I know a lot about nutrition now.

But that wasn’t always true.

For a long time, I was eating “healthy,” and it was actually what kept me stuck.

Today I will share these mistakes, because I know many of you are making them.

Solving these mistakes made me go from this to this:

(Yes, I just added the pictures to show my beautiful girlfriend).

If you’ve ever eaten what you thought was the right way and still felt tired, stuck, or like nothing was changing, you’ve probably made one of these same mistakes without realising it.

My “Healthy” Meal Was Actually Sabotaging Me

When I started working out, I didn’t know anything.

I didn’t know how the body worked.

I didn’t know which muscles a push-up even trained

But nutrition was the one thing I thought I knew.

I thought if I wanted to get into shape, I just had to eat healthy.

We grow up with a pretty simple idea for healthy eating.

Candy and sugar = bad, vegetables = good.

So naturally, my idea of a healthy meal became “if it has vegetables in it, it’s healthy.”

I can still remember me going to school with some carrots, cucumber and lettuce between two slices of bread.

And I thought I was doing great.

But I wasn’t.

My body needed calories.

It needed protein.

It needed more than some vegetables between bread.

Healthy eating only works when it actually gives your body what it needs.

That’s why you can eat healthy but still feel tired and make no progress.

You can eat all the granola in the world, but if you’re skipping what your body needs, it’s not healthy.

It just looks healthy.

I Was Eating "Right" and Still Exhausted

I was told I needed to bulk to gain muscle.

So I did.

Bulking means eating more calories than you burn, which also means gaining weight.

I trusted that advice (I actually wrote a full post about why that trust backfired), and after a while I was fat and needed to lose the weight again.

That mistake got tangled up with a second one.

I believed protein was the most important thing.

Protein is the building block of muscle, that part’s true, but I thought I needed way more of it than I actually did.

So I aimed for 180g a day.

That wasn’t hard while I was bulking.

But it became a problem once I started cutting.

To lose weight, I needed fewer calories overall, but I still stubbornly wanted my 180g of protein.

As my calories dropped, almost everything I ate went toward my protein.

My carbs got sacrificed.

I didn’t realise how much I needed them.

I was eating healthy, but I lost my energy, and I just blamed my exhaustion on being in a deficit.

Eventually I learned.

I started a normal amount of protein (around 120g, which is enough) and made sure I was actually eating enough carbs.

I had so much more energy.

Some people try to teach us that eating healthy means cutting carbs and avoiding fat.

But every macronutrient earns its place.

Skip carbs, and you’ll have no energy.

Skip fats, and your hormones won’t work the way they should.

The Real Reason I Lost 20kg (It Wasn’t Discipline)

My meal wasn’t just wrong for me.

It also just wasn’t good.

There’s this stereotype that taste belongs to unhealthy food.

McDonald’s (Burger King is better) or candy are delicious.

But if you want to eat healthy, you need to suffer.

I believed that for way too long.

I kept eating food I didn’t enjoy because I thought that was just part of getting fit.

But it couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are so many recipes out there that taste genuinely incredible.

Food you’d happily order at a restaurant.

Every time I make my burritos, my sister asks for one.

She doesn’t care about eating healthy.

She just really loves them.

I didn’t stay consistent, build muscle, and lose 20kg because I was disciplined.

I did it because I found food I actually enjoy eating.

Food I look forward to.

Life gets exhausting fast if everything requires willpower.

Sometimes you don’t need more discipline, but a way to actually enjoy it.

YouTube is a goldmine for this.

Search whatever meal you love, add “low calorie” or “high protein” or “healthy,” and you’ll find a thousand versions of it.

If you want to get healthy and learn from my mistakes, subscribe, and I'll keep sharing helpful tips!

Subscribe now

See you later,

Per

People spend a lot of time talking about gut health, brain health, heart health…

But there’s one organ that often gets overlooked.

Your skin.

Did you know that your skin is your body’s largest organ?

Skin health isn’t just about looking good.

Your skin serves as your body’s first line of defence and plays a vital role in your overall health.

Your skin protects you from bacteria, viruses, and harmful microbes that could cause infections.

It shields you from UV radiation that can lead to cancer and premature ageing.

Your skin also acts as a barrier against pollution and harsh weather conditions.

The good news is that following just a few simple rules can maximise your skin health by up to 90%.

Rule 1: Moisturise Twice Daily

Since your skin is your primary defence system, keeping it properly hydrated is essential.

When your skin lacks moisture, it becomes dry, and it starts to crack.

This will weaken your protective barrier, which can lead to infections and other complications.

Dry skin is most common after hot showers, making this the perfect time to apply moisturiser while your skin is still damp.

Which moisturiser should you choose?

Luckily for you, even standard moisturisers are quite effective.

Pick one you enjoy and stay consistent with it.

Rule 2: Use Sunscreen Daily

Many people think sunscreen is only necessary on very sunny days or when there’s a risk of sunburn.

But UV radiation is always present.

While it seems pointless to use suncream because the exposure may be minimal, it accumulates over time and causes significant damage.

Your skin gets damaged before you can sunburn.

Daily sunscreen use protects against UV radiation, preventing photoaging (premature skin ageing) and reducing skin cancer risk.

What to look for in sunscreen:

• Broad-spectrum protection: Both UVA and UVB rays can damage your skin, so choose a sunscreen that protects against both

• High SPF: SPF (Sun Protection Factor) indicates how much longer you can stay in the sun before your skin turns red compared to wearing no sunscreen

  Keep in mind that most people only apply about 25-50% of the recommended amount, so an SPF 30 sunscreen is closer to SPF 10-15 protection in real-world use.

There are also plenty of moisturisers that have built-in SPF protection. That way it’s much easier to stay consistent with both.

Rule 3: Incorporate Retinoids

People usually think retinoids are only for acne, but research has found that the ingredients also have anti-ageing effects.

While they do work well for acne, retinoids also reduce pigmentation and uneven skin tone, help minimise wrinkles, and improve overall skin texture.

Retinoids work by accelerating skin cell regeneration, which leads to healthier, more youthful-looking skin.

Starting retinoids is a commitment because they can make your skin more sensitive, causing irritation, dryness, or peeling in the beginning.

This adjustment period makes many people quit use before seeing the benefits.

Since some retinoids can be quite potent, it’s smart to consult a dermatologist before using them in your routine.

Rule 4: Use a Gentle Cleanser

While water cleanses your skin, a proper cleanser removes oils, dirt, sunscreen, and impurities that water alone cannot remove, optimising your skin’s cleanliness.

Harsh soaps or strong cleansers can strip your skin of its natural oils.

This can lead to dryness, irritation, and even more oil production as your skin tries to compensate.

A gentle cleanser, ideally pH-balanced and free of sulfates or fragrances, keeps your skin’s protective barrier while removing buildup.

Use lukewarm water and cleanse your face no more than twice a day to prevent over-cleansing.

Simple Daily Routine

Morning Routine: When I wake up, I splash my face with water to refresh myself and remove any overnight buildup.

After breakfast, I take a shower and cleanse my face thoroughly with a gentle cleanser.

Once I’m out of the shower, I pat my face dry with a clean towel, then apply moisturizer followed by sunscreen to protect my skin throughout the day.

Evening Routine: Before bed, I wash my face again and use a cleanser to remove the day’s dirt and oil.

After gently drying my face, I apply retinoid cream and wait a few minutes for it to absorb into my skin.

Finally, I finish with a moisturiser to keep my skin hydrated overnight.

Your skin is working 24/7 to protect you, shouldn’t you return the favour?

See you later,

Per

I used to think stress was just something that happened to someone.

Then I actually learned what’s going on inside my body when stress hits, and it changed how I deal with it completely.

Apparently you can take control of your own stress

By the end of this, you’re going to have a handful of practical tools that do exactly that.

you skip this, you don’t just stay stressed.

You stay stressed for no reason, when the tools to actually fix it were sitting right here the whole time.

Let’s get into it.

Stress Isn't the Enemy.

Stress is your body's built-in alarm system.

It’s your body’s natural response to challenges and demands.

The second something feels like a threat, your brain floods you with hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.

You've probably heard this called "fight or flight."

But stress isn’t inherently bad.

It’s built on hardwired biological mechanisms that evolved to keep us alive.

And because it's biological, not random, you actually have more influence over it than you think

By learning practical coping strategies, you can effectively put the brakes on stress before it overwhelms you.

What's Actually Happening Inside You Right Now

Ever wondered what’s actually happening inside your body when stress hits?

Running down either side of your spine, from your neck to your navel, is a chain of neurons called the sympathetic chain ganglia.

When something stresses you out, these neurons light up like a switchboard.

They release adrenaline and redirect blood flow throughout your body, which is why you might suddenly feel your heart pounding or notice warmth rushing through certain areas while other parts feel cold.

It’s a remarkable system designed to help you escape danger or face a threat head-on.

Why Modern Life Is a Glitch in Your Biology

Your sympathetic nervous system was built to help you survive immediate physical danger.

Escaping a predator.

Reacting to a real emergency.

Life-or-death stuff.

But that’s not what’s stressing you out anymore.

They’re work deadlines, relationship conflicts, financial worries, or endless to-do lists.

When your sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive without an actual threat to fight or flee from, you’re left feeling anxious, jittery, and overwhelmed, without any productive outlet for all that activation.

Which is exactly why learning how to turn this system off on purpose matters so much.

How to Turn Off Stress on Command

Lucky, you can turn this all.

Your body is also equipped with a parasympathetic nervous system.

Which is your body’s built-in relaxation response.

When this gets activated, it fades away your stress.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to do this is through intentional breathing.

When you extend your exhale, your diaphragm moves upward, slightly compressing your heart.

This makes blood flow through it more quickly.

Your heart starts sending a signal to your brain saying: “Hey, we’re going too fast here”

In response, your brain sends a signal back to slow your heart rate down, triggering a chain of calming effects through your body.

You’ve seen this in action already.

When someone is crying hard or feeling claustrophobic, they’ll often take long, slow exhales to calm themselves down.

The 4-6-8 Trick

Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try this:

• Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of 4

• Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of 6 to 8

• Repeat for 2-3 minutes

You’ll likely feel your shoulders drop, your jaw relax, and that racing feeling in your chest begin to slow down.

That’s your parasympathetic nervous system getting activated.

Stress is inevitable, but feeling overwhelmed doesn’t have to be.

Your breath is a powerful tool that’s always available to you.

Five Minutes Is All Your Cortisol Needs

Exercise isn’t just good for your physical health, it’s one of the most powerful stress-busters available to you.

Research shows that just 5 minutes of physical activity can start reducing cortisol and adrenaline levels in your body.

Exercises that get you breathing hard work better (remember that breathing-stress connection we talked about earlier).

But some exercise is always better than none.

If you don’t feel up for a run or an intense workout?

Just go for a brisk walk or a bike ride around the neighbourhood.

If you can do them in nature, that would be an extra boost to lower stress.

The goal is simply to move your body in whatever way feels accessible to you right now.

The First Hour of Your Day Is Sabotaging You

How you spend your first hour awake can set the tone for your entire day.

Many people wake up and immediately grab their phones, scroll through social media in bed, then stumble to the kitchen for coffee.

I used to be the same (except for the coffee, I don’t like coffee).

But this routine can make you more irritable, anxious, and stressed before your day even begins.

The coffee part specifically

The problem with early-morning coffee is tolerance.

Over time, your body adapts to caffeine’s alertness-boosting effects, so you need more to feel awake.

But caffeine also has anxiety-inducing effects.

And you don’t develop the same tolerance to caffeine’s anxiety-inducing effects.

So more coffee means more anxiety without the proportional energy boost.

So do not reach for coffee immediately after waking.

Wait around 60–90 minutes.

This gives you time to wake up naturally before adding caffeine.

It also helps you avoid the afternoon crash.

In that window, get outside if you can.

Some sunlight, a bit of movement.

Small stuff, but it will change how the rest of your day feels.

Why Finishing Feels So Good

Have you ever noticed that immediate sense of relief when you submit an assignment or finish a project?

It’s the feeling of your stress response powering down.

Incomplete tasks are stress generators.

They sit in the back of your mind.

Creating a low-grade anxiety that drains your mental energy.

I already wrote about this in my post on how to keep work at the office, but I wanted to mention it again because it also helps reduce stress.

Crossing items off your to-do list isn’t just satisfying.

You’re signals to your brain that something is done, triggering a mini stress-relief response.

Your brain needs clear signals that work is complete.

Stop Running From Stress.

It’s late at night.

You’re the last person downstairs and need to turn off all the lights.

As you walk through the dark house, you feel that prickle of irrational fear:

What if someone’s behind you?

You know there’s no one there, but still, you start walking faster...

Then jogging...

Then running up the stairs.

And with each quickened step, you feel more scared.

That's because when you run from anxiety, you make it worse.

Your body interprets your physical running as confirmation that there really is a threat.

Your heart rate spikes, adrenaline pumps, and suddenly that irrational fear feels very real.

The same principle applies to life stress.

When you’re overwhelmed and try to work faster and harder, you’re running from your anxiety and making it stronger.

Instead, stop and slow down.

Breathe.

Look around (metaphorically speaking) and acknowledge that you’re actually safe.

Take a grounding moment.

Notice where you are, what you’re doing, and remind yourself that rushing won’t make you more effective.

It’ll just make you more stressed.

If you can build in one minute every hour to simply pause, breathe and reset, you’ll find yourself both calmer and more productive.

But if an actual murderous clown is chasing you, please disregard this advice and run.

I Hid My Tabs and My Stress Disappeared

I used to sit down to work, open my laptop, and immediately have a browser with 20 tabs staring back at me.

I'd feel instantly stressed.

Every tab is a reminder of something I still need to do.

What actually helped was opening a clean window just for the task in front of me (or closing out whatever tabs I didn't need in that moment).

Everything else stays safe in the other window, just out of sight, which turns out to be enough to get it out of mind too.

Since I started doing this, it's made a genuinely noticeable difference.

Less noise, less low-grade tension, more actual focus on the one thing I'm supposed to be doing.

See you later,

Per

Today I will be sharing a story.

A story that a lot of you might relate to more than you’d think.

For the longest time, there’s this older gentleman at my gym who looks so mad at me.

He’s always there, at the same time I am.

And when I’m at the gym, I like to look around, walk around between sets.

And every time I glance at him, he looks so angry at me.

If eyes could kill, I would have been murdered every day for the last few months.

But I don’t know why.

Maybe I accidentally slammed a weight too hard once.

Maybe he’s one of those older guys who’s just irritated that everything isn’t like it used to be.

I don’t know.

For months I’d see him almost every day, and he’d look just as angry every single time.

Then a few days ago, I went to the bathroom.

When I went to leave the stall, he was walking past my door.

I thought, here it is.

He’s hated me for months, and now our first real interaction is me slamming a door in his face.

I was getting ready to have the biggest outburst I have ever seen.

But he just started laughing.

Made a joke, shook it off, went to wash his hands.

Apparently he never hated me at all.

I just misjudged the whole situation.

We are so bad at actually knowing what other people think of us.

We can be so sure someone’s angry at us for a joke they didn’t even hear.

We build entire stories in our heads about people who, half the time, aren’t thinking about us for a single second.

I just saw someone’s face and built an entire story behind it that only ever existed in my head.

And that’s a real problem.

We don’t think “maybe he’s annoyed”.

We directly jump to “he hates me,” and we act on it like it’s a fact.

This is the same thing that keeps people from posting the video, walking into the gym for the first time, or putting themselves out there in general.

You imagine the judgment before it exists.

You build it so clearly in your head that it feels real, even though nobody’s actually said a word.

Most of the time, the judgment you’re scared of isn’t even there.

And on the rare chance it is, it’s usually smaller and shorter-lived than the version you built in your head.

Real change starts with one habit.

Sometimes that habit is just doing the thing you were scared people would judge you for.

See you later,

Per

They’re just the ones who never stopped learning.

New skills.

New knowledge.

New ways of doing things.

And if learning new skills gets you ahead, learning them faster gets you further ahead, faster.

You might know I am very interested in Egyptian history.

Which is why I started learning hieroglyphs.

And I use all these tips to learn it as fast as possible.

So here’s what actually speeds up learning anything.

Nobody Is Learning “Guitar”

No skill is just one skill.

Every skill is a pile of smaller skills stacked on top of each other.

Content creation isn’t “content creation”.

It’s camera work, storytelling, editing, and about six other things wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one job.

Learning a language isn’t “learning a language”.

It’s grammar, vocabulary, listening, and the terrifying moment you actually have to speak.

Instead of telling yourself you’ll learn the whole skill, focus on the smaller skills that make up the whole skill.

This will do 2 things.

First of all, it makes the skill feel small enough to actually start.

The reason people do not start is that their goal is vague and intimidating.

But “learning the basic chords” is much more specific and does not feel as overwhelming as “learning guitar” is.

And secondly, this way you’ll get a lot of wins throughout your journey, and these small wins are what keep you going.

But it will also allow you to focus on the most important parts of each skill.

Because not every smaller skill is as important as every other one.

There are a bunch of skills that, when mastered, it seems like you have directly mastered the whole skill.

Even though you only master a few parts of it.

You don’t need to know every song or every chord when you start out playing guitar.

There are a handful of common ones that make up hundreds of popular songs.

If you actually master them, everyone will think you’re a guitar expert.

I Learned Spanish From a Buffet

During COVID, I decided to learn Spanish.

I’d always loved the language, so I started with the basics

Vocabulary, grammar, the usual stuff.

Then I looked for someone to actually talk to.

I found an Ecuadorian girl online, and we started chatting every single day.

My Spanish got good fast.

I could write.

I could hold a conversation in my head.

I felt like I was actually getting somewhere.

Then I tried speaking it out loud.

It went badly.

Which didn’t make sense to me.

Writing and thinking in Spanish went fluently.

Turns out those are just different skills, even if they feel like the same one.

I'd learned to write Spanish because I was immersed in writing.

But not in speaking.

That's the whole gap, right there.

The key to learning anything fast is immersion.

Actually being in it, not just practising near it.

If you want to learn how to give speeches, go speak to a small audience.

Not your mirror.

A few years later I worked a summer job at Center Parcs, making the breakfast buffet every morning with a colleague who only spoke Spanish and French.

I spent hours with her alone every single day.

I learned more about speaking Spanish in that one month than in all the time before it combined.

Learning isn’t just about consuming more content.

It’s about being stuck in a situation where the language (or other skills) is the only way through.

My Weird Bedtime Ritual (That Actually Works)

The reason I know so much about history is that I pretend to teach it to someone right before I fall asleep.

I lie there, and instead of counting sheep, I explain the fall of Rome to an imaginary audience.

I don’t know if I should be worried that I fall asleep from my own explanation.

But it works.

Teaching forces you to actually understand something instead of just recognising it.

There’s a huge difference between “yeah, I’ve heard of that” and “let me explain how that works”.

You can nod along to a YouTube video for years and still not really know the thing.

But try explaining it, even to an imaginary audience, and every gap in your understanding shows up immediately.

So whenever you want to actually learn something instead of just consuming it, you need to explain it.

Hieroglyphs Are Kicking My Ass (On Purpose)

It feels fun to do things we’re already good at.

We get encouraged.

We get compliments.

So we keep doing more of what we’re already good at

Which is a problem.

It’s much less fun to get your ego kicked by something you suck at.

But that’s the only part that actually teaches you anything.

Right now I’m learning hieroglyphs, and I’ve hit the point where it’s just hard.

And that’s exactly why it’s working.

To learn any skill, you need to be challenged.

You need to feel uncomfortable.

And if you want to learn something fast, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It’s also why I can’t stand Duolingo.

It’s built to feel good, not to challenge you.

It hands you the equivalent of training wheels forever, and you never fall off, and you never actually learn to ride.

So, what skill do you actually want to learn?

Drop it in the comments.

I want to know what you’re building.

See you later,

Per

If you read my posts, you’re someone who cares about your health.

But if you scroll online for five minutes, it starts to feel like you need a million different supplements just to function.

And sadly, a lot of the people selling you that idea aren’t doing it because they care about your health.

They’re doing it because they care about your wallet.

I actually turned down a sponsorship because the company wanted me to promote their supplement.

If you’re wondering why, you’ll have to keep reading.

The supplement aisle can be genuinely overwhelming.

But by the end of this post, it’s going to feel a lot less so.

And more importantly, you’re going to be a lot harder to scam.

The Supplement Industry’s Dirty Secret

Unfortunately, the world is full of people who want to make a few bucks and don’t care how they get it.

They don’t care if, in order to do that, they need to take advantage of people.

The supplement market is one of the areas where it’s very prevalent.

And governments are partly responsible for it.

In many countries (for example, EU countries and the United States), supplements are regulated as a category of food, not medicine.

Which means they are regulated much less strictly.

This leaves companies room for ineffective products and misleading marketing.

Manufacturers do not need to prove that a supplement works before selling it.

Their only responsibility is to make sure the product is safe and correctly labelled.

Which means authorities mainly intervene if a product is unsafe, contains illegal ingredients, or makes illegal health claims.

They are only restricted from claiming that their supplement cures diseases unless it has gone through the drug approval process.

Which is exactly why I turned down the partnership.

There wasn’t any independent research that proved the claims the company made.

Companies use these loose rules to profit from complexity and confusion.

Take “Miss Carrie June,” who sells creatine made specifically for women.

She claims most creatine is built for men, but hers isn’t.

She’ll throw out a wall of scientific-sounding compound names that nobody in the audience understands, just so the only thing you can understand is the point she wants to get across: her creatine works, everyone else’s is garbage.

The “our formula is superior to every other brand” line is one of the clearest red flags, because in reality, most supplements are basically identical across brands.

Sure, some protein powders taste better than others.

But the protein itself works the same way no matter whose logo is on the tub.

I’ll tell you later in this post which supplements I personally use and where I buy them.

Not because that specific brand is magic, but because some of you might not know where to get them.

I’m not sponsored by any of them.

The other giveaway is when something sounds too good to be true.

“Burn fat without dieting.”

“Build muscle without training.”

“Take this and be perfectly healthy overnight.”

Supplements can help.

But they will not do the work for you.

Chugging protein powder while spending your entire day on the couch is not a transformation plan.

And then there’s the before-and-after photo trick.

I once saw someone post their transformation, credit it entirely to the supplement, and mention “oh, I also started eating healthier” in one throwaway sentence, like it was a minor detail.

But that “minor detail” was probably the actual reason they got results.

The supplement might have played a supporting role, but once someone changes their diet, training, sleep, and lifestyle all at once, there is no honest way to isolate how much credit the pill deserves.

But of course, not all supplements are ineffective.

Some supplements might be worth taking, and that’s what the next section will be about.

The Supplements Backed by Actual Science

Not everything in the supplement aisle is a scam.

Some of it has genuinely strong evidence behind it.

Here’s what’s actually worth knowing about.

1. Protein Powder

Probably the most famous supplement on the planet.

If you talk to anyone who works out, they likely have a tub of it.

But protein powder isn’t special.

It’s basically milk with everything removed except the protein.

It just makes hitting your protein target way more convenient.

Just slab one scoop in some milk and you’ve got 35 grams of protein you can drink on the go.

If you’re already eating enough protein through food, you don’t need it.

The only real reason to buy it is if you struggle to hit your protein target through diet alone, or you’re busy and want an easy way to top it up.

Protein is necessary to build muscle, but protein powder isn’t.

2. Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine monohydrate might be the single most studied sports supplement that exists.

It increases strength, improves performance during high-intensity exercise, and there’s emerging (though still developing) evidence it might help cognitively too.

It is usually recommended to lifters or those who play other sports.

Some scientists think everyone should be taking it, mostly for those potential cognitive benefits.

The typical dose sits around 3 to 5 grams a day.

There are other forms of creatine out there, but monohydrate is the safest and most researched, so that’s the one to actually buy.

3. Vitamin D

Vitamin D is the vitamin your body gets from sunlight.

It supports bone health, helps with muscle function, and plays a role in your immune system.

If you don't get much sun exposure, or you're older, this is one worth paying attention to.

4. Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 is an essential vitamin that your body needs to make red blood cells, maintain healthy nerves, and produce DNA.

Your body cannot make it, so you need to get it through food or supplements.

It’s mainly found in animal products like meat, fish, eggs, and dairy.

Which is exactly why it matters more if you’re vegan, vegetarian, or you just don’t eat a lot of those foods.

Low levels can lead to fatigue, weakness, and shortness of breath.

5. Omega-3

Omega-3s are healthy fats your body needs for brain function, eye health, cell membranes, inflammation regulation, and heart health.

They are usually found in fatty fish, plant seeds, and nuts.

So supplements can be useful if your diet is light on them.

6. Pre-workout

This is one of the most effective performance-enhancing supplements available.

It’s a high-caffeine drink you have about 30 minutes before training, and it helps reduce how hard your workout feels while improving your endurance, strength, and power.

If you struggle with energy in the gym, say you train first thing in the morning, or after a long day at work, this one can help.

It can still be useful if you already have enough energy without it, but it’s not necessary for a great workout.

7. Electrolytes

Electrolytes are an interesting case, because they’re completely legitimate and also one of the most over-hyped supplements right now, at the same time.

They’re minerals that carry an electrical charge in your body, and they help regulate fluid balance, muscle contractions, nerve signals, and heart function.

During long workouts, intense sweating, hot weather, or endurance events, they can improve performance and hydration.

But the industry loves to claim everyone needs them all the time, and I don’t agree with that.

Which brings me to the pattern you’ve probably noticed by now: for a lot of these, I keep saying “useful if you’re falling short on it”.

Most people don’t need a supplement for something they’re not deficient in.

They think everyone needs supplements across the board, when really you only need them when you have an actual gap to fill.

There’re also other supplements that do work, but I didn’t mention, but of course, I can’t mention every supplement in the world.

Here are some of those that do not live up to the hype and are not worth your money.

Fat burners. Testosterone boosters. Detox products.

My Actual Supplement Stack (No Sponsorships, I Promise)

So which supplements do I use?

I use four of them.

Protein powder: I get plenty of protein from my actual diet, the way you’re supposed to. I just like using it as a small boost. I use only one scoop a day.

Pre-workout: This is the least necessary supplement on this list (for my situation). I just like the boost it gives me before training, and it tastes great. That’s the whole justification. I take around 2 scoops, which is around 300 mg of caffeine.

Creatine: For every reason I already laid out above. I use 5 grams a day.

Vitamin D: When I had bloodwork tested for my familial hypercholesterolemia, it turned up a vitamin D deficiency, mostly because I just wasn’t getting outside enough.

So I started taking a supplement, but I also started making a real effort to go outside more, so I could get more of it the natural way too.

I buy my protein, pre-workout, and creatine from MyProtein, and I grab my vitamin D at my local pharmacy.

Again, I’m not sponsored by them.

But before you go and add anything to your cart, it’s worth remembering something.

If you want to feel better, be more energised or get fitter, your food, sleep and training will do a whole lot more than supplements.

You can outsleep supplements, but you can't outsupplement bad sleep.

I am pretty muscular, but I don’t look like that because I take creatine and pre-workout.

I look like this because I started working out hard and consistently.

Supplements only played a small role in my fitness transformation.

See you later,

Per

Do you struggle with keeping work at the office?

Do you lie on the couch, trying to relax, but your brain keeps running through everything you still need to do?

And feel guilty for just enjoying your evening?

I struggled with this a lot.

I couldn’t do anything “unproductive” without feeling like I should be doing something else instead.

In this post, I’ll tell you what worked for me.

A while back, I messaged a bunch of my readers (if I missed you, I am sorry) to ask what you’re struggling with right now, and this came up again and again.

So I figured it was time to actually write about it.

If there’s something you’re struggling with, message me.

I would love to help!

Watching a Movie Made Me Feel Guilty

I used to sit down to watch a movie, a planned break, and spend the entire time thinking about my Substack.

I felt guilty for not doing anything productive.

I was just sitting there, half-watching, while my brain ran through everything I “should” be doing instead.

But working until late at night doesn’t automatically make you productive.

Most days, the highest-return thing you can do for tomorrow isn’t squeezing out one more hour today.

It’s stopping.

Your brain can’t work if your mind doesn’t.

Hanging out with friends, watching a show, doing nothing in particular, none of that is the opposite of productivity.

It’s part of it.

Those breaks are what make the whole thing sustainable in the first place.

And sleep is the biggest one.

It feels like working 30 more minutes has to be worth more than sleeping 30 more minutes.

But it rarely is.

Sleep is doing more for you than you realise.

It sharpens your attention, your creativity, your memory, your decision-making, and your ability not to snap at people.

All things you’ll actually need tomorrow.

Meanwhile, that extra half hour of work at night is usually the most distracted, least useful 30 minutes of your entire day.

So when it’s time to stop, ask yourself one question:

Will another 30 minutes meaningfully change the outcome?

Most days, the answer is no.

The goal was never to work fewer hours.

It’s to make the hours you actually work count for something.

So how do you actually leave work at work, and be present when you get home?

That’s what the rest of this is about.

The Reason Your Brain Won't Shut Up About Work

The reason why people struggle to let work rest is that their brains struggle to understand when a task is finished.

Most people finish a task and then either jump to the next one or take a break.

Even though it might be obvious to you that the task is done, it can still confuse your brain.

You have to make it painfully obvious to your brain that it doesn’t have to worry about tasks anymore.

That’s why to-do lists can work so well, because you can physically cross off your tasks.

When you write a task down and then physically cross it out, you’re sending your brain a message it actually understands.

There’s no ambiguity left for your brain to chew on.

Even just writing down the task, just so you can cross it out, is worth it.

And crossing something off just feels good in general.

But here’s also the other side.

Unfinished tasks.

There’s a thing called the Zeigarnik Effect.

Your brain keeps unfinished tasks running in the background because it doesn’t trust you to remember them on your own.

When I couldn’t finish one of the tasks I planned for the day, I would tell myself, “Alright, that’s for tomorrow”.

But because of the Zeigarnik Effect, it keeps poking.

All evening.

While I was trying to watch a movie or eat dinner.

The fix isn’t finishing everything.

It’s to capture unfinished tasks.

Not “that’s for tomorrow”.

But “finish presentation, Wednesday, 9:00”.

Put it in your agenda.

Give it an actual time and place to exist.

Once your brain trusts the plan, it stops rehearsing it all evening.

Why One Email After Dinner Ruins Your Whole Evening

Most people don’t stop working.

They just run out of day.

There’s no moment where they decide “okay, that’s it”.

They just work until it’s suddenly 11 pm.

If you want to actually be present at home, you need a clear end time.

Whether or not everything’s finished.

And yeah, I know, it feels wrong to just put the laptop down at 19:00 when the to-do list still has things on it.

But a task is rarely so urgent it has to happen today.

You also NEED to actually schedule this hour.

And once that hour hits, work is fully closed.

Not even one email.

I know replying to “just one” feels harmless.

But every time you answer an email after dinner, you’re teaching your brain that work could restart at any second.

And a brain that thinks work might restart any second never actually relaxes.

It can also help to plan what comes after that hour.

A movie, playing with your kids, whatever.

Put it in the agenda too.

Most people only put the “important” things in their calendar: meetings, deadlines, whatever.

The second your downtime is written down next to those things, your brain starts to realise it’s important too.

Still, even with a clear stop time, turning off your “work brain” can be hard.

Which is exactly why you need a ritual for it.

Why Seeing Your Fridge Makes You Hungry

Ever notice the fridge makes you hungry before you’ve even opened it?

Or when you get into bed to read for five minutes and somehow you're as tired as a cat that's done absolutely nothing all day (and if you've ever watched a cat, you know that's saying something).

Your brain works on association.

It sees a cue, and it just runs the program it’s learned to run.

An end-of-work ritual does for “stopping work” what your bed does for “falling asleep”.

It doesn’t need to be complicated.

It just needs to be consistent.

A few options:

• Write down tomorrow’s top 3 priorities

• Close every work tab

• Shut down your laptop

• Clean your desk

• Take a 5-minute walk

It might not do much the first few times.

That’s fine.

But if you stick with it (and don’t undo it by opening your laptop), eventually your brain starts recognising the pattern and actually shifting into relax mode on its own.

My favourite is cleaning the desk.

When I want to sit down to do anything, and my desk is messy, it just instantly kills my motivation.

A clean one gives me a boost.

The ritual itself doesn’t matter much.

What matters is that it’s the same sequence, every day, telling your brain one simple thing: work is over now.

Tell me, what will your routine be?

Drop it in the comments.

I am curious to know.

See you later,

Per

Skip it, and you’ll spend your 60s and 70s fighting your own body instead of living in it.

I know you might be thinking, “What does a 23-year-old know about getting older?”

Fair question.

I have familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic condition that means my heart doesn’t get any second chances if I get lazy with my health.

I’ve also dealt with knees so cranky I couldn’t train legs for months.

I have learned the hard way that it’s extremely important to take care of your health as soon as possible.

The Real Reason You Should Still Care About Muscle at 45

Most people feel it isn’t worth starting at 45 anymore.

Why would you, right?

You’re not 21 anymore.

You’ve probably got a partner who already loves you.

Nobody’s checking you out at the beach anymore, so what’s the point?

Working out isn’t just about the mirror.

It’s one of the most powerful tools you have for staying alive and staying capable.

The amount of muscle on your body is directly tied to how long you live.

Research shows people with more muscle mass survive diseases like cancer at higher rates than people with less.

Even your odds of getting sick in the first place go down.

But there’s something even bigger most people don’t think about until it’s too late.

Everyone dreams about retirement.

Long walks on quiet beaches.

Time with your grandkids.

Doing whatever you want, whenever you want.

Most people never get that version of retirement.

The less active you become in your 40s and 50s, the less capable you become in your 70s.

The people who struggle to get off the couch at 75 were usually not training in their 40s.

If you want to spend more time with your kids or grandkids and actually enjoy it without your knees screaming.

This is where that starts.

A lot of people over 45 think it’s too late to change.

I promise you it isn’t.

I’ve seen people start at 70 and completely transform their bodies and their lives.

So let’s talk about what actually changes in your body after 40, and just as importantly, what doesn’t.

The Scary Truth About Muscle Loss Nobody Explains

I told you that muscle is one of the most important indicators of your health.

But here is the scary part.

If you don’t have much muscle as you get older, it’s not just that your risk is high.

Your risk gets higher because your muscle starts disappearing too.

Starting around age 30 to 40, you slowly start losing muscle mass.

And after 60, that rate speeds up.

If you’re not doing resistance training, you lose strength.

You lose balance.

You lose mobility.

Resistance training is the single best way to stop that slide.

So skipping the gym isn’t just “not helping”.

It’s actively making you less healthy over time.

Recovery is probably the biggest practical difference you’ll notice.

I’ll talk about this at the end of the post.

Then there’s bone density.

As you get older, your bones get less dense, which means higher fracture risk and more chronic pain.

Your skeleton literally becomes more brittle.

This becomes a much bigger deal after menopause, when osteoporosis risk goes up a lot.

It’s one of the biggest reasons strength training reduces fracture risk later in life.

But here’s the one thing that surprises most people.

Most people think their metabolism crashes after 40.

That’s why they think they gain weight and can’t seem to lose it.

But it really doesn’t.

Yes, your metabolism slows down a little.

But we’re talking a few per cent, over a few decades.

What people call a “slow metabolism” is usually just becoming less active and slowly losing muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat does.

Add a job, add kids, and most people naturally move less.

Combine that with less muscle, and you’re burning fewer calories than you used to.

Age isn’t the reason you gained 15kg.

Your lifestyle is.

What Stays the Same, Even at 45+

Luckily, the fundamentals in the gym still work exactly the way they always have.

People assume that once you hit 40, you need a completely different approach to everything.

New rules.

New diet.

New way of training.

Nutrition hasn’t changed.

Protein is still the building block of muscle, even though you’ll want a bit more of it now. Carbs still fuel your body and brain.

Eating well still matters just as much as it always did.

And since your metabolism barely shifts, a calorie deficit to lose weight or a calorie surplus to gain still works the same way it did in your 20s.

Training hasn’t changed either.

Intensity is still the number one driver of progress in the gym.

This is actually where I see most older lifters go wrong, they stop pushing themselves hard enough.

But that’s not really an age thing.

It’s just the most common mistake I see in the gym.

But intensity should never come at the cost of good form.

I see people load up more weight and let their form fall apart to compensate.

That’s exactly how people get hurt.

A 22-year-old might get away with sloppy form.

You, at 40+, have a lot less room for error.

One simple way to check yourself, your first rep and your last rep in a set should look basically the same.

The only thing that should change is speed.

As the set gets harder near the end, your reps naturally slow down.

So the foundation hasn’t moved.

What has changed is a few smaller details, the kind of things that make a massive difference once you know them.

The Small Tweaks That Save Your Body

There are a few changes that you can make that will protect your body.

I used to struggle with knee pain.

I ignored it for so long that I eventually couldn’t train legs at all.

But it taught me almost everything I know about the small adjustments that actually matter as you get older.

Let’s start with reps.

As you age, your joints get crankier.

Higher rep ranges tend to work better later in life because they put less stress on your joints.

Just make sure the intensity stays high, higher reps don’t mean easier.

Controlling the weight matters more too.

I still see people at the gym letting the weight free-fall on the way down, and it makes my joints hurt just by watching.

Instead, control it on the way down.

Add a slight pause at the top and bottom of every rep.

That pause is one of the biggest changes I ever made.

I used to bounce out of the bottom of every rep, and that bounce is one of the things that was destroying my knees.

If you struggle with control, machines can help too.

A chest press instead of a dumbbell bench, for example, gives you more control over the weight path.

Range of motion is next, and this one really got me.

I always believed you had to squat all the way down, butt to the ground.

Because that’s what Instagram told me.

I kept forcing it even when my knees couldn’t handle it.

Now I listen to my body, and you should too.

Move through the range that feels good for you, not the range some Instagram coach says is “correct”.

Even before you get to reps, you need to warm up.

When I was younger, I barely warmed up, and I was usually fine.

If you’re past 40, that’s a luxury you don’t get anymore.

There is one more thing that helped me massively when my knees were struggling.

I flipped the way I structure my working sets.

Normally you’d start with your heaviest set and work down in weight as you fatigue.

I started doing the opposite.

My first set is lighter with more reps, since higher reps are easier on my joints.

Each set after that gets a bit heavier and a bit lower in reps, until my final set is the heaviest with the fewest reps.

This way, my joints are warming up in real time while my intensity still stays high enough to build my quads.

If your joints give you trouble, this small reversal can change everything.

Now here’s the part almost nobody talks about, and it might matter more than anything else on this list.

Doing Less Gets You More

Recovery is one of the biggest changes you need to make once you hit 45+.

Your body simply needs more time to bounce back from training than it did at 20.

In practice, that means you shouldn’t be training six days a week anymore.

(“Shouldn’t” might be a hard word here, you can still train 6 days a week, but in most cases training less will be better.)

At the end, I’ll share a routine that works whether you train two or three times a week.

Sleep matters just as much, because recovery actually happens while you sleep.

I usually recommend somewhere around 7 to 9 hours, but the real answer is to experiment and find what your body actually needs.

Walking deserves way more credit than it gets.

I’ll share some cardio recommendations at the end too, but I want to call it out here specifically, because walking is one of the best recovery tools you have.

It gets blood flowing, helps you feel better, and most importantly, it doesn’t interfere with your lifting the way high-intensity cardio can.

Train hard.

Recover harder.

That’s the actual formula.

So let’s put it all together, here’s the exact routine I’d hand you if you walked into my gym today.

The Simple Plan That Covers Everything Your Body Needs

Here’s the exact plan I’d give you if you walked into the gym with me today.

It takes about 30 minutes.

Train with real intensity and stay consistent, and you’ll see progress.

Every exercise here is done for 2 sets.

Exercises #1 — Squat

After your warm-up, you start with an exercise that trains your entire legs, with most of the focus on your quads.

Barbell, dumbbells, or machines like the leg press or hack squat all work.

I personally love the hack squat, but use whatever you actually enjoy.

The best exercise is the one you’ll keep doing.

Exercises #2 — Chest Press

Next we move to chest, triceps, and a bit of shoulder work with a chest press.

Barbell, dumbbells, or machine, take your pick.

It genuinely doesn’t matter which one you choose as long as you’re consistent and training hard.

Exercises #3 — Row

Now we hit back with a pulling movement.

A chest-supported row is the best option here, though cables, dumbbells, or a barbell all work fine too.

Exercises #4 — RDL

You’ve now covered 3 of the 4 basic movements (a squat, a push, and a pull), which means it’s time for a hinge.

An RDL is perfect for this.

It also trains your erectors, which helps with back pain.

It takes a bit of time to get the technique right, but it’s worth the effort.

On top of this, add 2 to 3 cardio sessions a week, 15 minutes each.

Walking, running, biking, or even dancing around your living room while you watch your show all count.

That’s genuinely everything you need to start making real progress.

But if you want even more help and have someone build this around your actual life instead of figuring it out alone, that’s exactly what I can help you with.

Send me a message and let’s work on it together.

See you later,

Per

I have a question for you.

Have you ever finished a week feeling like you got nothing done, even though you were busy the entire time?

I have too, more times than I’d like to admit.

The answer isn’t to work more hours.

It’s to choose your time better within the hours you already have.

And the best way to do that is by reviewing your week.

By the end of this post, you’ll have three questions that take only a few minutes and completely change how your week feels and the progress you make.

Let’s get into it.

Your Brain Is Lying To You

Your brain is a pessimist.

It was built that way on purpose.

Thousands of years ago, noticing danger kept you alive.

If you spotted the rustling bush before your buddy did, you got to see tomorrow.

Our brain rewarded that skill by making you really good at spotting threats and problems.

The issue is that the same programming is still running today, except there are no lions.

Your brain notices only the negatives.

Everything you didn’t do.

It skips right past the stuff you actually did do, because that doesn’t feel urgent enough to flag.

Which is exactly why it feels like you never make progress.

That’s why the first question of your Sunday review should always be:

“What were some wins I can celebrate?”

It does not matter how small.

Chose to write for 15 minutes over another episode?

Win.

Drank water before your coffee?

Win.

Showed up to the gym and did a mediocre workout instead of skipping it entirely?

Still a win.

Once you start looking for these, you’ll realise you’re making way more progress than you thought.

And that feeling is what pushes you to keep going, faster than guilt ever could.

One Small Change That Redirects Everything

Your future isn’t determined by one action, but by actions you do repeatedly.

If you want the life you dream of, your actions need to reflect that.

That’s why the next question you should ask yourself is:

“If I repeat this week’s actions for 10 years, where would it lead, and is that where I want to be?”

If your answer is yes, that’s great.

Keep going.

If your answer is no, ask yourself which actions are the ones steering you in the wrong direction.

If there’s more than one, look at whichever one is pulling you off course the most, and change that one first.

Once you’ve asked yourself that, you should be able to answer this next one too:

“What would I change, if anything, for next week?”

What Actually Moves the Needle

I used to sit down every Sunday with a to-do list twelve items long, feel amazing about how “on top of things” I was, and finish the week having barely touched the one thing that actually mattered.

So before you plan next week, it’s time to set actual goals, not just stack more items onto a list that already feels too full.

I’m going to assume you already have yearly goals.

Maybe even quarterly ones, which would be perfect here.

If you don’t have either yet, go write them down first.

You can still plan your week without them, but you’ll be aiming in the dark.

If you do have quarterly goals, write down everything you’d need to do to hit them.

Everything, no matter how small or trivial.

You only have to do this once per quarter, then reuse the list every week after.

Now the hard part.

Pick your top 3 priorities for the week.

The ones that actually move the needle.

If you’re not sure which is which, ask yourself:

“If I only had 2 hours a week to do all my work, what would I do in that time?”

That question forces clarity fast.

If you’re trying to build a product, for example, you’ll notice pretty quickly that brainstorming names doesn’t make that list.

Once you’ve got your answer, push it further:

“If I only had 4 hours a week, what would I do?”

Most of you have more than 2 hours, so this is where the rest of your real priorities start showing up.

Keep asking the question, adding hours, until you land on however much time you actually have each week.

Now you’ve got your tasks.

Time to schedule them, because what gets scheduled gets done.

We all know the lie we tell ourselves: “I’ll get to it sometime this week”.

If it’s not sitting in your schedule with a time and a place, it’s not real yet.

It’s just a wish with good intentions.

You’ve got two options here.

Strict scheduling, where you give each task a specific day and time.

Or loose time blocking, where you say “I’ll do this Tuesday, this Friday, this Sunday,” and slot in the exact time each morning when you plan your day.

Loose time blocking only works if you actually do that daily planning step.

Otherwise it disappears back into “sometime this week”.

Know yourself here.

If loose planning has burned you before, don’t reach for it again just because it sounds more flexible.

But what if your week breaks (and it will break at some point)?

It’s worth deciding now which task matters most, the one that moves the needle furthest, the one that, if it’s the only thing you finish, still lets you feel good about the week.

When things fall apart, that’s the task you protect.

Sometimes life gets bad enough that even that one task slips.

That happens.

But most weeks, if you’ve already decided what your non-negotiable is, you’ll still get there.

I'd love to know what you landed on.

Drop your top 3 priorities for next week in the comments, saying them out loud (or typing them, in this case) makes them a lot harder to ignore.

See you later,

Per

If you’re just starting out in fitness, you’ll make mistakes.

But failure is actually great, because it gives you a learning opportunity.

BUT what’s even better is learning from other people’s mistakes.

This way, you can get the lesson without the pain of the failure itself.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes on my journey.

This one is one of the worst.

And if you don’t learn from it now, you’re going to fall into a very avoidable trap and waste a whole lot of time doing it.

So let me waste the time for you instead.

Before I started training, I was the skinny guy who hated mirrors.

Every time I looked in one, I got disappointed.

And underneath the disappointment was something worse.

I felt unlucky.

I looked at guys who had the body I wanted and just assumed they were born into it.

They didn’t work harder than me for their body.

They just got the better genetics.

I got the short end.

It took me a long time to get over that mindset. But once I did, I ran into a new problem.

I still had no idea how to actually get the body I wanted.

I opened YouTube and started watching video after video. And they all told me the exact same thing.

“If you want to get muscular, you need to bulk.”

Bulking is when you eat more calories than you burn.

The logic behind it is that building muscle takes energy, so your body needs extra calories to build with.

You eat more than you burn, so yes, you’ll gain some fat alongside the muscle.

That’s fine, they said.

You clean that up later with a cut, and you end up with more muscle than when you started.

For years, I followed that advice completely.

I ate.

And ate.

And ate some more.

What I didn’t realise was that I wasn’t building the body I wanted.

I was just getting fat.

I wasn’t the skinny guy I used to hate anymore.

But I also still didn’t have the body I actually wanted.

I’d just traded one problem for a different one.

So I went into a deficit and lost the weight.

20kg gone.

And for the first time, I actually started seeing progress in my physique.

Real proof that the work was doing something.

But I hadn’t learned the lesson yet.

I bulked again.

This time I told myself I’d be smarter about it.

I wouldn’t go as far as before.

I gained 8kg. Lost it again.

And when I looked at what I actually had to show for it, the answer was: barely anything.

That’s when it finally understood it.

Bulking isn’t what I was supposed to be doing.

You don’t need to gain weight to build muscle.

You don’t need to get fat to build muscle.

I just did what I was told, and because I didn’t know better, I took their word for it.

The good news is that this mindset online has shifted a lot since I started.

Most people don’t preach bulking anymore.

Instead, the advice now is to just maintain your calories while you train.

Here’s what works instead: your body doesn’t need more energy from food to build muscle.

There’s already energy sitting on your body, in the form of body fat, that it can use as fuel instead.

I’m pretty lean these days, and I still have body fat my body can pull from.

As long as I keep training, eat enough protein, and stay around maintenance, I build muscle while my body fat percentage keeps going down.

No bulk required.

Only when you’re too lean and can’t afford to lose bodyfat, is when bulking can be useful.

But most people have much more body fat than they realise.

Save yourself the years I wasted.

You don’t need to gain fat to gain muscle.

I know I'm not the only one who's fallen for advice that sounded right but wasted a bunch of time.

So tell me, what's the biggest fitness mistake you've made?

Drop it in the comments.

I'd love to know I'm not the only idiot.

See you later,

Per

A few weeks ago, I got my wisdom teeth removed, and what was supposed to be a few days of rest turned into weeks of doing basically nothing.

Every time I opened my laptop to do something, I closed it again.

I told myself I was still recovering.

But I was just procrastinating.

So I went back and read one of my old newsletters about beating procrastination.

And reading my own advice helped me get back at it again.

That’s why I decided to write this updated version.

Here are the 5 things that actually beat my procrastination again.

1. I Blamed My Wisdom Teeth

We all have reasons for avoiding certain tasks, and we tell ourselves these surface-level excuses.

But those rarely reveal the truth.

I kept telling myself I still needed a break to recover from my wisdom teeth removal.

That wasn’t really it though.

I was in a bit of a dip about my self-confidence.

I kept feeling like my Substack wasn’t helping anyone, so there was no point in spending a lot of time on it or on my Instagram anymore.

Everyone has a deeper reason why they’re procrastinating.

You might tell yourself you need more research before starting that business.

But after months of “preparation,” you still haven’t begun.

You didn’t need more preparation.

You were just afraid to start.

Afraid to put yourself out there.

Afraid of failing and people laughing at you for it.

Fear is one of the most common drivers of procrastination, but it’s not the only one.

I want you to think about a task or project you’ve been putting off.

Ask yourself why you’re not working on it.

Is it really because you don’t have enough time?

Is it truly not the right moment?

Or do you genuinely lack the knowledge?

Or is there another, real reason behind these excuses?

This is what I asked myself when I was procrastinating on my own work.

It’s important to be honest with yourself. Because if you can’t be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with?

Honesty is one of the most valuable skills in self-improvement. It’s when you stop making excuses and start making progress.

Without understanding the real reason behind your procrastination, you’ll never overcome it.

2. The Mental Shift That Makes Starting Way Less Painful

The first few days after my wisdom teeth removal, I did nothing but watch videos in bed while eating ice cream.

I wasn’t really allowed to do much else.

But once I was better, once I could actually get up and do things, I still didn’t want to.

I’d gotten used to just watching videos all day.

And even though it was pretty boring, doing anything productive suddenly felt like a mountain to climb.

Most people feel this exact thing.

When you think about starting a task, you naturally focus on what you need to do. And a lot of the time, that feels boring or overwhelming.

Why would you give up something fun for something boring, right?

Instead, you need to shift your focus. Not to what you have to do, but to how you’ll feel once it’s done.

Yes, putting your phone down feels bad in the moment.

But once you’ve finished the task, you’ll feel great.

You’ll feel proud that you actually did it.

There’s almost no better feeling than the sense of accomplishment after finishing something you’ve been avoiding.

So focus on that feeling.

Not the discomfort of getting started.

3. Stop Fighting Temptation

You can’t out-willpower your phone. You have to outsmart it.

Procrastination has been skyrocketing because we live in a time with an abundance of distractions competing for our attention.

Social media.

Video games.

Movies.

All of it is just a tap away.

To stop procrastinating, you need to actively remove these temptations from your environment.

I used to spend hours doom-scrolling Instagram.

So I downloaded Stayfree, which blocks the app between 10:00 and 18:00.

Take a moment and think about your biggest productivity killers.

What pulls you away from your work and keeps you procrastinating?

Is it Netflix?

Instagram or TikTok?

That captivating book sitting on your desk?

Or is it the friend who keeps messaging you?

Once you actually know what’s keeping you from doing the work, you can find ways to eliminate it.

Move the book to another room.

Block streaming services during working hours.

Put your phone in another room, or use focus mode.

Usually, the simplest options work the best.

When you remove these alternatives, you create an environment where working becomes the path of least resistance.

You stop needing willpower because there’s nothing left to resist.

4. Why My Brand Guide Took Me Months

A lot of what I was procrastinating on was my own projects.

Learning new things to make my content better.

Finishing my brand guide.

That kind of thing.

The reason personal projects are so easy to procrastinate on is that they never have a deadline.

According to Parkinson’s Law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

If your boss gives you a month to finish a task, it’ll take a month.

Give you a week for that same task, and somehow you’ll have it done in a week.

Personal projects don’t come with a deadline.

Which means the timeline is basically infinite

Which means you’ll procrastinate on it for just as long.

That’s why even personal projects need a deadline.

Don’t tell yourself you’ll write a book.

Tell yourself you’ll finish the first chapter this month.

The trick is making the deadline close enough that you feel urgency, but realistic enough that you can actually hit it.

That’s how you beat procrastination.

For long-term projects with a fixed deadline, like work or school, you can’t change the final date. And even if you set an earlier personal deadline, your brain will usually still know the real one.

So instead of thinking “this whole project is due in three months,” break it into smaller steps with their own deadlines.

Step 1: Research and outline, due in 1 week.
Step 2: First draft, due in 2 weeks.
Step 3: Revisions, due in 3 weeks.

This works because it brings the deadline closer.

It creates urgency, and it makes a big project feel manageable.

When you can see exactly what needs to happen next, procrastination loses most of its power.

5. The Rule That Got Me Going Again

When I was trying to get back into things, every task felt overwhelming.

Writing a whole Substack post felt impossible.

So instead, I used the 5-minute rule.

The concept is simple.

You convince yourself to work for just 5 minutes. If you still don’t feel like working after that, you’re allowed to quit.

The psychology behind this is brilliant.

Getting started is the hardest part of any task.

Telling yourself you only need to work for 5 minutes makes it feel way less overwhelming.

So starting gets a lot easier.

And most of the time, once you’ve opened your laptop, started typing, or taken that first small step, you won’t feel like quitting anymore. You’ll just keep going.

Most of the time, the promise of “just 5 minutes” ends up turning into a lot more than 5 minutes.

But it doesn’t have to be 5 minutes.

You can also use a small task as your starting point.

Instead of writing a whole post, tell yourself you’ll just write the outline.

Once the outline’s done, you can choose to keep going or stop.

And even if you stop, you’ve still made progress.

This is actually the version I use most. It works exactly the same as the 5-minute rule.

But the important part is that you have to allow yourself to quit after 5 minutes.

If you know deep down it’s just a mental trick, and you won’t really let yourself stop, it defeats the whole purpose.

The rule only works if you honour the escape clause.

Here’s what I want you to do.

Think of one project you’ve been procrastinating on right now.

Then drop a comment below telling me which of these 5 strategies you’re going to try first.

Not only will that help you actually commit to it, but someone else reading the comments, someone stuck in that exact same spot, might see your comment and realise they’re not the only one.

That alone might be what gets them moving too.

See you later,

Per

If you care about your mental health, social media might be quietly working against you, and you probably don’t even notice it.

I didn’t.

For years, I let it turn me into someone more irritated, more negative, more wound-up than I actually am.

The good news is I learned a lot since then, and it made a genuinely massive difference in how I feel day to day.

In this post, I will talk about the mental health aspects of social media.

Why 100 Subscribers Made Me Feel Like a Failure

I felt like a failure with 100 subscribers.

I was already writing for a few months when I started seeing Notes from people who’d just hit 500 subscribers.

It made me feel small.

I remember thinking “what’s wrong with me?”

“Why does everyone else have more success?”

But I was comparing my chapter 2 to someone else’s chapter 14.

Social media is full of people who are further ahead than you.

And it makes it brutally hard to be happy with your own progress.

Especially because social media is fake.

I sometimes post pictures of my physique (go check my Instagram, shameless plug).

But those pictures are taken right after a workout, when the blood is still pumped into my muscles, and with great lighting.

I do not look like that for the other 23 hours of the day.

Most people only show you their best angle.

The great moment of the vacation.

Not the baggy eyes.

Not the part where they fell from the stairs at the Sagrada Familia.

Everyone has ups and downs.

But if only the ups get posted, it starts to feel like you’re the only one having downs while everyone else is just always up.

The good news is that it’s shifting.

More people are starting to show the downs too.

The emotions, the insecurities, the actual real life behind the filter.

And that might be one of the most underrated things social media can do.

It shows you that other people feel what you feel.

That you’re not the only one.

That you belong.

Which brings me to my story.

Ali Abdaal Made Me Realise I Wasn't Boring

For a long time, I hated being the guy who didn’t want to go to parties.

I didn’t like going out.

I didn’t like drinking.

I would much rather just stay home.

And for years, people told me I was boring.

I heard it enough times that I started to believe something was actually wrong with me.

Then I found a video of Ali Abdaal.

Turns out, he wasn’t a party guy either.

He’d rather learn something new or work on himself than get drunk in a park on a Friday night.

Except he wasn’t getting shamed for it.

He was getting praised for it.

There was nothing wrong with me.

I just had different priorities than the people around me.

Social media can reduce loneliness by connecting you to people who think like you, live like you, and want the same things you want.

It can make “different” feel normal instead of weird.

It can take the stigma off things people used to hide, mental health included.

But here’s the catch.

It’s never been easier to surround yourself, constantly, with people who only agree with you.

And when that’s all you see, it stops feeling like a community and starts turning into an echo chamber.

Once you’re in one, it gets harder and harder to hear a different perspective without it sounding like an attack.

And that’s usually the first step toward more extreme thinking, not less.

Which brings me to the part of social media that hit me the hardest.

I Spent Months Arguing With Flat Earthers. Here's What It Cost Me.

I used to spend way too much of my time arguing with conspiracy theorists.

From Flat-Earthers to more dangerous theories like anti-vaxxers.

I’d reply to posts and comments, going back and forth on theories that ranged from harmless-dumb to actually dangerous.

I told myself I was doing it because I saw the real damage the anti-science stuff was causing, while everyone else just brushed it off as “dumb theories, who cares.”

But it came at a cost.

Every day I’d get called dumb, a sheep or “vaccinated” (which I still don’t fully understand as an insult).

My head was full of irritation all the time.

Irritated by people making dumb arguments.

Irritated by getting insulted the second I had a point they couldn’t answer.

Irritated by the sheer amount of negativity in every comment section I opened.

And it didn’t stay online.

I’d think about it in the shower.

I’d think about it while trying to fall asleep.

It followed me everywhere.

Then one day, I deleted social media.

And it felt like a weight lifting off my shoulders.

I can’t fully explain how freeing that was.

It’s genuinely one of the best feelings I’ve had.

Social media can be extremely negative, and that will impact your life, even when you think it doesn't.

Who you surround yourself with shapes who you become.

Fill your feed with negativity, and you become a little more negative too.

That’s just how we’re wired.

I still argue with conspiracy theorists, but I don’t let the negative get to me anymore.

I learned I can let it go, instead of keeping arguing and arguing.

The One Thing the Internet Actually Gets Right

The greatest part of social media and the internet in general is that every piece of human knowledge is at your fingertips.

You can find someone explaining how to do laundry properly, someone breaking down a math concept you never understood in school, someone walking you through how to build an entire house from the ground up.

You can learn literally anything you’ve ever wanted to learn, which, for basically all of human history, was not an option.

That’s the best part of social media and the internet as a whole.

And it’s what I think it should mainly be used for.

What I Actually Do Differently Now

I’ve given you a lot of good and a lot of bad about social media.

So where does that leave you?

It starts with understanding everything above.

Knowing that most of what you see isn’t the full picture.

Knowing that negativity online doesn’t just stay online, it follows you into your actual life if you let it.

But understanding isn’t enough on its own.

You also need boundaries.

Set a daily screen time limit.

Leave yourself enough room to go out with friends, read a book, or build something with your own hands.

Your life should never revolve around social media alone, even if you follow the most positive, most encouraging people on the entire internet.

It’s fine to spend time on social media, but don’t let it rule your life.

If you want the actual system I use to keep my screen time in check without white-knuckling it, I wrote a whole post on it.

Go check it out!

I want to reduce my screen time

See you later,

Per

You shouldn’t have to choose between having a life and eating healthy.

A lot of people think eating healthy means saying no to basically every plan with friends.

No dinners, no drinks, no birthday muffins.

In this post, I’m giving you the exact system to stop treating your social life like the enemy of your progress.

The Efteling Muffin Incident

I was at Efteling with my family for my sister's birthday.

If you don't know it, it's a fairy tale theme park in the Netherlands.

And there it was.

A chocolate muffin, sitting in the display case.

I was losing weight at the time.

So what do I do because I can’t just eat that because I am on a diet?

Do you know what I did?

I ate it anyway.

Then I moved on with my day.

No spiral.

Flexibility isn't cheating on your progress. It's what makes progress last.

I talked about flexibility in my previous post, so I am going to make it short.

If you don’t build in room to actually live your life, you will fail.

Not might.

Will.

I almost never go out with friends, so when I do, I eat whatever I want.

But if you’re out with friends multiple times a week, that’s different.

Eating whatever you want every single time will hurt your progress.

This post is for people that goes out a lot.

If you’re more like me, you can skip this post because you don’t have to stress about being flexible from time to time.

Remember Maths Class? This Is Why You Needed It

Do you remember sitting in maths class, sighing, thinking “when am I ever going to use this?”

Well, today is the day.

Your body doesn't actually care about your daily calorie intake.

It cares about your weekly average.

Let’s say you’re losing weight on 2,000 calories a day.

Most people try to hit exactly 2,000 every single day, including Friday and Saturday when they’re out with friends.

It usually ends one of two ways.

Either you break your diet completely, or you sit at dinner silently doing calorie math while everyone else just enjoys their food.

But there’s a smarter way.

If you eat 1,800 calories Monday through Thursday, you’re busy with work anyway, so staying slightly under target is actually easier.

Then Friday and Saturday, when you’re out with friends? You’ve banked calories. Now you get to eat 2,500 calories on those nights.

Let’s do the maths (finally, some payoff): (1,800 × 5) + (2,500 × 2) = 14,000 calories for the week.

That’s still exactly 2,000 a day on average.

“But, Per, I’ll still be eating a bunch of unhealthy food on those days.”

Yes, but for weight loss specifically, your body only cares about calories in versus calories out.

2,000 calories of spinach and 2,000 calories of burgers move the scale the same amount.

Now, what you eat still matters for other stuff. Energy, digestion, long-term health, all real.

But having one or two days a week where you eat some worse foods and just focus on hitting your weekly number?

That’s not failure.

That’s the plan working.

How to Eat Out Without Undoing Your Progress

Going out to eat once isn’t going to destroy your progress.

I'll die on this hill.

But if you’re hitting restaurants multiple times a week, a few smart moves can make a massive difference.

Do This Before You Even Sit Down

Before you get to the restaurant, pull up the menu online.

Scanning the menu at home can make smart choices easier.

You’re looking for dishes built around lean proteins, loaded with vegetables, and prepared without being drowned in oil.

The best options are grilled, steamed, or baked.

This isn’t about being perfect.

It’s about having a game plan, so you’re not making decisions while you’re starving and everything on the menu suddenly looks like the best thing you’ve ever seen.

The Macro That Keeps You From Overeating

Protein is your best friend at restaurants for two reasons.

First, it makes overeating way harder.

Your body signals “full” faster with protein than with any other macro, so you naturally stop sooner.

Second, it keeps you full for longer.

Aim for 1-2 palm-sized servings per meal, and don’t be shy about asking for extra.

A few extra bucks for double chicken is cheaper than ordering a second meal later because you’re still hungry an hour after dinner.

The Silent Calorie Bomb on Every Table

Here’s where most people silently sabotage themselves: drinks.

A regular soda?

150+ calories of pure sugar that do absolutely nothing for your hunger.

A fancy cocktail?

Easily 300-500 calories before you’ve even ordered food.

Stick with water as your default?

That’s Boring.

That’s why the better options are herbal tea, black coffee, or zero-calorie soda.

Now, about alcohol, I’m not going to tell you to never drink.

That’s unrealistic.

But if you’re going to have a drink or two, be strategic

Wine or light beer will do way less damage than sugary cocktails or regular beer.

Keep it moderate, and you’ll be fine.

The Half-Plate Hack

Restaurant portions aren’t designed for your goals; they’re designed to make you feel like you got your money’s worth.

Which usually means they’re serving you enough food for two meals.

As soon as your food arrives, immediately box up half of it.

Before you take your first bite.

Because once you start eating, your brain shifts into “finish what’s in front of you” mode.

Boxing it up first means you’ve got tomorrow’s lunch sorted, you stay on track today, and you actually get two meals for the price of one.

Win-win-win.

Why Fun Might Be the Missing Piece of Your Progress

We live in a world where fun seems to be the last thing we should think about.

Which is sad because what’s life without fun?

Making progress with your diet shouldn’t be not fun.

Some of the best calorie-burning happens when you’re not even thinking about fitness, you’re just doing something fun with people you like.

Go for a bike ride.

Try paintballing.

Play pickleball.

Hit up a trampoline park.

I have been playing football in my backyard the moment I see that I haven’t gotten my steps in yet.

People think that exercise only counts when it’s boring.

But it always counts when you don’t sit still.

If you’ve got a friend who’s been quietly stressing about how to eat healthy without becoming that person who brings their own Tupperware to a restaurant, send them this.

See you later,

Per

This is the moment your health habits will stick.

You’ll finally be consistent.

But 4 days later, you are back to your old habits.

Now there’s this quiet voice telling you that you’re just not the type of person who sticks to things.

I know that voice.

I learned that there are a handful of things you’re probably doing wrong without realising it.

By the end of this, you’ll know exactly what those things are and why the version of you that keeps failing isn’t broken.

Let’s get into it.

The 1-Habit Rule That Beats Every Plan

I used to watch a lot of motivational videos about improving my productivity.

I would get hyped, and I would decide this time is different, and I'm going to change everything at once.

Two days later, you haven’t touched any of it.

Trying to fix everything at once isn’t ambition; it’s a setup for failure.

One consistent habit will always beat a hundred habits you tried and dropped.

So instead of overhauling your whole life this week, pick one thing.

Look at your health and ask which single change would actually move the needle most.

Are you someone who barely moves during the day?

Start with a 15-30-minute walk.

Or a 30-minute home workout.

Barely drinking any water?

Build a better drinking habit?

Already somewhat active but eating badly?

Start swapping out foods, like swap the butter for seed oils, swap the soda for a diet version,…

Master one habit before you even think about the next one.

The Secret I Haven’t Told You Yet

Being healthy has a boring reputation.

Even though everyone understands how important your health is, people still consider being healthy boring.

I get called boring all the time for this exact reason.

I sleep 8 hours a night.

I don’t drink.

I don’t do drugs.

And yeah, part of that is because it’s healthy, but if I’m honest, a lot of it is just because those things bore me.

Mental health is health too, and that means being healthy should also feel good, not just be good for you.

You don’t need to say no to everything just because it’s the “healthy” thing to do.

Before my workouts, I drink pre-workout, which is a very caffeinated drink (around 3-4 cups of coffee).

But I really like to drink it, so I keep drinking it.

I also tell people to swap butter for seed oils constantly (I did it a few paragraphs ago).

But I hate cooking with seed oils. -

Everything just keeps sticking to the pan.

Might just be a skill issue.

So I keep cooking with butter.

I’m not telling you to go smoke and drink your way through life, because enjoying it matters more than being perfectly healthy.

But it is very possible to take your health too seriously.

Would my health improve slightly if I forced myself to use seed oils anyway?

Probably.

Would it actually matter, given everything else I already do right?

Not really.

Some battles aren’t worth fighting.

Save your energy for the ones that are.

The 6 Words That Got Someone to Actually Learn Spanish

Someone once asked me the best way to learn Spanish.

So I gave her the full breakdown of what I would do if I had to learn Spanish again.

Then at the end, I added six more words.

“I will check on you tomorrow.”

The next day, I messaged her asking how it went.

She told me exactly what she’d done, and then she said that the only reason she’d actually started was that she knew I was going to check in.

She even pushed herself harder that day, all because of one sentence.

That’s the power of accountability, and it’s one of the most underrated tools for consistency there is.

Mostly because, in real life, nobody’s checking in.

If you quit playing the piano, no one cares.

If you stop reading that book halfway through, no one says a word.

Because most of the time, no one cares if you quit

And that’s exactly why it’s so easy to.

Ask someone to check in on you, even if it feels a little awkward to ask

You don’t need a whole support system.

Sometimes six words are enough.

I Used to Ask My Friends To Eat Snacks

I used to be too afraid to buy chocolate.

I was afraid of being judged for buying something unhealthy.

I'd be walking to the store with my friends, and I'd casually mention how consistent I'd been that week.

Then once we got there, I'd hint that I was craving something sweet, hoping one of them would say, "Oh, you've earned it, go for it."

That way, I would know I wouldn’t be judged for buying chocolate.

That’s how scared I was.

Looking back, that’s not discipline.

That’s a broken relationship with food, dressed up as consistency.

The most overlooked part of staying consistent isn’t willpower; it’s flexibility.

Everyone thinks they need to grind through everything with zero exceptions.

But a rigid plan doesn’t survive contact with real life.

A flexible one does.

Flexibility means chocolate doesn’t have to be a moral failure.

It means missing a workout doesn’t mean the week is ruined.

It means one bad meal is just one meal, not a reason to quit the whole thing on Tuesday.

The people who stay consistent long term aren’t the ones who never bend.

They’re the ones who bend without breaking.

So if you’re white-knuckling your way through your health goals right now, waiting for someone to give you permission to relax a little, consider this me giving it to you.

None of this works if you’re only thinking about your health in isolation, because your life doesn’t happen in isolation.

ou’ve got friends, plans, birthdays, and a social life that doesn’t pause just because you’re trying to eat better.

That’s exactly what I’m covering this Friday: how to stay on track with your health without becoming the person who can’t just enjoy a night out anymore.

If today’s post hit close to home, Friday’s might hit even closer.

Subscribe now so it lands straight in your inbox and you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

See you later,

Per

I’ve posted 300 reels but still have fewer than 60 followers.

All because I ignored one crucial thing.

For months, I posted daily on Instagram and barely grew.

I’d spend all my time on the actual advice, then throw together the first line without a second thought.

But if they don’t feel attracted after the first few lines, they will not stick long enough to actually get the benefit from your post.

That’s why I started researching, and in this post, I will share with you the 3-step framework to write irresistible hooks.

Stick around because at the end I’m giving you a list of 10 different types of hooks with real examples, so you’ll never stare at a blank page wondering how to start again.

Why Nobody Is Reading Your Best Content

Your hook is the most important part of everything you create.

Not the advice.

Not the structure.

Not even the solution you’re so proud of.

The hook is the compelling opening that stops someone mid-scroll and pulls them in.

It's the difference between someone clicking, watching, or reading, and someone scrolling right past you like you don't exist.

Doesn't matter if it's a Substack post, a YouTube video, or a 15-second reel.

If people don't stop long enough to actually watch or read it, none of the value inside it reaches them.

You could have the single best piece of advice on the internet.

If the hook doesn't work, nobody will ever know.

The 3-Step Formula That Actually Works

Step 1: The Difference Between "I Get It" and "You Get Me"

The first job of a great hook is to give people context.

What is this actually about?

If people don’t know what your post is about in the first few seconds or the first few lines, they will skip straight past.

But it’s not only about sharing the topic but making the topic relatable.

If you say “Do you want to lose weight?”, everyone understands the topic.

But nobody feels like you’re talking to them specifically.

It’s generic.

Now compare that to “Are you tired of being disappointed every time you look in the mirror, because all you see are your failures in losing weight?”

Same topic.

Completely different feeling.

That one feels like you climbed inside their head and pulled out the exact thought they’ve had a hundred times.

That’s the goal.

Not just naming the problem, but naming it in a way that makes them think “wait, how do they know that about me?”

If your hook doesn’t make someone feel personally caught, it’s not doing its job yet.

Step 2: The $1,000 Question That Explains Trust

Imagine a random stranger stops you on the street and tells you about an investment opportunity.

Give him $1,000, and he’ll triple it in a month.

You’d assume you were being scammed.

Now imagine an actual investment company told you the exact same pitch.

Suddenly you’d take it a lot more seriously.

Nothing about the offer changed.

The pain point is the same, and the benefit is the same.

The only thing that changed is authority.

So ask yourself this every time you create something: why should anyone listen to you?

You can do this by explicitly stating your results, for example, if I make a post about losing weight, I will talk about how I lost 20kg.

But you can also make it more subtle.

If you make a reel about investing, for example, and you sit next to a Lamborghini, people will be much more likely to listen to you.

But most people only use their results in order to create authority.

“Here’s what I’ve achieved.”

“Here’s what I’ve built.”

“Look how far I’ve come.”

But there’s also another powerful kind of proof most people are too scared to use: their failures.

It feels like admitting you failed will discredit you.

Like nobody wants advice from someone who did something wrong.

But that’s backwards.

People don’t connect with perfect people.

They connect with real ones.

They want to see your ups and downs, not just the highlight reel.

I used to be terrified of sharing that side of things, too.

But the connection it creates does more for someone’s trust in you than your results ever could.

Step 3: Tease It. Don't Explain It. (Yet.)

Giving away your full solution too early is one of the worst things you can do for your reader.

The moment you reveal everything upfront, there’s no reason left to keep reading or watching.

Instead of spilling the solution immediately, hint at it.

Focus on the process and the benefit, not the specifics.

Compare these two:

“The solution is X.”

That’s too direct.

The second someone reads it, they’re done.

“There’s a proven, step-by-step strategy that makes this simple.”

That keeps them engaged.

They know a solution exists.

They just don’t know what it is yet, and that gap is exactly what keeps them reading.

I could have written in the intro of this post that the perfect hook consists of a combination of topic clarity, authority and hinting at the solution, and everyone would have clicked away after the introduction.

Numbers work the same way.

Saying something like “5 hacks that fixed this” tells people exactly how much value is coming, without giving any of it away.

Now they want to stick around to see all 5.

The goal isn’t to hide the value.

It’s to hold onto it a little longer.

Optional Step 4: The One Line That Keeps People Reading to the End

One sentence near the top of your content can quietly decide whether someone finishes it or not.

That sentence is the nudge.

A nudge is simply a reason to stick around.

It’s not the hook itself, it’s the thing that keeps people reading after the hook has already gotten their attention.

It can be a tease. A free resource is waiting at the end, like “Stay until the end, and I’ll share a free cheat sheet to help you apply this instantly”.

Or it can be as simple as “the last hack is the most powerful.”

It works because it gives people a reason to keep going beyond just curiosity.

Curiosity gets someone to start.

A nudge gives them a reason to finish.

This step is optional, but it’s one of those small additions that quietly boost retention without anyone noticing it’s even there.

Quick challenge before you move on.

Go back and reread the intro to this post.

Now try to spot each step of the framework hiding inside it.

It’s easier to see a framework once you know what you’re looking for.

3. 10 Hook Types That Stop the Scroll (With Real Examples)

Not every hook works the same way.

Below are 10 different types of hooks, each with examples to show you how they work in practice.

These are examples, never copy someone else’s hook word for word.

Use them as a frame, a way of thinking, and then make it yours.

A) Curiosity-Based Hooks

These hooks make people curious and encourage them to click to find out more.

🔹 “You won’t believe what happened next!”

🔹 “This ONE trick will change everything!”

🔹 “I tried this for 30 days… Here’s what happened!”

🔹 “99% of people get this wrong!”

🔹 “The secret no one is telling you...”

B) Problem-Solution Hooks

These hooks highlight a problem your audience faces and hint at a solution.

🔹 “Struggling to lose weight? Try this…”

🔹 “Your website is killing your business, fix this now!”

🔹 “Why your ads aren’t working (and how to fix them)”

🔹 “How I went from broke to $10K/month”

C) Controversial/Shocking Hooks

These hooks challenge common beliefs or make bold claims.

🔹 “College is a scam. Here’s why…”

🔹 “Everything you know about dieting is wrong!”

🔹 “Stop using Google Ads, use this instead!”

🔹 “I quit my 6-figure job and don’t regret it”

D) Numbered/List Hooks

Numbers make content feel structured and easy to consume.

🔹 “7 habits of highly successful people”

🔹 “5 reasons why your business is failing”

🔹 “3 shocking facts about AI”

🔹 “The 10 best tools for content creators”

E) Storytelling Hooks

People love stories—these hooks tease an interesting journey or experience.

🔹 “I was $50K in debt. Here’s how I turned it around.”

🔹 “The day everything changed for me…”

🔹 “I made every mistake possible, here’s what I learned”

🔹 “This is how I got my dream job”

F) Fear-Based Hooks

These hooks use fear to grab attention and create urgency.

🔹 “If you’re doing this, STOP now!”

🔹 “You’re losing money without even realising it”

🔹 “Warning: This mistake could ruin your business”

🔹 “Most people will NEVER retire because of this mistake”

G) Challenge/Dare Hooks

These hooks directly challenge the audience to take action.

🔹 “I dare you to try this for a week!”

🔹 “Think you’re smart? Solve this riddle!”

🔹 “Can you guess the answer?”

🔹 “Bet you can’t do this!”

H) “How-To” Hooks

These hooks promise a specific, actionable lesson.

🔹 “How to make $100/day online (even as a beginner)”

🔹 “How to edit videos like a pro”

🔹 “How to get your first 1,000 followers”

🔹 “How to build a website in 10 minutes”

I) Social Proof Hooks

These hooks show credibility by highlighting success stories.

🔹 “I made $10K in 30 days, here’s how”

🔹 “How I grew my account to 100K followers”

🔹 “Why top CEOs do this every morning”

🔹 “Learn from the best: [Famous Person]’s morning routine”

J) Time-Sensitive/Urgency Hooks

These hooks create a fear of missing out.

🔹 “Only 24 hours left!”

🔹 “Limited spots available, act fast!”

🔹 “Get in before it’s too late!”

🔹 “This deal won’t last forever!”

Save this post so the next time you’re stuck staring at a blank page trying to write a hook, you can come back here and use the framework and examples.

See you later,

Per

I am injured.

I have a bit of pain in my elbow.

Injuries are very common.

Everyone will get injured at some point.

And that’s why it’s so important to know how to deal with them.

That’s why I will share some common misconceptions which might make your injury worse and what actually works.

The Part of Every Fitness Journey Nobody Posts About

Contrary to what most people think, there isn’t always a cause for getting injured.

Yes, you can get injured because you are using bad technique or using weights you can’t yet handle.

But sometimes you do everything right, and you still end up hurt.

If you exercise a lot, you’ll get injured at some point.

Even if you do everything perfectly.

Does that mean you shouldn’t work out?

No, of course not.

If you don’t work out, you’ll get injured too, and those injuries will be worse.

The Worst Thing You Can Do When You Get Hurt

Stopping completely is almost never the answer.

Even though it’s everyone’s first instinct.

Yes, you should definitely stop doing exercises that make the injury feel worse.

But most people take that too far, they stop moving altogether.

Your body needs blood flow to heal.

When you exercise, more blood reaches the injured area.

That blood carries oxygen and nutrients.

Prolonged inactivity will usually slow recovery.

I have pain in my left elbow.

There is no reason for me not to train my legs or do lateral raises.

When You Can't Do the Exercise, Do This Instead

In some cases, your injury will also prevent you from training other muscles.

The elbow is a frustrating one because it is used everywhere.

So I have to adapt.

For example, down below you’ll see a lat pull-down, and you’ll also see that the elbow is getting flexed when you do the movement.

That’s why I switched to something called a Keenan flap.

I couldn’t find a proper image for it, but instead of gripping a bar, you attach a cuff directly around your upper arm.

So no elbow stress.

Bench press is another one.

Normally, it would load my elbow pretty heavily, so I swapped it for chest flies.

But even the wrist position on a chest fly can shift weight to your elbow (everything in your body is connected).

That’s why you can see I don’t actually hold the handles.

Every exercise has a workaround.

It might take some experimenting, and it might feel awkward at first.

Your Body Heals Faster When You Do This

Resting the injury is smart.

But resting forever is not.

As soon as you can move without pain, start.

Just moderate stimulus to remind your body that the area still needs to work.

The longer you leave it completely alone, the harder the road back becomes.

The best way to keep your body protected while you come back to train it is by making the exercises more stable.

The easiest way to make an exercise more stable is to use a machine instead of free weights.

Small tweaks could matter too.

With my elbow, I've shifted toward exercises that keep my wrist in a neutral position because it puts the wrist and elbow in a more natural position.

Start light and work up to a heavier load, but pain-free.

See you later,

Per

You don’t need more sleep.

You need better sleep.

Most people assume the only way to feel more rested is to spend more hours in bed.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through exactly what was working against me and what I changed to feel more energised without sleeping more.

Let’s get into it.

The One Decision That Fixes Your Sleep Before You Even Get in Bed

Every successful person you admire has a bedtime.

I know that sounds ridiculous.

Bedtimes are for eight-year-olds who cry when they have to stop watching cartoons.

But saying "I'll go to bed when I'm tired" is the sleep equivalent of saying "I'll work on this project whenever I feel like it".

You already know how that ends.

You will lose time, just like time slips away when you don’t schedule your days.

It doesn’t just help you save time, but it’ll also reduce your stress.

I used to lie in bed doing the math, stressing if I was going to get 8 hours of sleep.

A consistent bedtime fixes this.

Your body learns when it’s time to shut down.

You stop negotiating with yourself every night.

And the sleep you do get actually works the way it’s supposed to.

The 30-Minute Investment With an 8-Hour Return

Going to bed at the same time every night is powerful, but it’s only half the equation.

The other half is what you do before you get there

Just like a consistent bedtime trains your body to know when to sleep, a consistent wind-down routine trains your brain to know when to start shutting off.

Think of it as a 30-minute investment with an 8-hour return.

Sleep Doesn’t Happen to You.You Have to Plan It.

Planning your sleep is not just scheduling your bedtime.

The second part is to plan your wind-down routine.

Winding down before bed is the most important part of sleeping better, and I will talk about it more in the next sections, but for now, plan 30 minutes of wind-down before your bedtime.

Your Brain Doesn't Know It's Bedtime.

Winding down your brain with a thoughtful evening routine is one of the best ways to improve your sleep quality.

It signals to your brain it’s time to sleep.

The earliest part of your wind-down starts actually at 3 PM.

The Invisible Saboteur That's Been Stealing Your Sleep for Years

Most people drink coffee at 5 PM and have no idea it is destroying their sleep.

Caffeine has a half-life of 5 to 6 hours.

That means if you drink a coffee at 5 PM and go to bed at 10 PM, your body still has 50% of the caffeine active in your system.

It’s the invisible saboteur.

You can’t feel it, so you never blame it.

But it’s quietly making it harder to fall asleep, reducing the quality of the deep sleep you do get, and leaving you more tired than you should be the next morning.

The fix is to stop drinking caffeine 8 to 10 hours before bed.

If your bedtime is 10 PM, your last coffee should be around noon.

Why Ancient Humans Slept Better Than You.

People don’t realise how much their brains use visual cues to fall asleep.

The biggest of these visual cues is light.

10,000 years ago, humans went to sleep when the sun went down and woke up when it came back up.

And those instincts are still carved in our brains.

When the room is lit with bright overhead lights, it tricks the brain into thinking it’s still daytime.

Our brain receives signals that there is still a big light source over the top of our heads, which our brain assumes is the sun.

There are two simple fixes.

First, if you can, step outside for 10 to 30 minutes around sunset.

Let your brain see the light changing.

Second, once you’re inside for the evening, stop lighting your home like an operating theatre.

Dim the overhead lights.

Use lamps placed lower in the room.

Light a candle if you’re feeling fancy.

The goal is to create an atmosphere that says winding down, not still mid-afternoon.

Your brain will get the message. It’s been waiting for it all evening

The 30 Minutes Before Bed That Most People Completely Waste

For the same reasons we dimmed our lights, we have to dim our phones.

Your phones can also signal it's still daytime.

Dark mode and anti-blue light settings are your saviours in this case.

For my phone, I just use the built-in settings, and for my laptop, I use f.lux.

But the real move is putting the phone down entirely at least 30 minutes before bed.

Use that time to get ready for bed, read something that isn’t a screen, or just let your brain exist without being stimulated for five seconds.

Also, schedule Do Not Disturb.

One notification is all it takes to pull you back in.

Remove the temptation entirely so you don’t have to rely on willpower to ignore it.

Because we both know how that goes.

Two Techniques That Quiet a Brain That Won't Shut Up

Your body and mind need to be relaxed to fall asleep.

Stress, fear and other emotions can keep you awake.

If you struggle to fall asleep, try these calming techniques to slow your mind and ease your body:

4-7-8 Breathing Exercise

This simple breathing technique calms your nervous system and helps you drift off:

1. Breathe in quietly through your nose for 4 seconds

2. Hold your breath for 7 seconds

3. Exhale fully through your mouth for 8 seconds

Repeat this cycle several times and feel your body relax.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Gently tense and then relax each muscle group, starting from your head and moving down to your toes.

Focus especially on releasing tension in your neck, shoulders, and legs.

This signals to your body that it’s time to rest.

Believe me, having those 30 minutes and coffee limit will make all the difference in the world.

Once you get used to it, you will wonder why you never did it before.

The Energy Drains That Have Nothing to Do With Sleep

All these things I just mentioned will help you fall asleep faster and will make you feel awake.

But there are also a lot of non-sleep-related things that can steal your energy and keep you tired.

The Hidden Cost of Trying to Remember Everything

“Our brain is for having ideas, not holding them.”

I make this mistake constantly.

I try to remember everything.

Post ideas, grocery lists, tasks for the day,…

Even though I know deep inside there is a strong chance I will forget them, I keep trusting myself not to forget them.

But using your brain to store things that could easily be written down creates low-grade stress, decision fatigue, and mental exhaustion that feels like “being tired for no reason.”

I notice this most with:

• Decisions I’ve half-made

• Conversations I’m avoiding

• Things I “should probably deal with”

Start writing things down, or just do them.

Just get it out of your head.

But even if you’re writing everything down and your mind feels clear, there’s another energy drain most people never consider.

The Exhausting Price of Living Out of Alignment

Living out of alignment is exhausting.

When your actions don’t match what you believe or want, even in small ways, it drains energy you didn’t even know you had.

You say you want to be healthier, but you skip the gym again.

You know you need to have that difficult conversation, but you keep putting it off.

You tell yourself you’re going to focus on your priorities, but you spend another evening scrolling instead.

Each tiny misalignment creates friction.

And that friction costs you.

That sense of being tired even though you “didn’t really do anything today”.

The fix isn’t to become perfect, it’s to notice the gap and start closing it, one small action at a time.

But also find enjoyment in your work

Work doesn’t have to be a drain on your energy

Research shows that positive emotions directly boost productivity and create sustainable energy rather than depleting it.

For a deeper dive into making work more energising and productive, I highly recommend Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, which explores how positive emotions can transform both your work experience and your results.

If you want more of this, practical, no-nonsense content on sleep, health, productivity and habits that actually stick, hit the subscribe button below.

Subscribe now

See you later,

Per

A few weeks ago, I had my wisdom teeth removed, and what was supposed to be a few days of recovery turned into a much longer stretch of doing basically nothing.

My to-do list sat there, untouched, slowly turning into a source of guilt instead of a tool.

And the longer it went on, the harder it felt to start again because every day I waited made the next day feel heavier.

If that sounds familiar, if you’ve ever had a few “off” days turn into off weeks, this one’s for you.

Today, I’m walking you through exactly what I did to get back in the saddle.

Stop Listening To The Voice in Your Head

Shaming yourself after falling off track doesn’t work.

But it’s the first thing people do.

For some reason, it’s a normal human reaction, but it doesn’t solve anything.

I am going to be honest, I have had bad thoughts too.

I called myself a disappointment more times than I'd like to admit.

I told myself I was lazy.

But that’s not what will get you off the couch.

Every single person has periods where they get nothing done.

Where even the smallest task feels like climbing a mountain in flip-flops.

No human is ever perfect.

So instead of beating yourself up, try reframing it.

You didn’t fail.

You took a break.

That break might have been exactly what your brain and body needed.

Rest isn’t the enemy of progress, it’s what makes long-term progress possible.

Nobody Starts With Everest

Nobody who has ever climbed Mount Everest started by climbing Mount Everest.

They started with smaller mountains.

Then slightly bigger ones. Until they were ready for the big one.

Getting back on track works exactly the same way.

The reason everything feels so overwhelming after a break is that you’re trying to jump straight back to the top of the mountain when you’re still at base camp.

So force yourself to write the whole post on your first session back, if you can’t do it.

Write the outline, which feels like a manageable task.

Take a break, and in the next session, write the first section.

Then the next.

Before you know it, you’ve finished something, and it feels incredible when you’ve been stuck.

This way, you will not only be able to finish your tasks, because if you just try to push yourself, you’ll feel overwhelmed and just procrastinate, but you will also create small wins.

And small wins create momentum.

The goal right now isn’t to be perfectly productive.

It’s to start moving again.

The Only Question Worth Asking Yourself Each Morning

Once you know what you can reasonably do in a day, you can start setting daily goals.

In the morning (or the day before, which I like to do), ask yourself what is the least I want to get done in order for today (or tomorrow) to be a success?

In the beginning, it might be small, but that’s fine.

Because what feels small for someone else can be huge for you.

I once watched a video about a YouTuber who had burned out so badly that her daily goal was simply to get out of bed and get dressed.

She struggled with tasks so much that even the most insignificant tasks felt overwhelming for her.

In the beginning, that target might feel embarrassingly small.

That’s fine.

Small is how you rebuild trust in yourself.

Define The Floor To Hit The Ceiling

Once you’re back in the saddle and stacking a few wins, it’s time to raise the bar.

Not by much.

Just enough to feel it.

This is where you set your minimal standards of a good week.

The short list of things that, if you do them, make the week count as a win.

To hit the ceiling, you first need to define the floor.

Your standards need to be slightly challenging, but not so high that you can’t hit them most weeks.

If they’re too easy, you won’t grow.

If they’re too hard, you’ll keep failing and lose trust in yourself.

So aim for the version of “good” that stretches you a little, without snapping you.

When they start feeling too easy, nudge them up slightly.

Then hold there until it’s time to nudge again.

That’s how real progress works.

In small, steady steps that compound.

See you later,

Per

Did you know most health routines are designed to fail you?

Not because you’re lazy.

Not because you lack discipline.

But because someone built that routine for a life that isn’t yours.

The problem was never your willpower.

It was the fit.

In this post, I’m going to show a simple framework for finding what actually works for your life.

The Toy That Explains Why Your Diet Keeps Failing

Do you remember that toy babies play with?

The one with the different-shaped holes, where you have to match the shape to the right-shaped hole?

Your health is just like this toy.

Your life is the box, and your health routine is the peg you’re trying to fit inside it.

Most people think there’s only one peg shape that exists.

They think there is only the square one.

Train 6 days a week.

2-hour sessions.

Cardio after every workout.

Hours spent cooking every single day.

So they grab that square peg, and they try to shove it in their round hole of a life (a full-time job with two kids), and they push.

And they keep pushing, but it just doesn’t fit.

Until eventually, out of pure frustration, they chuck the whole thing across the room and give up entirely.

But there isn’t just one peg.

There are loads of them.

Different shapes, different sizes.

And somewhere in that pile is one that actually fits your life, your schedule, your energy levels, all of it.

So how do you find the right one?

It all starts with asking yourself a few questions.

5 Questions That Reveal If Your Plan Was Doomed From Day One

I know the feeling.

It’s Sunday evening, you’re feeling motivated, and suddenly you’re convinced you can do anything.

Six gym days a week

Easy.

Cutting out everything fun from your diet?

Couldn’t be simpler.

This is the trap.

Motivation spikes make you set the bar so high that you are just doomed to fail.

So before you commit to anything, ask yourself these 5 questions.

They’ll tell you pretty quickly whether your plan is the right peg or just another square one.

1. How many hours do you genuinely have each week for health?

Not how many hours you wish you could spend.

Does your plan fit inside that number, or does it need a version of your week that doesn’t exist?

2. Could you realistically do this on your busiest week?

Your health is not going to improve if it only works on perfect weeks.

It should be sustainable even during your worst weeks.

The weeks when you don’t have any motivation.

The week when work explodes, or your kid gets sick.

If your plan only works when life is easy, it doesn’t fit your life.

3. What made your last health plan fail?

Every failed attempt is feedback for your next attempt.

Use it.

Was it too complicated?

Too restrictive?

Too time-consuming?

Once you know why it failed, you can build your next plan to avoid that exact trap.

4. Can you see yourself doing this six months from now?

Most plans aren’t built to last 6 months.

They’re built to last 2 weeks, going all-in until reality kicks the door down.

If the thought of doing this long-term already makes you want to quit, that’s your answer.

5. If your schedule became 30% busier tomorrow, would this plan survive?

This is a big one that most people don’t think about.

Life doesn’t stay still.

If your routine is already packed to the edge, one curveball is all it takes to break it completely.

What a Peg That Actually Fits (Could) Look Like

When you try to start your health routine and go on YouTube to find a good health routine, you’ll probably find a million videos made for people with unlimited time.

That’s why I will give you an example peg that is way more likely to fit inside your life.

For working out, you don’t need more than 2 workouts per week.

That’s already enough to lose weight, to build muscle or to get healthy in general.

It really does not take more than that.

Those sessions also don't need to be longer than 45 minutes.

You can make a lot of progress in sessions of 30-60 minutes.

Now for food.

This is where most people overcomplicate things, so the simple version is to pick one day (Sunday works great) to meal prep.

Cook some carbs, rice, pasta, potatoes, whatever you like.

At the same time, cook some proteins, chicken, turkey, and beef.

Buy some frozen veggies.

Now you’ve got a fridge full of mix-and-match meals for the week.

Just grab some carbs, some protein, some veggies, heat it up, and done.

If you want even more variety, you can also get some sauces, such as tomato sauce, to get even more options.

And the best part is that you can do this while watching your favourite show, listening to a podcast, or even working.

The time isn’t wasted, it’s multitasked.

At this point, you’ve already built something solid.

But there’s one more piece that ties it all together.

Walking.

Walking has been shown to seriously reduce your risk of dying early (which, let’s be honest, is a pretty strong selling point).

All you need is a 10 to 20-minute walk after dinner.

Got kids?

Bring them along, it’s a nice bit of time together.

Got a podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to? Perfect timing.

Or just use it to let your brain switch off for a bit.

For some of you, this peg might fit perfectly.

For others, it might fit with a bit of room to spare, which is great, that means you’ve got some flexibility.

And for some of you, it still won’t fit.

The point isn’t to copy this exactly, it’s to take it and shape it until it fits your hole.

But even the perfect peg won’t help if you’re not consistent with it.

And that’s where most people actually go wrong.

The First 2 Weeks Aren't About Results (Here's What They're For)

A lot of health routines don't last because people don’t build a solid foundation.

Consistency is the foundation you build the routine on top of.

It doesnt matter if you have the perfect workout routine, the perfect diet or evevn the perfect playlist.

If you can’t do them consistently, you’ll never see progress.

So for the first two weeks, forget about optimising your workouts.

Your only job is to show up.

It doesnt matter if you stay for 20 minutes, an hour or even just 5 minutes.

Every time you show up, even on the days you really don't want to, you're casting a vote for a new identity.

You become someone who goes to the gym.

That shift sounds small, but it’s the biggest consistency hack there is.

It also gives you an incredibly easy win right at the start of your journey, when you need it most.

A low bar you can clear every single time, and those early wins build momentum faster than any perfectly optimised programme ever could.

10 minutes at the gym is not a waste of time.

10 minutes at the gym, done consistently, is how you become someone who works out.

And becoming that person is worth infinitely more than one perfect session you never repeat.

See you later,

Per

If you have a full-time job, a packed schedule, and a side project you keep meaning to work on, this one is for you.

The motivation shows up occasionally, but the week flies by, and somehow you never touch the thing you said you were going to build.

Sunday rolls around, and you feel that quiet disappointment again.

You don’t need 20 hours a week to build a side hustle.
You need the right 3 hours.

In this post I’m going to show you exactly how to make real, consistent progress on your side hustle in just three hours a week.

I also made a free workbook so you can follow along and fill everything in as you go.

Click here to get your workbook

The Real Reason Side Hustles Die Before They Start

Most side hustles don’t die because the idea was bad.

They die because the idea never got any time.

So before anything else, open your calendar.

And ask yourself one question:

Is there any time blocked off this week to actually work on this?

If the answer is no, that’s your only problem right now.

The easiest way to make time is to sacrifice the things you don’t enjoy doing.

I used to spend hours scrolling on Instagram.

I came home, I would jump in bed and not leave for the next 2 hours.

Even though I didn’t like spending my time like that, I still did it every day.

Your goal isn’t to find huge blocks of time.

Even pockets of 20 minutes here and there add up fast.

We are looking for only three focused hours per week.

The Hour That Costs You Two Hours

Scheduling time is step one, but here’s where most people go wrong.

Even if you block off three hours this week, those three hours are not the same.

A focused hour at 9 am on a Tuesday when you slept well is not the same as a tired hour at 10 pm on a Thursday after a long day at work.

Some hours you’re sharp. Ideas flow, decisions come fast, and you get more done in 45 minutes than you normally would in two hours.

At other hours, you can barely string a sentence together.

That’s just how human energy works.

You need to understand your own energy pattern.

Grab a piece of paper, open Excel, or use the workbook and map out your week and track how you actually feel throughout the day.

How do you feel in the morning?

During midday?

Afternoon, evening, night?

Use this simple colour system to make patterns easier to spot:

🔴 Low energy: tired, foggy, unfocused

🟡 Medium energy: functional, fine for lighter tasks

🟢 High energy: sharp, focused, ready to do real work

Do this for a week.

You’ll start to see patterns you never noticed before.

Then protect your green hours.

That’s when your best work happens

Don’t waste them on emails or admin.

Save them for the work that actually moves your project forward.

Rest Isn't Always the Answer (I Learned This the Hard Way)

When we’re drained, our instinct is always to rest.

That’s why I would start scrolling when I came home.

It felt like rest, but I felt more drained than before I picked it up.

The problem wasn’t that I was resting.

The problem was that I wasn’t actually resting.

When you’re drained, your instinct is to do nothing.

Real recovery looks different for everyone.

For me it’s walking, reading, tidying my workspace, or spending time with my pets.

Those things actually give me energy back.

Take a piece of paper and draw two columns.

In the first column, write down everything you usually do when you feel drained.

In the second column, write down the things that actually leave you feeling better afterwards.

Most people have never done this consciously, but once you know the difference, you never want to go back.

Stop Doing Everything, Start Doing This

Having time and energy is only half the equation.

The other half is making sure you spend that time on the right things.

When you only have three hours a week, you cannot afford to spend them on the wrong things.

That’s where the 80/20 rule comes in:

80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

80% of your results will come from 20% of the tasks.

80% of your profit comes from 20% of clients.

80% of the points of your exam will be from 20% of the curriculum.

The percentage isn’t always exactly 80/20.

Sometimes it’s 90/10, sometimes 70/30.

But the principle stays the same.

If you can identify which 20% of tasks creates 80% of the output, you can get most of the results in a fraction of the time.

Your job is to find them, protect them, and do them first.

Everything else can wait.

So here’s how to actually find your 20%.

Write down your yearly goals.

Then write down the quarterly goals that move you closer to those.

Then the weekly goals that move you closer to those.

Now do a full brain dump.

Everything you think you need to do to reach those goals, write it all down.

Big tasks, small tasks, half-formed ideas, random to-dos.

Just get it all out of your head and onto paper.

Once it’s all in front of you, ask yourself two questions:

What are the 20% of tasks and habits creating 80% of my positive results?

What are the 20% of tasks and habits creating 80% of my problems?

Highlight the tasks that actually move the needle.

If you’re still not sure which ones matter most, use this filter:

“If I could only do one task this week, which one would move my project forward the most?”

That’s your answer.

Planning 100 Things Gets You Nowhere

By this point, you have something most people never build.

You have time blocked off. You understand your energy. You know how to recharge.

And you’ve identified the tasks that are worth your attention.

Now it’s time to put it all together.

Every week, before you sit down to work, I want you to ask yourself two questions:

If I only had one hour this week to work on my project, what would I do with it?

If I had three hours, what would I add?

It makes you cut through all the noise and get brutally honest about what actually matters this week.

One completed thing beats one hundred planned ones.

That’s the whole system.

Just three focused hours, spent on the right things, at the right time.

That’s enough to build something real.

See you later,

Per