Ilya VP, Author at Ilya VP

STOP Keeping Your Doors Open!

A couple years ago I was overwhelmed.

I was running 5 affiliate websites, trying to launch a new service business, and working full-time at a startup.

Every time I caught up on one project, all my other projects seemed to be in danger of failing so I had to switch my focus and repeat the loop.

This is a pattern many of us get stuck in, and Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, decided to take a closer look at this self-destructive behavior.

He had participants play a simple computer game and paid them based on their performance inside of that game.

For the first experiment, they were faced with 3 doors: red, green, and blue and were told they had 100 clicks to make as much money as possible. They would click on a door, their available click counter would go down by 1, and they would find themselves in a room of the same color as the door they just clicked.

Each room had doors leading to the other rooms, and each had a different payout range for each click inside of it. So the red room might pay 3-6 cents, the blue 2-5, and the green 4-12.

Since each room had different payouts the participants had to quickly determine which room had the highest payout.

Most participants did pretty well. However, the most interesting part of the study comes next.

New participants had to play the same exact game, but with a new condition: "each door that wasn't visited for 12 clicks would disappear forever."

So if a participant clicked on the blue door and entered the blue room, the green and the red doors would get just a little smaller.

Then when the participants clicked inside the blue room to determine the payout, the green and red doors would get even smaller.

He would try to determine the payout, but would get distracted by the red and green doors getting smaller and smaller.

The participant would quickly click on the red door, which brought it back to normal size, enter the red room, click a couple times in it, but then see that the green door was almost fully gone so he'd switch to the green. But then he would see that the blue door was getting smaller as he clicked, so he would switch over to that room.

In this condition the participants jumped from option to option, wasting clicks on trying to keep all doors open, and made 15% less money than those in the first condition.

Just like the participants of this study, when I was trying to keep all my doors open none of my projects were very successful, and in fact the business I was trying to start lost the most money I've ever lost through business.

They ran the study again, this time trying to discourage students from "keeping their doors open."

They tried charging them some money in addition to a click to open a door, allowed them to do hundreds of practice trials before the actual experiment, made it so the doors would "disappear" but you could bring it back to life with one click, and even told the participants the exact monetary reward they would get from each room, BUT the participants still did all they could to prevent their doors from closing, and this is when they knew that one room would make them 20 or even 30% more money than any of the others.

How many of us keep our options open when we really shouldn't?

How much of our mental energy are we spending on old dreams we will not pursue, potential romantic partners we're better off letting go, or commitments that we have but don't even know why we have them?

On the other hand, how many of us forget about the real disappearing doors in our lives?

How many of us spend too many hours at work while our relationship door with our family slowly disappears?

How many of us take our friends and family for granted because we assume they will be there forever?

Similarly, how many of us forget about the consequences of not deciding or the consequences of taking too long to decide?

We often use information gathering for a decision as a way to avoid taking action because we "need to be ready," when in reality we'd be better off picking one option, and just going with it rather than procrastinating by looking for the perfect option.

What a Simple Game of Cornhole Can Teach You About Learning

When I was in high school, I wanted to become a basketball star.

There were many days in the summer when I left for the gym right after eating breakfast, and got home right before dinner.

I adhered to the method of practice, practice, practice and focused hard on improving my 3 point shot.

If you've ever played basketball, you can probably guess what my practice looked like, and it's what many coaches recommended to me at that time.

I did 20 shots from the baseline, 20 from the left wing, 20 from the top, and continued going back and forth, and back and forth.

The basic idea was to keep shooting from one spot until you got better, and then move to another spot.

Well, this type training led to a huge embarrassment during tryouts, but I'll talk about that a bit later.

I'll just say: if I knew then what I know now about how learning and skill acquisition works, I would never train how I did back then.

Now, let's take a quick detour to the 1970s.

Two researchers wanted to test how different types of practice would affect the learning of a group of kids.

The task was a simple game of cornhole - throwing a beanbag into a hole in a raised platform at a certain distance away.

The goal was to get better at throwing the bag into the hole from 3 feet away.

There were 2 groups that had nearly identical pre-test scores, that trained differently for 10 weeks:

The first group always practiced tossing from 3 feet away, while the second group practiced tossing from 2 or 4 feet away, but NEVER from 3 feet away.

In the final test, their performance was tested from 3 feet away.

Which group do you think performed better? The 3 foot one, or the 2 and 4 foot one?

Surprisingly, the group that NEVER practiced the 3 foot throw, outperformed the group that ONLY practiced that type of throw.

This and other studies demonstrates that varied practice, in this case varying the distances you're practicing from, makes it easier to use this skill in a larger variety of scenarios than massed practice - which in this case is tossing from the same distance over and over.

Instead of learning how to do a highly specific thing, in a very specific environment, varied practice makes you perform constant adjustments as you go from throwing from 2 feet, to 4 feet, and back again. These constant adjustments and changes allow you to create a better understanding of how a certain amount of force will affect where the beanbag goes.

For massed practice, on the other hand, you don't have to adjust as much. Once you are "dialed in," the knowledge for how to get the beanbag in the hole is in your short-term memory, and you can keep tossing it in one after another without a problem.

However, without those adjustments, you won't have as good of a feel for how small differences in your throws can affect the beanbag. Once the knowledge of how to do it is in short-term memory, you are no longer "practicing." You are just repeating a motion you have memorized for a short time, just like you might repeat a phone number before finding a piece of paper and a pen to write it down.

And what happens with that phone number once it's written down? Exactly. You forget it.

In a similar matter you might also forget the precise technique you need for getting the beanbag in the hole because it's only stored in your short-term memory.

As you can see, massed practice can lead to worse performance in the long-run and that's exactly what happened with me.

If I could dial in my shot, I could sink 15 3-pointers in a row. From the same spot of course.

But if I had to shoot in the flow of a game... well, the story becomes a bit different.

We were playing a game during tryouts, and I was excited to show off my newfound skills. The coach already knew I wasn't bad, but I knew that showing him that I was now a 3 point machine, would guarantee a starting spot.

The first 3 point shot of the game, from a spot I practiced thousands of times during the summer... I airballed.

And I thought... That's fine. It's just adrenaline and nerves.

But, as the game went on, I realized that if I shot from a spot just a bit different from one that I practiced in, or from a pass that wasn't as perfect as the ones I gave myself, or if anything wasn't perfectly aligned with how I practiced, I would miss.

The game that I thought would clinch my spot as a rising star on the team, almost led me to being cut from the team.

I listened to the famous adage of "practice, practice, practice," but forgot about a similarly famous one of "practice like you play."

If only I changed the spots that I shot from with every shot when I practiced . Moved a bit farther beyond the 3 point line, and then moved a bit inside of it. Gave myself bad passes. Shot from weird angles that might happen during an actual game.

Then I just might have been playing in the NBA instead of making this video for you. 😉 But now it's your turn. Practice correctly, and don't let my mistakes become your mistakes.

Alright, you're smart enough to know what the subscribe button is and what it's there for. If weekly videos on meta-skills needed to thrive in the 21st century, living a proactive life, and broadening your horizons will be useful to you, then you know what to do. If not, I hope you found this video useful and will actually apply it to your life rather than using it purely as entertainment.

And remember to improve daily. A 1% improvement in any metaskill today can lead to huge compounding benefits over your lifetime.

Improve yourself today, and make time work for you. Not against you.

STOP Focusing On Your Insignificant Problems

Have you ever had problems reaching your goals even though you were working harder than ever?

A couple years ago I wasn't progressing at the gym at all.

It seemed as if nothing was working. And it didn't matter how hard I lifted, how much I ate, or what supplements I took. I looked and I weighted the same month after month.

I spent hours researching new programs, different tactics, and small "tricks" I could use to gain more muscle, all while ignoring the one big problem that was staring me right in the face.

I simply wasn't sleeping enough.

Instead of fixing this giant problem, I focused on the smaller, easier to fix things as if they were the most important things in the world.

Maybe I need to increase my protein intake by exactly 19 grams per day... Or I just need to add another exercise to really make my muscles grow... Or maybe I need to add this magical potion to my morning smoothie and everything will be perfect.

All of us do this in some areas of our lives.

We ignore the big, and the difficult problems, and we magnify the small, and the easier ones, because in many cases, convincing yourself that you are "working" on the problem, is easier than actually fixing it.

If you're not seeing progress at the gym, it's easier to focus on insignificant changes in supplements, exercises, and protein intake than it is to consistently stick to a healthy sleep schedule.

If your business isn't making as much money as you'd like, it's easier to focus on making your website perfect or trying to increase conversions by 1%, than it is to go out and try to sell to 50 new people every day.

The solutions to the big problems are often simple, but not easy, while the solutions to the small problems are often complicated, but easy.

Everyone knows how to get more sleep. You go to bed earlier, you wake up later, or you do both. Simple.

Everyone also knows how difficult it is to get more sleep. Your work is piling up, your friends are calling you and asking to hang out, you need to go to the gym, read all these books, play video games, take care of your kids, it doesn't matter. Everyone's lives are filled to the brim, and losing an extra hour or two of so called "productive time" to sleep just seems unfathomable.

We start making up excuses. I could do X, Y, and Z if I just slept an hour or two less tonight!

Sure... You could. But will you actually?

For me, a lot of the time when I stayed up to do something "productive," unless it was something I needed done by tomorrow, I pretty much ended up not doing it at all and wasted time watching YouTube or Netflix.

I wasn't productive, AND I was losing out on sleep!

Since the less you sleep, the less productive you are, the easier you get distracted, and the less you actually do. I ended up being in an infinite cycle of needing to sacrifice sleep in order to finish all my work, and repeating it day after day.

I was trying to use all of these different productivity hacks I found online, when in reality all I needed was to get more sleep.

I kept looking for small, bandaid fixes, when what I really needed was a full on surgery.

And this isn't to say that those small fixes aren't valuable. A 10% or even a 1% improvement can compound greatly over time, but the problem comes when you focus on these 1% improvements before taking advantage of the 50 or 100% ones.

It's simply a waste of time.

What's an area of your life where you're focusing on small problems and ignoring the huge one staring you in the face?

Is it your health? Productivity? Relationship?

How would your life change if you conquered the big problem head on instead of wasting time on the tiny ones?

It’s Harder Than You Think – And Why That’s Okay

I remember going to the gym for the very first time.

I had dreams of becoming super buff in less than 3 months and every week, I looked in the mirror, disappointed with the results I was seeing.

I couldn’t see the incremental progress, because I was too close to the fire. I wanted to be buff FAST. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t notice myself, gaining a tiny bit of muscle every single day.

I was blinded by the promises of 6 pack shortcuts, buff guys who have been training for YEARS, selling a program to look “just like them” in just a couple months.

Little did I know, that the human body has biological limits on how fast we can gain muscle.

As a guy, I could only gain about 1-2 pounds of muscle every MONTH. That’s right. That’s 2 pounds every MONTH, and I was expecting to gain 5, or even 10 pounds per month which is nearly 2 pounds per week.

I wanted fast progress, instead of settling in for the long haul.

You can probably guess what happened.

I ended up not following through with the program, being disappointed with my results, and coming back to it time and time again, only to repeat the same exact mistakes.

And 2 pounds per month might not seem like a lot, but if I consistently worked out, ate right, and slept well for a year, I would gain 12-24 pounds of muscle.

After a month of progress, I would look very similar to how I looked when I started, but after a year, I would be nearly unrecognizable.

Many of us overestimate how much progress we can make in a week or a month, but underestimate the progress that we can make in a year or 5 years.

And this doesn’t just apply to the gym.

How many people do you know who jump from opportunity to opportunity, certain that THIS IS THE ONE, and never end up going anywhere?

They see people who have worked for YEARS to get to where they are now, and they want to be at the same place where those people are, but without putting in the same amount of work.

One concept related to this, is called $0/hour work. (Which is an article by Billy from ForeverJobless linked in the description below.) (Billy has a lot of unique ideas, so I recommend you check out his blog.)

The basic idea is this:

When you’re just starting a business, you might have to put in dozens, or even hundreds of hours, before actually getting paid.

You might have to research the target market, figure out their true needs, create the right solution, prototype, experiment, and break barriers to solve the problem that people have.

Someone who you see earning hundreds of thousands of dollars online, might have spent months, or even years, on figuring out how to solve the problem they’re solving to make that money.

Or maybe they had to spend months on figuring out how to build an audience, or how to find the right audience.

Either way, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that most people aren’t willing to do this $0/hour work, and most people aren’t willing to think long term.

So… What does this all mean for you?

If you are able to overcome your natural tendency to be drawn to short-term gains, you might lose out on money NOW, but it’s likely that you will be better off in the long-term.

You Are A Thief

You are a thief.

You don’t rob houses or banks. You steal ideas, concepts, and knowledge.

However, you’re not stealing from the person you got that idea or knowledge from.

You’re stealing from the people who would have first encountered this idea from you. From the people who needed a reminder of this specific concept today. From the thought leader who might have stumbled upon your publication and influenced the lives of hundreds or thousands of people by sharing it with them.

Sure, you might be reiterating an idea you got somewhere else a couple years ago. Combining ideas. Or even repeating a story you just heard today.

But most things in life have already been said by someone smart. There are no ideas in the world, where everyone who needed to hear them, has heard them.

That’s why you’re not stealing from the person you originally got the idea from. (Although you should still cite them/link to them if you know who it was.)

Take a look at the following list:

Tony Robbins
Paul Graham
James Altucher
Grant Cardone
Gary Vaynerchuk
Brendan Burchard

All of them are rock-stars within their niches, but you probably haven’t heard of ALL of them, and even if you have, you likely haven’t heard every single important message every single person on that list wants to convey.

If someone has an audience of 100,000,000, there’s still nearly 7,500,000,000 people on the planet who haven’t heard their message.

Is their message important to every single person on the planet?

Most likely not.

But could it be important to 1/10 of everyone on the planet?

If we assume their message is important enough, then they’ve only reached 15% of all people who could benefit from it, and for most people hearing it once isn’t enough. To truly understand the message, they need to hear it multiple times throughout their lives.

Maybe they’re more mature now. More understanding. More compassionate.

Maybe they’re willing to listen more. Accept other people’s advice. Be humble.

It doesn’t matter.

You are just like the celebrities who haven’t spread their message to everyone who needs to hear it.

There is knowledge inside of you, begging to be let out.

Maybe this is knowledge you obtained today. Maybe it’s knowledge you’ve had for a while. Or maybe, just maybe, it is knowledge that you and only you could’ve come up with. (An insight so rare that it only happens with 1/10000 or 1/100000 people.)

Don’t bottle up your knowledge even if you think it’s been said already.

You never know who might benefit from it.

Why You Shouldn’t Keep Your Ideas Secret – The Adjacent Possible

Paris Stephanie Tarnier:

Chicken coop -> newborn incubator to cut the mortality rate in half
- A long chain of ideas: capturing animals for food/livestock -> what if animals could be entertainment (zoos) -> chicken coop in the zoo
- Combined with: let’s eat that thing that chickens lay -> how do we increase their number (incubator) -> zoos
- Developed world the incubators break & people can’t fix them because they’re too different from what they know -> let’s create it out of parts they already have there and know how to fix (automobile parts)
“We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified traditions. But ideas are works of bricolage; they’re built out of that detritus. We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across and we jigger them together into some new shape.”
Adjacent possible: all the “states or places” we can get to from where we’re currently at.
- It’s a house that gets bigger with every room you open. As you open each door, you see a room with more doors, that lead to rooms with more doors that lead to places you couldn’t reach from where you started.
- Based on the evolutionary idea of the adjacent possible.
- Atoms -> H2O -> one cell carbon based life forms -> multi cell life forms -> etc until we reach to humans

The multiple- Many brilliant ideas often occur to many people around the world working completely separately from each other.

Sunspots: four scientists in 4 dif countires
Electrical battery by 2 people
Isolating oxygen in the air by 2 people
Require previous ideas to develop new ones.
- EX: to isolate oxygen you needed to:
  - Know that you’re looking for something in teh air
  - Advanced scales
  - Once the above conditions are met, it’s a matter of time until we reach a new idea

Technological and scientific advances rarely break out of the adjacent possible. However, sometimes people have ideas that jump 50 years ahead of their time

Those ahead of their time ideas end up being short term failures
- Analytical engine designed in early 19th century by Charles Babbage
  - Basically a computer, but it was way ahead of its time
  - Wasn’t in the adjacent possible because it required parts not known yet and if they built it using their current knowledge it’d be too slow

All of us live in our own version of the adjacent possible:

Organizations, work, our capabilities, relationships, etc
“Challenging problems don’t usually define their adjacent possible in a clear, tangible way. Part of coming up with a good idea is discovering what those spare parts are, and ensuring that you’re not just recycling the same old ingredients.”

The Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday, Summary, Quotes, and Lessons

How to create something lasting

80/20 marketing to work ratio doesn’t work
People who are thinking about things other than how to make a great product never make a great product
Powerful work is a struggle and it requires great sacrifice
The difference between a great work and an idea for great work is all the time, sweat, effort, and agony that go into engaging that idea and turning it into something real
YOU must do the work YOURSELF
Art is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by your shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon
It doesn’t matter what the deadlines are or who is breathing down your neck — in a year, will the extra two days you spent seem ecxessive? In ten years, will spending ten extra days, or even ten weeks, seem like a long time?
You have to shift your “goal timeframe” and make tough choices.
Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 47 times, and the first part of the book 50 times.
Just like good wine has to be aged, an idea has to be given time and space to develop.
Test your ideas small and use the MVP framework when possible.
Decide who you’re creating for. If you’re creating for everyone, it’s the same as creating it for no one. You can’t wait until after you’re done to figure out who you made it for.
Imagine or find one ideal audience member and write/create for them/to them.
Just as you should know who it’s for, you should also ask “what does it do” for your audience?
Create your own category. Being the only one category is better than being the best in another, especially if you’re trying to compete in a competitive market.
If your idea is original, you’ll have to ram it down people’s throats.
Work is unlikely to be layered if it is written in a single stream of consciousness. Deep, complex work is built through a relentless, repetitive process of re-visitation.
It takes time, effort and sacrifice to make something that lasts.

How to position, package, and perfect your work

Audiences can’t magically know what is inside something they haven’t seen. They have no clue that it will change their lives. You can’t be the self-conscious wallflower in the corner, hoping that people will seee through the act and just know how great you are. Someone is going to have to tell them. (Dish presentation and taste.)
Even though it’s hard, you HAVE to take full responsibility for everything here. Just because you have help doesn’t mean they’re going to take care of everything for you, or that it will all turn out for the best.
You need an editor. The final decision is on you, but more often than not your first draft will be terrible.
When people tell you something is wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
Getting feedback requires humility. It deamnds that you subordinate your thoughts about your project and your love for it and entertain the idea that someone else might hvae a valuable thing or two to add.
One sentence, one paragraph, one page. This is a _____ that does____. This helps people _______.
You must understand which conventions of your genre you’re observing, and which ones you’re taking a risk on.
A creator can’t magically inherit the audience of another. There’s no convention for Malcolm Gladwell fans.
You must be able to explicitly say who you are building you thing for. You must know what you are aiming for– you’ll miss otherwise.
Service the core audience first and then expand.
You must create room for the audience to inhabit in and relate to the work so they see themselves as the hero and see their friends as the heros so they recommend it to them.
You’re not just competing with current published work. You’re also competing against the other greats that came before you. EX: New TV shows compete with Breaking Bad. New books with Harry Potter or Shakespeare. New films with the classics.
Of course you can judge a book by its cover– that’s why books have covers.
Nothing has sunk more creators and caused more unhappiness than this: our inherently human tendency to pursue a strategy aimed at accomplishing one goal while simultaneously expecting to achieve other goals entirely unrelated

How to market it

You can cut back on a lot of things as a leader, but the last thing you can ever skimp on is marketing. Your product needs a champion.
You must apply the same creativity and energy into marketing as you put into making. Marketing is an opportunity for you to distinguish yourself, to beat out the other talented folks whose entitlement or laziness holds them back.
Accept that nobody cares about what you have made (right now) and work from there.
Word of mouth is key because you can’t keep advertising forever.
Just because you’re playing the long game doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on creating an explosive launch.
While a launch date is artificial, it helps create momentum, and customers tend to choose what appears to have momentum.
Do a lot of work in advance so it seems like you’re everywhere on the day of the launch.
The problem for most artists isn’t piracy. It’s obscurity.
Think about all the stuff you haven’t checked out even though most of it is really cheap. There is so much out there that you couldn’t possibly consume it all in your lifetime. So we ignore a lot of it, especially the stuff that looks expensive.
Try to find people least likely to get a request from someone like you, and aproach them first, instead of going where everyone else is going.
Much of the press that people chase is ephemeral and innefectual, yet expensive and time consuming to get. Media outlets have trouble getting people to pay for their own product — what makes you so sure they’re going to be able to convince their readers and viewers to buy yours?
While other creators waste their time chasing media that doesn’t work, there are plenty of PR strategies that do work– and, better yet, are easier and often costless.
Do things that create media opportunities for reporters. Cut thorigh the noise, make a statement, and do most of the legwork required.
Platforms come and go like the wind. It’s always better to focus on the bigger picutre, on the things that don’t change.

How to build a lasting audience

Becoming a perennial seller requires more than just releasing a project into the world. It requires the development of a career. It means building a fan base both before and after a project, and itmeans thinking differently than most people out there selling something.
Networking isn’t about going to networking events and handing out business cards- that’s flyering. It is intead about forming, developing, and maintaining real relationships. It’s about being valuable and being avaialble so one day the favor might be returned.
Creating more high quality work will help you market your previous work.
It’s not enough to make one great work. You should try to make a lot of it. Very few of us can afford to abandon our gift after our first attempt, convinced that our legacy is secured. Nor should we. We should prove to the world, and to ourselves that we can do it again… and again.
It doesn’t matter how popular your product is or how long you’ve been doing it. To the majority of people you and your product will still be new.
Luck is polarizing. The successful like to pretend it does not exist. The unsuccessful or the jaded pretend that it is everything. Both explanations are wrong.

I Slept For 5 Hours Every Day- My First Polyphasic Sleep Attempt

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″] This is my very first public experiment that you get to read. How exciting, right? Anyway, you might be wondering what polyphasic sleep is, why I’m trying it, and whether or not you should do it also. I hope to answer most of those questions in this post. (I can’t tell you whether you should do it or not. I can only share my experience with it and let you figure things out on your own.) [toc]

What is Polyphasic sleep?

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5gFDJVRyNQ” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″] Most people in the world sleep monophasically. (One period of sleep at night.) There are some people in the world who sleep biphasically (one period of sleep at night with a siesta during the day.) And there are others who sleep polyphasically (multiple periods of sleep during the day and the night.) The whole idea behind polyphasic sleep is that REM and slow wave sleep are the most important types of sleep. The usual cycle of sleep for humans is: light sleep, slow wave sleep, and REM sleep. The idea is that once you get sleep-deprived enough you’ll be able to go straight to REM sleep by skipping the useless light sleep, and once you get enough REM sleep, your body will go straight to SWS. There have been no scientific studies done on polyphasic sleep, and the only info I could find was from blog posts by people like me who wanted to share their polysleep experience with others. Some of those people are:

Steve Pavlina– Probably the most famous one. His experiment lasted for 4 months which is very impressive considering that most people give up after a couple days.
The origins of SPAMAYL– This is the polyphasic pattern that I will be using. You can view the first 5 pages of the forum using WayBackMachine.
/r/polyphasic– A subreddit of people who sleep polyphasically.
Search Google for “polyphasic sleep diary” if you want to read more. I don’t want to make this list of links too long. ?

What is SPAMAYL?

SPAMAYL or Sleep Polyphasically As Much As You Like is a variant of polyphasic sleep that is exactly what it sounds like. You don’t stick to a definite schedule. You just take a 20 minute nap whenever you start feeling even a tiny bit tired. You can read about the origins of SPAMAYL using the WayBackMachine and it’s cool to see that the original creator of it stayed with it for nearly a year. I’m a college student so SPAMAYL is the best option for me because I can “front-load” my sleep during the night and only take a couple naps during the day. I don’t have to carve out 1.5-3 hour time periods during the day for naps. I can just do it whenever I want to. Here’s how the creator of SPAMAYL described it:

You nap in blocks of 20 minutes, just like with Uberman. The difference is that you have neither a fixed amount of naps, nor a fixed time for naps. You’re napping, basically, as much and when you like. There’s just one limitation: There needs to be a 20-minutes waking period in between naps. And you need to stand or sit during that period, don’t simply stay in bed/on the couch/at your sleeping place.

And what about the adaptation? Most people take 1-3 weeks to completely adapt to the Uberman and the other polyphasic cycles, but here’s what the creator of SPAMAYL had to say about it:

For me, it took just a few days (maybe 4-5) to feel functional with the schedule. It took then another 2-3 weeks for the nap times to stabilize, as hatten puts it. In the first few weeks I usually had something like 5 naps on one day and then 10 on the next day- think of it like a car out of control- you steer left, get in danger of leaving the road on the left side, steer right to counter that, and so on and so on- it took a bit of time to get the car moving smoothly in the middle of the road.

Why am I trying this out?

Curiosity. I want to know whether this is actually possible or if everyone talking about it on the internet has a genetic mutation or is a liar.
Productivity. As a college student there are never enough hours in my day, and since I need between 8-10 hours of monophasic sleep to be at my best, SPAMAYL would give me 4-6 hours of awake time which would make life much easier.
Helping others decide if this is for them. If polyphasic sleep is as awesome as people say, then this is the way of the future. However, I don’t want to talk about it before trying it out first so here I am.

My plan and DAY 0 LOG

My-SPAMAYL-Sleeping-Pattern The sleeping pattern that I plan to use is on the right. Awesome, right? This is what I will be starting out with, and eventually I might decrease the number of naps during the day and the number of naps during the night in order to get more awake time. I actually took my first 10:00 nap today, but I didn’t want to count that as Day 1 so I called it Day 0. I couldn’t fall asleep, but just laying there was relaxing.

Day 1

The first day wasn’t too bad, but it also wasn’t great. I didn’t sleep at all during the night, and it was almost as if my brain decided to sleep deprive me even further in order to help me adjust quicker. I’m not sure if it actually helped or not, but during the day I slept during nearly all of my naps. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPmsMsWYIY” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Quick Summary:

Sleep attempted: 383 minutes/15 cycles Sleep achieved: 138-150 ish. 5/6 cycles I attempted to sleep for about 6 hours in 20 minute increments, but only ended up sleeping for 3.5 hours. Currently I feel better than if I only slept 3.5 hours monophasically, but I feel worse than if I slept for 6 hours monophasically. I know that eventually I should be able to fall asleep for 80-90% of my naps, but for now I’m okay with a 50% success rate. If I slept during the night I’d probably sleep less during the day, but I felt tired so I took a nap. It’s as simple as that! Right now I have a small headache, my stomach was having some issues earlier in the day, and I can feel my brain working slower than usually, but I have had no major issues so far. From what I’ve read adjusting to this can take anywhere between 2 days to 2 weeks so we’ll see how this goes for me. After almost every nap, I felt very sleepy and tired, but after waiting for 5-10 minutes I felt better and had enough energy to work for 1-1.5 hours. I might change my “break time” for my night-sleeps as 25 minutes awake isn’t nearly enough for me to get tired. I’ll probably do a 25/35 or 25/40 split.

Detailed Info:

This is how I planned on sleeping:	And this is how I actually slept:

Keep in mind that I only slept during 50% of the red bars, and I had only 1 school-related activity I had to go to. Ideally, I’d be able to front-load my sleep during the night and only take 2 naps during the day.

Nap Details

My setup:

I sleep with one of the lights on, but with a sleep mask.
I have my earbuds in my ears to block out sound, and when the alarm goes off the music plays in my earbuds and from the phone.
I sleep under a thin blanket and not under my main one because I don’t want to get too cozy.

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Sleep Time	Comments
9:26-9:51 am	My first nap. I laid in bed, but didn’t fall asleep. I was really tired, but my body was still energized after going to the gym and I was also hungry.
12:02-12:27 am	Couldn’t fall asleep. My earbuds were uncomfortable and I didn’t use a sleeping mask which made it too bright. I did feel more rested after this nap even though I didn’t sleep.
12:50-1:15 am	No sleep once again. I was possibly afraid of oversleeping even though I had 3 alarms set for the nap and 2 in the morning. Maybe it was still the earbuds.
1:42-2:05 am	I think I got no sleep this time. I was close to falling asleep right before the alarm rang, or maybe I was in light sleep. I’m not quite sure.
2:35	I was planning on going to sleep here, but I wasn’t tired at all so I waited until I got more tired.
3:00-3:25 am	Almost slept. After this I increased my timer to 28 minutes so I’d have more time to fall asleep.
3:55-4:22 am	Almost slept again, but was super tired after “waking up.”
5:05-5:30am	No sleep once again. At this point it felt like my body was purposefully trying to tire me out to speed up the adjustment period.
6:40-7:05	I wasn’t sure if I slept or not. When I heard the alarm it felt as if I was waking up, but I never got close to falling asleep before so I’m not sure what happened. I felt super awake after a long shower, but went to a presentation and nearly fell asleep while sitting.
10:35-10:55 am	My first actual nap! It felt amazing, but I was too tired to get out of bed after so I just set another alarm and did back-to-back naps. (I’m technically not supposed to do this, but I felt better and not worse after the naps so hopefully it didn’t slow down my adaptation.)
10:55-11:23 am	Finished up the second nap. I felt more awake, but was planning on napping in 25 minutes. However, I sat there for 10 minutes and was awake enough to do calculus which surprised me.
12:20-12:50 pm	I got woken up halfway through the nap by my phone as I forgot to set it in vibrate. I just continued sleeping, but it would’ve been better if my phone didn’t wake me.
3:40-4:05 pm	I don’t think I actually slept here as I was still aware of what was happening around me, but I still felt better after.
7:02-7:30 pm	Feel asleep quickly and was tired after waking up. Even after 30 minutes of awake time I couldn’t get rid of the exhaustion so I took another nap.
8:00-8:30 pm	I was super tired right after the nap, but felt better 10 minutes later.
10:00-10:25 pm	I wasn’t sure if I fell asleep or not again. If I did, it was just light sleep. I had a bit of a headache before and after the nap which didn’t make sleeping any easier.

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Days 2 & 3

I ended up oversleeping both on day 2 and 3. I continued my “go to sleep when tired” schedule, but I realized that I need to change it to something different if I want to do this long-term. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUUbqBoXgDc” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Quick Summary:

Day 2:

Sleep attempted: 210 minutes/7 cycles Sleep achieved: 280-300 minutes/5 cycles It’s only the second day, but I already overslept! I went to sleep at 6:44 am and woke up at 9:30 am so my 30 minute nap turned into a 2.5 hour nap. I felt exhausted after that nap, so I waited for 25 minutes and took another short nap after. I was expecting the short nap to help, but I actually ended up feeling worse and not better after it. Something interesting also happened between 3:30-4:15 pm. I had an intense moment of clarity and brain power. I was working on math, and it seemed easy for the first time in nearly 6 months! I only had 5 hours of sleep up to that point, but I felt quite good. My right hamstring was tight, so I decided not to do any exercise, but mentally I felt better than when sleeping monophasically (at least for those 45 minutes.) If there is less exhaustion and more clarity moments post-polysleep adaptation, then polyphasic sleep is even better than I thought it would be!

Day 3:

Sleep attempted: 120 minutes/4 cycles Sleep achieved: 300 minutes/4 cycles As you can see I overslept again… I went to sleep at 5:06 and woke up a 8:50 to 5 turned off alarms and with my sleeping mask next to me. Apparently I had my first zombie mode during this experiment! I managed to take of my night mask, turn off all of the alarms, and go back to sleep all without remembering what I did. That’s kind of scary, but also quite cool! I also had an extremely vivid dream during one of my naps. (This means I was getting REM sleep in my nap already as that’s when you dream.)

The Dream:

I was in my dorm room trying to accomplish some endless list of tasks in 1-2 hours before I had to sleep. I walked to one side of the room, started walking back and collapsed on the mini-fridge because of exhaustion. I laid my head on the fridge sideways and could feel the immense pressure of sleep on top of me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything physical, but I could think, so I thought to myself “I can’t go to sleep now! I have so much to do and if I sleep now without any alarms I’ll wake up in like 12 hours!” Once I said that, I snapped awake in my dream and also in real life. It was a weird merging of the two and I’m excited to experience this again. Random thoughts:

Video games definitely help me with waking up, but they’re inconsistent. On day 2 playing Rocket League for 5-10 minutes after waking up boosted my alertness and woke me up, but it didn’t work as well during day 3.
Zombie mode is extremely weird, but also extremely cool. Now I know how sleepwalkers feel!
Polysleep might help out with lucid dreaming. Awesome!

Detailed Info:

This is how I slept on day 2:	And this is day 3:

As you can see I’m not really where I want to be, but I feel more rested than if I slept for 5.5 hours monophasically, so I’m still ahead right now! As you can see, the morning nap is the toughest one for me as that’s when I overslept both times.

Switching Schedules

After asking questions on reddit, (thank you GeneralNguyen!) and reading up on polyphasic sleep I realized that SPAMAYL isn’t the best choice for me. I plan on lifting heavy weights at least 3 times a week, and since muscle recovery happens during slow wave sleep, I’m going to need more of that. With SPAMAYL my body will recover very slowly, and there’s a high chance of oversleeping if I exercise. That’s why I decided to switch to the Everyman 2 schedule. Everyman-2-Schedule Here’s what that looks like: It’s quite flexible as I can start my core-sleep any time between 10 pm – 1 am after adapting, and I can move around the naps a bit if I need to. According to what I’ve read, it’s also quite easy to adapt to, so since I pretty much already sleep-deprived myself and taught my body to get REM sleep during naps, I think the adaptation period for me will be quite short!

Nap Details

Day 2

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Sleep Time	Comments
1:02-1:30 am	Not sure if I actually fell asleep or not. If I did, I got 10 minutes of sleep or less.
2:50-3:20 am	Very hard to wake up and super tired after.
5:05-5:30 am	I’m not sure if I fell asleep or not.
6:44-9:30 am	Overslept by a ton and was super tired after waking up. Needed another nap to function after.
09:57-10:27 am	Was hoping this would get rid of my oversleep tiredness, but it didn’t work.
1:42-2:17 pm	Woke up somewhat tired, but was refreshed after moving around for 5 minutes.
5:54-6:26 pm	Tired before and after sleeping. However, after 5 minutes of being awake, I felt good!

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Day 3

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Sleep Time	Comments
12:00-12:30 am	Didn’t sleep for most of it. Probably only got light sleep, but still felt rested after.
5:06-8:50	Another oversleep. Exhausted and Rocket League didn’t wake me up. I turned off my alarm at 30 minutes during zombie mode.
9:35-10:02	I felt a bit better after the nap, but still exhausted. I wanted to stop this whole experiment right here, but somehow I plowed through.
4:20-4:45	Took a while to fall asleep, but had an extremely vivid dream that I woke myself up from. 100% rested after with no drowsiness.

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Day 4 – First Day of Everyman

Today was my first official day of everyman 2 and I think it went quite well. I definitely wasn’t 100% today, but I’m still adapting and I will change up my schedule depending on when my body gets tired during the day. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLWqtPvwBc” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Quick Summary:

Sleep attempted: 350 minutes/4 cycles Sleep achieved: 320 minutes/4 cycles My first day didn’t go too bad, although I accidentally set the core sleep alarm for 5 hours after instead of 4.5. After almost every nap getting up was hard, and I felt exhausted, but after a couple minutes I felt better. I also napped outside of my room for the very first time since the start of the experiment. It didn’t feel as good as the bed, but I have to practice the skill of falling asleep in unfamiliar places if I want to succeed with it.

Detailed Info:

This is how I planned on sleeping:	And this is how I actually slept:

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Nap Details

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Sleep Time	Comments
11:30-4:30 am	Woke up and felt a bit groggy. The walk to the bathroom got me to clarity and I woke up during the first alarm!
10:20-10:45 pm	Napped outside of my room for the first time since the start of this experiment. I’m not sure if I fell asleep or not. Didn’t want to get up as always, but I managed to do it.
4:30-4:55 pm	Somewhat slept. Didn’t want to get up, but felt more awake overall.

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Days 5 – 8.5

While days 5-8 weren’t very similar to each other, they also weren’t very different. 5 and 6 were tough adaptation days, but 7 and 8 were easier, non-sleepy post-adaptation ones. All in all, I think I’m done adapting to Everyman 2, and I’m excited to see what I can do with the extra awake time. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1T8-rMFkw0″ _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Quick Summary:

I never overslept, so the sleep attempted and the sleep gotten should be very close to each other. Of course I had naps where I’m not sure if I fully slept for all of them, but overall I probably got 290-300 minutes of sleep out of 310 possible minutes in every 24 hour period. (I wanted to say night, but it’s not really a night.) My overall state is at pretty much 100% of my monophasic capacity. Days 5-6 I oscillated between 20% and 90%, but days 7 and 8 were a steady 85%-100%. I’ve been fighting off a cold, and many times I feel worse before sleeping, but wake up fully healthy so obviously my body recovers during my naps. I think I’m fully adapted, and I even did some heavy weightlifting on the morning of day 8, which I wouldn’t do if I didn’t feel great. Schedule wise the time between 4:30 am and 7 am is amazing. I’m not sure if I feel great because I’m awake when I know most people are sleeping or for a different reason, but I don’t care as long as it stays this way. The time between naps is enough for me to feel tired before them, but I think I can move them around a bit if I can’t sleep for whatever reason.

Detailed Info:

Everyman-2-Schedule This shows how I planned on sleeping, and so far I’ve been following it pretty closely. I moved my core sleep to start at around 12:00-12:30 and shortened my naps to 20 minutes, but I’ve kept it consistent every day since then. I haven’t had any oversleeps yet, and I doubt that I will because I have at least 6 alarms set for each nap and core sleep, and I have to solve a math problem to turn off one of them. I switched from a 25 to a 20 minute nap based on GeneralNguyen’s recommendation on reddit and naps feel better now. It’s weird as I’m used to thinking longer sleep = better, but that’s not the case here.

Nap Details

Day 5

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Sleep Time	Comments
12:00-4:30 am	Woke up in the middle of it, went to the bathroom, and then went back to sleep. Ideally I wouldn’t wake up at all, but I should still continue the same sleep type after going to bed as 5 minutes isn’t enough to “reset” it.
11:20-11:45	The weird heavy-head feeling and dream awareness were back again. This time when I switched from the dream to the real world my head still felt heavy and I felt as if I was falling through and into my pillow.
4:25-4:50	Didn’t sleep too much, but I definitely fell asleep for a while. Doesn’t matter too much though because I feel well-rested either way!

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Day 6

Sleep Time	Comments
12:05-4:35 am	Getting up was really hard, but felt good after 10 minutes of awake time.
5:35	It was near impossible to stay awake at this point. I was tired up until 8 and after that I was fine. I did Ninjutsu the day before which isn’t that much physical activity so I doubt that’s what affected me.
9:30-10:00	Had a weird near-lucid dream. I knew I was sleeping, but every time I tried to control the dream, the “scene” that I was in switched. Watch the video above to get a recap of my dream!
4:25-4:45	My first time shortening the nap to 20 minutes during Everyman. Felt sick and exhausted before, but felt awake and healthy after. If this is what all naps are supposed to feel like then I’m 100% sold on this!

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Day 7

Sleep Time	Comments
1:13-5:43	I went to sleep late as I wanted to wait until I was actually tired. Also, before sleeping I wrote a non-sense phrase in the diary and I don’t remember writing it. I woke up at about 3 and went to the bathroom thinking that my time was up. I felt incredibly awake, sat down at my computer, realized that I still had 1.5 hours of sleep left and promptly went back to sleep. I wonder if my sleep cycle is around 1:47?
10:10-10:31	Amazing nap. I was in a public place, but still felt great!
4:45-5:06	Slept for about half of it, but still felt well-rested after.

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Day 8

Sleep Time	Comments
1:15-4:45	It was hard to wake up, but not too bad overall. I woke up halfway through the night again feeling like I was done with my core.
10:20-10:41	Not sure if I fell asleep during the nap or not. I definitely feel more rested, but I was a bit sick before the nap and that didn’t change after it.
4:30-4:51	Not sure if I slept, but felt great after!

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Day 9 & 10

Isn’t it great when you think you’re fully adapted and then end up oversleeping 2 days in a row? I didn’t oversleep by THAT much which is good, but it’s still a setback. I’ll have to figure out what caused it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I also jumped off the bed and scratched the skin and bruised the ribs on my left side (there’s a 2 inch red scratch). It hurt a ton when it happened, and it still hurts to move in a certain way, but my body’s healing processes are surprisingly efficient for how sleep deprived I am. The scratch nearly fully healed in 2 days, and it was BIG. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiE-4utHoTU” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Quick Summary:

I overslept my afternoon nap by 100 minutes on day 9, and somewhat overslept my morning nap on day 10. For the afternoon nap I woke up, turned off my alarm, and went back to bed for “one more minute with my eyes closed.” That didn’t really work too well. I need to get up when I turn off my alarm. For day 10 I woke up at the end of my nap at 10:00 (I shifted it almost an hour earlier) and then laid there in bed. I don’t think I fell asleep as I was talking to my girlfriend, but there might’ve been a couple of micronaps in there somewhere.

Detailed Info:

I haven’t been following my planned sleeping pattern as closely as I should’ve been and I paid the price for it. My core jumps around between 12:00-1:30, and my naps moved around by plus or minus 10 minutes every day, but on day 9 I took my nap nearly an hour too early. That’s not highly recommended even after you’re adjusted, so I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea at the time. I guess I was just tired and wanted to sleep. The 20 minute naps definitely feel better, but I won’t be able to fully adapt until I keep them consistent for at least a couple weeks. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Nap Details

Day 9

Sleep Time	Comments
12:20-4:50 am	Went to bed feeling sick, but woke up quickly and didn’t feel sick at all.
10:10-10:31 am	Didn’t sleep too bad, but it wasn’t great either. Not as rested as I was yesterday or the day before.
4:20-6:00 pm	Overslept by 80 minutes. This isn’t too terrible as it was pretty much an additional short core and not a 5 hour “nap.” Still a setback though.

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Day 10

Sleep Time	Comments
1:00-5:30 am	Fairly easy to wake up and I was very awake after. My girlfriend woke up and went to the bathroom right before though so that could’ve primed me to wake up.
9:40-10:00	Slept for 20 minutes, but didn’t want to wake up after at all so I stayed in bed and talked to my girlfriend. I didn’t fall asleep again, but there could’ve been a couple micronaps here and there.
3:30-3:51	Felt rejuvenated after the nap, but didn’t sleep that well during it.

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Day 11

Getting back into it after oversleeping even for a bit was surprisingly hard. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t terrible, but I thought it would be easier since I only overslept by 80 or so minutes. Of course the fact that I was moving around naps and my core sleep around daily doesn’t help, but I still thought it wouldn’t be that bad. I’m going to stick to today’s schedule for at least 1-2 weeks and see how I feel. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMhZWHajiDM” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Detailed Info:

I overslept on days 9-10, so now I’m paying back for that. Today wasn’t too bad overall, but it was definitely a step back from how I felt on days 7 and 8. I felt better than I had on monophasic sleep, so I thought I was already adapted, but I was obviously wrong. PureDoxyk-Ubersleep-Book I also bought the Ubersleep book by PureDoxyk. She’s been doing polyphasic sleeping for nearly 12 years at this point, and she’s the one that restarted the Ubersleep movement. (I think) Her book is full of useful info and I recommend reading it before you jump into any type of polyphasic sleep. It’s expensive at $10 for the eBook version, but it’s definitely worth it. Think about this: if you could pay $10 now to have an extra 1-2 hours of awake time per day, could you make that $10 back somehow? I think you could. Anyway, her book showed me what I was doing wrong and what I need to fix to successfully adapt. She also describes how you know whether or not you’re done with adaptation which is something I’ve been wondering for a while now. Basically the key is keeping all of the sleeping times the same for at least 2 weeks so your body can adjust, but ideally you’d keep them exactly the same for at least a month. After that you can start moving them around a bit if you’re doing Everyman. Uberman isn’t that flexible, which is exactly why I’m not doing it. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Day 11

Sleep Time	Comments
12:20-4:50 am	Hard to wake up but I felt good after walking to the bathroom.
10:16-10:37	I slept, but I don’t think I was in REM. I could still hear noises in the background from time to time so I was probably in light sleep. Still felt rested after though!
4:30-4:51	I slept in a fairly loud place and I was missing one of my earbuds so I wasn’t as shielded from sound as usually. I think I still fell into light sleep as it didn’t feel like 20 minutes passed before I had to get up.

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The End of Polyphasic Sleep

After 22 days trying to do polyphasic sleep I have to stop. I’d like to apologize for the lack of text updates starting on day 11. I tracked my sleep, but I didn’t have time to publish the posts on the site. I ended up simply posting the videos on YouTube, and since I’m writing this nearly a month after the experiment ended, I feel that writing out the detailed posts now would not be a good idea. However, I can talk a bit about why I’m done with polyphasic sleep for now, and why I will try again later. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-mb_fZsFTM” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.51″]

Why did I stop?

Days 20 and 21 were hell. I was exhausted, I wanted to sleep, and all of my previous “adaptation” seemed to flow out the window. Even going to sleep didn’t feel good as it felt as if my body forgot how to sleep. Since Everyman adaptation isn’t supposed to be this rough I decided to stop. I thought that my brain was working somewhat well during this adaptation period since I managed to get a good grade on my math exam, but once I got enough sleep I realized what I was missing. I was able to get math concepts nearly two times faster than when I was “adapting” to polyphasic sleep. However, I still think that polysleep might be a viable strategy that you can adapt to, but only if you do the adaptation correctly.

Why I will try again

While this experiment wasn’t successful, I’ve had some amazing naps that showed that there might be something to this whole polyphasic sleep idea. I want to try again later, but I’m going to take a less extreme and more scientific approach to it. I will establish a baseline for my quality of sleep and amount of REM, light sleep, and SWS using a couple of fancy sleep tracking gadgets. Then I will once again try adapting to Everyman 2 or the Biphasic sleep schedule, but this time I will do it right. I will pick a sleep schedule that works with my Circadian rhythm, and I will go to sleep at the same time every day for at least 2 weeks. During this time I will track as much of my sleep as possible using my sleep tracking devices, and I will see how the quality and amount of my sleep changes. I think this is something that shouldn’t be thrown out simply because it didn’t work once. The appeal of sleeping less and doing more is quite high, and I want a definitive answer before throwing this idea to the curb. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_comments admin_label=”Comments” _builder_version=”3.0.51″ /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

June 2017 Income Report and Plans

June-Income-Report This is my 28th income report for this blog.

Every month I publish a post like this showing:

how much money I made
what I worked on
and what my plans are for the future.

These reports will help me keep myself accountable, and hopefully I can help you figure out how you can make money online.

What I Did in June

I spent a lot of time reading, thinking, and writing in June.

However, it wasn’t all introspection and no action. I accomplished a lot of biz stuff also!

Online I:

Sold my BAB site for $20,000!
Published 4 posts on this blog:
- How I almost went to the dark side of making money online
- My journey from zero to hero with a new Amazon affiliate site
- The complete review of a course creation platform Teachery
- And the May income report roundup
Did 2 site redesigns for a couple businesses for free. This gave me enough confidence to start contacting local businesses with the goal of charging them, but I put this on hold until after I come back from my vacation.
Wrote a couple of guest posts for WHQ.
Bought content on Upwork for a couple sites and bought links for WHQ. This is my last hurrah for this site. If the new content, links, and guest posts don’t bring it back from life I will hold it for a couple months and then sell it off to recoup some of my expenses.
Wrote 15,000 words for EG.

Offline I:

Got my wisdom teeth removed. Ouch!
Read tons of great books. The ones that made me think the most were:
- Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone
- The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss (A reread of some parts.)
- The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris (My 3rd reread of this book.)

Plans For June

I have grandiose plans for this site and my brand, but you’ll have to wait until next month to see what they are. 😉

I’ll be using the 10x principles and starting a completely new venture that I know will be successful.

I’m going on vacation for 1 week, so after I come back I will be rejuvenated and extremely ready to do the work.

Technically I don’t need a “vacation” in the way that most people view it as I’m pumped and ready to work every day for 10+ hours per day, but this is a pre-planned thing and I get to see my girlfriend who I haven’t seen in 2 months so I will be completely present in the moment and dedicating my time to her and her family. 🙂 Complete presence in whatever you do is a must!

Website Traffic

Traffic is a bit higher due to people sharing my income report roundups on social media and blog comments.

OnlineMoneyz-June-Traffic

Amazon Affiliate Websites Traffic

This section is for those interested in my Amazon affiliate sites.

Most of my income is from Amazon, so I thought you might be interested in seeing how much traffic I get on my biggest sites and how much money they make. (I used to have another site here, until I sold it for $20,000)

WHQ is a site that I removed from this section previously, but I’m bringing it back now as it will make a comeback soon.

It made $73.59 in June compared to $60.6 in May.

This is due to my obvious drop in traffic and rankings, but my VA and I are working hard on re-ranking the site and adding content to it.

WHQ-June-Traffic

Income Report

Here are the numbers that everyone loves to see!
Revenue:

Amazon Affiliate- $425.68 Solid income for an “off” month. If only WHQ was actually making real money…
Content Samurai– $700.8 My first $700+ month. Glad to see this number increasing and not decreasing. I’m quite used to this stream of hands-off income.
Website Sales- $17,000 I sold BAB for $20,000 and since EmpireFlippers takes a 15% cut, I received $17,000 straight into my bank account. Not a bad payout for only a couple hours of work per month!
Total- $18,126.48 Nearly 10x higher than my previous highest month. Next couple months won’t be anywhere near this high, but eventually I will get to a steady stream of income at this level.

Expenses:

SerpLab- $5 Keyword tracking.
Domains- $21.74 2 renewals on Namecheap.
SEO- $637.75 Bought a “guest post” and a couple of PBN links.
Upwork- $13.87 Content for WHQ.
VA- $640 High expenses month for me.
Other- $398.52 Spent some money on Divi, some money on a Skype number and unlimited US calling, and some money on VideoScribe for whiteboard videos. Can anyone guess what my next project will be? Let me know in the comments below! 🙂
Total- $1,716.87 I allowed myself to spend more on business as I designated some of my money from the BAB sale to go into the business. Next month expenses will also be pretty high, but I’ll see if I can minimize them in August.

Total Profit: $16,409.61

That’s a ton of profit for one month! Most of it is going towards living expenses and taxes for the next school year, but as you can see I’ve already spent some of it on business.

Now if only I could get to a steady $15,000 per month without having to sell my websites. 😉

The Complete Teachery Review – Last Updated August 2017

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Teachery Review I would like to give two disclaimers before I start this review:

I’m a member of the BuyOutFuture program offered by Jason and Caroline, so I got Teachery for free. I also get an insider’s perspective to how Jason thinks, how he treats his customers, and how hard he works to make great products, so while I will do my best to provide a non-biased review, it’s hard to do that when you know so much about him.
I am an affiliate for Teachery. If you make a purchase through my links, I will get % of your purchase at no extra cost to you. You don’t have to use my links. I won’t be hurt at all. However, please let me know how I can make this review better and contact me if you have any questions about Teachery and I’ll do my best to answer them!

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Rating

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Ease of Use – 10/10

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Value for the Price – 8/10

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Quality of Support – 10/10

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Number of Features – 6.5/10

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Quick Review

Teachery doesn’t host videos for you or have as many advanced features as Teachable or Udemy, but they’re not aiming to compete with those companies.

Their goal is to offer a simple, no hidden fees way of creating online courses while creating a great customer experience.

Simplicity and great user experience is key for them, so if you’re looking for course-creation software with hundreds of bells and whistles, it’s not for you.

However, if you’re looking for a quick way to get your course up and running and a support team that will run through walls to help you, Teachery is for you.

8.6/10

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The Price

They have a free 14 day trial, so you can check the platform out before shelling out your hard-earned money.

There are three pricing options and all of them give you access to the same exact features.

$49 per month– Great if you don’t want to pay a lump sump right away. However, if you like the platform after the free trial, I recommend doing the $470/year plan to save money. After all, if you create a course on the platform, you wouldn’t want to stop paying and take away your student’s access to it! This would only work if you move the course somewhere else, but if you start on Teachery and like it, you’ll probably use it for all of your courses.
$470 per year – This saves you 20% every year over the $49/month plan. I recommend starting with this one unless you have the money for the lifetime plan and are sure that you’ll stay with Teachery for a long time.
$900 for life– Get access to everything Teachery has to offer forever. Pick this one if you’re planning on using Teachery for more than 2 years!

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What makes Teachery unique and why you would want to use it 🙂

They have no transaction fees on their platform. You’ll still have to suffer through Stripe’s 2.9% + $.29 per transaction fee, but that’s it.
You can create an unlimited number of courses and lessons and have an unlimited number of students with all of their plans. Want to create 1,000 courses with 1 video each? Go ahead! You’ve created an amazing course that gets 1,000,000 paying customers? AWESOME! You don’t have to pay $$ for every student that joins because it’s all included.
Their customer service is amazing. They’re happy to help you with any question you might have, and Jason still answers customer questions all the time. (His attitude is so very awesome and contagious.)
Their team cares about the success of their customers. They’ll tell you if Teachery isn’t the right platform for you and they won’t try to squeeze every single dollar out of you. (That’s why there’s no transaction fees!)
Their simple setup lets you create courses quickly without getting bogged down in details and tech problems.
Their free trial requires no credit card details.
A doze of fun when you’re working on your course at 4 in the morning and want to tear your hair out. (You’ll see what I’m talking about in a bit.)

Why you might not want to use Teachery 🙁

They don’t host your videos, images, or presentations. (Except for your logo/header images.)
Only 2 available themes. You can customize the themes they provide however much you want, but they only have 2 of them so far.
Mail integration with MailChimp or Convertkit only.
You have to use Disqus for student discussion and comments.
Student’s can’t upload materials or answer questions unless you embed OfCourseBooks or something similar, but that costs extra.

The Complete Review

The above should give you some general info about Teachery, but if you’re like me and want to know everything before buying, the below info should help you. 🙂

Here’s a video review of those who prefer that over text:

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The Home Page

When you first login you’ll be greeted by three buttons that ask you to “Create a Course,” watch the Teachery intro video, or create an outline.

On the right of that you’ll see your created courses and total course revenue once you actually have a live course.

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If you’ve purchased any courses through Teachery, you can scroll down to find them.

Here are a couple example courses I own that were created with Teachery!

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Creating an Outline

If you’re struggling with outlining your own course, Teachery can help.

It won’t help you outline your entire course, but it’ll help you get started which is often the hardest part.

I love the grayed out button once you’re done and the message that comes up when you save the course.

Simple enough, put in a name:

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Also pretty easy. Just a quick description and that’s it.

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Only 3 topics? Sure, I can do that!

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Hmmmm, I have to explain things now? Oh well, they said “I’m not etching it in stone,” so I don’t have to worry about it too much!

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Rinse and repeat.

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Rinse and repeat. Some motivational words for ya.

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The grayed out button doesn’t work and gives you a boost of motivation to continue.

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Wow, that was easy!

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Thanks for reminding me to go get groceries! :/

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The Main Page

This is you base of operations for editing the course.

Here you can change the course font, change the front page of the course, and set the drip schedule for the course.

On the left you have your trusty dashboard that will follow you around the site hoping that you click it and do something.

Teachery uses a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) which makes editing how your course looks a breeze.

However, they only have two themes and you can change the colors of your course, but now the positioning or other parts of it.

You can edit more colors for the default theme, but it’s definitely a bit more busy and “older” looking. The minimal theme is very sleek and modern, but you also have less color editing options.

The Default theme:

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The Minimal Theme:

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Here’s what editing the main page looks like.

As you can see, you can upload a logo (this is one of the only things they let you upload), remove or add an intro, remove or add a get started section, change the text in all the fields, upload your profile picture, and change how the lesson view looks.

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Here’s an example of the grid lesson view:

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And here’s an example of the stacked lesson view:

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You can set the course to start on a specific date using the drip schedule feature, but if you want each lesson to start a certain time after someone buys a course you’ll have to go to the lesson section.

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The Lesson Section

This is where you’ll add content to your course and change your lesson names and materials.

You can add lessons:

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And you can add sublessons:

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You can also edit both lessons, and sublessons in the same exact way:

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As you can see, you can edit the title, add video, audio, or whatever other embed code content you would like to add, add a transcript, comments (using Disqus) and remove the lesson completed button.

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You can also sort the lessons and put them in order. My biggest annoyance here is that it only shows “lesson 1, lesson 2, etc…” so you don’t actually know which lessons you’re sorting if you want to keep the titles of your lessons numbered.

If you name them simply “How to Be a Cat,” that’s how they’ll look in the lesson dashboard, so then it looks a bit weird.

Of course, can always title them “Lesson 1- How to Be a Cat” or “1. How to Be a Cat,” but I feel like that’s a work-around and not a good solution.

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Here’s what it looks like when you add a YouTube video to the lesson content section. As you can see, there’s also a caption and you can add more videos per lesson if you want. From what I could tell, there was no maximum.

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You can also add a drip schedule so each lesson opens up at a different time.

This is useful if you want people to do something every day without looking ahead, or if you want to limit their access to the entire course for whatever reason.

Here’s what adding a drip feed looks like:

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Look at the sidebar on the left and you’ll see that lesson 1.5 is locked for 1 day, and lesson 2 is locked for 4 days from the start of the course.

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Landing Pages

You can create as many landing pages as you want, but there’s only one template.

Their info page states that they plan on adding more templates later, but I’m not sure if that’s in the works or not.

For now, you can just assume that there’s one template and that’s it!

Adding a landing page:

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Oh no, am I getting Rick Rolled?

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Never would’ve expected this, would ya?

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Here’s what the completely collapses landing page looks like:

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As you can see, you’re pretty limited by what you can add, but if you like your landing pages super long, you can add as much content as you want to the “main body” part.

Payment Pages

You can also create unlimited payment pages.

This is what a payment page looks like:

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As you can see it’s pretty standard.

When adding a recurrent payment you can edit the price, the duration, and the frequency.

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If you create a recurring order, this is what it looks like:

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Promo Codes

You can add an unlimited number of promo codes.

They can be a percent discount or a dollar amount discount.

You can also limit the number of uses for each code and set an expiration date if you’re having a limited time sale.

Here’s what adding a promo code looks like:

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And here’s a page with a couple promo codes listed.

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Course Emails

You can send out a welcome email, a course completed email, and a “recurring payment failed” email.

You can edit them however you want, and they don’t require you to integrate with MailChimp or a ConvertKit.

Here’s what the welcome email looks like:

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Here’s the course completed email:

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And here’s the recurring payment email!

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Course Styling

You can style your course and make it look as beautiful or as ugly as you’d like it to be. 😉

There are different styles for the landing page, the overview, the lesson pages, and the payment pages.

Landing Page Styles

You can edit the color of every part of the landing page.

Look at how beautiful I made mine! 😉

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Here’s the “masthead” edits.

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The general content edits:

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The author edits:

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The lesson edits:

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And the pricing package edits:

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Overview Styles

This is what the main page of your course looks like.

There’s a lot of stuff to edit here color-wise, and it can actually be a bit confusing as to what changes what.

General edits:

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Welcome edits:

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Sidebar edits:

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Intro edits:

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Lessons edits:

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Lesson Styles

When editing lessons you can change the intro, sidebar, transcript, and sub-lesson colors, but I only showed the intro picture below because the rest is the same as the overview page edits.

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Payment Page Styles

Just like everywhere else, you can edit the view of the payment page to your heart’s content!

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General Settings

There’s also a general settings page where you can edit your course name, our default template, your comment theme, default course page, and add a custom homepage URL.

You can add a body tag tracking code, a G analytics code, and also delete the course if you’re unhappy with it.

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The Final Verdict

While Teachery definitely isn’t the most powerful course creation platform out there, it’s simplicity and ease of use is welcome over other bulky products.

However, if you like having a bunch of extra features and don’t care about getting great support from the founder of the tool, then Teachery probably isn’t for you.

All in all, I have a lifetime plan with them already, so I’ll create a couple courses on their platform and move on if I don’t like it. However, I’m about halfway done with one of my courses right now, and I’m enjoying using Teachery.

I’ve previously tried creating courses for Udemy, but they’ve always been incredibly inconsistent and picky.

It’s nice to have control for a change.

​How to create something lasting

How to position, package, and perfect your work

How to market it

How to build a lasting audience

What is Polyphasic sleep?

What is SPAMAYL?

Why am I trying this out?

My plan and DAY 0 LOG

Day 1

Quick Summary:

​Detailed Info:

Nap Details

Days 2 & 3

Quick Summary:

Day 2:​

Day 3:​

The Dream:

​Detailed Info:

Switching Schedules

Nap Details

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4 – First Day of Everyman

Quick Summary:

​Detailed Info:

Nap Details

Days 5 – 8.5

Quick Summary:

​Detailed Info:

Nap Details

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9 & 10

Quick Summary:

​Detailed Info:

Nap Details

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

​Detailed Info:

Day 11

The End of Polyphasic Sleep

Why did I stop?

Why I will try again

What I Did in June

Plans For June

Website Traffic

Amazon Affiliate Websites Traffic

Income Report

Rating

Quick Review

The Price

What makes Teachery unique and why you would want to use it 🙂

Why you might not want to use Teachery 🙁

The Complete Review

The Home Page

Creating an Outline

The Main Page

The Lesson Section

Landing Pages

Payment Pages

Promo Codes

Course Emails

Course Styling

Landing Page Styles

Overview Styles

Lesson Styles

Payment Page Styles

General Settings

The Final Verdict

How to create something lasting

Detailed Info:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Detailed Info:

Detailed Info:

Detailed Info:

Detailed Info:

Detailed Info: