This is how most people live their lives

Hi, it’s Bog.

Sometimes I get curious and ask people around me about what their goals are.

To my surprise, a lot of them don’t seem to know what they want. They usually respond with “I don’t know” or “I don’t have any goals right now.”.

This is absolutely mind-BOGgling to me.

Then, as I continue my interrogation, I usually find out that they’re doing stuff that they “should” be doing without giving it much thought. Things that others expect of them. But even though they’re doing it, they’re not that happy about it.

What’s even stranger, is that for a lot of people, coming up with a goal seems like this massive mystical thing that should be hard and take tons of hours of reflection and analysis.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A goal could be just an experiment. Having an “experimental goal” is still a goal. It’s many times better than not having a goal.

When I didn’t have any goals, it felt like life just pushed me around. When there was nowhere I wanted to go, it didn’t matter which direction I went. And I ended up going in the direction that was the easiest. Which meant that my circumstances had full control over me.

When I first started my YouTube channel, I decided to come up with a goal for it. It seemed like a “formality” to me at the time, but I thought I might as well.

So I pulled a random number out of my […].

500 € per month.

That’s how much I wanted to make.

I was a student at the time, so that seemed reasonable.

I also heard that writing down your goal on a piece of paper makes you more likely to achieve it. So I did that too.

I then picked up a calculator to “run the numbers” and calculated that, at the high end, I would need 333,000 views per month to get to 500€/mo from YouTube Adsense. That number was scary.

“How much???”

Before I had written it down, I thought, “Eh, it will be like a few thousand views, and I’ll be making 500€/month, easy peasy.”.

But the number I had to hit was not 10, but 100 times larger.

It felt like I got punched in the face.

Seeing the number right there in front of me immediately opened my eyes and reset all expectations.

But at that moment, I also remembered watching a YouTube video where I heard this quote:

Pursuing a 10x bigger goal is not necessarily 10x harder, it’s just a different path.

So I asked myself, “If someone else in the same position as me had achieved this goal, what would they’ve had to do?”

And so I listed a bunch of things, such as:

• Uploading at least 1 video a day

• Finding good clickable topics

• Making awesome, maybe minimalistic thumbnails

• Working on videos for at least 1 hour per day

• Brainstorming and researching video ideas instead of winging them and going with ones I think would be good

• F****ing determination

• Not quitting when not seeing results

• Executing and not punishing yourself for failing

• Making this THE PRIORITY. First thing in the morning, if I have to

• Learning to edit videos

• Good, clear voice-over

Some of them seem funny now.

But lo and behold, exactly 595 days after writing down the goal, I achieved it.

I pulled this goal completely out of thin air. It just seemed like a nice number.

But without the goal, there’s no way I would have done it.

I wouldn’t have even come close.

I would have quit after a few weeks at best.

But it took 1.6 years.

And right now, I think of starting a YouTube channel as one of the best decisions I ever made. It not only allows me to work whenever and from wherever I want but it also taught me so many useful skills.

What’s strange was that realizing that it would take 100 times more views to reach my goal was actually a good thing.

If it only took a few thousand views per month, I might not have tried that hard because that felt attainable.

But 333,000 views a month. That felt impossible.

So having a goal that felt out of reach made me try so much more because I knew that half-assing it wouldn’t work.

I had to commit and actually try.

It also made me feel a lot further behind, a lot more deprived of it, and thus I wanted to try a lot harder.

So having a goal (even an experimental one) is so much better than not having one. It gives you a direction to go in, which stops you from letting your circumstances push you in any direction they want.

And making that goal so high that you think it’s impossible can increase your chances of actually achieving it because:

a) There are a lot fewer people aiming for big goals, which means there’s less competition.

b) The goal is actually motivating.

Thanks for reading 👋!

❤️ My Favorite Things

⚙️ My favorite tool: Affinity Photo

This month I tried out Affinity Photo, which is a one-time-payment Photoshop alternative. I expected to struggle using it since I’ve been using Photoshop for almost a decade now and for it to lack many features, but, surprisingly, I had a great experience. Some features are missing (like the ability to select a subject of a photo with AI), but 95% of the ones I need are there. So I decided to buy it and start using it for making YouTube thumbnails. So far, it’s been great.

⌨️ Cool keyboard shortcut:

Ctrl + Windows + → or ← to switch virtual desktops on Windows (you can create virtual desktops by pressing Windows + Tab).

I know I usually put a MacOS keyboard shortcut here but this month I’ve spent quite a bit of time editing the videos on Windows (also, control + → or ← switches virtual desktops on MacOS).

✍️ Quote of the Month:

Make decisions that your 80-year old self and 10-year-old self approve of. The former cares about the long-term compounding of actions, while the latter reminds you to have some fun along the way.

🎬 Free Resource To Make It Unreasonable That You Don’t Succeed With Your YouTube Channel

https://thaomaoh.gumroad.com/l/youtube-game

🍿 My New Videos

Adobe is horrible. So I tried the alternative - Affinity Photo

Watch these 33 minutes if you want to start a YouTube channel in 2024

The ARCH LINUX Experience