I've Made Zero Progress in 2 Weeks.

How I Get Myself Out of "The Dip"

“He who chases two rabbits, catches none.” - Confucius

You know the feeling:

You start a new project full of energy.

Full of expectation.

Excited about the unlimited possibilities of your imagination.

Then reality hits.

Your expectations aren’t met — you launch a product, for example, and it doesn’t become an overnight success. It flops.

You work super hard — but struggle to keep it up after a few weeks.

You pour your heart & soul into it — but don’t see the results.

Then, in most cases, you give up.

This is the danger of what Seth Godin calls “The Dip”:

This moment between the excitement of starting & the moment of success or mastery.

I’ve been through The Dip a lot.

When starting multiple businesses.

When learning new languages.

When learning guitar.

With sport.

So I knew this moment was coming.

Luckily, I have systems in place to persist.

Here are 4 specific tactics & principles I’m falling back on to rebuild momentum:

1/4 Reset My Process

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” — Elizabeth King

I’ve got a lot on at the moment:

• I’m running a Prod MBA cohort (workshops & 1x1s to run each week)

• I’ve started freelancing with 2 startups (6-8hrs per week)

• Hanging out with my son most days after 3.30pm

• I had flu for a few days, which set me back

• Surfing a lot, as it’s the best time of year for it here in Portugal

I’m super happy to be doing these things.

These are all things I’ve consciously decided to do.

These are things I enjoy doing.

But — apart from parenting — these are not priorities.

They have become my priorities by default.

By my actions.

You can see this clearly in what I’m prioritising in my calendar:

So, time to reset.

Specifically, time to introduce 2x 90min focused blocks each day to focus on each startup I build.

These are non-negotiable.

These should not be interrupted (e.g. I could schedule work 6-8am, but that’s usually also when my son gets up & we have breakfast, so not a good time).

How do I set myself up for success?

1. 5.30-7am: Go to bed 1hr earlier. Get up earlier. Get some deep work done before the rest of the house wakes up

2. A flexible 2nd block: Before I start each week, look at my schedule & block out 90mins between 8am-12pm for another 90mins

3 focused hours per day = more productive than a full day.

If I make this happen, I start making progress again.

2/4 Eliminate Distractions.

I posted on LinkedIn every day for 4 years.

2 weeks ago, I stopped.

Why?

It’s not driving my personal or business goals.

I used to write long-form articles on here.

I’ve stopped (I’m only writing this as it helps clarify my own thinking so effectively!).

Why?

It’s not driving my personal or business goals.

I've run 14 cohorts with Prod MBA.

The current one will be my last.

Why?

It’s not driving my personal or business goals.

Anything that is not either energising me or a high-impact way of achieving my goals?

I cut it out.

I don’t have enough time.

Or energy.

If I don’t, I compromise my priorities by default.

Instead, I want to be conscious of what those priorities are — building startups, freelancing with startups that excite me, quality time with my family, doing sports/hobbies — and make sure they are (& remain) priorities.

3/4 Reframe The Work

When confronted with a difficult task, author Tim Ferriss asks himself,

"What would this look like if it were easy?"

When starting any new project, there’s an easy way to do it — and a hard way — yet rarely does the hard way lead to a measurably better outcome.

Therefore, rather than picking super complex products to build, or problems to solve I know nothing about, start simple.

Pick simple products to build.

Focus more on differentiation, than complexity.

Pick problems I can relate to — that I am an expert in.

Or a really concrete example from this week:

I wasted a morning manually uploading baby travel product data from Amazon. By asking myself “What would this look like if it were easy?", I paused, asks ChatGPT some prompts, found a tool to scrape the data from Amazon, then exported it all in a correct JSON format in a few minutes.

Relentlessly simply to reduce the work.

But, also, relentlessly simplify to reduce the mental work.

Why?

It means more energy, more momentum & — therefore — more likelihood of success.

4/4 Break My Own Self-Limiting Beliefs

Just because I’m building 12 startup in 12 months does not mean I need to build 1 startup per month!

That’s just something I’ve told myself!

And have put pressure on myself to live up to!

In fact, it has probably meant I over-built with Idea Forge (allowing myself 3 weeks to build out lots of features, rather than a few days to focus on one, high-impact feature).

It also means I’m not focusing on waiting to find the right idea. The right timing. The right trend exploding in popularity right now.

And it means, like with the Baby Travel product I’m working on right now, I’m sometimes not spending a few necessary extra weeks solving for distribution.