Singapore Trip Report

Flying to Singapore

A couple of days before my trip to Singapore I got food poisoning and was feeling absolutely terrible. Fortunately enough I recovered fairly quickly and felt okayish on the day of my flight. The flight was great, because I flew Korean Air. They simply never disappoint! I also talked to an interesting Japanese businessman during the flight and during our stopover at Incheon. After arriving in Singapore I took a cab to my hotel. I'm pretty sure the taxi driver spoke English, but for some reason I couldn't understand what he was saying. I was later told that he must've spoken 'Singlish', some sort of mix between English and Chinese spoken amongst certain locals.

I stayed at a hotel called the Forest by Wangz. A little pricey, but definitely an amazing place! The staff is INSANELY friendly and after eating a great scrambled eggs with bacon breakfast I headed out to explore Singapore and meet with a friend of a friend called Hiroyuki for lunch. He took me for some local food. The food wasn't bad, but not exactly my thing. However I did really enjoy meeting Hiroyuki, which is most important anyway! Here's pictures of the food:

 Noodles with some pork and vegetables

Soup filled with dumplings

Singapore's Atmosphere

After lunch, I set out to explore Singapore. If you like nature, skyscrapers or a mix of them you're sure to love the way Singapore looks:

 Skyscrapers

 Very interestingly shaped skyscraper. Looks like there's some amazing penthouses!

 More skyscrapers

 Probably the most interesting looking skyscrapers I've ever seen

 Orchard shopping district

 Very cool looking shopping mall, Ion Orchard

 Chinese themed shopping mall in Orchard on the left

Overall I think Singapore's a beautiful city. There's a TON of nature and it's definitely called 'The Garden City' for a good reason. On top of that, I love skyscrapers and there's no shortage of those in Singapore either. Plus Singapore's skyscrapers look a lot cooler than the ones in Tokyo. I have a feeling that they can't be as creative in Tokyo due to earthquakes, because the skyscrapers in Hong Kong also look a lot less dull.

Food in Singapore

So Singapore's beautiful, but how about the food? Well... I was severely disappointed on this front. Especially the first week, I sometimes spent nearly an hour looking for a place with decent food. There's very very few healthy options in Singapore and the food doesn't taste particularly great either. I didn't really have any decent food for the entire first week. Supermarkets are even worse. Unless you don't mind cooking(which I do when travelling), there is absolutely NO healthy food apart from fruit in Singaporean supermarkets. Absolutely none!
Fortunately enough during the 2nd week I stayed in Singapore I ran into a few decent restaurants(mostly Korean and Japanese). There's quite some variety in Japanese food in Singapore and while it's weak at best compared to Japanese food in Japan, it's better than most Japanese food in western cities like London. I also happened to stumble onto the Marina Bay Sands resort on my very last day and actually found that there were some good restaurants there aswell. So I guess overall there probably is some good food in Singapore, you just have to really know where to look for it.
Last but not least I want to touch on Singaporean local food. Food courts are typical Singaporean places where there's a lot of tables where you can sit and eat and a lot of vendors selling food. It's generally very cheap and thus low quality. Not exactly my thing. The only true Singaporean food I ate is Chicken Rice, which was actually pretty good. Cheap, healthy and fairly tasty too. Here's the couple of pics I took of food:

 Chinese food at a food court

 Thai food at a restaurant

Pretty good chicken rice

The rest of my time in Singapore I spent handling a couple of business things through Skype and playing a bunch of online poker. The highlight of my trip however was meeting up with Vanessa, my friend in Singapore. I hadn't seen her for over a year so it was great to catch up with her. We went for dinner one day and then another she took me to the chicken rice place and we went shopping afterwards. Thanks for showing me around even though you were crazy busy with work, Vanessa!

Marina Bay Sands Resort Singapore

On my last day I went to the Marina Bay Sands resort, which has a rooftop with an amazing view of Singapore's skyline.

Shopping at Marina Bay Sands

Overall Thoughts

Overall Singapore's a beautiful city, but there's not a ton of stuff to do and I personally hate the food. I may be back for business at some point, but what this trip made me realize the most is how freaking amazing Japan is!!!

Utopias, Ethicology and Privately owned Nations

I've been very ill over the past few days with what is probably some kind of food poisoning. Fortunately enough I seem to be on the road to recovery just in time for my trip to Singapore on Tuesday. I'm not sure if it is at all related, but I seem to be in a very philosophical mood today.

First, I questioned my own priorities and goals in life, specifically the importance of a partner to my own happines after watching this Ted Talk:

Quite a good talk, worth a watch

In the end, my priorities remain unchanged. Then I watched a couple of other relatively interesting Ted Talks, but nothing really spiked my interest until I saw this one about IT projects in governments:

Not sure if it was good, It got me thinking about something and then I stopped paying attention

I actually only caught maybe 20% of it, because I got lost in my own train of thoughts throughout the rest of it. Before I proceed I also quickly want to list this Ted Talk that I recently saw about the way N.P.O.'s are handicapped:

Pretty interesting. If you're interested in business worth a watch. If you're interested in N.P.O.'s a must watch.

The talk about IT projects in governments basically talks about how some tech experts go and work for the government for 1 year and make some applications for the government that vastly outperform the projects the government does by themselves. This sounds very familiar to me, because my dad has done a lot of(and currently does) IT projects for the government and the stories I've heard about some of the people he's run into over the years sound pretty bad.
So I started to question why it is that the government sector performs worse than the business segment until I remembered the Ted Talk about N.P.O.'s. Just like N.P.O.'s, governments aren't as incentivized as corporations to produce great results, because the prospect of a big pot of gold at the end of the road just isn't there. There's a few more factors like (excluding politicians) it's a little harder to be recognized for your successes and it may not be as 'cool' as working in the business world, but money is most likely the biggest hurdle.

So what could we do to change this? Well the easiest solution would be to turn countries into corporations, privately owned. They're not thát different as they are, both are organizations that in many cases are trying to improve themselves and trying to become more effective and efficient.
There would be some issues, but I think many of them could be resolved by having much more liberal laws about deciding to migrate between countries. That way countries would have to stay competitive and treat their citizens well, provide good healthcare and such in order to keep their citizens and in order to keep receiving their tax money. Of course this would also mean countries would have to be run much more efficiently, because if it can offer lower taxes it will attract more citizens as is already the case with attracting businesses.
Obviously one small caveat is that you may have to put some restrictions on the maximum number of people in a country and it's interesting in and of itself whether you could implement a system to allow you to select whom you allow into your country or that it is too sensitive to racism and cannot be done or only up to a certain extent. Maybe I'll write about this next time, because this and immigration laws are quite interesting subjects too.
The biggest reason of why I currently don't even waste a second of my time on politics is because it is nothing but a popularity contest. Not the smartest, best suited for the job, hardest working person wins the election and runs the country. No, the one who's the most popular in the eyes of the public, the most charismatic and the one with the best campaign(in other words richest, best connections etc.) wins the election and runs the country. I could go on about the flaws of democracy for a while, but I don't have an easy to implement better solution as of right now, it definitely has it's upsides too and I want to get back to my main thoughts, so I'll stop talking about democracy's flaws.

Other advantages of the privately owned nations would be the fact that certain more wealthy countries could buy and invest in poorer countries and 'renovate' them and turn them 'profitable'. This may be a quicker way to raise some of the third world countries into the second and eventually first world. Of course I'm skipping over a ton of details here, but if I covered every little detail this blogpost would turn into a book.
Furthermore financial institutions would become less powerful. Right now they hold a lot of power over countries who are dependant on their loans. The flipside of this coin is that countries would become immensely more powerful and they would be privately owned. It would sort of turn them into mafias, because they have armies to fight things out in case they can't talk things out, but aren't countries already sort of like mafias in that sense?

I guess what we would need is some sort of global Earthwide UN-like organization that governs all countries and sets up good ground rules that everybody can and should live by. But then again, how are the people chosen that make this organization? Some sort of democracy? Does this turn into a popularity contest again rather than people being chosen who will actually do a good job? What is doing a good job anyway? What are these rules supposed to do? Are the rules that the most people agree with, the same rules that will make the most people happy? In other words do people know what makes them happy? If not, how would we force rules upon people that will eventually make them happier? It's hard to answer all these questions...
Another question is: Is there a set of rules that will make everybody happy? Highly unlikely. Would we need a 2nd Earthwide-UN like organization with different rules catering to different people? Then some countries can register under that one and cater to the people who have different needs. There's undoubtedly a small subset of the population who would be the happiest in a society where things like rape and murder are perfectly legal. I guess in some sense we're wrong to force people like this to adapt to our rules and force them to live in a society that is not optimal for them.

The general concensus seems to be that the human race is evolving over time into a more civilized species and if we're to believe some movies, eventually we'll all unite under the banner of the human race, cooperate in relative peace and live in some sort of utopia with our only threats coming from other species from different planets. At the very least in the very distant future we'll all realize we should just get along and live in an utopia, right? Well... with the way it's going... quite possibly, because people who like rape and murder and 'don't get along' don't particularly thrive well and generally don't get to 'reproduce'. So survival of the fittest dictates eventually these genes will go extinct.
However, in the end we're all just chasing 'happiness' aren't we? And what makes our 'good' way of chasing happiness better than their 'bad' way of chasing their happiness? Of course a murderer chasing happiness by murdering people hinders the happiness of others who don't like a murder society and a non-murderer doesn't hinder other people's happiness in the same way, but there is no way for a murderer to currently opt into and live in his own perfect society.

I think this is where my little philosofical adventure is going to end for today. No superclear conclusions, besides the fact that there are PLENTY problems left in the world worth solving, but it would be pretty boring if there was nothing left to do, no?

I guess my final question to you is. Do you think there will come a day that humanity will have created a perfect self sustaining society with no problems left to solve where a baby can instantly retire the second he is born?
I think the chances aren't very high, but...

Singapore and Macau Trip due to visa issues

Visa Issues

This week I got some not so great news. I will not get my investor visa before my 90-day tourist visa runs out on the 8th of October. Before we started the application process my lawyer mentioned to me the visa office was busier than usual and instead of ~4 weeks it'd probably take 6-7, but he said it would definitely be done before the 8th of October. However, it seems like they've been even busier than expected and it's still not here.

Considering I've already entered Japan 3 times this year, going to another country for 24 hours and coming back is not an option, because my lawyer thinks the chance of denial at the border is extremely high. So this leaves me with not much of a choice besides taking a vacation. My visa application was submitted on the 27th of July and they're currently working on an application that was submitted on the 2nd of July, so my lawyer believes I will get my visa somewhere in the middle of October. Fingers crossed.

I was already planning on going to Macau at the end of October, because of the Macau Poker series. This just means I have to leave Japan 1-2 weeks earlier than planned. I've decided to go visit my friend Vanessa in Singapore whom I haven't seen for about a year since she left London to go back to Singapore. Spending time with her and playing poker in Macau should be quite a lot of fun, but nonetheless I would've prefered staying in Japan. I have to miss an amazing lunch that was planned for the 17th at one of Tokyo's top restaurants. I also won't be able to see any of my friends and work on one of my projects is going to be quite hard, so I have to rely on my partner to take care of a lot of stuff for me. I guess I'll just have to work twice as hard when I get back to make up for it!

Overall unfortunate, but a good sign that I love life in Tokyo so much that I'm unhappy about a forced 3 week vacation and it should be a fun life experience seeing Singapore and playing poker in Macau!

Fully Furnished Apartment

As promised here's a video of my fully furnished apartment and my Home Cinema in action.

 

 

Fitness

Workout Program

Fitness has been going pretty well for the past ~5 weeks. I've gotten back on the 6days/wk program I used to do in London. It's really intense, but since I've done it twice already it's not that bad for me. The workouts usually take 100-120 minutes. I do abs every day, and the rest of my body parts I train 3x/week. Right now Days 1, 3 and 5 are Legs, Back and Biceps and Days 2, 4 and 6 are Chest, Shoulders, Triceps and also Cardio.

I definitely did not design this program myself. I'm pretty knowledgeable as far as fitness goes, but program design should be handled by a professional. I got mine from workoutbox.com. A fairly cheap online fitness website run by an entrepreneur/ex-personal trainer friend who really knows his stuff.

I'm already looking forward to Week 10, which is the start of the Breathing Squat phase. Basically for 8 weeks I'll be doing Breathing Squats which means only 1 set of Squats a day, but it is 1 set of 20 repitions with a weight you could normally only lift about 6-8 times. By breathing 3 times inbetween repitions, your legs sort of recover a little bit and you're able to perform more repititions. It's the single hardest physical thing I've ever done and I love it! Can't wait for weeks 10-17!

Diet

My diet too is courtesy of workoutbox.com. Based on a ton of information I entered, they estimate what my body needs on a day-to-day basis. Right now that means ~3300-3500kcal on workout days and about ~2300-2500 on non-workout days. About 20% of that comes from fat and I split the rest about 50/50 between carbs and protein, although I eat slightly more carbs than proteins.

In the morning before going to the gym I usually drink some milk, orange juice, iced green tea and multi-vitamins. After the gym I drink my big smoothie I posted about in my last blog. The rest of my meals are mostly brown rice and some sort of meat/fish with the ocassional smoothie, protein shake and salad.

Results

The results so far are not bad at all. I went up from about 70.5KG to 75KG in 5 weeks. I probably gained a little bit of fat too, but I definitely look much better and to be honest, I haven't been eating quite as well as I used to in London. I've eaten out more with friends, which is part of Japanese culture and lots of fun aswell.

Performance wise, I've gotten a lot stronger, but more importantly my cardio's finally getting up to a good level again. Over the summer I had a small issue with my knee and thus I didn't do any cardio for about 2-3 months. I had to start back at a pretty low level cardio wise, but I've improved tremendously over the past 5 weeks. I think I could run a 12 minute 2 mile again like I did about a year ago! I got pretty close to it the other day and I was only really doing H.I.T.(High Intensity Interval Training) nor was I that tired towards the end.

My best running performance to date was a 19:19 5KM christmas last year. I weighed only 70.5KG though and my cardio was in sick shape. I don't think I'm quite at that level yet, but I may try to do something cool again at some point. A sub 45:00 10KM could be cool, but that may be too easy. I'll think of something eventually.

Singapore & Macau

My next update will probably be from Singapore or Macau with a good old trip report and plenty pictures! If you have any tips/suggestions on things to do in either cities or if you're going to be there too in October, definitely hit me up!

Also feel free to post any fitness and non-fitness related questions in the comments box below!

Delicious Smoothies, 37 Steakhouse Roppongi, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and much more

First of all I need to correct a little something. My last blog wasn't really meant to say I was overall unhappy or anything. It mostly just illustrates I've been thinking about the meaning/purpose of life, been searching for my true passion, but most of all been fiddling around with the best way to schedule my life as an Entrepreneur in Tokyo, rather than a Poker Player in London. I've pivotted again since my last update and made some adjustments, but it'll be a few more weeks before I update about that particular subject again.

This blog will mostly be an update about what I've been up to in the past month or 2 and contain a ton of pictures. First some random life stuff, then more towards the bottom a full business update.

Workout Routine and Smoothies!

First of all, I've gotten back into a solid workout routine courtesy of http://www.workoutbox.com/! 6 days/wk, 2 hrs/workout like I used to in London. And a sick workout routine goes hand in hand with a (mostly) solid diet. Which in my case means quite a few smoothies. Here's the recipe for my post-workout shake:

-100g Blueberries(I use frozen ones)
-100g Pineapple(I use frozen)
-150g Watermelon
-1 Banana (~100g)
-300ml 2% Milk
-60g Whey Protein Powder Strawberry Flavor

Nutritional Facts:
-640 Calories
-85.5g Carbohydrates
-55.7g Protein
-11.6g Fat

Very healthy and very delicious! A perfect post-workout meal!

Home Cinema Theater

Furthermore, I've got my entire projector setup complete and I got a ton of awesome new blu-rays! I promise to shoot a few proper pictures and even a video of my entire apartment fully furnished and my home cinema in my next blog, but for now here's a few pictures I took a few weeks ago, before the screen arived. Projecting on the wall looks great too though.

 Love Lord of the Rings. Gotta do a marathon again at some point!

Waseda University Tour

 This past week, I got a tour of Waseda university from an American professor who's been in Japan for well over 30 years! Unfortunately enough it was summer vacation so I didn't get to meet any students, but the prof was a very kind and interesting man and although not as beautiful as the university I saw in Seoul the main campus Waseda campus is quite nice.

 The founder's statue

 Library

 Waseda's iconic tower.

Such peace in Tokyo's city centre!

Best Unagi Ever

Last but not least, I had a few great meals. First of all I went to a very popular Unagi restaurant and had the best Unagi experience of my life:

Unagi is a pretty small meal, but I love it and I need to eat it a lot more often. The world's most renowned Unagi restaurant is walking distance for me and still high on top of my list of must-visit restaurants. Unfortunately enough it's not really a place you go on your own, so if you're reading this and you're interested in going, get in touch!

Great Fish Restaurant with my Landlord

The second one was a great fish restaurant which my landlord took me to. The sushi's rice was cold, which is usually a very bad sign, but in this case it was quite good. What stole the show however, were the starters. I got served some Natto(fermented soy beans) on Tofu and although when asked if there's any Japanese food I don't like, Natto is usually on top of the list, this time I actually liked it! Highlight of the night was the fried fish, which was the best piece of fish I've ever tasted! No pictures were taken unfortunately enough.

37 Steakhouse Roppongi

Lastly I went to a friend's favorite steak restaurant in all of Japan(and quite possibly the entire world), 37 Steakhouse in Roppongi.

 The Oysters weren't that tasty, but the Prawns were great! Superjuicy!

 Awesome salad!

 American Prime Beef

 Australian 35 days aged

 The above 2 and a piece of Australian 21 days aged

Me and 2 friends ended up splitting 3 slices of meat, American Prime, Australian 35 days aged and Australian 21 days aged. I'm not sure if it was the fact I got to taste 3 different kinds of steak or what, but this was quite easily the best steak I've ever had! The seasoning was especially SUPERB! I started off liking the Australian 35 days aged best, but after I finished eating I liked all of them equally. All 3 fantastic pieces of meat!

Unfortunately enough the side dishes(creamed spinach and fries) were very disappointing and very blend, but the steaks were so outstanding, I will definitely return here!

FrankPeelen.com

Business wise, I've been working on a few projects. As I mentioned in my last blog, I decided to drop the referral project, but my own personal website is finally up and running! There's a Japanese version coming very soon aswell, but for now you can check out the English version here:

http://www.FrankPeelen.com/

Meishi

 

aka business cards.

 

Language Link

Language Link is still progressing sort of on schedule. I had hoped to be able to start actual coding this past week, but hopefully we can finalize the specifications early this next week and get started on the actual coding towards the 2nd half of this week.

I've also made some minor additions to Language Link's website's wireframes and I've hired a team to build this website. It's a slightly more complicated website than FrankPeelen.com and thus will cost a bit more and take a bit longer, but it should be up and running in 4 weeks. Something which I'm very excited for.

On top of this, Language Link's Facebook page and Twitter page now have professionally designed graphics. You can check them out at:

https://www.facebook.com/LanguageLinkApp/

and

https://twitter.com/LanguageLinkApp/

There's not a ton happening on these pages yet, but as the application gets closer to launch there will definitely be a lot more exiciting stuff on LL's social network pages.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics

Last but definitely not least, me and a close friend are working on a very exciting project for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I can't really say much yet besides the fact that our vision is grand and we plan to make some big things happen in Tokyo leading up to and in 2020!

The Lean Startup

I've also been reading this great book by Eric Ries on his approach to building a company. It has really resonated with me, because it's very scientific and analytical and reminds me of playing poker. I'll definitely be taking a lot of things away from it and can already recommend the book to anyone interested in business, startups and entrepreneurship.

I think that pretty much brings you up to date! Next time I'll post a video of my fully furnished apartment and whatever else I've been up to.

Frank

Dissecting my own Psyche

In my blog post about my first week as an entrepreneur I mentioned that I had started using this To-Do-List template to plan my days:

On top of that I've been using a file on my computer to list what I want to do each week and month. I've been using this system for about 5 weeks now and for half of it it's been amazing for me! I got an unbelievable amount of stuff done. During the first week of September for example, I did almost everything I had planned for the first 2-3 weeks of the month!
On the other hand, there have been weeks where, although I still got a decent amount of work done, I wasn't particularly motivated, felt a bit sluggish and wasn't all that happy overall. So I set out to find out what was causing it.

First I blamed sleep. I have been sleeping less than the 9 hours I used to, but by now I've realised this is not the issue. The 8 hours of sleep I get each night are enough, because there were also weeks where I did completely fine sleeping 8 hours a night.

Next was the lack of exercise and healthy food. I hadn't been to the gym in 2-3 months, due to 2 injuries, spending time in Europe and moving to and getting settled in Japan. I had also been eating out the vast majority of my meals for the past 6 months. So 3 weeks ago I finally started going to the gym again and eating superclean and healthy 90%+ of my meals. But regardless of the 6x2 hours/week I've spent in the gym and the healthy food, I still have had the same periods of sluggishness and unhappiness since then.

At this point I started to question what it was I actually want to do. I figured, maybe I am not enjoying what I'm doing. I am very confident that entrepreneurship suits me. I've never had a regular job and always made my own schedule. On top of that I really need to be challenged.
However, I did start to question exactly what kind of business I want to build and asked myself: "What is it you want to do with your life?". I still don't have the exact answer to that, but I do know that I'm very excited about my  Language Link project. Especially building out the website and the millions of different marketing possibilities excite me to no end!
Another project I was working on was an affiliate website for Udemy.com. Udemy is a website where you can take a wide variety of courses ranging from 'Learning How to Build a Website' to 'Learning Photoshop' to 'Photography' and 'Management' courses. I completed a course on building websites, which was fairly interesting and should prove useful in the future, but I found myself not so excited about building the actual affiliate website. Especially when the affiliate program turned out to work differently than I originally anticipated. So I've pretty much decided to drop this project.
{However, if anyone reading this is planning to sign up for Udemy, hit me up! Got some referal links and I'm happy to share the money with you that Udemy pays me for refering you!}
I was also planning on playing quite a bit of poker, but after playing 1-2 sessions, I've noticed it's just not gonna happen. I may play every now and then if I really feel like it, but mostly for fun. I don't expect to do any serious online poker playing anymore.
In the end I decided that it'll come to me eventually. I'm only 24, so I have plenty time to figure it out. And for now I'm very excited about my Language Link project, so I will be working on that whenever I can.

This still left me with the periods of sluggishness and lack of motivation. So I started to ask myself a few slightly different questions. "What excites you?", "What do you want to do right this instant?" and "What if this was your last day alive, how would you spend it?". Worringly enough I still wasn't able to come up with any clear answers and I began to realize not much TRULY excites me at the moment.
Sure, there's things I really enjoy such as good food, movies, socializing and certain parts of the Language Link project I'm really looking forward to. But the food has to be really outstanding and there's only a handful of movies out of the 1000+ I've seen that truly get me to jump out of my seat.
Possible causes are for one the remaining effects of having been a professional poker player. I developed a lot of skills that'll serve me extremely well throughout my life, but I also feel like I've surpressed my emotions quite a lot. Secondly, I've already experienced a lot of pretty big things for a 24 year old, which has been great, but it makes it harder to find newer and bigger things to be excited about.
Last but not least, I've always liked to be challenged. The issue with that is that I may be overconfident in some ways. I feel like there's almost nothing I can't do, everything seems so possible and within reach and thus not much of a challenge and less exciting...

I think lacking a true passion is definitely one part of the problem, but on top of that I've definitely spent time doing some things I was clearly unexcited about. Mainly the affiliate project and poker I wasn't that excited about. So I've decided to make 2 main changes on top of dropping the projects I'm not excited about:
1) Change the entire way I schedule my days.
Throw out most of the to-do-list as is and instead after I finish up a few things that have to happen that day, I just do whatever I feel like. No joke! Usually these are useful things like working on Language Link anyway. I think I'll be focussing a lot more on Japanese studies again aswell. I haven't progressed that much as of late. I've especially been speaking Japanese very, very little despite living in Japan.
2) Get out of the house more and meet more new people.
Take my laptop with me and do work from coffee shops more, so I don't spend too much time at home behind my desktop just like I did in London for 2 years playing poker.
And since I rarely have a bad time when I'm socializing, I've decided to go out of my way and try to meet more people. Which I was sort of planning to do anyway for networking purposes.

For now I think making these 2 big changes, should have a big positive impact on my life, but we'll see how it pans out for real in a month or 2.

I have a LOT to update you on regarding my Language Link project, life in Tokyo, my totally furnished apartment, some movies, some dinners and possibly upcoming trips too. However, I think this blog is long and dense enough as it is, so I'll promise to update you on all of that as soon as I can. Hopefully within a week or so, although this week is really busy so don't expect it before the weekend!

If you actually got through all of this, I'm impressed. Maybe my writing isn't as boring as I thought it was! Leave me a comment if you did, especially if any of this resonates with you I'd be interested in hearing from you!

Weekend Productivity

I've never really been someone who's taken weekends off. Especially during my time as a professional poker player I often worked weekends, because that's when the best games were running. However, as of late weekends have blended together into my normal workweeks even more so than usual. Here are the 3 main reasons.

1) Workout Schedule

I recently started a new fitness program and it happened to be convenient to start this on a Saturday. My fitness program is a 6 days/wk split, which means my only day off is Friday. As a result, my Saturday feels like the start of the week and thus like Monday.
Don't think for a moment that this makes Friday feel like weekend though! My friends, business partners and the companies I interact with still work on Friday, so I still deal with people working and do a lot of work myself, because I get important emails that need responding to.

2) I enjoy what I do

A lot of the time what I want to do is work! Even if I had clear and defined weekdays and weekends, I would still do work on weekends. I am very excited about the things I'm working on and making progress on those is a lot more fun and rewarding to me than my hobbies.
However, like any other healthy human being I too take breaks from work, but...

3) I schedule non-work time

Definitely not all of it, I still decide to call it quits when I'm tired and decide to go out with friends when they ask me last-minute, but I do schedule breaks here and there to stop myself from burning out. For example, next week I'll join a university baseball team in their practice and most weeks I schedule going out for some food and such.


I believe that on top of my strange work schedule in the past as a professional poker player, these 3 things have recently made the line between weekdays and weekends even vaguer for me. This has made me more productive during the weekends and best of all I really enjoy this kind of schedule!