Edition #24

Hi All!

Here is your weekly serving of practical guidance and inspiration to ensure you live your life with purpose. Feel free to forward this along to friends and family. Enjoy!

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Act on Your Interests: Explore New Frontiers

Have you ever read a book or watched a video or just been randomly struck by a moment that sparks your curiosity?

A feeling that you need to dig deeper into an idea or topic?

That you need to explore it.

But then, as quickly as the feeling came to you, you just as quickly let it pass you by.

Without investigating.

Without testing.

Without anything more than a thought of ‘What if?’

Well, What if your ‘What if’s’ could become more than that?

What if you actually acted on those feelings of curiosity and dug deep to explore those interests further?

That’s what I’m doing with creating video content.

Watching Nathaniel Drew’s YouTube videos has been the catalyst for my interest in further exploring video as a medium to communicate.

His combination of:

• Style

• Energy

• Quality

• Storytelling

Creates an audio-visual experience that is truly a work of art. I think what draws me in is the craftsmanship behind it all.

I’m not looking at his videos from a consumer perspective, although the information and concepts he explores definitely entertain me — I view his videos with a focus on the craft of telling stories through video.

Even if you haven’t watched any of his videos or been interested in the craft of filmmaking or video content creation, you have probably felt the captivating nature of video at some point.

Be it a film you watched.

Or a show you have gotten sucked into.

Or a YouTube hole for learning about a certain topic.

I really see video as the language of the internet. And I want to become fluent in that language.

But to do that, I can’t just wish for it.

I have to explore the fundamentals, set my foundation, and build up from there.

Life is short.

Why sit on the sidelines letting your interests and potentially life-changing opportunities pass you by?

I encourage you to explore your interests. The ones that spark your curiosity, the ones that give you that flutter of excitement in your stomach.

Maybe you have avoided those feelings in the past. I know I’m guilty of this.

Maybe you will choose to explore an interest of yours and the excitement or desire for it fades away.

That’s okay.

Because at least then you can say, I tested this. I tried it out. It just wasn’t for me.

That is a whole lot better than the feeling of regret that comes with never giving it a go.

Letting it live on as a ‘What if’ for eternity.

Looking back on what could have been.

And who knows? It could be the opposite. It could change your life.

For me, I’m gonna throw myself at the art of video creation and see where the path leads.

What unknown frontier are you willing to explore for yourself?

Hone Your Habits

Batching For Productivity

Ever feel like you are bouncing around from task to task and finding it difficult to stay honed in and focused?

No?! Liar.

Lol just kidding. Well for those of you who ARE human, I’ve found a little habit that I’ve recently been implementing that has given me an uptick in my productivity.

It’s called Batching and you have probably heard of it in some context before.

Essentially the idea is instead of jumping from one area to the next with your projects or daily responsibilities, you group tasks together and do them all at once or at least for an extended period of time before switching to another one.

An example of this that is likely applicable to many is checking work email.

Certain jobs just won’t be applicable to this idea but where possible, you might try to batch-check your email.

Instead of checking it every hour or every single time an email comes in, you only check it say twice a day. Once in the morning and address all messages you need to and then once before the end of the work day and do the same thing.

That way, instead of having one eye on your inbox at all times, you can put full focus on a critical work task and batch your emails.

A different example to drive it home can be related to the video creation process which is top of mind for me.

Instead of a traditional process such as:

• Research

• Write Script

• Shoot

• Edit

• Thumbnail Design (in the case of YouTube)

• Post

• Repeat

You could approach it like this instead:

• Complete Research for all 10 video ideas

• Write all 10 scripts

• Shoot all 10 videos

• And so on, you get the picture

This way you can really internalize the task you are dedicated to and don’t feel like you are on a hamster wheel of a repetitive cycle.

Think about your daily or weekly tasks.

Are there things you do daily that could instead be batched and done all at once on one day of the week?

Play around with your responsibilities, hobbies, and habits as well as your available time, and see if you can make batching work for you.

Words of Wisdom

You can complement this weekly newsletter with short reminders, ideas, and thoughts about personal development by following me on 𝕏.

Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent