Public Commitment 2024 – Update 1

Theme: Lucidity

It’s been a bit over three months since I started the ‘year of lucidity,’ and I’m happy to report that things are going well.

As always, the key results are a bit ambitious (meaning not all will be achieved). Still, this is the way to go for me (your mileage may vary), and I’ve updated them for the coming quarter with the new (or sometimes similar) ones.

Overall, I can report back that work has been very rewarding, living in the small village of Anna Paulowna is still a blast, and that I’ve spent more time gardening than every working on a house interior – in my life.

House

Objective (O): Make the garden unambiguously green and lively

Key Result (KR4): Plant and grow a lot of veggies

KR5: Paint just about everything outside

KR6: Remodel the bathroom downstairs

V: Rework section between house and cabin

V: Build a compost heap

V: Add more hens (done, Jan 29th)

Starting off strong, we totally revamped the area between the house and the cabin. Instead of two patches of grass and a stone path in between, there are now six gardening raised beds (old fruit boxes), a path of sea shells (against slugs and for aesthetics), and lots of plants and herbs on the sides. The first vegetables have been planted (as well as many tomatoes in the greenhouse).

One thing that took longer than expected was cleaning the remaining tiles. But about 10 hours of work later (while listening to an audiobook, many podcasts, and the theme music from Dune), the tiles now look fresh again.

With the chickens, we’ve had quite the adventure (some may even say it was traumatic (with a small ‘t’). As the original chickens were two cocks and one hen (they are no longer with us). Someone from the next village over was selling her six hens (their barn had collapsed, and they were roaming around the neighbour’s garden), so now they are living with us. Every day we get six (huge) eggs from them. So, if you know us, then we’re likely to gift you a few in the near future.

For the coming quarter (April-June), we plan to fill all the raised beds and start growing in the greenhouse. We also have a small pond to which we’re going to add some plants to make it self-cleaning (if that is the word for it).

This quarter will also be the time of painting. The lady who lived in our house before left it in a relatively good state, but she had moved around 20 times in her life, meaning she didn’t take care of those long-term things like painting. We will be painting the sheds in the garden, within the cabin, recoating the furniture in the garden (which, in our lack of experience, we left out in the winter rain without a cover for the first few months), and letting a company repaint the house (in a light green colour – instead of the current white).

Inside the house, we’re working on repainting (and tiling) the bathroom downstairs. And that should keep us busy for the coming months.

Finances

O: Earn twice as much as I’m spending (Q1 done)

KR1: Keep track of finances every week (Q1 done)

KR2: Earn as much from Blossom as from Queal (Q1 done)

KR3: Lotte earns as much from FLO as from her regular job (Q1 fail)

There are 24 hours in the day, and if I’m being realistic, I can only work eight hours per day (my time tracking puts me at 37 hours per week). Some days, I’m working a bit more, and lately, I’ve been working a lot in the evening doing consulting work. But overall, I feel that the balance between work and other things in life has been great.

The work that I’ve been doing has been interesting, and because a lot of it has been consulting work, it has also paid off financially. The objective has been reached, and key result two (which I’m keeping for the coming quarter) has also been achieved.

Unlike last year, I’ve also been consistent in tracking where I’m spending money. There are not crazy things to note here, except that home improvement is (of course) a much bigger bucket than it was a year ago.

Unfortunately, the third key result has not been achieved (by a long shot). I’ve been taking on a few clients for FLO coaching, but Lotte hasn’t had success in attracting clients (though this has changed now at the start of April). I’ll get to our coaching business in a bit, but here want to note that this is still a goal that we’re pursuing actively.

Flotte

O: Continue unblurring who the other person is

KR1: Have one day in the week for each other (Q1 done)

KR4: Spend at least eight hours per week working together

KR5: Get married

V: Become business partners (Q1 half)

V: Prep all big things for the wedding

In line with the previous goal, we haven’t spent enough time (in my eyes) working on FLO and the promotion of the business. So, I’m making the goal more concrete, with an average of eight hours working on the business (i.e. non-coaching time) per week.

We have consistently made time for each other (which was a reaction to spending a lot of weekends seeing friends and family without spending time together). One thing that has pleasantly surprised me is that Lotte enjoys going to the gym (lifting weights), and we’re now doing that together three times a week (agenda permitting).

We have also started recently started meditating together in the mornings and reflecting on the experience right after. This has been a fun way of doing another activity together. I suspect that we’ll also be spending a lot of time together painting and gardening.

The big tasks for the wedding have been completed, and we (okay, mostly Lotte) are now continuing to work on the fun small things (like table decorations). The wedding rings are in the pocket, and all that is left is praying to the weather gods for the sun during the big day.

Relationships

O: Maintain quality relationships

KR1: See friends at least every two weeks (Q1 done)

KR3: Visit friends independently three times

X: Message with friends during morning cardio (medium, not enough time cardio b/c cold, same, low cardio rate but all good w/ contact)

There isn’t much to note about the goal of maintaining quality relationships with friends. This has been going well overall. I haven’t been doing as much morning cardio as I wanted to (and some of it has been a combination of cardio and weights—i.e., no time to message friends). I’m dropping this goal for now and replacing it with a goal to (independently) go and see friends at least three times this quarter (e.g., a day going to Rotterdam).

FW.com / Brand

O: Build a personal brand

KR1: Publish a piece of content for every day (average) (Q1 meh)

KR2: Publish one piece of significant original work each week (>1000 words or equivalent) (Q1 half)

KR3: Publish a transformative piece of work every quarter (Q1 fail)

KR4: Take half a day to further operationalize the personal branding/content strategy

Who is Floris? What is the phrase that one person tells the next at a cocktail party when I’m not around? That is the objective of this section and I’ve not been paying enough attention to it.

I want to bring more unity to the projects I’m working on and consistently broadcast this to the world.

Now that I’m reflecting on this objective, I need to operationalize this more (in my daily routines). One action I’ve added an item to my daily action items (Todoist; to make this more top-of-mind). Yesterday, a friend of mine spoke at a conference on the intersection of design and psychedelics on the topic of branding. I’ll have a conversation with her about how I can apply some of those lessons in my own (presentation of my) work.

Blossom / Delphi

O: Provide clarity for all stakeholders in the ‘psychedelics as medicines’ field

KR1: Launch a course for novel psychonauts (Q1 fail)

KR2: Publish or update one piece of original content for members only (to increase Blossom’s revenue) (Only Jan)

KR3: Share one content piece each workday (Q1 done)

KR4: Have 5k subscribers to The Bloom (now at 3k, not made big strides with this)

KR5: Get paid help for improving the content and consistency of promotion for Blossom

KR6: Continue the consultancy work for Delphi

If I look back at the last quarter for Blossom specifically, I’ve dropped the ball. As I said earlier, there are only eight hours per day which I’m working and the priority has been on consulting work for a significant chunk of this.

This also means that there is income that has been very welcome (especially when planning a wedding). But, now that I’m reflecting here, I think it’s time I start spending a bit more on Blossom (I already have a VA helping with some basics, but I know there are a lot of talented people in the space that can help out with different parts of the site.

This also matches with the key results of being more consistent in bringing out content. I don’t need to do all of that myself. With a good brief, I know others will be able to help me get this out the door.

Similarly, the course has been stuck in limbo (all the ‘chapters’ are there, just need to sit down and make them). So, a new goal here is to actively get more help with maintaining and improving Blossom.

I’ve also added a goal of continuing the work with Delphi, which has been challenging and rewarding in the best way.

Queal

O: Continue providing sound nutrition

KR1: Launch QQ offer each quarter (done)

KR2: Do a mega overhaul of our webshop (and potentially for our products)

Queal has been humming along, and we’re still happy to help our customers each day (and fuel ourselves with Queal, too).

The second key result has been added for the second quarter as we’re now planning to overhaul the webshop completely. This means working on adopting new platforms (that weren’t around when we started Queal). This is leading up to the 10-year existence of Queal this August.

FLO Coaching

O: Build a meaningful practice with weekly facilitated sessions

KR1: Experiment with the four different promotional methods (1-1/1-many x (un)known)

KR2: Get Lotte one client each week (still not there)

As discussed above, the activities with FLO Coaching have been too slow. We haven’t been doing consistent promotion and therefore don’t have the client base to support one session per week for Lotte.

We have been revamping our ebook, which is a great thing to have, but we also need eyeballs on the products. So, that will be the focus for the coming quarter.

Sports

O: Improve on my fitness level of 2023

KR1: Do sports 6 out of 7 days (Q1 good)

KR2: Incorporate stretching routine at the end of workouts (Q1 fail)

I’ve been consistently going to the gym and also doing cardio/HIIT training at home (in the cabin). I’m happy with where I am with sports and don’t see big changes coming in the second quarter (I also have to stay about the same size for the wedding).

Stretching has been very sporadic. The current plan is to (at least) do them after sports at home. I’ve also added this to Todoist.

Health

O: Improve health through metrics

KR1: Measure 3+ health metrics

KR2: Build a place to store the (health) metrics

KR3: Improve VO2 Max

To be frank, I haven’t taken any actions on this part yet and it’s less ‘top of mind’ as everything is going well. Still, I want to start more ‘biohacking’, and measuring is the first step in this journey. So, I will keep these goals here and (now) mentally file this under ‘hobbies’.

Especially with the assistance of AI, I should be able to put together an online place to keep track of my measurements (and I am already tracking a few things).

Mindfulness

O: Brighten my cone of consciousness

KR1: Take psychedelics every month (2x)

KR3: Meditate each day, building up from 12 minutes

X: Write a substantive post on the Jhanas (read some, but paused for now)

Lotte and I have started meditating daily since about two weeks ago. This has been a great experience and I like the daily inquiry. Over the coming months I plan to build on this foundation.

The catalyst for restarting meditation (which I’ve been doing on and off for about a decade) was a coaching call with Roger Thisdale, a very experienced meditator. He was able to answer some of my worries (some of the other experienced meditators I’ve met were quite different than me in some aspects that I didn’t like – e.g. not seeming to care much about their body or not recognizing me after meeting an hour earlier). The analogy Roger mentioned about investing in different skills (like in a video game) really hit home and made me more comfortable with exploring meditation more (whilst still caring about fitness and other goals I have – and as you can see above – those are quite a few).

The Perfect Day

6:30 wake up (dogs, chickens, coffee)

6:45 meditation

7-9 sport (travel & shower)

9-18 work (and some gardening etc)

18-19 dinner

19-22 hobbies/social/work/game

Notes

Overall, I look back at a very good first quarter of 2024. Only FLO Coaching (and the health metrics) are lagging, but other than that, I have been reaching most of my goals.

Onto the next quarter of ‘the year of lucidity’.