Halfway Through 2022: Reflections and Goals For the Next 6 Months
If you had told me in January...
I don’t usually feel great about reminiscing over the past, but the past 6 months have been crazy.
At the beginning of this year, I’d never competed against a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. My first match of the year was against a black belt, and one of my first 10 matches was against one of the top-ranked black belts in the world.
We didn’t really “ease” into this year. We got right to it.
After I missed and underperformed at some of the biggest tournaments in the world last fall, I felt really hungry to get out there and showcase my skills as much as possible this year.
I was also really motivated to get to a place where I could Jiu-Jitsu and blog full-time. At the beginning of the year, I was doing a lot of copywriting for clients of about 10 different businesses, in addition to training 2-3 times per day and writing daily on Medium and Quora.
Honestly, I figured that by doing these “non Jiu-Jitsu” gigs I was decreasing the quality of my training and that I was going to struggle in competition until I made the jump into full-time training.
In the end, that didn’t happen.
In the end, I ended up doing pretty well in Jiu-Jitsu in the first half of the year.
I took 4th at the ADCC West Coast Trials, made the top 8 in the European Trials, and I beat an ADCC veteran to win a $5000 tournament in Minnesota.
I also got my black belt, got to teach a few seminars, and got to go travel to a bunch of cool places to train, including London, San Diego, and Austin. I also went and traveled to Italy for a week and ate bread until my face was shaped like an oval.
It’s only halfway through the year and I’ve already been on 12 trips for Jiu-Jitsu this year.
I also quit copywriting.
I had a lot of success with writing at the beginning of the year.
I published my first ebook, created my premium newsletter, and I’ve garnered almost 8 million views on Quora so far this year.
All of this extra publicity on my writing opened the door to a new writing position that I can’t say too much about (it’s a ghostwriting position), and it was paying more than all of my copywriting clients combined.
So, I took a shot and quit working for businesses to write a secret blog for someone I’ve never met on the internet.
And? That’s actually working out well.
What I’ve struggled with the last few months has been balance.
My goals for the next 6 months:
In Jiu-Jitsu, the goals are always pretty simple, and this is nice.
My goals are to keep improving my skills, keep competing consistently, and stay healthy and active.
If I can do all of these things, the rest of the specific competition goals (performing well at the IBJJF no-gi events at the end of the year or getting more paid superfight/competition opportunities) will take of themselves.
I’ve been able to stay consistently active in competition pretty much for this entire year, and I feel that that’s been a huge help in terms of my improvement.
I feel like with my Jiu-Jitsu goals, I have a very specific plan and all I really have to do is implement it.
That’s why my goal for the next 6 months is to buckle down with my writing a little bit more.
Between competing literally all over the world, training, and traveling constantly, it’s been hard to find time every day to write articles that don’t suck.
The “don’t suck” is the important thing. Constantly publishing bad writing on the internet is the equivalent of not publishing.
Plus, when I’m consistent with my writing, my reading, and publishing output, I find that I perform better in all of the different areas of my life. Writing makes my Jiu-Jitsu better because it makes my head feel lighter.
The goals I wrote down in January (and how I’m doing):
Compete in as many Jiu-Jitsu competitions as possible—So far doing pretty well with this one… Lol.
Podium at all major events I compete at—It’s hard to determine what is a “major event” since I haven’t competed in the IBJJF once this year, but I’d say I’m 1/2 on this one.
Teach 5 seminars—Currently at 5, and I have a few more that will be announced soon. If you’d like to book me for a seminar, send me an email.
Publish 250 articles on Medium (I did 201 last year)—I’ll have to pick up the pace here, I’ve only published 90 articles on Medium thus far. My wallet feels the effects of this lack of publishing 😂
Publish 1–2 Quora answers every day (I’ve published every day since I started writing here!)—I really want to get the “top writer” tag on Quora, so I’m going to post on Quora as much as possible for the rest of this year. After that, I’m going to focus on Twitter.
Publish 2–3 ebooks (one is coming out soon!)—One published so far, and another will be published before the end of the year. That’s probably it for books/ebooks for this year. The end of my year is already looking pretty crazy.
Publish my first book—Not this year, but it’s going to happen! You might not know this, but writing books takes a while. It’s also very challenging to write good books when you’re training full-time and writing 10 articles per week.
Expand my copywriting business to cover ghostwriting and brand consulting—I actually did this back in early March. If you’re looking for a ghostwriter, send me an email.
Hit 1000 subscribers on my weekly newsletter.—We’re on our way! I think I can get there by the end of the year. 😊
3 tweet threads per week—Struggling with this one, but I have grown on Twitter slightly. Follow me on Twitter! It will motivate me to keep tweeting.
Closing Thoughts
I usually break my goals up in 6-month increments.
For the most part, goals that take less than 6 months to achieve are in my experience, not challenging enough. It’s hard to do something for less than 6 months and expect your life to change.
It’s really hard to become a famous writer in 6 months. It’s nearly impossible to become a Jiu-Jitsu world champion in 6 months.
It takes a long time to get good at things that are worth getting good at.
That’s why, at the halfway point of this year, I’m really freakin’ excited about where I am and where I’m going.
I have some big life news and news on my next ebook that I’ll be sharing soon as well, but for now, it’s just training and writing for me.
See you next week. 😊
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