Just do 100 reps

A great approach to building your own body of experience or work (your life portfolio) is to do 100 things. This methodology was first brought to me by a guy on twitter, and as that is, I’m going to use his guidance for this chapter. You can read Visakan Veerasamy’s original blog post here titled “do 100 things”. Nonetheless, I’m going to go over it here, how it’s helped me, and how I believe it can help you on your journey of creation.

if you don’t like reading: you can watch the youtube video i made of this instead.

Before we dive in, if you want daily posts about these sorts of thing: to help you create more cool sh*t, follow your curiosity, & live a better life… then make sure you’re following my new twitter account! (the old one was starting to smell)

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Examples of using doing 100 of a thing

First, here are some examples of this approach in practice to give you a good outlook on the general idea of such a simple approach of “do it 100 times”

Picasso’s advice to you, if you want to get better at art, is really just: create more art. Seems simple enough right? Where else does this apply?

Running:

Making videos on the internet (vlogging):

Writing:

Podcasting:

Building a pitch deck for investors:

Selling chocolate bars (doing business)

Finding a good book title:

Becoming a musician:

There are infinitely more examples of this approach, but I think you get the gist of it now. Or I hope so… In case you don’t “get it” all quite yet, here is how our friendly internet friend Visakan put’s it so it can’t be misconstrued:

“Do 100 Crappy Things For No Reason, With No Agenda To Live Up To, At Whatever Pace Feels Comfortable, However You Like.” – Visakan Veerasamy

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Doing less than 100, and getting your sh*t out

Note: you don’t need to do 100 of anything just because you started 10 of a thing. You may find out after doing 5, or 3 or 19 of a thing that you'd rather spend your time doing 100 of something else. By all means, go be curious in another domain.

The point of doing 100 to me is largely a vehicle for realizing what you might want to do 100 of, and a vehicle for curiosity about “what would it look like to do 100 of this thing?” maybe you’ll be better off, maybe not… how can you know

Well you can try to do 100 things 100 times, it would be unlikely you don’t come out of this experience with a ton of well: experience.

“When you switch on the dirty tap, shit water is going to flow out for a substantial amount of time. Then clean water will start to flow out.” — Ed Sheeran

With Ed’s quote in mind: If you were to do 100 of some-thing, any-thing, don’t you think your dirty tap would spout a little more clean water than it did before you did 100 of that thing? At some point, some bits of clean water are bound to make their way through, you just need to keep the tap on long enough to get it all out. Do 100 of a thing, see what happens, do 10 of a thing even or 5, do the thing, see what happens. Who knows what will happen? Only the doer of things knows.

My journey on creating 100 things

Now, let’s think about creating 100 things. As of now you may be creating things from time to time, but what if you declared “I am going to make 100 things!” well now you are on your way, and the first step, the only step to make yourself more on your way is to do the thing, to create something.

For me I did this with youtube videos, I created one every day, (you don’t need to do daily, this was just the approach I chose) and in a matter of 6 months I was in a place of progress I had no idea could have come from this approach of just doing 100.

My expectations at first were set high, but as I put the expectations aside, the experience became much more fun. I was having fun just doing the thing every day, whatever may come of it. It was a reward in itself to do the thing, and that’s how I ended up making 1200 youtube videos in 3 years.

Oddly enough If I look back into my life and the things I’ve created that have been to my notation “worth while” all of these things stem from some variation of “do the thing, a lot of times”. I figured out the things I didn’t want to do in this way, I continued on doing the things I did want to do this way, and I even optimized my health in this way. I did these things, lots of times.

My journey on creating 100 things

A final example for this chapter which put me in a sorts of awe is this example of Visakan Veerasamy drawing an owl and his progression in “doing the thing”. See how doing the things leads to his faucet getting clear water? (there was dirty water to get out of his system)

Visakan’s first three owl drawings:

Visakan’s 9th owl drawing:

As you can see, it didn’t take all that long to get significantly better at something. The biggest blockade is usually just your expectation that you can’t do the thing enough times before you see progress. And maybe it takes longer to see progress than 9 doings of a thing, maybe it takes 100, but it’s clear that progress is happening because how else would you get to your final form, if not to do a thing more? Each rep is a step forward… Not always up, but forwards.

Note: Visakan stopped at Owl 9, because he realized he didn’t want to draw owls anymore.

That’s all I got for you today, if you enjoyed this then click some buttons below, and go like y’know do 1/100 things, or 1/5, start now because why not… or go do some pushups to punish yourself? i dont know 😂

have a good day,
your friend,
with love,
jack ♠️