How (not) to fumble your biggest project yet
Real-world learnings on the way to becoming 2030's most watched podcast...
¡Buen día! ¿Cómo están mis amigos?
Last week, I described a hectic month; this morning, it’s fresh quesadillas and blueberry Amper energy drinks as I type from the taqueira attached to my hostel in Cancún. Bloody ‘ell.
Part of the rush in the last month or so has been ensuring my clients and you, dear reader, listener and buddy o’ mine, had a seamless continuation of service while I hopped over the pond and down a bit.
In the penultimate week, I ran the Sheffield 10K, helped my clients to a couple of PBs on the road and in the gym, filmed four podcast episodes and drafted three newsletter ideas, and then in the last week was really ill – summat about the candle that burns brightly eh?
How (not) to fluff your lines
Somewhere in this massive productivity/over-reach streak, I was tapped out on hardware space and so leant into cloud storage on my editing tools to ensure that I could record in the highest quality possible and have space for every episode.
Some files were kept on my old software, CapCut, and some were moved over to my new one, Filmora – if you’re interested in why the swap, DM me!
And in the handover, thinking I’d finally got a grasp of this multiple shows in a week thing, I alternately outright deleted and lost the two episodes that I’d partly gone to London for.
Now, I’d had a great weekend in London catching up with friends from four different groups and chapters in my life but I’d be lying if I said I could just chalk the recordings off or account for them in karma…two people I cherish as mates and respect as chefs had given me their time to contribute to my project and I’d just lost their conversations? What, like a dog chewed the homework?
Honestly, the thought of ringing Marina up while she’d just gone on holiday to say that her episode simply wouldn’t be airing was embarrassing. But, if you’re going to lose your homework anywhere, it might as well be in the university library, right? I whipped around the helpdesks who bounced me across campus until a sentence from an IT tech in a completely new building for me helped me think outside of the box.
The solution’s the least important bit
My now-uploaded episode with Marina, and my re-found and now-edited episode with Soph took an hour each to resolve but the learnings from them have saved me hours of stress since: I’ve got structure to my edits, logic to my filepaths and a cloud that automatically updates with exported and raw files. When I’m recording, I use my laptop and phone and during each chat will triplecheck everything’s running – Marina’s episode was so high fidelity that the phone cut out 2/3 through a typical recording session.
I still don’t quite have enough space – from a computer or brain standpoint – to do another four episode week again, and I definitely don’t have the capacity right now to edit and export in 4K. I can part fix that with a new phone when I’m back and can look to a new laptop (or team-member?) as the show grows.
But something I absolutely couldn’t countenance was letting Soph, Marina or you down – regardless of whether you subscribe to the podcast. By having multiple parties to report to, there was no way that “I just lost the recordings” was going to be what I settled for.
I knew I didn’t have the answer and so asked people who might. I came to the conclusion I needed without their direct input but wouldn’t be writing this newsletter were it not for their involvement and want to help. The primo IT-guy was clueless – I’d cooked it, he thought. His protege then asked me an obvious question, and from there she and I unlocked a non-obvious answer.
I don’t care if you hire a coach but…
If you’re struggling with a specific goal right now and it’s gone on longer than a month, you might not have the answer for it.
Look, I get it, you want to be responsible for feeling like you cracked the code and/or turned your life around. It’s noble. It might even be brave. But if it was you that got you where you are, and you that’s kept you there for longer than you’d care to admit, do you think you have the answers?
I understood the rules of rugby better when I watched a game I wasn’t playing or training in from start to finish; I’ve got a knack for remembering vocabulary in every language I attempt to learn but if I’ve not used it in conversation, you best believe I’ve lost it; freshly chopped watermelon and pineapple taste even better with a dusting of chilli flakes and a squirt of lime.
All of these things I might have learned with enough time and random chance, sure. But all of them came much quicker as a result of not relying on just me to come up with the answers or even questions I hadn’t thought to ask.
F&T podcast
The Fitness & Thinking podcast is just two episodes away from our second big milestone, and who better to clatter us towards it than former 2x world champion Thai boxer, Helene Garnett.
Available now on Apple podcasts as this newsletter goes out, and in a couple of hours on Spotify and YouTube, I think you’ll love Helene’s takes on what it means to be the best and then find what your best looks like again and again with age, experience and menopause.
In episode 21, I’ll run through some of the big learnings and moments we’ve had since episode 12 and I’d love to tackle some of your thoughts and questions too: send me a message on fitnessandthinking@gmail.com to join the chat!
On the road again
For the next six weeks I’ll be five to seven hours behind the majority of you reading this. And I’m both in it and can’t bloody wait for what comes next. Mexico’s been top of my list for years and I feel beyond lucky to have the opportunity to explore it.
Practically, I’m aiming to start and finish my days earlier, and, also, to actually enjoy the places I’m in. I want to stay accountable to the writing and the thinking and the fitness but I hope you’ll allow for posting variance as timezones change and some living gets done!
And if you’ve got your own health and wellbeing on your mind, and thinking that maybe now’s the time to get a fresh perspective on it, feel free to reply to this newsletter. December’s when I’ll launch the last spaces for this year and allow people to start 2026 at 2025’s prices. It all starts with a conversation…maybe one question or answer is all you need from a call with me and then you really don’t need a coach after all!
Much love and I’ll see yas in the next one
J x