Mid-Year Reset: The 1% Plan To Become Unrecognisable

Research shows that the middle of an event, journey, or project is when people start losing motivation, and effort begins to follow a U-shaped curve. In other words, people experience a sharp slump in producivty and momentum.

But time is an illusion. Months don’t exist. These “productivity slumps" can happen at any time of the year. New Year’s resolutions are also BS. Why not make a change now? What’s more exciting than that? The present is the only time we can ever make a change.

The truth is, most people don’t fail because of a “mid-year slump.” They fail because they lack urgency from the very begining.

In this article, I’m going to share four shifts that you can make right now to become unrecognisable. Not in the next six months, but in in the next six weeks.

Be honest

Firstly, I want you to exercise being honest with yourself. We’ve been trained to think that every single endeavour needs a huge amount of time. We hear stories about athletes, authors, content creators, musicians, filmmaners, craftspeople, engineers—how all of them took years, and sometimes even decades, to get to where they are.

But do things really have to take that long?

Or are we just accustomed to a certain system?

You know what I’m talking about. To get one grade, it would take us a year. To get one degree, it would take us four years. Our brains have literally accepted this as truth. And this continues in our work lives. A performance review happens annually. Promotions and bonuses also happen annualy.

If there was one thing they should’ve taught us in school, it should’ve been time management. Not just how to manage our time, but how to design and manage our own projects. I say this because people, including myself, are terrible at estimating how long somethings actually needs to take.

It sounds impressive when someone says, “I put blood, sweat and tears into this for FIVE solid years.” We respect it more beacause of the repetiion and consistency. But does something really need to take that long? I tend to believe that the time in between doesn’t matter. What occurs in between matters.

Ask yourself: Where are you getting your timeline expectations from? Is it the people around you? Is it from deeply rooted beliefs you formed in childhood and adulthood through school and work? Are you even aware that you have a timeline expectation? Not setting one is worse because then whatever you need to do can be done wheneever. And whenever usually means never.

Your life moves at the speed of your decisions.

Work life balance is utter BS. Learn from nature instead. Everything comes in seasons. Every sucessful person is viewed as borederline insane becuase, at some point, they had a SEASON of going borederline insane about their goals and vision.

If you’re in your season of work, forget about balance for a while and do the thing until it gets done. Most of the time, it’s all just emoitonal safety. Not doing the thing makes you feel better in the short term, but quitely kills you in the long term.

If you want to move faster, learn faster. If you want to learn faster, then move faster. The quicker you learn the lessons, the quicker you’ll progress. Treat everything as a feedback loop. Not just your failures, but your successes too.

Don’t forget the basics

Get good sleep. Move your body. Don’t doomscroll the moment you wake up. Be well dressed and look presentable.

The basics are your sacrifices. They’re a NO to other people and the outside world. You must say no to things that don’t align with your goals and vision. That’s a non-negotiable in and of itself. A lot of people crave confience, but confidence usually comes from saying no and sticking to the plan.

Have 3-5 non-negotiables.

Here are mine:

• Workout for 30 minutes (even if it’s a long walk)

• Meditate for 20 minutes

• No alcohol

They’re not exciting. But they’re simple. And that’s the point.

Work on your money mindset

Over the next 6 weeks, pick one skill and ruthlessly eliminate everything else. If you’re not satisfied with where you are, skill is how you move from point A to point B through the bridge of self-eduation.

No dabbling.

Just pick one thing.

I would recommend writing, marketing, storytelling, or sales. That’s basically content creation, but it all falls under one umbrella.

Do a deep dive. Absolutely saturate your brain. Read, watch, listen and write about your interests and curioustiies for 4+ hours a day.

Then launch a project.

One project.

Build something.

A landing page. An e-book. A one-on-one coaching service. Anything.

Get feedback on it fast. Fix it. And Repeat.

It’s enevitable that something will happen. I promsie. Even if it’s just a $50 offer you put out there, it will teach you lessons and grow you much more than the two decades you spent at school.

Who is the person you envision yourself becoming? Is he someone who doesn’t work a traditional job? Does he have a side income? Is he self-employed to some capacity?

I’m 26. Entrepreneurship and selling your own thing has become the most integral part of my self development journey because it’s the only path, that I’m aware of, that forces you to work on so many of your limiting beliefs.

By trying to make money, you quickly see how many limiting beliefs you actually have. It’s a matter of practising abundance. You need to believe that anything that is meant for you will be yours. Very corny, right? But if you don’t believe something is yours, regardless of what it is, how can it truly be yours?

One of the biggest blockers for a lot of people are themselves. They spend weeks, months, and even years working on something that should have took a few hours or days. But that happens because they don’t believe they should get paid that amount just to do a few hours of work. Behind all of it is a limiting belief.

I have very strong beliefs about the creator economy and the opportunity to make money online because I genuinely believe this is peak humanity. This has never been done before. My parents had to leave their parents to come to the UK as immigrants and raise their kids, me. To give me this life.

Now, I could work through the corporate world and become a “something”, but I know that something is usually just a cog in a machine who no one knows their name.

What I’m talking about is different.

The internet is an opportunity.

For all of us.

If you also hold similar strong beliefs but aren’t sure where to start, or feel lost and overwhelmed by all the noise, I’ve created a free guide for you. It’s directly tied to what we’re talking about here, covering branding, persuasion, content and marketing.

Visibility

The more visible you are, the more opportunities you attract. Being brutally honest, I’ve never truly been in a good environment. I was born in Turkey, then moved to the UK at the age of two, to Newcastle which is a pretty rough area to grow up in. Before you think it can’t get any worse, I then moved to North London around the age of 13. These are all places where not many people make it through.

That’s why the internet means a lot to me. It’s given us the opportuntiy to put ourselves in front of people we would have never had the chance to meet before.

I’ve posted on TikTok since 2020. During that time, people have started reaching out to me. No, sorry. Not people. Some of the biggest brands in the world.

Netflix. Paramount Plus. Universal Studios.

I even almost had the chance to interview Christopher Nolan when Oppenheimer was being released. When the agency I was with at the time, “Digital Fox Talent”, told me about it, I was Unfortunately away on holiday in Japan, so I couldn’t do it. But the opportuntiy was there. And it came from being visible.

Don’t understimate visibility. Visibility is leverage. And leverage creates endless opportunities.

You also don’t need to be on camera. You can write Substack articles like these. Visibility is visibility at the end of the day.

That’s all from me for this week.

I’ll see you inside the free guide.

→ Get Creator Business Essentials for free

If not, I’ll see you in the next letter!

I hope this was helpful.

-Serkan