Thirty-First Month of WA - Where My Focus Should Be

bykevinzshan

647 followers

3 years ago

Another month has passed in 2021, which means it's time for me to give my monthly update once again. February 2021 was a month that was somewhat unproductive for me but filled with new updates and revelations. These changes made me think about what I was doing and where my focus should be, especially for the next month. Let's jump into my review of February 2021.

As always, here's last month's post if you're interested: Thirtieth Month of WA - I Quit My Job, Now What?

I'm Becoming A Real Estate Agent

I spent a considerable chunk of my time in February taking courses. More specifically, I put a lot of effort into my real estate agent licensing courses and exams. I managed to finish everything in February. All that's left is for me to sign with a brokerage and start selling houses.

When I get fully licensed (which is hopefully within this or next week), my first project will be selling my parents' house for a number close to a million.

I'm excited about the possible chance for me to be working with one of the most experienced real estate agents in my city. This real estate agent has sold and is selling a crazy number of multi-million dollar properties. It's fantastic to have an opportunity to have him mentor me. I'm sure my ability to sell houses will be much higher if he's working with me.

That being said, becoming a real estate agent brings upon a whole slew of new responsibilities and work to my already worrying pile of blogs and businesses I started. And thus, I really need to develop a plan and system to reach the goals I want to achieve.

No Blogging, But More Money?

Half in the fact that I was spending all my time taking courses and half because I didn't want to do anything, I hardly published any blog posts. I published two blog posts on Medium, two on Vocal, two on my gaming website, and one on my programming website.

Those blog posts hardly amounted to anything, though. My gaming and programming websites aren't monetized yet, and my Medium and Vocal blog posts earned a few cents.

However, my badminton blog, the first website I created, earned $29.05 despite having not published anything for half a year. It was quite a surprise as the badminton blog only made around $12 last month.

The income coming from my badminton blog is truly passive income. I haven't done anything except occasionally update plugins and respond to comments, and my blog is generating money. Of course, it's not enough to cover my living expenses completely, but it made me think about where my focus should be.

For the last year, I have been much more focused on writing on Medium. I published 165 blog posts on Medium, and my highest earning month was January when I earned $19.70.

On the other hand, my badminton blog has 118 published blog posts, and it managed to earn $29.05 from Google Adsense. I put less work into my badminton blog and got more out of it. Imagine where I would be now if I spent all my effort on my badminton blog and wrote 283 blog posts.

Something else that I need to consider is that not all the blog posts I wrote on my badminton website rank well in search engines. About forty of my blog posts were written without any SEO research and get no views. Basically, my website gets all its traffic from 80 different posts and performs better than my 165 blog posts on Medium.

Plus, after this month, I can also see that Medium takes more active work. Without publishing many blog posts on Medium this month, I only managed to earn $8.91.

It makes me wonder why I spent so much time on Medium. I could have made so much more money if I just focused on one project, as everyone here on WA was telling me.

What Allows Me To Write

There was a reason I wrote a lot more on Medium over my badminton blog, though. It's also why I started so many different blogs without putting a serious effort into any of them.

I'm only motivated to write about the things that are happening in my life. In the past couple of months, I talked about how I had no motivation to write on my badminton blog because I wasn't playing any badminton due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

I started a gaming blog because the only thing I was doing at the time was playing games and watching content related to games. I started a programming blog back when I was taking courses on programming and computer science. Now that I'm becoming a real estate agent, I will undoubtedly create a real estate blog.

The reason why people recommend you to start a blog on your passion because you write best when you're regularly doing and thinking about your passion. The best way to generate content ideas and motivation is to do what you want to write about and consume content related to the activity.

The best way to get me back on track with my badminton blog is to get me to play badminton. When that's not possible, I should consume media on badminton and train my body and mind physically and mentally as those topics relate to my badminton website.

Thus, in March, I decided to work out more and fill my YouTube recommendation with full badminton matches to watch so I can continue to produce content on my badminton blog.

Create A Plan And Focus On The Goals

In some of my most recent monthly WA updates, I talked about getting rid of traditional goal-setting strategies and doing whatever I wanted. Instead of focusing on writing 30 blog posts in one month or making $1,000, I would focus on improving every day without a set destination.

After watching an "MBA" class on Udemy and listening to a section on goal-setting, I realized that I am better off writing down my goals. It's much easier to focus and get things done if you know exactly what you need to do and where you're going.

I noticed that every time I write one of these monthly updates posts, I would get motivated to do whatever I needed to do. However, after about a week or two, I would lose sight of what I need to get done, get lost, and start messing around.

A strategy that I believe will be instrumental to my ability to be productive will be writing down my goals and putting them in a place where I can quickly remind myself what I should be doing whenever I get distracted.

I will also be experimenting with a "productivity game" I set up towards the end of February. In this productivity game, I will be tracking my actions every day and assigning points based on my performance. At the end of every two weeks, I will add up the points and give myself rewards based on my performance. I have still yet to figure out all the details, but it has been fascinating tracking my productivity.

I have a couple of goals for March.

First, I need to sell my parents' house. This means doing what my mentor requires me to do in the listing of our home. As a real estate agent, I will also be setting up the foundations of my brand. This includes a website and social profiles.

My second goal is to get better at video editing. I'm looking to create videos for both my gaming and badminton blogs. Some basic video editing skills will help me a lot, and I will gain them from a course I own on Udemy.

Video editing also directly plays into my intent to work on my badminton blog more in March. I want to grow my badminton YouTube channel to the point that I can monetize it, and I'm thinking of uploading pro-player compilations, pro-player analyses, and videos demonstrating how I train. I will couple the studies and training videos with blog posts as well.

Lastly, I have a ton of different blogs that I created from my shiny object syndrome. They hardly cost me anything, and I do occasionally get content ideas for those blogs. I'm satisfied with letting them slowly grow.

Breaks Are Essential

Since I stopped playing badminton due to COVID restrictions, I noticed that my body slowly deteriorated from sitting all day. My eyes have been pretty much always dry, and I have been gaining a little bit of weight here and there.

I noticed that burn-outs have been pretty common for me, and it's not just from working. I realize that I've been burning out from too much screen time. Even when I'm taking a "break," I'm still either playing games or watching videos. Basically, my brain is never resting.

As we advance, I plan to incorporate more true breaks. More specifically, I will be reserving one day or two days every week where I completely cut out screen time—no phones or computers.

Additionally, I will be doing my best to do things such as meditate or nap whenever I'm tired and distracted. My goal is to make sure that every time I work, I'm putting in high-quality effort into my time to get more done in less time.

Let's do this!