Want to compress timelines? Do this…

I just got back from the gym.

I deadlifted for the first time in a hotttt minute. I’m for sure gonna feel it tomorrow. Why, you ask? Why put myself through all that unnecessary pain?

Good question.

The answer is because a few weeks ago I was hanging with my buddy Fernando… and he made me feel like a little b*tch.

Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic.

But seriously. Over the week, we got to run, lift, work, and hangout with each other.

And honestly?

Fernando mogs me in every category.

He’s faster than me.
Lifts more than me.
Makes more $$ than I do.
Thinks in longer time horizons.
Is more disciplined and high agency.

He’s where I want to be in a few years.

Who needs a shot of espresso when you have friends like Fernando?

And the cool part about hanging out with Fernando, is I left with a fire lit under my butt to go harder than I was.

Psychology backs this up. What you’ve just witnesses is me entering a state of psychological deprivation.

I feel terrible compared to Fernando. The gap between where we are motivates me to take aggressive action to close it.

That’s a good thing.

Every time I feel demotivated, I can remind myself that people like Fernando exist out there in the world - and that I can be going harder than I currently am.

Which leads me to my cheat code for you today…

One of the fastest ways to accelerate your progress and compress timelines is to put yourself in environments where you're the worst in the room.

I believe a large reason why I’ve been able to accomplish a lot at a young age is because all I do is hang out with and compare myself against people who are older, better, more experienced than me.

“But Jay, that’s not healthy.”

Maybe.

But another one of my core beliefs is that when you’re early in your career, you want to use whatever fuel you have, good emotion or bad.

I had a mentor once tell me, "Don't waste your time trying to figure out why you have certain demons. Just use them.”

Because if a “bad” emotion helps you take a good action, was it really a bad emotion?

Regardless, this is not a fuel I’ll continue to rely on as I get older… but it’s been incredibly useful as ignition fuel when I need a lil bump.

Here's my homework for you this week:

Until next week,

Author of You Can Just Do Things & Work With The Best

Ps. Can’t wait for December

Pps. I have a podcast now.

Anna Gat on habits of the successful:

“In my experience successful people are successful because they have such enormous personal problems that literally becoming the best in the world is less hard than solving them.

So all the productivity and health life tips are totally missing the point….”

James clear on how to choose a career:

“The 4 qualities of a great career:

1) I enjoy it
2) I’m good at it
3) I make good money
4) I’m around fascinating people

Answer in reverse order:

1) Where are fascinating people?
2) In what ways can I make money with them?
3) Which ones am I good at?
4) Which ones do I enjoy?”

Feedback is a gift. It shows the other person cares about you enough to take time out of their day to help you improve. Thank them. Listen to them. Implement. That’s how you reinforce their behavior and get more feedback.

I believe every young person should get in the best physical shape possible.

It doesn’t take money or intelligence. Just discipline, persistence, and patience.

It’s the one thing completely in your control. And will serve you for life.

Respect your future self. Get in shape.

I left my dream job with Alex Hormozi to go all in on ME. Did you think I would play small?

It would be disrespectful to everyone who invested in me. It would be disrespectful to myself.

Every 4am wakeup. Every late night at the office. Every extra hour studying, strategizing, scheming.

I'm 20. Over the next decade, I will build my dream life...

- $1M/mo biz
- Travel the world
- Best shape of my life
- Big impactful brand
- Find my wife
- Coolest friends in the world

I invite you to follow along. Better yet, I invite you to join me.

1. Write down your North Star.
2. Reverse engineer the actions to take
3. Document it all

YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS.

Time to get to work 🤝

You can grab your copy here.

Hot take: I hate using AI for writing. But I LOVE using it for everything else.

How I use AI in my content process:

I use a tool called Stanley.

I have over 25 automations running in the background.

Here are my 10 favorites:

1. Morning Brief - every morning at 6:45am CT, Stanley texts me a personalized news/content briefing with outliers, easy wins, and opportunities for the day.

2. Auto-Retweet + Cleanup - every hour, scans my tweets. Anything crossing 200 likes gets retweeted automatically, then unretweeted after 24 hours so my profile stays clean.

3. Vault Repost - every day at 12pm CT, Stanley pulls a high-performing tweet (500+ likes, 90+ days old) and reposts it. Evergreen content on autopilot.

4. X → Threads + Substack Cross-Post - every 30 minutes, scans my new tweets and auto-publishes qualifying ones to Threads and Substack Notes.

5. Daily Top Tweet → Instagram Card - every day at 4pm CT, finds my best tweet of the day by likes, renders it as a dark-themed X Card, and texts it to me ready to post on Instagram.

6. Sentry (Daily Engagement Radar) - every evening at 8pm CT, surfaces who showed up for me today across replies, mentions, and DMs so I never miss a relationship-building moment.

7. Newsletter-to-Tweets Pipeline - every Sunday at 8pm CT, takes my latest Spark newsletter and extracts tweet drafts from it so my newsletter content gets a second life on X.

8. Weekly Content Report + Impact Report - every Monday at 9am CT, delivers a full performance breakdown of the past week (top posts, themes, engagement rate, recommendations) plus a pre-Stanley vs. post-Stanley comparison.

9. 297 Posts Scheduled Through March 2027 - Stanley manages a content calendar with ~300 posts queued across X, Threads, and Substack, auto-publishing on schedule.

10. Pinned Tweet Retweet Cycle - retweets my pinned tweet every 24 hours to keep it circulating, then auto-removes after the cycle window ends.

You can try Stanley out for free here (when you sign up with my link, my favorite automations will be automatically added to your account).

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