Have you ever struggled to motivate yourself to wake up everyday? A lot of us fall into this robotic routine: wake up, go to work, sleep, and repeat five days a week. Then comes the weekend—we enjoy it, only to dread Monday’s arrival again.

We repeat this cycle for years. Our pay increases, and so do our expenses. Some of us get married, buy a car or a house, and maybe even have kids. Before long, you realize you can’t afford to “quit” the job you once loved because of hefty monthly commitments—car installments, mortgage payments, insurance, and other big-ticket items split into monthly repayments.

You start complaining about your job, your boss, or comparing yourself to high-performing peers. Sometimes you wonder, “I was smarter than person X in school. How come they’re doing what they love and earning a good living?” At least, that’s what their social media shows.

To be honest, as I write this, I still struggle to wake up every day and find what truly motivates me in life. I know this is something I need to figure out, so I try to read non-fiction books for inspiration. Let me share a great tip that I learned from a book I read recently.

A Simple Exercise

I learned this simple exercise from a book called Will It Fly? by Pat Flynn. This book teaches us how to validate a business idea before fully committing to it.

The thing is, in this society—especially when we’re young—we’re always taught by our parents that:

If you work hard, you will get what you deserve.

While there’s some truth to that, it’s not always the case.

Personally, I agree that working hard is the bare minimum for success, but you need to work hard on the right things. For example, let’s say you have a full-time job and come up with a brilliant idea while showering one day. You then dedicate all your free time and spare cash to it, but six months later (if you’re persistent enough), you realize that it’s “not working.” Then, you quit and move on to the next idea. After repeating this a few times, you might start labeling yourself as “someone who can’t do business.”

Of course, I’d say this is still a relatively “mild” example because, even if you try and fail, you still have your full-time job income to fall back on if things don’t go your way.

Now imagine you quit your job and dedicate all your time and savings to your “big idea” for 1–2 years. Unfortunately, after 1–2 years of grinding, you discover that it was a product that only you would buy.

This is where this book comes in to help avoid such situations. But today, I’m not here to promote the book. Instead, I want to share one of its exercises that I found transformational: The Airport Test.

The Airport Test

The key idea is pretty simple. Imagine it’s five years from now, and you’re at an airport. You bump into an old friend, and they casually ask you:

How have you been?

Your response is:

Amazing! Life couldn’t be better!

And when you say this, you truly MEAN it—not just trying to impress your friend.

Now ask yourself:

1. What makes you say that?

2. What would need to happen for you to feel that way?

If you’re feeling a bit lost now or think your life could be better, this exercise can help you figure out what really matters.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Grab a piece of blank A4 paper or use the template I’ve made for you here.

2. Divide the paper into four quadrants. What do you put in each quadrant? You can write about the things that matter most to you! For example, I labeled mine as Family, Professional, Health, and Wealth. Yours might be different.

3. In each quadrant, list what would make you say, “Life couldn’t be better.” For example, under Family, I wrote:

   • Lunch/dinner once a week with my parents and siblings

   • Quality time with my wife every evening

   • If I have kids, attending all their events and witnessing their growth

   • Annual family trips

   Write down everything that comes to mind, even if it feels unrealistic right now.

4. Repeat for the other quadrants. This will help you identify what you value most.

5. Take a picture of the paper with your phone. Store it somewhere safe or stick it in a private place where you’ll see it every day.

Reverse Engineer Your Goals

Once you’re done (I really hope you do this immediately after reading the article instead of thinking):

Nah, I’ll do it later when I have time-you know how that will end...

Ask yourself:

1. If I keep doing what I’m doing now, will I realistically achieve these goals in five years?

2. What changes do I have to make to get there?

This simple exercise will help uncover what you truly want and guide you toward doing work that matters the most. At the end of the day, we all want to wake up motivated every day to do what we love! I hope this exercise helps you to figure out what to focus in your life. If you find it helpful, feel free to drop your comments or reply to this email—I read every reply.

P.S. If you are considering to start a YouTube channel or are already making videos, I'm offering a free PDF whereby I share the essential tools I use to create my videos efficiently. Just fill out a short survey on my website to help me tailor content that truly matters to my audience—including you—and you'll receive the free PDF instantly!

Find out more here today

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Prefer listening? Feel free to enjoy the audio version of this article by clicking the play button below, or continue reading below.

Struggling to complete the New Year’s resolution you set back in January 2024, or a goal you set 2-3 months ago? Feeling like the world is against you as you work hard, but discipline and procrastination always get in the way? I’ve been there and still find myself stuck sometimes. Today, I’ll share what I do to increase the chances of completing any personal project or goal I set.

Set a Tangible Goal

Many of us start with vague goals. For example, you might say,

Does it mean having a house with a swimming pool, driving the latest sports car, or not having to work anymore? A better approach is to define your perfect lifestyle and calculate the monthly commitment it would require.

For instance, if being rich means spending time with your family without financial stress, driving a Tesla, owning a house with lots of greenery, and ensuring your children have a good education, you can estimate that this might cost 10,000 USD a month or 120,000 USD a year. Using a conservative 4% yearly yield (which is achievable with many funds), you’d need 3 million USD. With 3 million USD invested, you could generate that 4% and retire immediately.

This approach highlights the importance of setting a tangible goal. If your current actions won’t generate 3 million USD in 5 years, your chances of achieving that goal are slim.

Instead, let’s set a more realistic, shorter-term goal, like hitting 50,000 USD in revenue in 3 months.

Write it down and stick it somewhere you’ll see it every day—on your phone screen, whiteboard, or mirror. Now, let’s move on to the next step.

Set a Realistic Weekly Goal

Have you ever been busy all week but felt like nothing got done? It’s easy to fill our time with low-priority tasks to feel productive, but this won’t help you achieve your goals. Instead of staying busy from Monday to Sunday, spend 1-2 hours crafting a realistic weekly goal.

You don’t need fancy tools—simple apps like Notion work well. Write down what you want to achieve by the end of the week, considering your available time. For example, if you work a full-time job and want to produce a YouTube video each week, you might have 30 hours available (15 hours during the weekdays and 15 on the weekend). Ask yourself, “What can I realistically accomplish in 30 hours? Market research, scripting, recording, editing, uploading? Is it feasible to do it all in one week? Can I outsource some tasks if my budget allows?”

Set a few checklists under your weekly plan, balancing 1-2 big goals with smaller ones.

For example, uploading one YouTube video might be your big goal, with smaller tasks like going to the gym three times a week. Push yourself slightly out of your comfort zone, but stay realistic.

Setting a goal of uploading seven long-form videos in one week isn’t realistic unless you work 24/7.

Set a Daily Goal

Once your weekly goal is set, break it down into daily goals.

This approach helps you stay relaxed and avoid feeling overwhelmed. With weekly and daily goals in place, you can enjoy your downtime guilt-free. Whether it’s binge-watching your favorite Netflix series, playing games, or reading a book, as long as you’ve hit your daily or weekly goal, you’ve earned it.

Summary

I hope today’s insights give you ideas to help you achieve your goals. Drop your goal in the comments—I’d definitely love to hear about it! And a big thank you to everyone who has subscribed to my YouTube channel. Since my last story, I’ve posted three more videos, and my subscribers have grown from 3 to about 1,500 now, I’m truly grateful for your support.

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Software Used

• Data Generation: https://chatgpt.com

• Video Generation: https://www.canva.com

• YouTube Scheduling: https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=cmyong

ChatGPT Prompts

Generate data

Generate 10 sets of intriguing and thought-provoking facts based on the style of the examples given. Arrange these facts in a table with six columns: Question, Fact 1, Fact 2, Fact 3, Fact 4, and Fact 5. Make sure each fact is unique and does not repeat. The focus will be on dating facts. Each set should start with a question and be followed by five different facts. Use simple language that anyone can understand, suitable for a reading level below grade 7. Here are three examples:

5 clear signs someone likes you a lot
Fact 1: 1. They subtly touch you...
Fact 2: 2. Their eyebrows raise suddenly at you...
Fact 3: 3. They lean towards you often, sit next to you, and remove barriers between you...
Fact 4: 4. They ask about you and want to know more about you...
Fact 5: 5. They smile a lot around you and try to make you smile...

5 signs he like you (School Edition)
Fact 1: 1. He fixes his hair a lot...
Fact 2: 2. Waits for you to leave class first so he can walk behind you...
Fact 3: 3. He stares when you aren't looking...
Fact 4: 4. Looks at you when you walk into class or when he walks in...
Fact 5: 5. He teases you when getting told off by the teacher.

5 Dangerous words used by girls when she's angry (Boys take note)
Fact 1: 1. I'm fine...
Fact 2: 2. Your wish...
Fact 3: 3. Please shut up...
Fact 4: 4. I don't care...
Fact 5: 5. Leave me alone.

Regenerate data

Generate 10 more using the same specifications, make sure you don't repeat previous ones.

Make

Sign up your free account here

Initial Population Workflow

Download here

Sample Json

Download here

YouTube Scheduling Workflow

Download here

Resources

1. YouTube Shorts monetization policies

2. Connecting to Google services using custom OAuth client

3. YouTube Shorts Safe Zone

   Subscribe to my newsletter where I share things that inspire me!

   
   

1. Go to https://github.com/KwaiVGI/LivePortrait

2. Click on Code and then download Zip

1. Then create a folder called e.g. LivePortrait in place like Desktop or Documents. Then, copy all the content of the downloaded files into this folder

Step 2 - Download pretrained weights

1. Go to this link based on the Google Drive link below in https://github.com/KwaiVGI/LivePortrait

1. Download both folder into your local computer

3. Go to the LivePortrait folder you created in Step 1 and copy both of the folders into pretrained_weights folder

Step 3 - Create conda environment

We will create a Python conda environment to run the code. For those of you who does not now what conda environment is, you can just imagine that it’s a place for you to install all the dependencies/software required to run the LivePortrait software.

1. Install Miniconda from https://docs.anaconda.com/miniconda/#miniconda-latest-installer-links

2. Create conda environment, the environment will be created at the default directory of conda (e.g. /opt/miniconda3/envs/LivePortrait for macOS or C:\Users\<YourUsername>\Miniconda3\envs\LivePortrait for Windows)

# create env using conda
conda create -n LivePortrait python=3.9

1. Activate conda environment

conda activate LivePortrait

1. Navigate to the LivePortrait directory and install requirements in your conda environment

# for Linux and Windows users
pip install -r requirements.txt

# for macOS with Apple Silicon users
# Edit the requirements_macOS.txt to change the version of onnxruntime-silicon==1.16.3 to onnxruntime-silicon==1.16.0
cd /Users/chenming/Documents/LivePortrait
pip install -r requirements_macOS.txt

Step 4 - Install ffmpeg

macOS

1. Install homebrew at https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/releases/tag/4.3.12

1. Install ffmpeg using Terminal, just open the Terminal app

Open Terminal

# Install ffmpeg using brew
brew install ffmpeg

# Verify that ffmpeg is installed
ffmpeg

Windows

1. Install by following this step here: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/ffmpeg-windows

Step 5 - Open web interface

# For Linux and Windows users
cd C:\Users\chenming\Documents\LivePortrait
python app.py

# for macOS with Intel
cd /Users/chenming/Documents/LivePortrait
python app.py

# For macOS with Apple Silicon users
cd /Users/chenming/Documents/LivePortrait
PYTORCH_ENABLE_MPS_FALLBACK=1 python app.py

You should see something like this 👇

Open your web url at:

http://127.0.0.1:8890

Hello everyone, I have been procrastinating to start my newsletter for some time now and finally decided that it’s time for me to really start writing it. Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter even though I didn’t have any content initially. In this newsletter, I will share various things that I’m passionate about, and I hope you will be able to learn a thing or two from my writing. It’s gonna be pretty casual with what I think about various experiences that I go through. Some of my opinions might be wrong, so take them with a pinch of salt.

So here comes the question:

Story About Myself

If you had told me that I could sell my product to an audience from different parts of the world by just focusing on one social platform, which is YouTube, back in 2022, I would not have believed that. In 2024, I have a YouTube education channel that attracts paid students from different parts of the world through videos I posted almost two years ago.

Of course, before 2022, I had been trying to sell my knowledge on various platforms and got a mixture of results from these platforms.

For example, on one of the biggest teaching platforms, I started selling back in October 2021, and now in 2024, I have about 1300+ students who have learned from my online course. It’s been about 1000 days since I started publishing my program. So around 1 student per day, which I think is an encouraging feat.

Looking at the screenshot above, my program has actually helped students from different parts of the world. In general, I have an average rating of 4.5 for this program, which was created about 3 years ago.

Then you might be asking me, why not

Double down on the teaching platform and create more courses there?

I would say that it’s a viable strategy for certain creators but might not be applicable to everyone out there for reasons below. Of course, I’m not saying that you should not start from there at all, but I’m just giving my personal take on this.

1. First of all, you have no control over the pricing of the course. Well, you do have “control” over how much you want to charge for your course, but the platform will not promote your program if you decide not to opt into their marketing program. Basically, if you set your program pricing to be $100, the platform will adjust the pricing to what they deem suitable based on the audience from different parts of the world. And in most cases, it will be around $10, and you will only get a cut of this $10. If you decide not to opt into this program, it’s hard for your new program to stand out among thousands of courses out there. (Unless you have your own audience and supporters, you have no choice but to opt into their program.)

2. It’s hard to build a personal brand on these platforms. On the platform itself, your course is like a common commodity. A typical example would be like when you shop in your local shopping mart and want to purchase some tape. You will see a wide variety of tapes with similar pricing.

   

   You will tend to choose the one with lower pricing and good packaging. Of course, if you know it’s a reliable brand, you will tend to pick it as well as long as the price is not outrageously high. In general, big brands have the advantage of economies of scale, and their pricing tends to fall on the lower side as well. So here comes the issue: if you want people to purchase your course over other creators, you first have to have a big name (and in your case, it’s unlikely since you’re just starting out). Next, it’s a race to the bottom. You have to opt into the marketing program, and the platform will set your course to a competitive pricing they deem suitable.

With these 2 reasons above, it’s hard for you to replace your traditional job if you choose these learning platforms as your major income source. Of course, this is my own experience with one of the platforms out there, there might be other platforms who will offer you better growth. I would say that a viable strategy would be creating a teaser of your program on all these big teaching platforms and selling at a low price or even for free. Then you can get them to join your higher-priced program to improve your engagement.

Why YouTube Is Good Compared to Other Social Platforms?

Some of you might be asking me, there are platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, etc. out there. Why do you choose YouTube in particular?

1. Search intent of the audience: This is the first reason why I choose YouTube over other platforms. When you’re scrolling through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, or Facebook, you’re not actively looking for a solution. But on YouTube (the second biggest search engine in the world after Google), you’re actively seeking a solution to your problem in video form. So when you offer digital products, professional services like coaching, freelancing, affiliate marketing, paid memberships, physical products, and others on a platform like YouTube, customers will come to you automatically instead of you actively looking for customers!

2. Views from evergreen content are perpetual: The second thing about YouTube is as long as you’re creating evergreen content, you will continue to garner views across the years compared to platforms like Instagram/TikTok, where your content views tend to fall short after the initial burst period.

Why Starting a YouTube is Beneficial for Your Personal Growth

1. Improves presentation and copywriting skills: Regardless of your current status, whether you’re a student now, a full-time professional employee, a business owner or someone looking to explore the online world. This is the perfect place to train both your speaking skills in front of the camera as well as your ability to summarize what you learn in video form. Take note that when you’re creating any content on YouTube, you have to think that the audience doesn’t have the same background knowledge as you, so you will have to distill your knowledge in a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand format for them to absorb your content.

   

2. Opens up endless opportunities: Instead of serving your company, your local market, or your local neighborhood, you’re able to reach any population in the world. And when you’re able to impact millions, your path to earning millions is not far away.

3. Low Risk, High Return: Compared to starting a typical brick-and-mortar business whereby you have to spend thousands of dollars to rent/buy a place, purchase equipment, and hire staff before even earning your first penny, YouTube only requires you to have a camera to get started. In some cases, if you prefer to do a faceless YouTube channel, you will just need a decent mic to get started! If the channel gets to enter a flywheel mode, congratulations! If not, what you have risked is just your time and some opportunity cost. But along the way, you will have learned so many things that you wouldn’t be able to learn in a typical corporate/retail environment whereby your work tends to get repetitive after a while.

Ending Thoughts

I hope this encourages you to start a YouTube channel if you have been struggling to get started or are unsure whether this is the right thing to do.

Instead of spending time watching the latest Netflix series or mindlessly scrolling social platforms, why not be on the producer side this time around instead of being on the consumer side all your life?

You have to believe that your limit is endless, and abundant things will come to you as long as your videos are helping anyone in this world in any form. I have been interested in AI & business automation for a long time and have been using a lot of these tools in my current workflow. I decided to start a brand new YouTube channel from scratch here. You can subscribe to my channel if you wish and witness my growth together with me.

I only have 3 subscribers now, and my first video only has 20 views. But I believe that as long as I’m consistent and continue to provide value to my target audience, it should grow slowly. I also want to show you that overnight success is rare. It’s about being consistent and believing in yourself along the way.

If you have recently started a YouTube channel or own one now, feel free to drop your link in the comment section and write a short sentence about what your YouTube channel does. For example,

My YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@chenmingyong and I help people use AI to improve their lives.