LSC #34: Stick to your schedule ✍️ ✍️
Hi there! Welcome to a new #LSC, the 34th edition this time.
As a quick heads up, in case you just landed here or have been forwarded this newsletter, expect to find some content on productivity, personal growth, health hacks, and interesting content, always with a down-to-earth approach. Nice, right?
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So now, let's get into it!
Today’s summary:
🏋️♂️ What elite athletes teach us about success
✍️ How to actually stick to your schedule
🔮 Time machine for music
📸 Get new profile pictures for free
🏋️♂️ Elite athletes and success
A few weeks ago I made a reflection on Linkedin that I thought it is worth sharing:
What elite athletes teach us about success: Some thoughts from the Crossfit semifinals 💪🏋️♂️
While watching the Crossfit semifinals last month, and with every athlete hitting a complicated lift (and believe me, I saw some pretty complicated lifts where I thought the athlete would either break or explode), I thought all those achievements showed us something:
💪 It's worth keeping at it
💪 Your mind can either sink you or propel you
💪 Nothing is lost until the last point
💪 Great achievements take effort
That’s why, regardless of your status, whether you're an employee, entrepreneur, or student, there's so much we can learn from elite athletes:
💥 Patience and discipline (the most undervalued skills)
💥 Performing under pressure
💥 Managing emotions
💥 Managing expectations
💥 High tolerance for discomfort
And what I personally value the most:
Make peace with the fact that sometimes you'll succeed, and sometimes you'll fail, but it’s always up to you, at least to some extent, to enjoy the process.
✍️ How to actually stick to your schedule
And well, this is not only about elite athletes but for everyone else: We all know it's easy to derail from our original plan. Hold on, I’m not getting philosophical here; I’m just talking about our daily schedules.
So, here’s the thing: how do we actually stick to our plans?
While there’s no magical recipe, I am sorry to say that it ultimately depends on our commitment. However, I have two rules that work pretty well for me:
Avoid over-scheduling:
It sounds easy, right? But starting your day with too many tasks can lead to stress and wasted time when things don’t go as planned (which happens quite often, let’s be realistic).
To fight this, it’s essential to create a realistic schedule with some margin for error. What I do is estimate that each task will take twice as long as I expect to allow for flexibility.
Plan for losses:
Assume shit will hit the fan because it always does. And that’s okay—life isn’t perfect! My second rule for sticking to a schedule is to have a plan B.
Can’t finish a task on time? No problem. I have a backup plan for such situations (breaking it down into smaller milestones, sharing progress with those involved, adjusting and changing the approach for the next iteration… the sky's the limit!).
At the end of the day, it’s about doing our best and accepting that sometimes we won’t finish everything we planned. That’s okay. We’re not machines, and life happens!
🔮 Time machine for music
For all the oldies out there, here's something interesting: The Nostalgia Machine is a website that collects videos of the Billboard hits from the year you select (from 1951 to 2015, so it has you all covered). Just pick a year that holds special memories, and voilà, you’ve got the soundtrack for that year.
Sadly though, as a metal and rock lover back then (we all have our things, right?), the late 90s were a pretty musically bad era for mainstream music, so MTV was not my go-to. But hey, who doesn’t love a musical time machine?
📸 Get new profile pictures for free
Speaking about oldies, I think this tool also qualifies as an oldie, as it was already out there a few months ago during the initial AI boom. Back then (back then as in 9 months ago, crazy), it wasn't weird to see new AI tools offering weird services like creating a post-mortem version of someone who passed away or a hot-looking avatar you could integrate on your website as a chatbot customer service (if this is something you really wanted, not judging here).
Anyway, this tool is a bit more humble but pretty useful if you need to upgrade or renew your professional or personal pictures to showcase yourself online. You basically upload a picture, and it generates a lot of different styles (with pretty decent results if the original picture is good enough) for LinkedIn, CVs, resumes, or whatever social platform you can imagine.
No excuses for a crappy profile picture anymore! And it’s free for the non-AI effects part, which is, believe me, more than enough.
📊 Data Dive
And to finish, let’s take a little look at the LSC performance:
336 Subscribers → Last week we were 330
0 Unsubscribed → Clean week, yay!
54% Open rate → The goal is to keep this, as you know, in the 60-70% range. Need a bit of improvement here.
Before leaving though, there are a few things you can do to help me:
Share this newsletter with someone you think will like it. You can also share it on your SM profiles, not gonna judge you ;)
Reply to this publication.
If you’re on Substack, like this publication, re-stack it, move it around… sky is the limit!
And now, for good: Keep an eye out for the next LifeScore Chronicles—something exciting is just around the corner. 🚀
Until next week, stay safe and healthy!