May was a decent month. I met many of my goals and none of my habits fell entirely to the wayside. Still, it was a slight regression from April - good, but not great.

It finally dawned on me that this is my default pattern: two steps forward, one step back. The moment I begin to gain momentum, I take my foot off the gas.

In other words, I realized that I’m complacent.

Does it suck to admit this? Yes. But am I glad it’s out there? Yes. Now I can get to work. You can’t fix what you don’t know.

I’ll dive deeper on this issue in a separate post. In the meantime, here’s what happened this month.

Health and Happiness

These were my goals for the month:

  • Maintain good sleep, exercise and nutrition habits. Sleep 8 hours on a regular schedule, exercise 4x/week and eat clean. Exceptions allowed, but keep them to a minimum.
  • Build a steady journaling habit. I won’t quantify this, but here’s the question I’ll use to judge: did I capture a representative story of how my life is going?

This is how it went.

The Big 3

My exercise and diet were on point. I was consistent despite changes in my routine due to external factors. When I did deviate, I recovered quickly.

My sleep habits took a hit. I got complacent from my progress in April and didn’t take it as seriously this month. Overall, I’m still in a better place than before. Two steps forward, one step back.

Going forward, I need to get this back on track and maintain my momentum.

Lesson: Maintain your momentum or you erase all your progress.

Journaling

I barely journaled. Just as with sleep, I was riding off April’s progress and I didn’t prioritize it.

I did feel its absence, however. While these monthly reflections are great, they don’t capture my full day-to-day experience. Journaling does, and I want to do more of it.

To that end, I discovered a neat trick to reinforce the habit: write one sentence a day. It made it less daunting to start and I ended up writing more than I otherwise would have.

Going forward, I want to bundle this with putting my phone away at night. It’s a win-win to sleep earlier and get journaling done.

Lesson: When (re)building a habit, set small goals so it’s easy to start.

Effectiveness

These were my goals for the month:

  • Eliminate unproductive distractions during work hours. I need to act with urgency.
  • Work on most important tasks first. Combined with the above, I know I’m doing the most I can. Time spent isn’t the best measure.

This is how it went.

Distractions

Same story with unproductive distractions - I got complacent and let my guard down. I gave into them more than the previous month, but my overall baseline has improved. Again: two steps forward, one step back.

I’m on the right trajectory, though. I catch myself drifting off sooner and I’m able to put the necessary interventions in place. Going forward, I need to stay on this path and chip away at the problem.

Prioritization

I mostly prioritized important tasks and avoided the trap of perfectionism. It did get the best of me on several occasions, however.

I would slip up and get caught in a rabbit hole of minor details. Afterwards, I almost always regretted it.

There were two reasons for this.

First, it delayed the process. If you launch first and iterate later, users can get value out of it sooner. Plus, this creates a tighter feedback loop based on their response.

Second, it came at a significant opportunity cost. Mostly, I was agonizing about meaningless details. That time would be better spent on something else. See the Pareto Principle: 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of the effort. Why not use the marginal effort to get outsized returns on another task?

Lessons:

  1. Reduce time to user value. The longer you spend perfecting a feature, the longer they’re using an inferior version. Prefer to launch early and iterate.
  2. Consider the opportunity cost. Marginal effort on one task can yield outsized returns on another.

Projects

These were my goals for the month.

  • Habit Gym
    • Add measurement for the entire funnel. I have it in silos, but not a cohesive view. This is limiting my ability to more clearly see bottlenecks and where to invest further. I have an intuitive sense, but it would help to quantify it (and the causal effect of changes).
    • Improve conversion into the recurring program. This is where the real benefits lie and I’m not doing a good job of selling it. Increase touchpoints in the product, post-program retargeting and in the community.
    • Widen the top of the funnel through content, free programs and partnerships.
  • Validate 3 new business ideas - create MVP and pitch to customers.
  • Streamline podcast. We have the production process down, now we want to grow it through marketing.
  • Improve my storytelling abilities and reduce time taken to write. I believe there are core nuggets of wisdom, but I don’t always do a great job of highlighting them.

This is how it went.

Habit Gym

I added measurement for my funnel, though I let perfectionism get the best of me. I spent too long creating an elaborate spreadsheet and accounting for rare edge cases.

In hindsight, I should’ve kept it simple and focused on a single metric until the user base grew to justify a more complex setup. It’s the same lesson as earlier: launch first, iterate later.

I also made improvements to increase conversion, but the results are pending. It’s a lagging indicator due to the long trial period. Fortunately, I now have the measurement in place to track it when the time comes.

To widen the top of the funnel, I hit 2 out of the 3 goals.

I launched a weekly newsletter to share user’s learnings from Habit Gym. It’s a great way to shed light on everyday struggles that others can relate with. Plus, I combine it with useful lessons about habit change. It’s still in it’s early days and it will take time to get off the ground. I plan to continue investing in this. It should be doable - since I already set up the system, I just have to write a new piece every week.

I also launched a free program. Interestingly, doing so increased the conversion for the staked version. My hypothesis is that by putting the two side-by-side, the value proposition is more clear.

I didn’t reach out to potential partners because it’s been hit or miss in the past. I aim to do it regularly this month. I’m going to start by creating a system, after which it’ll be easy to continue.

Lesson: Systematize your processes. Once you have an established routine, it’s easy to stack them on top of each other and compound your progress. Related post.

Other ventures

I didn’t brainstorm or validate any new business ideas. I was too caught up in busy work for other projects that I didn’t carve out the time. Next month, I want to do exactly that: define my % allocation for each project so I can properly diversify my effort and move the ball forward on each front.

Podcast

We didn’t fully streamline marketing, but we identified one channel that we’re already seeing some traction from.

We also did our first interview, which was received very well. We want to continue doing them. If you know any Asians living in the West with a cool story, please reach out!

Writing

I didn’t get to intentionally invest in my writing skills at all. That being said, I tried to incorporate more storytelling on this blog. Next month, I’ll continue to do this and consume more resources to improve.

Next Month

These are my goals for next month:

  • Health and Happiness
    • Maintain good exercise and health habits. Don’t regress.
    • Improve sleep hygiene. Sleep at a consistent time every night. Implement a no-screen bedtime routine and don’t use my phone in bed (morning or night).
    • Build a journaling habit. Write at least one sentence every day.
  • Effectiveness
    • Eliminate unproductive distractions during work hours. Keep phone away and don’t aimlessly browse the internet - use app timers and feed blockers to facilitate this.
    • Build and maintain momentum: give every day my 100%. Put in the effort (no time-wasting), prioritize tasks (first things first) and don’t succumb to perfectionism (maximize launches/week). Don’t let complacency get the best of you.
  • Projects
    • Habit Gym
      • Launch mobile app. It’s clear this is where the users are. Whenever I tell people about it, they immediately check the app store. Plus, it will increase program compliance since it’s more seamless.
      • Integrate AI throughout the experience to delight users, surface valuable insights and provide tailored accountability.
      • Evaluate time cost of status quo maintenance. This will inform my diversification strategy.
    • Define time allocation across all projects - blog, podcast, Habit Gym and new opportunities.
    • Brainstorm + MVP 3 new ideas. This is in line with the anti-perfectionism ethos: launch fast.
    • Rebrand blog + podcast. I do a poor job communicating their respective themes. I suspect they’re relevant to more people than currently consume it, so I want to make the visions abundantly clear. Plus, I think there’s an opportunity to tie all three together.
    • Set up 1 consistent marketing channel for the podcast and reach out to 10 potential guests.
    • Improve my storytelling abilities and reduce time taken to write.

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