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#231 · from $3k/mo to $10k/mo (step-by-step + example)

youtube ↗Mindset

How can I find high energy to work consistently on my YouTube channel despite laziness, overthinking, procrastination, school, and health concerns?

You have a bunch of goals, and for the most part, the biggest thing that will ever stop you from achieving those goals is yourself. So I guess you're starting to work on these early. What you need to do is make it less of a big deal. The way all of this works—mental friction, stress, burnout—are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe in them and take them seriously, constantly looping them in your head, the probability of them occurring goes way up. I'll give you an example: our forefathers, 200-ish years ago, were working-aged men crammed into mines, stooping over with a crusty loaf of bread and maybe another 300-calorie meal, working 12 to 16 hours a day, mining, blowing things up, many dying. If you asked them if they were super stressed or about burnout, they'd have no idea what you meant. For them, life was just get up, go to work, come home, and spend whatever few hours with family. The point I'm trying to make is that the only reason you're even thinking about this is because our culture has been overloaded with these concepts recently. We've really given in to therapy culture—which I'm not knocking; I know many people who go to therapy, and I've tried it myself, though I found it mostly useless. We've just been overloaded with the propensity to dwell on the negative things in our lives over and over, to the point where 17-year-olds now worry about overthinking, procrastination, and doing bad things they shouldn't. At the end of the day, just live your life. Work on the stuff you want to work on. If you don't allow these negative concepts to enter your mind, you'll go a lot further than if you constantly feel bogged down by them. So just don't go through those negative loops. Don't worry too much about mental friction. Obviously try to optimize your life, but if you think about stuff like this all the time, it will just hurt you. I'm sorry I couldn't give more concrete advice, but I think if you took even 1% of what I said, you'd find yourself much more successful. Also, anybody who has ever achieved massive crazy outcomes—or at least the vast majority of them—typically ascribes to some sort of mentality like this. I could spend my entire life hustling right now, trying to spend the most effort ever, but it wouldn't really matter all that much because the world is way bigger than anything I could ever hope to aspire to. So why not just take it day in day out, try my best to show up, and treat it like a video game? I think you'll go pretty far.

energymotivationprocrastinationmental-friction

Related answers

youtube ↗Mindset

How do you deal with physical or mental burnout and taking breaks when you get engrossed in work and feel you have no time to rest?

I think the problem you describe is common. The key for me is not seeing work and breaks as opposites. The most important thing is momentum—making sure I always put in some small daily effort toward an actionable goal, regardless of what I’m doing. Starting small and gradually increasing effort works like progressive overload at the gym: your ability and resiliency grow over time. Most people view work as always on or always off, but I fluctuate—some days I work many hours, other days just a few, while avoiding extreme swings from top to bottom. I always do some amount of work toward my goals because momentum matters; when you get a ball rolling, lead generation, outreach, or content production will eventually yield results if you don’t stop. I avoid all‑or‑nothing thinking—I might work at 40% one day, 100% another, then drop to 30%, 80%, 60%, etc.—and that’s my typical workday. This approach helps reframe work so it doesn’t have to be all on or all off. Books like Atomic Habits and The Compound Effect reinforce this: start with a tiny habit (e.g., run for one minute) and build up gradually; by the end of a month you’ll have a solid habit. This method is far more effective and economically sensible than the all‑or‑nothing approach.

burnoutmental healthbreaksmomentum
youtube ↗Mindset

How do you handle burnout, especially when you’re working long hours and feeling exhausted?

I was feeling really tired that day, barely sleeping and having to wake up at 4 am, so I thought about burnout. I believe burnout is mostly a story we tell ourselves. Humans are great storytellers, and we internalize the narrative that burnout is a real, inevitable condition. Historically people worked in dangerous jobs—coal mines, for example—and kept going despite extreme hardship. The idea that we’re somehow uniquely vulnerable is a myth. If you keep telling yourself that burnout is a looming catastrophe, you’ll feel it more. I try to remind myself that nothing I do matters on a cosmic scale, which helps put the pressure in perspective. I also avoid short‑form content that trains the brain for instant gratification; instead, I focus on longer, deeper work that builds patience and real growth. By rejecting the burnout narrative and reshaping the stories we tell ourselves, I stay more resilient.

burnoutproductivitymental health
youtube ↗Mindset

Hey Nick, earlier in your agency or automation career, how do you stay on schedule when filtering stuff out like family and other distractions that are out of your control? If you were in this situation, what would you do? I've thought of going to a coffee shop or library, but my PC setup is nice and would bottleneck my workflow on a MacBook. Would love to hear your thoughts.

I find that people generally do not respect my time or schedule, which creates unnecessary emotional issues and problems in the agency itself. It would be ideal for all of us to have our own place with peace and quiet, but the reality is we start in a situation where external distractions or circumstances disrupt the flow of crucial inputs needed like outreach and sales calls. If you were in this situation, I've thought of going to a coffee shop or library to work, but my PC setup is quite nice and would bottleneck my workflow on just a MacBook. Honestly, I think people who make their ergonomic setup super complicated are just coping; I operate fine with a MacBook and make tons of money, so being a bit slower with it isn’t a huge deal—maybe 20% slower at most. Personally, I would just get out of the situation. I lived with my family for a very long time; coming from an Eastern European background, family values are similar to more collectivist and Asian cultures where it's expected that the person in the household lives with family until about 30 before starting their own family. That was never something I could do while taking the risks I wanted to take; every time I tried something, I’d feel a reflexive pullback, like a crab‑in‑the‑bucket effect, not because my family are bad people but because they just want the best for me, and when you risk things it's hard to get the best for yourself. So I just get out. I have many friends who have lived with their families far longer than they should have due to financial issues; I think if they had left earlier and exposed themselves to the need to make a few thousand bucks a month to pay rent, they would have happily traded that money for peace of mind and the ability to control their own life. Let’s be real: most of us have families and other people vying for our attention, so staying on schedule is difficult. You basically need to erect boundaries if you live in the same household, or just get the hell out and find a place where you can spend all your time and energy focused on yourself. Hope that helps and doesn’t destroy your dreams. As an example, my very first apartment was a garage I found on Craigslist for $650 a month—a retrofitted garage with light insulation, a pull‑out bed, etc. I told my family I was moving there, they wanted to help, but I insisted on doing it myself. They eventually came to see it and were surprised, but I really enjoyed it; it was probably the catalyst for some of the biggest self‑improvement I’ve ever done. I had no money but found a way to make it work, and I think everybody else can too.

productivitydistractionswork-life balanceboundaries
youtube ↗Mindset

Nick, how do you genuinely manage your time so well? I tend to get overwhelmed by a lot of stuff at this point. I have inspo stuff I want to do. I'll write a to-do list and still drift off or do stuff that aren't on the to-do list. Secondly, I feel like I just waste a lot of time generally. I block social media, but I still don't feel like I'm moving towards as much to my goals. I'm currently how you used to be. Write out a lot of stuff, plan, and do one or two. I'm also in the AI space. Yeah. So, how do you genuinely manage your time? I tend to get overwhelmed.

When I feel overwhelmed, I take a minute to list every single task I actually have to do on paper. The overwhelm comes not from the total volume but from my perception of the volume bouncing around in my head. My simple steps: take a deep breath, identify the first thing bouncing around that I need to do and write it out, then identify the next thing and write it out, and keep rinsing and repeating for 10‑20‑30 minutes to get a big list of actionable steps. To push further, write out the first subtask needed to move that forward—for example, after moving provinces I needed to figure out car insurance; the first actionable step was to call a phone number. Knowing the exact step reduces friction and makes it much easier to get done; this is about eliminating akrasia (weakness of will). Reduce the friction and you’ll win.

time managementoverwhelmproductivityactionable steps