Welcome to my income report for August 2020

In August I have earned $97 in total. About 50% less than in the previous month.

What I Did In August

So what happened in August?

Traveled Abroad For Three Weeks

This will be a short report since I spent only half a week hustling. The rest of the month, I spent abroad traveling, hiking, biking, and exploring the Adriatic seaside.

All the details will be shared later in a separate trip report. For now, the important thing is that I took a break from my 9-5 job, from my side projects, so I could focus purely on truly living life instead of rotting in front of the computer screen.

Traveling works as some kind of a catalyst. It helps me to forget about all the burden, stress, the petty things in my life.

Whiles seeing new locations, meeting new people, and experiencing new cultures forces me to lose the tunnel vision, clears my head, and gives me the opportunity to see everything from the bigger picture.

Sad to say it is not as it used to be. Before the virus, traveling was much more thrilling. There were no restrictions, people were more fun and carefree.

Still, having to take care of the basic living needs, overcoming physical challenges, and then chilling on the beach is just enough to feel alive.

New Productivity Framework Based On Maslow Hierarchy

And how spending three weeks doing nothing helped me in my journey?

First, I reevaluated my life based on the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Every activity, every task, or project is now categorized under one of the needs. Any item can fulfill more than one need.

The effect of seeing which need can be satisfied by finishing a task is an instantaneous sense of priority. Is working on Youtube video more important than doing a morning exercise?

Before, I would just blindly do what has the most potential and neglected the basic needs such as sleeping properly. Which always led to burnout and the necessity for a vacation.

Now, I fulfill my basic needs first and then work on less impactful and ambiguous tasks.

The hierarchy is very simple. On the bottom level, there is food and health (water, rest). Then we have safety, be it money or housing. Next are relationships, followed by self-esteem, and topped by self-actualization.

This blog could belong to the safety category because I treat it as a potential income stream, but it also fulfills my self-esteem bracket due to sharing my knowledge and exposing my thoughts.

While growing social media account such as Twitter would mainly fulfill the self-esteem bracket.

Does it make sense?

Then once I decide on which task to do, I follow my old methodology of writing the title onto a piece of paper. Giving it 15 minutes of a good brainstorming session, breaking it down to the smallest pieces.

If the first step is realistic and doesn't require any ad hoc research, then I hit TheHustle timer and start with execution.

I am excited to try this new productivity framework for a prolonged time. Let's see how it goes and for how long my post-vacation happiness lasts.

Live projects

The Hustle App

I only managed to make minor progress with the settings screen. After the vacation, it will take me weeks to get back into the groove and understand the codebase again.

The priority for the next month is still the same, finish fancy UI features on the settings screen and move quickly to the main screen.

Good House Music

At the time of writing this post, it grew to 152 subscribers. A 9% increase over the previous month.

Glad to see minor progress even though I was offline and didn't post any new content for three weeks. Passive organic growth is something unique no other platform or business has.

That is why It is worth creating content with no reward in return. One never knows what it becomes ten years from now.

Since the music channel only fulfills self-actualization and self-esteem needs, according to Maslow, I won't spend as much time on it as before. And I will only create new content when I feel like it.

Financia

I worked hard on Financia in August.

Added an important point of interests to each property
Fixed location-wise bugs

While I was biking in Croatia, I was contacted by one of the users, which caught me by surprise, because It never happened to me before.

He was curious about all the analytics I calculate on the website and how it works. As I was told, he was considering buying a property and my website came high in a search engine result.

This pleased my heart knowing someone finds my project useful. So I immediately put him on the phone while sipping a beer in a restaurant on Sali, one of Croatia's islands, with a nice view over the Adriatic sea.

I got very encouraging insights, that there would be a demand for some kind of a personalized mailing list, because, no one else except me has hours each day to vet every property on the market.

With new ideas from the end customer, it is clear, that Financia will become my main coding side project for the next few months.

In September, I will analyze if I am capable of creating a minimum viable feature, that solves his problem.

Income Report Breakdown

P2P Lending

Nothing has changed in August.

My P2P strategies are turned off and I am still waiting on the sideline. Mintos lenders are still owing me a lot in pending payments.

Savings Accounts

Nothing has changed in August.

In September, I have to rebalance my savings accounts because of the end of many marketing campaigns.

Used Stuff Sales

My path to life minimalism went well in August. I got rid of a pair of PC memory modules. The less material things I own, the more freedom I get.

Plans, dreams, and wishes

My goals for September are the following. Get back on track, reevaluate my side projects, and make Financia better.

That would be it. Thank you so much for following me on this journey and see you in the next report.

Income Report Aug 2020 – Spent 3 Weeks Traveling