What did you learn in Q1?

Saying yes paid the bills. Saying no might build the future.​

Read time: 3 mins

It's been a while, Reader. Today, I've got a quick update from life on the self-employed path, what I’ve learned, where I’ve helped others, and the quiet shift happening now.

Most people associate self-employment with freedom or risk. But the truth sits somewhere in the daily choices: what you say yes to, how you price your time, and when you start building something that compounds.

They over-optimise for the present: chasing client work without carving out time to build long-term leverage. Or they over-optimise for the future, turning down all paid work too soon.

I've also got some recommendations for you in "Escape the algorithm"

Q1 update

The pressure of invoicing is real. It’s irregular. It’s entirely on you.

In Q1, I said yes to projects that didn’t tick all my boxes. But they covered bills (and nappies).

A lot of this work had no acquisition cost. People came to me. That felt like a signal of trust, and in chaotic moments, trust is currency.
So I priced generously. Early on, I’d rather build goodwill than squeeze every euro out of a short-term gig.

Most of Q1 was spent inside other people’s crises.
Helping businesses stabilise. Bringing structure to chaotic moments.
That’s been a huge privilege. (Although in one case, a tragedy, it took its emotional toll.)

But I didn’t leave the 9–5 to trade time for money. I left to build something of my own.

As Q2 begins, the stream of work has slowed in comparison, but that’s given me what I needed.
More space to build and take steps in my own direction. And already, it’s starting to bear fruit.

A random quote that kept ringing in my head during this quarter.

So that’s where I am:
Less firefighting, more building.
Less noise, more leverage.

Escape the algorithm

Post: I agree - Ticking the box, “I have read and agree to the Terms,” is one of the biggest lies on the web today. As shown by Dima Yarinovsky-Lima.

Book: The Anxious Generation: “My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”

Documentary: Trailer - WWE Unreal. Opinions aside, WWE's evolution is a lesson in reinvention, business storytelling, attention economy, and the future of media. (By clicking on this link, you are signalling interest in a future newsletter about this)

Prompts: Ask ChatGPT If you were the devil for a creepy response. Then ask it to help you reach your highest potential.

AI tool: Notebook LM. I finally started using this and should have sooner. Feels like a personal search engine where I control the sources. The WOW feature here is the audio overview, where two virtual hosts will discuss the main topics from your sources, and you can interrupt them like a radio phone-in.

Website: My own! I've done a fair bit of work on it. It's far from finished. It does represent me much better. Would love to know what you think.

If you got this far,

you're part of 69% of subscribers, so thank you, Reader.

If the first quarter was about proving I could hold others steady, the second is about seeing what I can create when I give that energy to my own ideas.

Let me know what you’ve been building lately. I always read the replies.

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See you in two weeks.

​Peace,

Has

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