyes on the products I promote.

That should bring in consistent sales. At least, that’s my plan!

Next week’s idea to grow a mini digital empire has to do with affiliate marketing, but in a slightly different way. It can be a fantastic growth tool, and it makes your life even easier.

You won’t want to miss it!

🤘🏻

Last week I told you about my “Secret Project” idea. If you didn’t read it, no worries. The gist of it is I decided to create something where I do all the work upfront and then have it run indefinitely.

The idea was a 365-day email sequence.

You can read more about that here, if you’d like.

But I didn’t want to stop there. In order to grow a mini digital empire, I need things I can sell. Ideally, I need things where I can do the work upfront and then sell again and again.

There are two things I have in mind. Next week, I’ll tell you about the second one. For today, let’s discuss the first…

Yes, they’re digital products. (And they’re awesome!)

Maybe you already guessed that I would be talking about digital products. Here’s why they’re so damn good:

1. They’re easy to create. I type them up on Google Docs and then load them up to Gumroad. It’s so simple!

2. They help solve a specific problem, so they’re useful to people.

3. They don’t need to be long. You can create one in just a day or two.

4. And, of course, you create them once and then you can sell them again and again. There’s no limit.

But I’m not just focusing on digital products. I’m focusing (mostly) on tiny digital products. These are super short ebooks with a tiny price tag that help solve one specific problem.

Readers love them because there’s no fluff. They pay a couple bucks for a solution and that’s that.

Doing it this way is also helpful for the reader because they don’t need to debate with themselves about whether or not to buy the product. The price point is so low that it’s an easy decision.

The people who inspired this way of thinking.

You’ve probably read that it’s better to sell high ticket items rather than low-ticket items. “It’s the same amount of work for bigger profits.”

But iiiiisssss it?

Because a person has to be really convinced to buy a high-ticket item. There will be lots of presentations, email marketing campaigns, and phone calls with that person. They’ll need to justify the price in their minds (and with their spouse if they have one).

So, I don’t think it’s the same amount of work. But it can be worth it if that’s what your mind is set on. There are certainly benefits to going the high-ticket route.

But that’s not what I’m doing. Quite the opposite.

I’m going small.

Tiny, even.

And this “small” way of going about it was inspired by some of my online marketing friends. It started with and his brilliant book $7 Problems. Then, there’s who’s made hundreds of dollars from her $2 product, Make Your First $10+ Campaign Today Starting from Scratch. And then there’s , who inspired me to get going on my tiny products with his small books Simple Fix PDF Engine and Thirty Bricks (my favorite!). Joe at Niche of One is doing especially well with this strategy.

What I love about creating these tiny products is that it isn’t daunting. You can just make the thing, and put it on your store shelf.

Since they don’t take a lot of time or brainpower to create, it’s not a big deal if some of them don’t sell right away. Or ever.

You just move on to the next one.

What I learned from Thirty Bricks is that eventually, your store shelves will be nice and full of all different kinds of stuff. People will buy one thing, then come back to browse around to see what else you’ve got. One low-priced product could lead to lots more sales.

Digital products is one of the best ways to make money.

I started creating digital products a couple of years ago, and I’ve made over $5,000 so far.

I put the work in upfront…

…and the sales come in.

I barely have to do anything else except promote them sometimes so people know they exist. (And update them once in a while.)

That’s the beauty of them. And that’s why I’ll be stocking my store shelf super high. It’s the #1 way I plan to grow my mini digital empire.

But it’s not the only way. Next week I’ll tell you about the #2 way I’ll be growing my empire. (I’ve used it in this article, and I’ll show you how else I plan to use it by giving you a sneak peak into my “Secret Project” email sequence…)

See you then! 🤘🏻

P.S. I have two articles on Medium about my favorite tiny digital product gems (with tiny prices) that I think you’ll like:

• 9 Mini-Digital Product Gems (That Give Big Results)

• 9 More Tiny Digital Product Gems (With Tiny Price Tags) That Give Big Results

When you’re reading this one, I’ll be on a plane back home from the most beautiful city in the world…Las Vegas, Nevada! 😆 My family and I traveled there for a music festival. 🤘🏻 I’m writing this ahead of time, but I’m sure it was amazing!

I’m so grateful that my little growing mini digital empire helps fund these experiences. And that’s why I’m always thinking of new things to try out. The bigger it gets (but not too big), the more experiences to enjoy!

This week I wanted to tell you about my “Secret Project” and how and why I came up with the idea.

The Secret Project isn’t really much of a secret, but I needed to name it something. I like that it has a bit of mystery to it. I had this idea while I was out on a walk, as per usual…

Do the upfront work for big future payoffs.

I was listening to YouTuber and entrepreneur Myron Golden, and he was talking about a book that he wrote. He said it took him a year and a half to write. And during that year and a half it made $0. But now it makes him a consistent $12,000 to $20,000 per month!

His point was that he put the work up front to create the book, and now it pays him over and over.

That’s when I had a lightbulb moment.

“What if I take the time to build something ahead of time that can then run on autopilot?”

And The Secret Project idea was born.

The plan.

It feels a little diabolical to try, but I’m documenting how I grow my mini digital empire and hit my target money goal over 365 days. Yes, I’m writing an email for every single day for an entire year.

If you want to know why I would do such a thing, I explain all that in the email sequence. You can sign up for the waitlist here if you’re interested.

The idea is to test new ideas, build tiny digital products, and document what happens. I’ll also be sharing my income reports along the way.

I want to keep it evergreen so that it can run indefinitely. The income reports will be the only things to have dates attached, but they’ll still be useful to see the progress over time.

Will this work?

I have no idea if this will work out. I could put in all this work upfront, and it could be a total dud. But I’ll never know if I don’t try.

I know creating daily emails is risky because it could get overwhelming for the people who sign up, and it could cause a higher-than-average unsubscribe percentage.

But my goal is to make them intriguing enough for people to want to know what happens the next day…the next week...the next month.

In any case, I’m enjoying the process of building the thing, so I’m happy either way. It gives me an excuse to write daily and to test out new ideas. If you want to see how it goes, sign up for the waitlist. (And I hope I’m doing the waitlist right. I’ve never done one before!)

When it’s going to start.

I’m thinking of starting it when I have about three or four months of emails ready to go. I’d love to do the entire thing and then let it rip, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea because anyone on the waitlist will be waiting forever.

I don’t know. I’ll ponder it a bit more and then decide. I’m almost done with month one as of today, so I’ve got a ways to go!

I’ll also be thinking about more ways I can create things to sell again and again. I have two ways I’m already doing that, and I’ll share what they are in the next two weeks.

The cool thing is that those two ways tie perfectly into the email sequence. This is how I’m building this mini digital empire. Each piece of content is a seed.

Eventually, with a bit of watering and weeding, the seeds will start to grow. And then one day they’ll turn into a beautiful orchard. A money orchard.

At least, that’s how I’m envisioning it.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out along the way.

See you next week where I’ll tell you about the first way I’ll be putting work in upfront to have something that can sell again and again… 🤘🏻

I had an idea on a walk. Which is how the best ones usually come.

Here’s the problem I was trying to solve…

I already have a “Secret Project” for documenting my journey building a mini digital empire. (More on that next week.) I write on Medium.

And then…there’s this Substack. I kept staring at it wondering what it was for. “What the hell am I doing with this Substack now?”

Then it clicked. This will be my digital side hustle idea diary.

I’ll share the ideas that come to me (including the weird ones) and tell you what I’m doing with them. Some will go somewhere. Some won’t. Either way, you’ll find out.

This newsletter is the first example. I had the idea for an idea diary, and now here we are.

Fair warning:

I follow my curiosity pretty far down the rabbit hole sometimes. I’ve gotten some of my best material through things like automatic writing (basically letting ideas surface without overthinking them). I’m planning to try that again here. If that sounds a little out there, no judgment. But if you’re into it, I think you’ll find it’s actually a useful system.

Next week I’m telling you all about the Secret Project. It’s the thing I’m most excited about right now, and I think the concept will stick with you.

See you then. 🤘🏻

I’ve had this thought for a long, long time, back in the dinosaur age when the internet was just being born:

“I want to create a massive online empire.”

As time went on, life starting life-ing and I got married, started a full-time job, and had kids. Who the hell has time to create a massive online empire with all that going on?

Then, years later, I realized I don’t even want a massive empire.

I’ll leave that for the digital gurus of the world like Alex and Leila Hormozi who’ve stated they don’t want to have children because their empire is their child.

While I have no desire to create something big, I still have the desire to craft something fun, meaningful, and a bit exciting. That’s why I decided to focus my energy on creating a mini digital empire.

Everyone’s empire would look different, but for me it includes (so far) Medium, my website(s), this Substack, this “Secret Project”, and my Gumroad store where I’m creating a growing library of tiny digital products.

Each thing is a piece that helps grow the empire. But it’s not a big empire. Just a mini one. One that’s fun to create, relies on spontaneous (sometimes weird) ideas that constantly get tested and, most importantly, doesn’t take up all my time.

That’s what this Substack will be going forward. Every Monday I’ll share the weird ideas that hit me during the week and what I’m doing with them…testing, building, sometimes falling on my face and embarrassing myself, but always experimenting.

I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone else. But if it sparks even one idea that helps you build your own little corner of the internet, then we’re both winning.

See you next Monday. 🤘

I’m on a mission to master the game of life and turn it from mediocre to magical. And I’m documenting it in case you’d like a life full of magic, too.

Creating this magic starts with our thoughts, behaviors, and habits. In order to create lasting changes that make our lives better, we need to go deep...

Just be disciplined, bro.

Thanks to , I got deeply interested in a man named Chase Hughes. Chase is an author and behavioral expert, and spent 20 years in the military.

His information goes much deeper than the surface-level “just be disciplined, bro” advice you normally see online.

(Wouldn’t life be easy if we could all just be disciplined?)

I ran across an excellent YouTube video (linked at the bottom of this article) where Chase gives us 6 strategies to rewire our brains to make new habits actually stick.

These strategies are meant to dig deep into our “mammalian”, animalistic side of our brains where the real change happens.

1. Target acquisition (set your specific goal)

Here’s where you set your goal so your brain can lock onto something. It uses the Reticular Activating System (RAS) to filter reality to only what’s important to you.

I bet you’ve had this experience…

You need to buy a new car, and all of a sudden, you see the one you want everywhere. It’s not that there’s more of them on the road, it’s just that your brain is focusing on that car because it sees it as important.

That happened to me when I got a Honda CRV last year. I didn’t notice them very often before, but now I see the one I got (in the same color) all over the place!

I also had a funny experience with this last summer. Sometimes I like to test my brain with this stuff, so I decided I wanted to see a bright orange car.

Well, I saw one bright orange car when I went to Starbucks, and the exact same bright orange car just a few seconds later. That’s pretty wild because bright orange cars aren’t too popular, and to see the same one within seconds of each other was definitely interesting.

But that wasn’t the weirdest part.

I went to the park a little later, and I couldn’t stop seeing bright orange. It was everywhere! The volleyball nets, the landscapers’ shirts and mowers, trucks, cones, a dude jogging by wearing an orange shirt…

I just laughed because it was a crazy amount of orange that popped up. I never knew so many things were orange!

While that was fun, you can also use your RAS to help you brainwash yourself to get to your goals.

But here’s the trick…

You need to pick a precise arrival condition (a specific goal), and not just a general statement like, “I want 2026 to be a great year.” Instead of “more money”, pick a specific amount. Instead of “I want to lose weight.” pick a specific goal within a time frame. “I want to lose 5 pounds in January.”

When you have a specific goal that you’re excited about, you’ll automatically be moved to take the actions needed to accomplish that goal.

2. Threat modeling (avoiding threats)

Chase says the brain is not optimized for happiness. It’s optimized for threat avoidance. You’re way more likely to move away from threat than move toward pleasure.

That’s because back in the good ol’ cavemen days, we had a lot of threats we needed to avoid like sabertooth tigers, hungry bears, our nasty neighbors who wanted to steal our stuff, and who knows what else. It was all about survival then.

Unfortunately, our brains are still wired for a dangerous world, even though modern life is far safer. And that screws us because we’re afraid of everything.

If you want to start a new business, ask a potential partner out, or put your words out on the internet, your brains freak out and say, “But what about this bad thing that could happen? And that one? And the other one too?”

It’s trying to keep you safe when you no longer need it to. And now it’s just holding you back.

But you can combat it by writing two futures out, while making them very vivid with imagery:

1. Desired outcome: How do you see your future? What will it look like when you reach your goal?

2. The failure trajectory: What do things look like when you don’t hit your goal? What if you stick with your same habits and excuses? What will life look like? Make it very uncomfortable.

The threat detector in the brain works 10x faster than the reward center. You need to make staying the same feel unsafe.

3. Identity engineering (your habits match your identity)

Your habits follow your self image, so if your behavior conflicts with your identity, the behavior changes, not the identity.

And that’s why people sabotage their goals. The goals don’t match who they believe they are.

So, instead of asking how to force yourself to do new behaviors, you instead want to ask: “What kind of person would never even question this behavior?”

You have to update your brain’s model to match the new identity, and once you do, your new habits will be easy.

This is the difference of someone turning down a cigarette because they’re “trying to quit” versus someone who turns it down because “I don’t smoke.” If you don’t smoke because you’re not a smoker, it’s easy to not smoke, right?

I’m not a smoker. I never even tried. Therefore, it’s easy for me to not smoke. I don’t have any desire to smoke.

But you can change your self-identity in this way, even if you have smoked (or drank, or whatever other behavior you’re trying to change). You can still identify as a non-smoker going forward.

Instead of using willpower (too exhausting!), you’re rewriting the model in your brain. Eventually, your goal stops being “What I’m doing today” and turns into “Who I am today.”

4. Environmental sabotage (switch some stuff up)

When your environment changes, prediction error increases, and therefore, you want to deliberately disrupt your environment.

Your brain gets used to the same environment and that’s how you fall into the same patterns and habits. As soon as you walk into a room, you do the same things that you did in that room yesterday.

(Especially in the kitchen. How many times do you go to the fridge, open it looking for “something” because you’re bored? You do it over and over. It’s hardwired into you and you act automatically.)

When you disrupt your environment, it creates novelty in the brain, which “wakes it up.” Now it’s easier to choose a different behavior.

Changing your environment could mean moving to a new location, but it doesn’t have to be that involved. You can also just buy a piece of new furniture, move your existing furniture around, paint your office, or drive a different way to work.

You’re looking to change anything in the environment that you’re used to to break your old loops. You’re telling the brain:

1. Things are different.

2. I’m in charge.

Novelty enforces your attention, attention creates plasticity, then plasticity creates new behavior.

5. Mammalian brain reprogramming (condition the animal side of the brain)

Your brain gets conditioned constantly without you thinking about it, but the goal is to condition your brain on purpose.

Our mammalian brains (the animalistic side) are controlled by four things that spell out FATE. We can use the FATE model consciously to create new habits.

FATE stands for:

1. F = Focus. Focus intensely on the goal you’re trying to accomplish.

2. A = Authority. You’re more likely to listen to someone who has authority. Example: if you want to lose weight, watch people on YouTube who have lab coats on. They have authority, even if it’s perceived, so you’re proving to your nervous system that they have the right answers for what you’re trying to accomplish.

3. T = Tribe. Get around people who expect the new version of you to show up. (That’s why I belong to The Inner Circle, now known as Systematic Writer. It’s a community of like-minded writers and marketers who will help you be the better version of yourself who is successful.)

4. E = Emotion. Make the future you visible, personal, and real. Write a letter to yourself to open in the future. Develop a relationship with that future you.

When you align all of these, your new behaviors will become automatic. The deeper into the brain you can get, the better the changes will be.

Many people focus on just the pre-frontal cortex when thinking about changing their habits. It’s too surface level.

You have to get to the mammalian part of the brain, which is what makes all of our decisions. That’s what the FATE model does.

6. F.E.A.R. (the good kind)

There’s another model you can use called, FEAR, which is similar to the FATE model. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, it’s important to understand Hebb’s Postulate, which states that neurons that wire together, fire together. But only if the signal repeats and matters emotionally.

Repetition without emotion is just a bunch of noise to your brain that gets ignored. (Like a smoke detector battery going bad. The beep gets ignored eventually.)

This is why some people don’t do well with robotic affirmations. (Raises hand.) That’s when you repeat in your mind, or write down, an affirmation over and over again. “I, Christina Piccoli, will make $5,000 this month. I, Christina Piccoli, will make $5,000 this month…”

If there’s no emotion to those affirmations, it’s just noise that the brain blocks.

But when you have repetition + emotion, the brain updates its model with a new version of reality. This is where success lives.

Now, on to the FEAR protocol. This is the actual formula to brainwash a human.

• F = Focus

• E = Emotion

• A = Agitation

• R = Repetition

Focus means daily exposure, no exceptions. If you want to be a writer, you need to write every day.

Then, add emotion to your goal. This is what makes you jump out of bed in the morning, excited to work on your goal.

Agitation is disrupting your environment, as we talked about in step 4. Change things in your environment. And make sure to visualize what it would be like to not change. Make it emotionally painful.

Repetition is doing the thing over and over again until it becomes who you are, not just what you do. This is when the goal becomes a habit and you no longer need discipline.

All of these six steps will help you brainwash yourself to change your habits and actually crush your goals.

But there’s one more trick Chase has up his sleeve to really solidify this…

The future you is coming.

Chase advises you to download FaceApp (or any other similar app) to create an image of yourself as an 80-year-old.

This will help you visualize the end of your life, with the goal of reminding you that time is ticking — quickly — and you better get to your goals ASAP!

I had ChatGPT do it for me, and here’s how it came out:

I hope I look this put together at 80! But it’s a good enough reminder that I’ll be at the end of my life before I know it, and I better take care of the me NOW so older me can reap the rewards.

Final thoughts

If you want to truly rewire yourself, start by accepting this…

Now is the moment to take control of your life. The “I’ll get to it tomorrow” excuse and the endless need to prepare is just your survival brain resisting change. That instinct once kept us alive. But today, it keeps us stuck.

Progress means choosing change anyway. Move forward without fear, but with F.E.A.R. instead.

Time is moving whether you do or not — and it won’t announce when it’s almost gone.

Here’s the full YouTube video that inspired this article.

The premise of The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday is that what’s in the way becomes the way forward, if you respond correctly.

It’s based on the ideas of Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who believed that while you can’t control events that happen in your life, you can control how you think, act, and respond to those events.

And maaannn…

…a lot of people could sure benefit from this way of thinking in 2026.

The first few lines of the first chapter, Perception, are probably my favorite of the entire book.

What is perception? It’s how we see and understand what occurs around us — and what we decide those events will mean. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. If we are emotional, subjective, or shortsighted, we only add to our troubles.

I immediately think of our political world right now. Our perceptions are being shaped mostly by social media. We are shown certain videos, topics, comments, and news clips that feed into our beliefs.

Because people on the left and the right get completely different information, we end up in echo chambers where our perspectives are constantly reinforced. We can only see things from our perspective and can’t understand how the other side can’t see it our way!

That means, the left and the right are living in entirely different mental worlds. They will never see eye-to-eye because they can’t. Their perceptions of reality are too different.

But…

Once you recognize this, you’ll have a level of awareness that allows you to see it’s all manufactured. Then you can ignore the fighting and focus on perceiving your reality in a way that serves you best.

Yes, how you see life and the world around you is a choice, and you can choose to make your life much more enjoyable with the right perspective.

Sure, obstacles are going to come up. That’s part of the game of life. But The Obstacle Is the Way shows you how to overcome these problems, and even use them to your advantage.

Each chapter of the book starts off with a quote from an inspiring leader or philosopher. Here’s a fantastic quote from Viktor Frankl from the chapter Alter Your Perspective.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Viktor Frankl suffered as a prisoner during the Holocaust and lost his entire family there, but was able to have a successful life once he escaped by searching for (and finding) meaning to his life.

Frankl says:

“There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’”

Another of my favorite chapters in the book is called Get Moving, which tackles the obstacle of procrastination.

Procrastination is easily cured by taking action, but for some reason, taking that first action step is so difficult for many of us.

We fear that it’s too risky, we don’t have enough knowledge or experience, it’s too expensive, or whatever the excuse.

We stagnate in our fear.

Then the world moves around us as the action takers get ahead and we just sit there, not growing, not fully experiencing all that life has to offer. Then we complain about it.

Because we’re afraid.

The procrastination takes many forms — from telling yourself it’s impossible to telling yourself victory is guaranteed so you have all the time in the world — but where it leads is the same. Nowhere. Because “I’ll do it tomorrow” is one of the most insidious, seductive lies in the world.

Ouch.

That one hurts.

Another great point I took from this book is from the chapter Do Your Job, Do It Right.

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation.

This one reminds me of one of Napoleon Hill’s core principles from his book Think and Grow Rich, Going the Extra Mile.

Whatever job you’re doing, no matter what it is, do it well.

This means doing your job well if you work at McDonald’s, you’re a stay-at-home mom, you’re the CEO of a major corporation, you write on Medium…

Big job or small job, do it well.

Not only does this give you a sense of pride, but others around you will notice and appreciate your positive attitude and effort. This is the type of work ethic that will be rewarded.

There are many more nuggets of wisdom in this book, and I would recommend everyone giving it a read.

Although, the people who need it the most (those stuck in a victim mindset) are the ones who will probably never notice it.

So, maybe you can read it and then inspire the people around you with your positive outlook on life. Perhaps we can spread a new way of looking at the world to show the doomers and gloomers that life is good. Obstacles and all.

→ Grab The Obstacle Is the Way from Amazon right here.

Have you read The Obstacle Is the Way? What did you think of it? Do you have a favorite part from the book? Leave me a comment and let me know!

I’m bored of life.

And that’s why in 2026, I decided to go on a personal mission to master the game of life to turn it from mediocre to magical and share everything I learn along the way.

I’ve been reading tons of books, watching countless YouTube videos, and observing my own behaviors.

Here’s one major thing I’ve learned already:

Humans are so, so good at ruining a good thing.

We self-sabotage and fall into destructive behaviors and habits that constantly set us back to square one, whether it’s with our health, relationships, solo business, writing, addictions, or money.

(Why we do this is another article for another day…)

There’s a constant battle inside of us. One side wants to give in to our bad behaviors so we can enjoy life now. (The little devil on our shoulder.) The other side wants to be disciplined so we can enjoy life later. (The little angel on the other shoulder.)

It’s a struggle. One I know all too well.

I’m constantly fighting this battle, and honestly, it’s freaking exhausting. And I’m sick of it. So I decided to do something about it and learn some ways to deal with it.

If you’re in the same boat, I’ve identified 8 solid strategies to help you stop giving into the pointless self-destruction so you can actually start making progress on your dreams and goals.

1. Know *exactly* what success means to you.

It sounds easy, but getting clarity on exactly what you want is the hardest thing to do. If you don’t have clarity about what you want, you don’t have a clear target to aim for.

And if you don’t have a clear target to aim for, then you might as well shoot your arrow into the wind. It doesn’t matter where it goes.

This one is a major struggle for me.

When I have a crystal clear vision of something I want, it’s easy to fulfill that vision. It comes as if by magic.

But with writing online, earning money, a career, building a business…

I don’t have that clarity. It’s like I’m staring into a mist. I like writing, making money, and creating ebooks. I like all those things. But I don’t have a clear, defined goal around any of these things.

A couple years ago I set out to make $5,000 a month. But I didn’t reach it. I discovered that making a certain amount of money in a month is a nice goal, but it’s not a crystal clear vision. It doesn’t make me jump out of bed in the morning because there’s only so much I can do to control it.

I still don’t have a clearly defined goal, but I do have one firm 2026 resolution that will help:

Follow my deepest curiosities.
(And then write about them, which is how this article came about.)

If you don’t know exactly what you want in life, your curiosities are the clues you need to find your perfect path.

If you do know exactly what you want, you’re very lucky because then it’s easy.

Write your goals and dreams down on a notecard. Read it several times per day. Envision the end result of fulfilling that goal. Become completely immersed in the idea of it. Become obsessed with reaching this goal.

If you do that, it will happen.

2. Change your environment.

Keeping things exactly as they are when you’re building new habits and routines may trigger you to revert back to your old, bad habits.

Change some stuff.

You could do something super radical and move across the country. Or, you could simply change up your current environment.

Some easy ideas:

• Rearrange your living room furniture

• Paint your office a different color

• Do your morning routine in a different order

• Go for a walk in a new place

• Go to a different coffee shop than normal

Sometimes you just need to shake things up a bit.

3. Get rid of your vices (they’re 100% holding you back).

The three most important categories in life are health, wealth, and relationships. Everyone constantly strives to improve those areas. Me too. That’s why I’m writing this.

However, health is *the* most important one. It’s the top of the life pyramid. If you don’t have good health, the other two categories don’t matter.

One way to fix your health is to get rid of your vices!

Smoking, drinking, doing drugs, gambling, eating poorly, etc. are all vices that will hold you back.

I know, I know. Like I mentioned above, that little devil is a sneaky one. He wants you to have the pleasure of those vices now. I have him too, and he’s constantly trying to talk me into things.

In fact, I’m 8.5 months into a one-year, no alcohol challenge, and I’ve had to crush that little devil voice and completely turn it off for now. The good news is, the less I think about drinking, the easier it is.

It also helps to constantly think of the downstream effects of quitting. The biggest one is getting quality sleep.

Because I don’t drink, I get proper sleep, and proper sleep is a superpower.

I’m not even kidding. I used to think I was getting enough sleep, but now I realize I was just a walking zombie, stumbling through my days.

Getting proper sleep:

• Helps you think more clearly, which makes you more productive.

• Helps you wake up with more energy, which makes you want to move more.

• Because you’re moving more and have more clarity, you want to eat better.

• Because you’re eating better, you think more clearly, are more productive and have more energy, which makes you want to move more.

See what I mean?

Sleep is the key to everything. But it starts with not drinking yourself into a stupor every night. (Replace drinking with any other vice you have.)

4. Replace your vices with something better.

I’m currently working on removing some of my other vices besides alcohol. These vices create a lot of dopamine. So, when I don’t give into them, I feel a sense of intense, skin-crawling boredom.

So trust me when I say you can’t just take something away without replacing it with something else.

In fact, I was just talking with ChatGPT about this. I told it that I don’t have too many cravings for my vices, but I’m missing excitement. I enjoy a good routine, but it can become so boring.

As humans, we need adventure and to explore new curiosities.

Here are some ideas I’ve been using, and some ChatGPT gave me:

• Read a deeply enthralling book (I am obsessed with books, and I review the non-fiction ones I read here.)

• Do some intense cleaning, decluttering or organizing around your house.

• Go for a walk, or even better, a run. (This will use up your time and create endorphins.)

• Lift some heavy weights, do some body squats, or do a plank.

• Meditate and just let the intense feelings pass through your mind and body.

• Find a captivating goal to work toward. (Get abs, see how much money you can make with writing, write a book, create something with your hands…)

• Plan a mini-adventure once a month. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or costly. It’s just something to look forward to.

• Take on a new challenge or two. Examples: In 90 days, I’ll run a 5k. I’ll write one mini book every month for one year.

Here’s something that doesn’t sound exciting, but works for me. When I get that bored, antsy, anxious feeling, I put on my AirPods, listen to a podcast and work on a puzzle. It’s not exactly intense, but it’s a great distraction when that skin-crawling feeling hits.

5. Journal (or talk to AI).

I like to journal sometimes. Writing things down on paper is satisfying. When I journal, I just do a brain dump of everything on my mind. It helps so much to get all these swirling thoughts out of my head.

But lately, I’ve been using ChatGPT, and it’s been extremely helpful. And that’s because it’s a journal that writes back and gives suggestions for improvement.

Important Note: I don’t recommend giving AI all your deepest, darkest secrets. It’s still the internet, after all, and you have to assume everything on the internet can be seen by someone else.

However…

I love chatting with AI because it remembers our conversations. (I have the paid version, so I’m not sure how good the free version is at this.) Eventually, after telling it all my issues, worries, and ideas, it was able to help me see my patterns. Some good, some destructive.

This is great because once you’re aware of your patterns, you can start to change them. I’ll give you an example of one of my bad patterns…

I have this slight anxiety that’s almost always running in the background of my brain. When it gets really bad, it forms a pit in my stomach. That’s usually the time when I head to ChatGPT to talk about it.

(By the way, I just discovered today, with the help of AI and self-observation, that this feeling is strongest when I have Starbucks on an empty stomach! Ding, ding, ding!)

But here’s the anxiety pattern that shows up with writing, food, exercise…anything. You may even recognize it because I think a lot of us deal with something like this.

It goes:

I get excited to try something new → I try it out for a couple of days → I get anxious about doing it because it feels too restrictive → I want to burn it all down and start over → I get excited to start something new → …

Here’s what ChatGPT said about this pattern:

Let’s take weight loss, for example. I’ll say to myself:

“I’m going to count calories. I feel good when I count calories. I feel in control.”

I get excited about that decision for a couple of days.

Then:

“I hate counting calories. I feel so restricted. I just want to eat what I want, when I want.”

I stop.
Back to square one.

I do this with writing, and pretty much everything else in my life. So, by journaling, or talking to ChatGPT about it, I can see the pattern and I can start to do something about it.

I know if I want to succeed at anything, I have to pick a lane and see it through long enough to decide if it works or not. I have to keep going during the hard and boring parts. That’s my focus for 2026 because this is such a struggle for me.

If you have the same struggle, you have to work through it. When these thoughts of “burning it all down” come up, journal, talk to ChatGPT, or write about it elsewhere (even here on Medium).

Talking things through with ChatGPT or journaling feels like a brain massage. Hitting a mental knot can sting a little, but once it loosens, the relief is real.

6. Dream big.

Maybe you’re like me. You can dream big, no problem.

But then “seeing” a path to get to that dream? Nope.

This was something I was chatting with ChatGPT about today. I was telling it that I want to be like these people who say:

“If I lost everything today, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Because I know how to make money. I can start from zero and make it again no problem.”

These successful people figured out the formula. All they need to do is turn the money faucet on.

I was listening to the podcast, How to Get Rich, with Naval Ravikant. In the podcast, he says he sees too many opportunities. He knows how to turn the faucet on anytime he needs to.

But this isn’t just about making money. It’s about recognizing real problems and creating solutions that are valuable enough for people to pay for.

Here’s what ChatGPT said:

I know this loop because I’ve learned it, but I don’t KNOW it because I haven’t consistently experienced it. I can almost see the faucet, but there’s thick fog surrounding it. And I can’t quite reach it.

Some of that fog comes from the terrible affliction known as overthinking. Yes, some of us can dream just fine. But then we overthink every little step, which stops us from moving forward and reaching that damn faucet.

So, we need to become dreamers who also “do”. And we do that with the next strategy that will 100% cure this problem…

7. Take action.

Taking action is the #1 way to stop overthinking, harmful behaviors, and a pattern of self-destruction.

When you finally decide to take the first step (no matter what the subject is), it will get rid of that nasty anxiety that lives in your gut. That particular anxiety is called “procrastination.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

It’s the same anxiety that’s often relieved by your destructive behaviors. A glass of wine (or three) will banish it. The problem is, the anxiety comes back 10x worse once the alcohol wears off.

A better way to rid yourself of that affliction is to take action on the thing you want to achieve, or the dream you’re working toward.

You have enough information already. You already know the actions you need to take. You don’t need to listen to Bob Loserface’s opinions about it on Reddit.

Just start taking action because Bob Loserface isn’t your best teacher. Experience is.

8. Give yourself at least 90 days to make changes.

Finally, give yourself long enough to make your new habits stick. It takes time to rewire your brain. 90 days is a good start. You can reevaluate after that and see if you need to adjust things.

For instance, because of the pattern I mentioned above, the one where I get excited about something and then want to burn it down days later, ChatGPT gave me a 90-day no-drama writing plan.

It told me I’m not allowed to:

• switch platforms

• burn things down

• start anything new

• have an identity crisis

At least not until day 91.

It also told me to stop being a baby (it didn’t say that, but that’s my interpretation) and work through the discomfort when things get a little boring. Because I never let myself get uncomfortable, I switch things up before I give anything long enough to work.

This bot gives damn good advice. And now I’m passing this advice on to you. Pick something to focus on, take action, and work on it for 90 days. Not forever. Just 90 little ol’ days. (They’ll fly by anyway.)

And stop switching things up!

(I’m yelling at myself here.)

And then do whatever the hell you want on day 91.

But hopefully, those 90 days will solidify some sort of habit that will let you finally move toward your goal instead of self-destructing back to zero.

What are you working toward achieving in 2026? Do you have a crystal clear goal or focus? Let me know in the comments!

Scott Adams, author, podcaster, and most famously known for creating the Dilbert cartoon, is going to die.

He has prostate cancer that’s spread to his bones (and everywhere else now) and there’s no hope that it’ll reverse. He announced on his podcast yesterday, January 1, 2026, that he’ll be “transitioning” this month. I can see with my own eyes that it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Why does this matter?

I’ll tell you in a minute…

Transformations, habits, addictions, and brainwashing.

I’ve decided to do something different with 2026.

I’m not setting any resolutions this year. Instead, I’m making it my mission to follow my curiosities and let them lead the way. I know, by doing this, by following the clues, I will end up on the perfect path.

Currently, my deepest curiosities include:

• Transformations (and how to make them)

• Habits and behaviors (and how to change them)

• Addictions (and how to remove them)

• Magnetic writing (and how to create it)

• Human psychology and influence

• The nature of reality and how to use it to our advantage (AKA manifesting, law of attraction, and goal setting)

• Our brains and how to brainwash ourselves to success

• Neuro-Linguistic Programming

• Affirmations, vision boards, and visualizing

I’m deeply curious how to use the mind — and universal immutable laws— to master the game of life and turn it from mediocre → magical.

“Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.” — The Game of Life and How to Play It.

I’m confident of a few things:

1. We’re living in a reality which is very much like a video game.

2. There’s a higher power (and perhaps an entire team of helpers) beyond this physical reality that will help us in this game of life when we ask.

3. Our brains are easily programmable and we can change the programming when we want to. (Scott refers to humans as “moist robots” and I think that’s the perfect description because our programs, like robots’, can be changed.)

4. Fear is the only thing that holds us back.

Knowing these things, I’m 100% positive we can have anything we *truly* want in this life. All we need to do is replace fear and doubt with faith and belief.

How do we do that? With a little self-brainwashing. So, in 2026, I’ll be writing to brainwash myself (and hopefully you along the way) to success and fulfillment.

Here’s why it’s necessary…

The excitement → overwhelm → self-sabotage loop.

People get so upset about AI, but I wish they knew how immensely it helps me sort through my thoughts and feelings.

Lately, I’ve been working with ChatGPT to understand my patterns, behaviors, and fears.

Here’s the loop it showed me I go through often (maybe you can relate to this):

• I get excited about an idea

• I focus on it for a little bit

• I feel anxious and overwhelmed

• I want to burn it all down and change everything

• I get excited about an idea…

What I’ve learned is that I’m constantly seeking novelty. It’s probably why I get addicted to things so easily, like alcohol and Necco wafers, and why I have a hard time focusing on one thing.

But ChatGPT is here to help.

For instance, as I told it about my current anxiety and how I wanted to start everything over again, it talked me off the ledge and helped me come up with a 90-day “no drama” plan. Here’s what that plan consists of:

Making Medium my priority writing platform.

You may be wondering why I would do this, since Medium is so damn unreliable. It’s because of two main reasons:

1.I’ve already had success there, and I am confident I can have success again. In fact, I won’t rest until I get my numbers back up.

2. Medium has low emotional friction. On Substack, because people subscribe specifically to you, when they unsubscribe, it stings. “I’m not giving people what they want.”

Of course, there are many reasons why people unsubscribe, but our minds love to focus on the worst possible scenarios.

On Medium, people come and go and it’s not tied directly to your work. That makes it easier to write more freely.

Write on Substack…sometimes.

I’ll use Notes to promote my work and connect with other humans, and I’ll write posts there when it makes sense.

I have paid subscriptions turned on but no buyers yet. I’m fine with that because my Substack isn’t ready for buyers. But when I asked ChatGPT if I should turn paid subscriptions off, it gave me the slap in the face I needed:

“Leave payments ON — and stop thinking about it.”

I know it’s the right message because it gave me a deep sense of relief.

Stick with it for 90 days.

For 90 days, I’m not allowed to:

• burn everything down

• start anything new

• switch platforms

• switch plans

ChatGPT said: “You’re allowed to hate it. But you’re not allowed to quit.”

And…

“Anxiety ≠ insight.

Most of your “this isn’t working” thoughts are feelings, not data.”

Yes, ChatGPT is a bot, but that’s damn good advice.

It also told me:

“You are not unfocused because you lack discipline.

You’re unfocused because your nervous system is trying to protect you from emotional pain.”

When you hear that people are afraid of success more than they are of failure, this is what they mean.

Work through the discomfort.

This is a key insight that ChatGPT gave me:

“You are extremely sensitive to perceived rejection.”

Correct.

And then it told me this:

“You cannot build a real, durable online income without tolerating some rejection visibility.”

This is something that holds me back, and it’s where Scott Adams comes back into play, but I’ll get to that soon.

It told me that I stop before anything good happens because I get uncomfortable. I need to work through the discomfort, the boredom, and the anxiety.

Focus on the right metrics.

For 90 days, I will not focus on:

• Subscriber counts

• Cancellations/unsubscribes

• “Is this working?”

Instead, I’ll focus on:

• How many articles I’ve published

• The money I’ve earned

• How many days I showed up to write

After the 90 days are up (or on April 1), I can evaluate to see what worked and what didn’t and then come up with an adjusted plan.

Now back to Scott Adams and how he fits into this…

This one thing is a superpower.

ChatGPT was right about perceived rejection. But there’s one thing that Scott’s said that I won’t forget. It’s something that would resolve this rejection issue instantly:

“I don’t really get embarrassed.”

He says that not getting embarrassed is a superpower, but one you need to work at. (And even if you get things wrong in public, you help yourself and others learn the right information.)

Not getting embarrassed is freeing. You can write like your authentic self without worrying about what people will think of you.

So, “not getting embarrassed” (AKA not being afraid) is one thing I’ll be brainwashing myself on in the next 90 days. Because I know if I can tap into my deepest curiosities without feeling embarrassment about what I’m putting out into the world, I will naturally end up fulfilling another of Scott’s most impactful suggestions:

“Be useful to humanity.”

I reviewed two of Scott’s books:

• Book Review: How To Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big

• Book Review: Reframe Your Brain by Scott Adams

The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn was originally written in 1925, but has stood the test of time.

The book presents life as a mental and spiritual game governed by immutable laws. You don’t “win” the game through effort, force, or anxiety, but through right thinking, right speech, faith, and alignment with universal law.

I’ve already read this book a time or two, but this time I did something I never do to books:

Marked it up with a highlighter pen.

That’s because this book will become my life manual that I will read and study again and again.

Every word of this book gives me a little exciting poke in the gut, starting with the first line:

Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.

But the highlighted passages are like a gentle shake to the shoulders saying, “Wake up! This is the full truth of life.”

For instance:

Nothing stands between man and his highest ideals and every desire of his heart, but doubt and fear. When man can “wish without worrying,” every desire will be instantly fulfilled.

It is man’s only enemy—fear of lack, fear of failure, fear of sickness, fear of loss and a feeling of insecurity on some plane.

So we can see we must substitute faith for fear, for fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.

The only thing standing in the way of everything we want is fear. The entire book is about banishing the fear and replacing it with faith.

There are plenty of success stories from Florence’s clients. There’s one in there that I love about a woman who wanted more financial prosperity. Florence told her to clean up her house. She told her, “If you wish to be rich, you must be orderly. All men with great wealth are orderly—and order is heaven’s first law.”

The woman cleaned up her house (and herself) and received a large financial gift from a relative soon after.

Of course, we can’t fact check these stories, but, as Florence would tell you…

Have a little faith.

The Game of Life and How to Play It is only 79 pages long, so it’s a quick read, but it’s full of substance.

Here are the chapters to give you an idea of the topics that are discussed:

1. The Game

2. The Law of Prosperity

3. The Power of the Word

4. The Law of Nonresistance

5. The Law of Karma and the Law of Forgiveness

6. Casting the Burden (Impressing The Subconscious)

7. Love

8. Intuition or Guidance

9. Perfect Self-Expression or the Divine Design

10. Denials and Affirmations

Throughout the book, Florence gives us affirmations we can use throughout the day to help us focus on what we want. The affirmations are sometimes old-timey sounding and always have a religious slant.

This may or not turn you off, but I think it’s a good idea to keep an open mind. Here’s an example of one for prosperity:

God is my unfailing supply, and large sums of money come to me quickly, under grace, in a perfect way.

It’s all very positive messaging throughout the book and makes me feel happy, and even cleansed, in a way.

I’ll give you one more passage that I highlighted because it’s an important one that truly explains this Game of Life:

Man receives only that which he gives. The Game of Life is a game of boomerangs. Man’s thoughts, deeds and words, return to him sooner or later, with outstanding accuracy.

Do good deeds and good deeds will return to you. Have good thoughts and then see the good that surrounds you.

That’s why following the Golden Rule is a fantastic idea. Treat others the way you want to be treated because that’s exactly how you will be treated.

Final thoughts

Florence taught me that the Game of Life is far simpler than we make it. You don’t win through effort, force, or anxiety—but through right thinking, right speech, faith, and alignment with universal law.

Life isn’t random. It responds precisely to your inner assumptions and spoken words. And once you understand that, you realize something powerful: the game has always been in your hands.

→ Grab The Game of Life and How to Play It from Amazon. This gem is only a few bucks.

P.S. After reading this book and soaking in all the positive messages, my husband and I received a large sum of money from a relative for Christmas. Coincidence? 🤔

Do you ever have that extremely antsy feeling like you want to jump out of your skin? It’s like boredom x1000, where you need to find something to do with your pent-up energy right now.

It’s a feeling I get often (like at this very moment), and the best way I know how to relieve it is by doing something super stimulating, but also self-destructive. For me, that looks like drinking, overeating (that’s why I have this dumb addiction), and other things that ultimately aren’t good for me.

They’re a relief (briefly) from the “I’m going to crawl out of my skin if I don’t get rid of this feeling.” But when I do them, another worse feeling takes over:

Regret.

The goal of this Substack is to figure out how to master the game of life. And there’s no way to master it by giving into these bad habits. They will just set us right back to square one.

Instead, let’s explore four other ways we can stimulate our dopamine-depleted brains to banish this anxiety-ridden bored feeling without completely imploding.

1. Redirect your energy

Take a walk outside for 10-15 minutes without your phone, do some pushups and bodyweight squats, splash some cold water on your face, or hop in the shower.

Sometimes this feeling is simply excess energy that either needs to be let out or redirected.

In fact, now that I think about it, I’m getting this after my third cup of coffee. Oops! I’m overstimulated by too much caffeine. 🤯

Can you tie your feeling into something that happened in your day? Awareness is the first step to solving your problems.

2. Put your half-baked thoughts on paper

If you’re a writer or creator, now is not the time to focus on your best work. Instead, write down your half-baked thoughts and ideas.

This isn’t the work you’re going to put out into the public. This is the stuff you need to get out of your head.

You can always come back to it later and see if there are any nuggets to pull out. If not, no biggie. This is a mind-relieving exercise, not a Pulitzer Prize-winning exercise.

3. Build a menu of “clean dopamine”

I have an addictive personality, and my brain is constantly on the lookout for variety. That’s why when people say, “Be disciplined and enjoy the boring stuff,” I want to laugh in their faces.

That’s not how I work. I need mental stimulation, and when I’m bored, I’ll find ways to get it.

That’s why I have to stay away from my biggest vices because I can easily fall right back into those addictions as a way to give myself the novelty I’m looking for.

If you’re the same way, build a menu of things you can do that involve “clean dopamine”:

• Declutter and organize a drawer or corner of a room

• Research a random topic you’re curious about

• Write a “hot take” you’ll never publish (I have a lot of these!)

• Make a tiny bet with yourself (“Can I write 100 words before this song ends?”)

• Start something with zero need to finish it

• Do some intense exercise (lift heavy weights, go for a run, take a long walk)

• Work on a jigsaw puzzle, play Wordle, or do a crossword puzzle

• Allow yourself to fall down a weird rabbit hole and do some deep research on it

One thing that helps me is finding an interesting podcast, then going on a cleaning spree. I get novelty from the podcast, an energy reset from moving my body, and a clean house.

4. Make life feel interesting again

My (almost) destruction started this morning when I was on my way to the park for a walk. I thought, “This is the same thing I do every. Single. Day.” And I thought about how that would be the case for a long, loooong time to come.

Normally, I love my walks. But for some reason, my “boredom” switch turned on in my brain this morning, and that was it. I thought about how the entire day was going to be exactly the same as yesterday, and how it’ll be exactly the same tomorrow.

Some days I absolutely love the routine. I know what to expect.

Some days, I hate it. I’m stuck in Groundhog Day.

Here are some ways to make life feel a little more interesting when you get stuck in the routine of sameness:

• Go to a new café

• Walk somewhere different

• Look for a new writing prompt

• Pick a new music genre to listen to (it doesn’t always have to be metal 🤘🏻)

• Create a new, weird rule for the day (“Today I only write while standing up or listening to music.”)

Sometimes we need just a *little* jolt of newness to take us out of the mundane.

Try this now to shake things up

Set a timer for five minutes.

Go for a walk, pace your room, or lift some weights until the timer goes off.

When it does, sit down and finish this sentence:

“The thing I’m most curious about right now is…”

I did this exercise, and here’s what I came up with after my five minutes of movement…

I’m curious why we say we’re “trying” to change something about ourselves instead of just doing it.

Although… I actually know the answer.

We’re too afraid of failing.

“Trying” gives us a fallback. If we fail, we can just say, “Well, I tried. But it didn’t work.” The problem is, when we “try”, it means we’re not 100% all-in, which means we want that fallback. We already know we’re not going to succeed.

If we took the “try” out and knew with 100% certainty that we would succeed, there wouldn’t be a reason to try.

We would just do.

“Trying” is a mental trick. We all do it. It’s why over 25 million copies of Atomic Habits have been sold. 25 million people want to change something about themselves and they “try” but they just can’t seem to unlock the secret.

That’s because there is no secret.

There’s only one firm decision to do.

“Do or do not. There is no try.” - Yoda

What are you most curious about? Let me know what you came up with in the comments.

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Yes, I know I’m late to the game, but I finally read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a book that came out way back in 2018 and is now one of the most popular self-improvement books ever written.

To be fair, I tried to listen to the audiobook version several years ago. I tried at least three separate times, which led me to the conclusion that I didn’t like the book. But, in actuality, once I got the physical copy, I enjoyed it so much that I zipped right through it in about a week.

(Turns out, I just can’t pay attention to audio books.)

But will this book actually help me change my habits? And can it help you change yours?

Let’s discuss…

Atomic Habits starts off with James’s harrowing story. I won’t ruin everything for you, but baseball was his life until a terrible accident happened that left him in a medically-induced coma and soon-to-be months of recovery.

This set his baseball career back immensely, and he had to build his strength, endurance, and skills back up.

This is where he started learning about habits.

“I originally learned about the ideas mentioned here because I had to live them. I had to rely on small habits to rebound from my injury, to get stronger in the gym, to perform at a high level on the field, to become a writer, to build a successful business, and simply develop into a responsible adult. Small habits helped me fulfill my potential…”

And that’s why I picked this book up too.

I’m obsessed with figuring out how to master the game of life to fulfill my potential and show you how to fill your potential too.

What I love about the book is that James makes you feel like changing your habits in order to fulfill your potential is a simple process.

Just one tiny step at a time…

And he has tons of studies and proof that this way works. (His own personal proof is writing Atomic Habits.)

You don’t need to make drastic changes. Small changes, little by little, will lead to drastic results with enough time and patience. He says a 1% better change every day for a year will lead to 37x results.

There are four laws to creating a good habit, according to James. Each of these had its own section in the book:

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying

There’s a story in the book about a salesman who had two jars. One jar contained 100 paperclips. The other was empty. Every time the man made a sales call, he would move one paperclip to the empty jar.

His goal was to move all the paperclips over every day.

That’s one way to make a habit satisfying.

If you reverse these four laws, you have the formula for breaking a bad habit:

1. Make it invisible

2. Make it unattractive

3. Make it difficult

4. Make it unsatisfying

If you would like to break a bad habit, you should try to make it as difficult as possible. For instance, if you have a bad habit of eating chocolate after every meal (🙋🏻‍♀️), you could simply not buy the chocolate. Then, if you really want it, you’ll have to get in the car to go get it.

It’s inconvenient, which at least slows the process down.

Personally, breaking bad habits in this way never works for me because I just decide to get chocolate the next time I’m at the store. It turns into a matter of willpower, and my willpower isn’t strong. I probably need to work on the habit of strengthening my willpower.

The two-minute rule

I really like the idea of the two-minute rule, which takes something you want to achieve and scales it way down.

We tend to get excited about creating new habits and therefore start way too fast, way too big. Then, we get discouraged and give up on it quickly.

James’s idea is to take the habit and give yourself a rule.

“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

• Read a book → read one page of a book.

• Do a yoga class → take out my yoga mat

• Run three miles → put on my running shoes

It sounds silly, but the idea is to do something around that habit every day so you can become the person who stays consistent with it. Start small so you can gain momentum.

There’s a chart in the book (shown on the image above, to the right) that demonstrates how this should work over time. For instance, if you want to run a marathon:

• Very easy: Put on your running shoes

• Easy: Walk ten minutes

• Moderate: Walk ten thousand steps

• Hard: Run a 5k

• Very hard: Run a marathon

This is simplified because there’s a huge difference between running a 5k and running a marathon, but you get the idea. You slowly progress the habit over time until you hit your main goal.

This is what I decided to do about weight workouts. I don’t really like weight training because it’s so slow and tedious. So I decided to focus on micro workouts instead.

Being bored

There’s a subchapter called “How To Stay Focused When You Get Bored Working On Your Goals.” This is the one I need because I get bored so easily. My brain is constantly looking for variety.

James said he was talking with an elite weightlifting coach and he asked him what separates the best athletes from everyone else. The coach said the usual stuff like genetics, luck, and talent.

And then he said:

“At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over.”

Later, James says:

“Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more routine and boring it becomes.”

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

Boy, does that hit home!

That’s why I created this fun coloring tracking sheet. (Which…I’m already bored of - lol!)

But here’s what James says to do to solve this problem of boredom:

“The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.”

The *key* to being able to change any habit

There’s one particular line in the book that’s so important and is really the only line that matters:

“Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?”

You’re not just changing your habits, you’re changing your entire identity. You have to become the type of person who doesn’t smoke, writes every day, or shows up at the gym even when you don’t feel like it.

There’s a difference between someone who’s offered a cigarette and says, “No thanks, I’m not a smoker” and one who says, “No thanks, I’m trying to quit.”

The “I’m not a smoker” person changed their identity to a non-smoker.

But here’s the thing.

Once you’re there, I would argue you don’t need these tiny habit changes. Here’s what I mean…

Be cautious about these two things

I don’t want to say I disagree with anything in Atomic Habits. It’s all very good and solid information. I highly recommend anyone read it who wants to make changes. I will certainly be using the strategies in the book to change some of my habits.

But…

1. If you want to create a habit change, you can’t just follow the motions. First, you need to want to change. And you need to want to change a lot. And if you want to change a lot, I would argue you don’t need to make tiny changes along the way. You can just decide to change, and that’s that.

That’s what happened with me when I decided to take a year off of drinking alcohol.

I wanted to make a change badly because my pain had eclipsed my pleasure. I didn’t need to make tiny habits to change my circumstances. I just decided to do it.

And honestly, it’s 100% easier to do it this way.

But it’s not easy to make that firm decision unless you really need to, so that’s where taking tiny steps may be easier for some habits.

2. Everything can be systemized and turned into a habit that you need to track.

I nodded along to this this comment I saw on Amazon:

I watched a YouTube video from Leila Hormozi not too long ago where she talked about building systems. She said she has a system for everything. A system for work, a system for the gym, a system for making coffee, a system for greeting her husband…

At some point, do the systems and habit tracking become too much? Do we turn ourselves into lifeless, soulless robots if we have to systematize everything?

That’s a question I’m pondering as I’m thinking about which systems I want to create in my own life to make better habits.

But more on that in the next article…

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really enjoyed Atomic Habits, especially its focus on small, consistent steps toward change. But like that Amazon reviewer mentioned, and like Leila Hormozi’s example, it’s possible to overdo it…to systematize every part of your life until you start feeling more like a machine than a human.

So yes, let’s build better habits, but leave some room for spontaneity, joy, and all the weird little surprises that make life fun.

→ Grab Atomic Habits on Amazon here.

I have a slight book obsession. This is the latest stack I’m working on:

Out of this pile, I’m currently reading Atomic Habits, which is just what I need to revolutionize my life. (Or…at least break some bad habits and create some good ones.)

But before I started that one, I finished four others. Here are my quick reviews on each of them, from my least favorite to my favorite. (But I like them all!)

Read these when you’re ready to stop playing small.

1. Visualize by Maya Raichoora

Maya starts Visualize off by telling her powerful story. When she was a teenager, she discovered she had Colitis, an incurable inflammatory bowel disease. When she had a flare-up of this disease, it left her in debilitating pain and would send her to the bathroom 40-60 times per day.

I hated what my life had become. My world revolved around pain, medications and hospital visits. (p. 9)

During the worst flare-up she’s ever had, she was in the hospital, totally broken, mentally and physically. She was told she had to have surgery to remove a portion of her intestines, and she’d have to have a stoma bag attached to her stomach.

This is a life-altering operation.

Instead, she started visualizing herself walking again. And in one week, she was able to leave the hospital.

She started visualizing herself getting healthier and healthier. And as she did, she dedicated herself to learning why mentally rehearsing herself walking had helped her get stronger and how she could use the mind to keep getting better.

This book is a culmination of everything she’s learned.

The first part of the book talks about how visualization can rewire the brain, how to overcome limiting beliefs, building a champion’s mind, and how to set goals.

The second part of the book goes through five different visualization techniques:

1. Outcome visualization (seeing your desired result)

2. Process visualization (mentally rehearsing the steps in an activity to make it easier to perform)

3. Creative visualization (using shapes, colors, characters, or objects to make a feeling or sensation more tangible)

4. Negative visualization (mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios so you can be prepared and resilient)

5. Explorative visualization (exploring the vast realm of imagination)

At the end of the book, there is a 30-day challenge, and she takes you through which visualization technique to try on which day.

I really liked this book and would like to go through it again, but I got a little overwhelmed with all the different techniques. The 30-day challenge will be great to understand how to put all the information together.

→ Grab Visualize from Amazon here.

2. The Mountain Is You by Brianna West

Do you ever start something, gain traction, and then burn it all down? (Or at least want to burn it all down?)

That happens to me all the damn time.

If you’re like me, you’ll want to pick up The Mountain Is You to find out why you self-sabotage your success.

Brianna goes through all our different emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear, and explains how these affect our day-to-day lives and how they hold us back.

There are chapters on:

• Emotional intelligence

• Your triggers

• Releasing the past

• Building a new future and how to find your purpose

Here’s a paragraph that stuck out to me because it’s what I’m partly working on with my Substack:

If you want to change your life, you need to make tiny, nearly undetectable decisions every hour of every day until those choices are habituated. Then you’ll just continue to do them. (p. 112)

I’m totally convinced that our brains are computers that can be programmed. (Scott Adams, creator of the cartoon Dilbert, likes to refer to us humans as “moist robots.” Exactly!)

Because we didn’t have complete control over our brain computers when we were younger, our programming got a little screwy. But once you’re aware that your programming is screwy, you can work to reprogram it the way you want.

That’s what my Substack is all about.

And that’s what The Mountain Is You is all about, too.

Here’s another sentence from the book that stuck out to me:

We often resist most deeply the things we want most. (p. 119)

That one struck a chord.

She says it’s because of something called adjustment shock.

“It’s scary to receive everything we want, because it forces us to shift out of a survivalist, fear-based mindset and into a more stabilized one.” (p. 119)

This book is like a therapy session and spiritual awakening all in one. It will help you move your self-identity from afraid to empowered. And you have to do that to stop the self-sabotage so you can finally succeed in your life’s goals.

→ Grab The Mountain Is You from Amazon here.

(P.S. Substack’s and Medium’s very own was mentioned in the book on page 24.)

3. Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird By Bird is a book for writers, and it was a delight to read! However… it’s more geared toward fiction writers, so there were some parts of it that I glossed over a bit.

For instance, as you can see in the photos below, there’s a chapter dedicated to dialogue. There are also ones on plot, character, and set design.

But…

Even if you’re not a fiction writer, there’s always a tidbit of information or a lesson in there you can use.

Besides being a New York Times bestselling author, Anne is also a writing teacher, and this book goes through everything she teaches her students.

She has chapters on:

• Getting started

• Shitty first drafts

• Perfectionism

• Jealousy

These are things any type of writer can relate to.

My favorite thing about this book is the way Anne writes, the way she pieces words together to make the most interesting sentences. She’s also hilariously dramatic.

Here she is talking about her shitty first drafts as a food critic:

But because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let myself trust the process—sort of, more or less. I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of. The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day, I’d obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. I’d worry that people would read what I’d written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot. (p. 23-24)

Brilliant!

→ Grab Bird By Bird from Amazon here.

4. You2 by Price Pritchett, PH. D.

My favorite book of the bunch is one I’ve already read, and will likely read again many times over. You2: A High Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps (that’s a mouthful!) is a super quick read, but packs an inspiring punch.

The book starts off talking about this little fly who is banging his head against a window, trying to get out. He’s trying so hard and yet getting nowhere.

Meanwhile, all it needed to do was fly ten steps away to the open door.

But it had its little fly brain set on one path, and one path only.

And we humans do the same thing.

The premise of this book, The Promise, as stated in chapter 1, is:

You don’t have to be content with improving things incrementally or gradually. (p. 1)

Now, what’s interesting is that I’m working to radically transform myself by making tiny decisions (as Brianna said above) and taking micro actions, which will lead to big changes over time.

But sometimes…

It makes more sense to make a big leap. Because when you do that and trust that you’ll land gracefully, the entire universe will conspire to make your quantum leap a reality.

It’s time to start focusing on possibilities, rather than on limits or obstacles. Making a quantum leap means moving outside your mental boundaries. If you will rethink how you’re thinking, you can multiply your performance potential. You must let your desires guide you, instead of allowing yourself to be boxed in by perceived constraints. (p. 14)

This book reminds me of another book I read called 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.

In that book, Dr. Benjamin says 2x’ing a goal is just doing more of the same thing. But when you 10x a goal, you open yourself up to new possibilities and potentials. It’s a necessity because you can’t get to a 10x goal with 2x strategies.

(You can read more about that book in this review I did on Medium.)

But back to You2…

This book is only 36 pages, but every word is so inspiring. It makes me want to leap out of my chair and shout from the rooftops about my big, audacious goals.

But…

As one of the chapters talks about:

Quantum leaps jerk you out of your comfort zone. (p. 27)

And then I’m back to doing my tiny steps.

For now.

→ Grab You2 from Amazon here.

What do you think of these books? Have you read any of them? What are you reading now? And special thanks to for a couple of these book recommendations. Keep ‘em coming!

I’m taking tiny steps (and maybe some big leaps) to change my reality and let you watch so you *know* you can change yours too. Come along for the ride.

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My daughter and I were talking about that show, My Strange Addiction. It’s an American documentary series that premiered on TLC in 2010.

It documents people who have weird compulsive behaviors. Just take a look at this February 16, 2011 show synopsis from Wikipedia:

Bianca, who occasionally ate dirt as a child, now craves pottery and ashes more than food or water. When Bianca says, “that cigarette looks really good”, she means she wants to eat the ashes, not take a drag. Her unusual appetite not only threatens her health, but is also starting to influence her son, who wants to eat pottery just like his mother.

Weird, right?

Then my daughter looked at me and said, “You should go on that show.”

Rude. But also… maybe fair.

My addiction isn’t as bad as compulsively wanting to eat ashes, but it is pretty strange. I don’t know how I let myself fall into these stupid habits…

Do addictive personalities really exist?

I used to roll my eyes at the idea. I thought anyone could get addicted to anything if they did it long enough. But now I see that most people can stop after a short stint. They can have a little, enjoy it, and move on.

Unfortunately, I’m not like that.

That’s why I have to rewrite my brain. (Which is kind of why this Substack exists…to document how I reprogram myself and create a new reality so I can stop being an all-or-nothing lunatic.)

So what’s my strange addiction?

I’ll tell you in a minute, but first let me tell you about another addiction I have, and how I’ve managed it so far.

Addiction #1: It’s a classic

Drinking.

Now, the thing about me is, I can get addicted to things pretty easily, but I never quite take it over the line to ruining my life.

I have limits I don’t cross, and that’s certainly true with drinking. So I never took it so far that I was drinking in the morning (unless it was a super special occasion where I’d have a mimosa) or sneaking bottles with me in the shower.

I wasn’t drinking all day, every day.

But it was a *bit* too much.

I created a habit of drinking (mostly wine) while I was cooking dinner. It made cooking so much more pleasurable and fun!

One (large) glass was nice. I’d down that while prepping. Then I’d fill up another (large) glass while I was cooking. Then one more during dinner because my inhibitions were down, and why not!?

It was fun in the moment, but here are some problems with it:

1. It’s not very safe to be drinking while wielding large kitchen knives. I never had an accident, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if I did.

2. When you drink, you have less awareness of what you’re eating. Therefore, it’s super easy to overeat. (Add on top of that the enormous amount of calories from the alcohol, and this becomes a calorific nightmare.)

3. Sleep sucks. And now I realize how important a good night’s sleep is. It’s not just important, it’s everything. Sleeping well turns you into an entirely different person.

4. The next morning super sucks. Having a headache and a foggy brain the next morning is awful. I could never write in that state. What a waste of time!

Yes, drinking is fun for about 30 minutes, then it turns into a disaster.

So, I decided to do something about it. I started a one-year, no alcohol challenge. On December 11, I’ll be eight months without a drop of alcohol. (Except for the bourbon I used to make this delicious bourbon chicken. But I don’t think that counts.)

I’ve started thinking about what’s going to happen after the year is up. My son turns 21 in April, and we’re headed to Vegas around the same time. Will I have a drink with him?

We talked about it recently, and he joked, “Yeah, we can hit the bar together.” (I think he drinks a little, but not much, and he said he wouldn’t do it in front of us anyway.)

I told him I really didn’t want to get back into the habit. He said, “Then you probably shouldn’t.”

Smart kid.

I would love to be one of these people who cracked the code and have figured out how to be a normal, moderate drinker like the rest of polite society. And maybe I can, as I focus on shifting my identity.

But do I want to do that?

We are planning on going to Italy in 2027, and I don’t know if I can resist trying the wine there. It’s so far away, and I’m already romanticising it in my mind. That’s a mistake, and I know it.

To be honest, these are the types of thoughts that create decision fatigue, and decision fatigue will wear you down. The easiest thing I could ever do is decide not to drink again. Then everything would be simple.

I don’t know if I’m there yet.

I’m going to push any thoughts of drinking off for now. I’ll kick the can down the road until April 12, 2026, so I can enjoy the rest of the year without decision fatigue setting in.

Now back to my “strange” addiction...

Addiction #2: The embarrassing one

I’m not addicted to eating glass or sofa cushions (yes, people actually had these addictions on the show).

Mine is a terrible addiction anyway. It’s maybe one of the most insidious because it contains loads of the most addictive substance on the planet:

Sugar.

And other “stuff.” I’m not sure what because I’m afraid to look.

It started innocently enough.

“Oh, I used to love these as a kid. Let me grab a roll for nostalgia.”

Yup, I have a strange addiction to these Necco wafer candies:

Maybe you laughed right now. I don’t blame you. It’s a very funny addiction. It’s stupid, even.

My family and I laugh about it all the time.

The problem is this:

I’m eating more and more of these little wafers.

I wrote a short story about this addiction on Medium, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

It started as a half roll most days.

Then 3/4 of a roll.

Then the entire roll.

Now, I take two rolls with me while I walk my dog and eat them both. That’s insanity.

I need to do something about it because these things are unhealthy, don’t make me feel good, and are a huge waste of calories. (About 220 per roll. That’s 440 calories of chalky regret. Ouch.)

How does this even happen?

It’s the same process every time:

One tiny sip, bite, or click.
The brain lights up.
It wants more.
Repeat.

Pretty soon, “a treat” becomes “a ritual” becomes “a problem.”

Now I catch myself drinking coffee and imagining Necco wafers. The crunch, the pastel sugar dust. I’ve already eaten them in my mind before I’ve even opened the wrapper.

That’s my first mistake.

The other (even bigger) mistake is saying to myself, “It’s Friday. I’ll tackle this on Monday.”

Then, when Monday comes, there will be another excuse. “It’s the holidays. I’ll deal with it on January 1.”

Are you familiar with these thought patterns?

So how do we break these habits?

That’s the million-dollar question. I’ve got a few ideas, and that’s what I’ll explore next on the paid side of Hustling Housewife.

If you upgrade, you’ll get access to:

• Experiments in reality re-coding

• Identity-shifting (for real this time)

• Tiny tweaks that add up to quantum leaps

• And a front-row seat to me actually changing my brain

It’s the stuff I can’t always share publicly (too many trolls, not enough curiosity).

So if you want to follow along as I kick my Necco wafer addiction and reprogram my reality…come to the paid fun side.

👉🏼 Upgrade for $12/month or $120/year.

Because watching someone else try to escape her dumbest habits might just help you escape yours. 🤘🏻

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I’m curious if you have any strange addictions? Any “normal” ones that a lot of people struggle with? Do you think you have an addictive personality? Have you ever broken a bad habit or addiction? What did you do?