Getting ahead of 2024, how I blast through emails & making habits that stick... 💯

GM Friends 👋

Almost the end of the year! 💪

In this episode I’ll cover:

🪂 Care-Package:
🎅 Taking this time to be a quiet achiever
🔭 The tool I use to blast through emails
🏋️ How I’ve started 5 new habits and made them stick
🧗‍♂️ Building in Public: The Newsletter

🪂 Care-Package:

A weekly package of actionable strategies to help you Grow Faster through content, business & health.

🧲 Attract an audience:

🎅 Now is the time to win in private. Be a quiet achiever.

This week is not the week to grind on content.

Everyone is at home and no one is paying attention.

Now is the time to set yourself up for success in 2024 (and take some time to recharge).

This is how I’m approaching the final days of 2023 to set myself up for the new year:

🍄 Become Better:

🔭 The tool I use to blast through emails.

I’ve always been terrible at email.

The more active I am publicly, the more I find it’s the one platform that I let slip.

Earlier in my career this caused me to miss a lot of opportunities or accidentally come across as a bit rude to people I really care about.

Thankfully last year, I made the switch to using a platform called Superhuman.

I’ve been using it for over a year now and it’s the first time ever that I’ve been organised and not let a single thing slip.

It turns out I wasn’t bad at email, it was just the tools that I was using.

Before you say:

“Yes Alex, that’s great but I use Gmail, there’s no way I’m switching email providers.”

That’s what I thought too!

But it actually plugs into your Gmail and makes the experience so much f*cking better.

The average Superhuman user gets through their email twice as fast (and for me saves me several hours a week).

There’s a bunch of features that sound boring (automatic reminders, follow-up, soozing emails, etc), but actually make such a massive difference.

It feels like an email experience built for 2024, not 2004 when Gmail was first released.

So why do I bring this up?

You guys know that I almost never promote anything here.

But this is a product that I’ve gotten so much value out of and I think it will do the same for you.

Who should use it:

✅ Entrepreneurs / CEOs
✅ People spending 1 hour+ every day in email
✅ People who find email boring AF and just want to get through it quicker

Who shouldn’t use it:

❌ Casual email users.
❌ Those with a job that doesn’t use email often.
❌ People who don’t need to stay on top of frequent updates & requirements.

If you’re a fit and you want to check it out,

They’re doing a 2-month free trial at the moment (normally it’s just 1 month), and it’s available till New Years.

Test it for yourself and let me know how you go.

👉️ You can get the signup bonus here: https://superhuman.com/refer/0eppleih

🌿 Feel f*cking fantastic:

🏋️ The one simple trick to make habits stick

A couple weeks back I mentioned how I read Atomic Habits for the first time

(And boy was that too late… I wish I read it years ago!)

Well, I’m now several weeks past it now, and I’ve found that there’s one simple trick 🪄 

…that has been more effective than anything else in the book.

And I’ll start by saying that if you’ve had trouble forming new habits… You’re not lazy, you just have a bad system.

For me, everything changed when I discovered attaching new habits to existing habits.

Let’s say you want to meditate each day…

And you put it on your to-do list…

But you never get to it…

And each day you say to yourself: “Damn, am I so busy or disorganised that I can’t even find 10 minutes?”

This is what I used to be like.

But then I found out I was doing it all wrong.

See, what you need for a habit is to define a trigger that will make you do that habit.

That trigger can either be:

1. A time of day (e.g. as soon as you wake up)

2. Another habit or action that you always do (e.g. When you go the bathroom).

I don’t like time of day habit triggers (unless it’s as soon as you wake up), because every day is different and you might be busy at a certain time.

Instead I’ve been using other habits / actions / feelings to trigger me to get into gear.

(The best part… I’ve always thought you couldn’t start multiple habits at once, but with this system, YOU CAN and IT WORKS).

Here’s how I’ve been using this:

1️⃣ Lifting Weights 🏋️‍♀️
Habit goal: 30 mins weightlifting every day
Trigger to start it: Must complete it before I am allowed to have my morning shower.

2️⃣ Reading / Listening to Audiobooks 👨‍🏫
Habit goal: 10 mins of reading (which usually becomes 30 mins to 1 hour)
Trigger to start it: When I start cooking or go to the grocery store, I start reading / listening.

3️⃣ Going for a run 🏃‍♂️
Habit goal: Running for 20 mins each day (separate to weightlifting)
Trigger to start it: When I feel mentally fatigued from calls (I usually need a mental break after 1.5 hours of calls), I put my shoes on and go for a run.

4️⃣ Cleaning around the house 🧹
Habit goal: Do incremental cleanups so that I don’t have bigger cleanups later
Trigger to start it: Must do 3 minutes of cleaning before I can go to the bathroom

I literally have a sticky note that tells me to do this…

5️⃣ Taking my supplements consistently
Habit goal: Remembering to take my supplements each day.
Trigger to start it: When I make lunch, must put the supplements on my plate.

💪 This method has been a game changer for me and it can be for you too.

If you’ve been struggling to make that one habit stick, try it for yourself and let me know how you go 🏆

🧗 Started from the bottom now we’re here…

^{If you’re new here, one of the core principles of the content I share is that a newsletter is the most linear and simple business you can start in Web3. It has high sponsorship revenue and can go from being a side hustle to a full-time business in under a year. I am building this newsletter in public, to share the progress each week so that you can be a part of the journey. Now let’s get into it 👇}

This Week:
Subscribers: 3,553 (+1 Subscribers)
Open Rate: 39.7%

Tracking my goals:

🚂 Improve the graphic design of this newsletter: Paused until 4,000 subs.

🚂 3,553 / 4,000 Subscribers: Still grinding through this plateau. Working on a new approach for 2024.

✅ Update the welcome email for new subscribers: (Complete)

Have a Happy Holidays friends 🎉

— Alex

Thanks for reading this week’s episode of Grow Faster ❤️

I’ve been in Web3 for 8 years, ETH since $45 and am building on my NFT project Bricktopians every single day.

If you want to join my world, and be a part of a project that grows with me.

Grab a Bricktopian NFT and let me build for you 💯