There’s a question I get on almost every coaching or community call:
"Yana, how do you actually do all of this with a job?"
The million-dollar question, right?
I got it again last week on a live, so I finally sat down and wrote the whole thing out.
Then I decided to turn it into a video and a one-page cheat sheet you can print and stick above your desk.
And here's the full video, where I walk through every piece of it:
By the way, this video is part of my new faceless-ish experiment on YouTube - one of the two actually. More about this in my next free post next week.
Now, let me guess what you think my answer is.
I'm super disciplined
I wake up at 5 a.m.
I don't have a life
I'm just built different
Not really.
I spent more than 20 years in corporate doing products, sales and marketing. I still work that job. And on the side of it, in about two hours a day, I built a newsletter with 21,000+ subscribers and more than 1,400 paid ones. Now I help others do the same.
And no, I don’t feel like working every evening. Most evenings I don't.
So how do I do this?
I just stopped running on motivation and started running on an actual protocol. Or, like Savitree Kaur would say, I have a rhythm.
I usually answered the “how do you do all that?” question with “I just do it”. Today I give you exactly what stands behind that answer.
The myth that keeps you stuck
Here's the thing nobody tells you about motivation: it's like a battery. It drains. And everyone selling you "get motivated" is selling you a battery that dies by week five, right when the real work starts.
So you wait to feel ready. You'll start properly next week. When work calms down. When the kids are back in school. When that project is finally over.
And that's completely valid. I did it for years.
But guess what? Things never calm down.
You will never have the time. You have to make the time.
And no, you’ll never feel ready. You just start anyway.
Those are just excuses for fear of failure.
The people who actually build something aren't more motivated than you. They don’t feel ready. They don’t have the time. They just stopped asking how they feel or is it the right moment before they open the laptop.
That's the whole protocol.
Here's how it runs.
You can't win a week if you didn't plan it
My week usually starts on a Sunday - twenty minutes, not more.
I look at the week and I decide what to write. One free piece, one paid piece. Some community calls, maybe a live. Whatever the thing you're building needs. Whatever you promised to your audience.
Then I do what I call the pre-work. This is the part that changed everything for me.
On Sunday I collect the ideas, the structure, the one tangible thing each piece needs, and I half-start everything with my AI skills. I prepare the drafts so during the work week it feels easy to just finish them.
I did the same with this post.
So when Tuesday evening comes, I'm not staring at a blank page deciding what to make. The deciding is already done. I just make.
Because starting is the expensive part, so I pre-pay it on Sunday.
And the small repeatable stuff, like my Notes? Batched in one sitting. A week at a time, sometimes two.
My three energies rule
This is the rule almost nobody will tell you, and honestly it's worth EVERYTHING.
Energy is everything. Not time, not motivation, not readiness.
Energy.
You have to be aware of what you’re doing at every single moment and how does this thing contribute to what you want to get done.
If it doesn’t, it’s a waste of your energy (and time). Stop it immediately.
If it does? Keep doing it. It’s instant dopamine when you’re done.
With Substack I realized my brain runs on three kinds of energy, and they can’t co-exist together (much like water and oil):
Communication. Answering people, comments, DMs, emails.
Creation. Making the thing. It’s the flow.
Learning. Courses, videos, reading.
The person who answers two comments, then writes four sentences, then watches half a tutorial, then answers one more message? That person just did three jobs badly in the time one job needed.
I’ve been in that place.
That’s how you burn your energy out.
So I split them. Communication gets 30 minutes in my mornings, before my job. Creation gets the two evening hours. Learning gets the weekend, when my brain is relaxed.
And yes, I'm an evening person. There is no 5 a.m. hero scene in this protocol. Ideas don't come when you're performing. They come when you're resting.
You have to build a rhythm that fits your energy levels.
The two hours, minute by minute
If I have to split them by timing, here’s how it would look like (but it’s not set in stone):
Minute 0 to 10: the ritual. Same desk, same drink, phone physically in another room. You decide nothing. The ritual decides for you. You just sit and do.
Minute 10 to 50: make the one thing. Not plan it. Make it. Ugly is allowed.
Minute 50 to 60: walk. No phone. You're a human, not a server.
Minute 60 to 100: edit it, build it, finish what the first block started.
Minute 100 to 120: publish the piece, answer the comments, send the email. Work only counts when it leaves the house.
That's it. Boring, right?
Yes, that's it! Boring is what repeatable looks like. Excitement is for the results, not the process.
My “worst-day” clause
Now the part that makes this unbreakable.
You don’t think I did this every single day for more than two years, right?
I don’t have some superhuman discipline. I just don’t.
Sometimes I do 20 minutes instead of 2 hours.
Sometimes I skip.
And that’s ok.
Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t be hard yourself, you haven’t failed. Not if you continue the next day.
Here’s how I work around this: create a bare minimum, say 20 minutes or something that’s low effort. For me it’s posting Notes (remember I use my AI minions). I think I never skipped a day. Everything else I allowed myself to skip - posts, comments, engagement, emails…
Because some days literally fall apart. Because…life happens.
My partner gets sick, a brutal day at the job, I just feel empty. All I want is a glass of wine and some me time.
Those days, you run the 20-minute version. It’s the checkbox your bran needs to feel safe, not failed, making progress.
The protocol can scale down, but never down to zero.
Because the streak was never about output. It's about never having to renegotiate with yourself tomorrow morning. And renegotiating with yourself every single day is f*cking exhausting. That's the exhaustion people mistake for "no discipline."
There’s a reason why I named the first domain of the QUEST Mindset of Achiever.
This is how I do it.
No regrets, no blame, no shame
And the rule above all the rules.
You will skip a day. You're human.
Skipping a day is not failing the protocol. Hating yourself for two days about it, that's failing the protocol.
The only thing that matters is that you keep moving. Slowly counts. Detours also count. Progress is the metric, and nothing else is.
Even the smallest part of progress.
Because it fuels motivation like nothing else does.
So if you’re sitting there still planning for the moment you feel ready, I see you.
I was there too, with the folder of half-finished plans and the courses collecting dust.
This protocol is how I buried that version of me.
Do this today
Use it. It works. I’m the living proof.
Print the cheat sheet.
Stick it above your desk.
Run it this week, worst days included.
And if you want to see how I built the whole machine behind it, start here:
People absolutely love that Quest.
I’m sure you will too, let me know.
Yana
P.S. If you need to improve your Substack conversion rate, this is where you start.
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Sound advice! Energy is the key! 💪