Coping w/deadlines

I felt productive.

I felt like I achieved something.

I felt like I was moving toward my goals.

I wasn’t wrong.

I did more than most people:

• starting to post on X

• trying to build a personal brand

• commenting, engaging, and growing daily

The results spoke for themselves:

• reaching 1641 followers

• gaining over 800k impressions

• even reaching more than 470 newsletter subs

All the dopamine hits when I gained 11 followers overnight.

When all the engagement paid off and my long forms gained 5k views.

Refreshing the BeeHiiv dashboard on the day of a giveaway.

But?

There’s an issue here.

A pretty big one.

It’s not that I got banned.

Even though that kinda sucked.

Worse:

There were no $ signs.

No cashflow in sight.

No business.

I focused on the completely wrong things.

The tasks I did were way too micro.

Day-to-day.

Endless grinding away.

No goal beyond “let’s see how many metrics I can get tomorrow”

Days vs. Weeks vs. Months

I based my perception of success on day-to-day actions.

Endless grind right?

Just keep going and putting in the reps.

But:

You don’t do enough big stuff.

Important stuff.

Lever-moving stuff.

Most people only have daily plans and monthly goals.

I say that’s inefficient.

From

• personal experience

• testing shit over and over

• failing so many times in everything

I found the best system:

Daily action, weekly deadlines and monthly goals.

Doesn’t sound too strange.

But I used to forget about the middle part:

Weekly deadlines.

We do daily, monotonous grinding actions:

• engaging

• going to the gym

• study for one hour daily

To get to our goals:

• X amount of followers

• bulking to X amount of kg

• pass the exams with absolutely minimal effort

So we might have a monthly goal of:

“Create my offer”

But what now?

You wake up and the task is “working on your offer”

Great job.

You fucked yourself.

Monthly goals are too broad to follow.

The solution?

Weekly Deadlines

You have important, needle-moving mini-goals.

And you have to get them done in one week.

I’ll take myself as an example.

I focus on 2 major areas of life:

• gym

• business

And a touch of uni.

These translate to monthly goals:

• lean bulk to 80kg

• make 1st $ (checked btw) + 1k followers

Now, I have daily actions like:

• engaging

• going to the gym

• sending DMs

• stretching

• emails

that get me closer to those goals.

But they’re not sufficient.

Introducing weekly deadlines (examples):

• write and launch a giveaway

• set up a welcome sequence

• build the backend lead gen systems

These aren’t result-based, we don’t need more goals.

These are action-based.

And these are important actions.

Lever-moving actions.

So here’s what I do to come up with and keep these weekly deadlines.

Once a week (obviously), I set deadlines and check if I achieved the ones from the week before.

I do it Sundays.

Set some time aside.

Plan your week.

Again, only action-based, not result-based.

• what can I get done to really move me forward?

• what can I get done to make a difference?

• what can I get done to actually progress?

And yes, that’s the same question asked in 3 different ways,

But you get the point.

I do this for every monthly goal I have.

Coming up with important things every week is harder than it sounds.

At least sometimes.

But the actual hard part is keeping the deadlines.

Introducing:

1. Punishments.

No joke, including punishments in your deadlines makes you keep them far more likely.

Why?

We are more motivated running away from something compared to chasing something.

Obviously, they’re not supposed to harm me.

They’re just annoying as hell.

I’d choose rather not to have to do them.

And that is enough for me to try to keep my deadlines.

It’s easy to cope, ignore, and forget about doing the thing you said you were going to do,

ONLY IF there are no strings attached.

2. Even better strategy:

Tell somebody about it.

Get yourself an accountability partner, or set your deadlines in public if you want to.

Admitting failure to somebody we respect is a lot harder than admitting it to only us.

Seems like we don’t respect ourselves that much.

3. Hang them on your wall

This is also one I do.

Why does this work?

It’s the same thing: It’s easy to cope when deadlines are just in our heads.

Our stupid brains love to fuck us over.

To constantly remind yourself of your deadlines, hang them on your wall.

Look at them daily.

Don’t let monkey brain forget they exist.

Feel a bit of anxiety when you take a look at them and you still didn’t act.

Pair this with the other two tactics and you’ll start keeping your deadlines.

Weekly deadlines rule.

Compared to monthly goals, they’re a lot more flexible.

Compared to daily actions, they’re a lot bigger and allow for planning and building.

Still?

I know you’re struggling with procrastination and focus.

Everybody does.

So I’m offering up 30-minute calls to help you out with your personal issues.

The price?

$1 and a testimonial.

That’s it, literally.

But only for the first 6 people interested

(or I’d be overrun with free work)

Reply to this Email with “1” if you:

• struggle with procrastination

• feel unable to concentrate

• want to improve your focus

And want my personal help with your issues.

(or just want to see if spots are still available)

Thank you for reading.

See you soon,

~ Henri