Course change and the use of this blog.

So it has been a minute since I actively posted on this blog, and to be honest I didn't get around to it. And maybe more than that: I didn't see the direct value in it. But on the off change that someone ends up here: it has to be current.

The fact of the matter is that 2025 was a sling-shot year that accelerated the online business that I'm building. I tried a ton of things. I made pivots. And I figured out what I will be working on for the coming years.

I have a detailed plan worked out that I will carry out between now and the summer of 2030. Right now the limiting factor is time, so I'm very deliberate in what I will spend my time on. 

To quickly bring you up to speed: check the pages in the side-bar (or scroll all the way down if you're on mobile). If you just read "short-lists", and more precisely the "one pager of what I'm working on" and "honorable list of projects pursued with the intent of making money" then you will have a pretty good idea of the sort of guy I am. 

And if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, check "my current mega-projects". As for this blog: I will mostly use this to post "founder notes" that didn't make the cut for one of the Friday videos on the yt channel of Stacking Sleep.  

 I will try a new upload schedule, starting this week (Monday).

Unfortunately I can't yet see when my audience is online, so I'm just trying this based on what I could find out using gemini. 

Summary of Recommendations:

• JBT: Sunday (Late morning/early afternoon, e.g., 10 AM - 2 PM AST)
• EJW: Tuesday or Wednesday (Afternoon/early evening, e.g., 2 PM - 5 PM AST)
• PG: Friday (Evening, e.g., 5 PM - 8 PM AST)

Prim's Game Explained For Beginners!

So I'm trying to grow the YT of Prim's Game mostly through shorts, but I felt that I needed something more immersive. So that's this. It's a try-out, and it feels a bit forced, but it's also the best that I can currently do. In the coming weeks I plan to do a weekly video like this, each week taking one of the problems that Prim's Game solves, and literally showing where and how in the installments each of these problems is being solved.

First video of Prim's Game on the dedicated channel

So I have been working very hard on mapping out the fictional universe that ties all of my stories together. And little by little I am building out the entire infra-structure that I think is needed to "get it out there".

That's also why I started a dedicated yt-channel, which will be exclusively about Prim's Game. The only video right there at this moment is the introduction to both Prim's Game and The Entity. 

In case you're interested: I wrote the text, recorded the audio and used Recraft AI to generate all of the images.

 

Changing course slightly to "Making money online in an awesome way"

I really figured that the way I felt about moving forward with my "online ambitions" after 6 months would be how I would move forward from now on. And then I changed course still.

The fact of the matter was that "it didn't quite feel right", and that's why kept on evaluating a while longer. And this is also most of the reason why I made a video this week, to explore how I feel about things, and also to "put the idea out there". 

So, moving forward, my goal will still be to make recurring revenue by the end of the year. The "how" has slightly changed towards "making money online in an awesome way".

Rephrasing the goal of this year gives me just a bit more air, and it allows me to lean in on the two big things that I enjoy in my free time: woodwork & writing. 

So, yes, I'm going back to writing fiction, and in this video I will explore my feelings, reasoning as to why now is the right time to jump back in.

6 months in 1 full day on yt / online fly-wheel

Part of me can't believe that it has already been 6 months since I started dedicating 1 full day to yt. To start: I hit my target of 300 watch hours (current score is 374). But over the last few weeks I was in a bit of a slump because I felt that I wasn't moving in the right direction. So that's why I haven't been uploading for the past two weeks.

This is most of the reason why I also paused the 2nd channel (currently all videos on that channel are private). But I did restart what I hadn't planned on doing for the next few years: I started going back to making it as a fiction author. 

I'm leaning in slowly, and it seems that a lot of the landscape has changed over the last 3 years: AI makes it easy to create images and visuals, the site Royal Road is also popular beyond fantasy, Tiktok has become way more than just dance videos, Reddit is open to targeted advertising, and on top of that: in the week that I slowly went back to writing, I came across the slow start of an accelerator for authors that will have their first cohort in June (which I plan to be a part of). 

So a lot has happened, and leaning back into writing is giving me a lot of ideas and inspiration moving forward. And it's also how I prefer to operate; I prefer to have "two big things going on", and on and off lean a bit "to the left or right". Over the years I have come to realize that it always comes down to these two things: writing and woodwork.

My current plan is to continue "Jelmer Builds Things", while also slowly working towards making it as an author of fiction. My plan is still to get monetized on yt by the end of this year, and also to start making money from my author activities around that time. I have enough ideas, but until I have worked them out, and tried them out, I will keep most of these to myself. 

So next update will be 8 months in, with the goal of having 600 watch hours, and by that time I will also be starting to get the flywheel in motion to make it as an author of fiction. 

is this failure?

 This morning I tried to make one of the hardest things that you can make with basic power tools: a wood ball. I tried it before, and didn't succeed. This morning, well, it went worse so I put up my tools and was ready to accept defeat. 

But then after a good break I realized that I can't let it define my day: I will have to get back at it and still go above and beyond to make this happen. This is not foolhardiness, but it's to make a point to myself: this day is to produce one good piece of content. And the failure in one aspect can be the creation of a success in another (if that makes sense). 

The vid will be up next week Friday (hope you're interested!).

btw this is what the wood looked like after I gave up in the morning:

4 months in 1 full day on yt

So it has been a busy stretch between the 2 month mark and now (4 months in). It has been quite a journey to get it all started, but that's also what keeps things interesting. So over the Christmas break I had time to do some deep reflections, which I had initially recorded as a 2nd channel video ---- until I realized yesterday that it makes no sense in pursuing a 2nd channel right now-----there were literally 0 views, so I pretty much took down the 2nd channel for now (more on that later). 

These are my take-aways 4 months in

- my goal was 150 watch-hours by January 1st. I hit 250, so that feels good. Next goal will be 300 by March 1st. This will lead to monetization by the end of the year at the latest.

- a weekly video has to be the priority, so my focus will have to be on shorter videos that I can produce in less than one day. And I will have to lean into what works.

- I will have to create a stock-pile of videos in case the yt-day falls through (sickness, vacations, or anything in between).

- for audio the YouTube Audio Library will be my go-to. It's free, and of better quality than I anticipated. I used pexels.com until December, and there were too many "copyright-flags" after uploading. So better to avoid all that for now.

- I will discontinue the 2nd channel for now. Its goal was to answer the question "who is this guy", but it didn't get much views and started taking up too much time. It really clicked yesterday, when I was preparing a 2nd channel video about the book "50th law" when I came across this note: "the public is never wrong. when people don’t respond to what you do, they are telling you something loud and clear."

this video is what I had in mind.

In the fall of '23 I pulled the plug of figuring out a good niche for yt, because it was obvious where I would get both views and in a niche that I actually enjoyed (woodwork + building stuff). So between the fall of '23 and the summer of '24 I did two things

1) I filmed all the projects that I could, so I could have a good momentum for the launch in August of '24.

2) I spent way too much time on strategy and "planning all the way to the end".

But it was during that time that I figured that my moat would be "me + content with my kids". But what I hadn't counted on was how hard it actually is to create content with kids, because if they are not totally in it----then it's not gonna work. 

So that's what makes me "extra proud" of the video that I made public yesterday. It's exactly what I had in mind when I started getting serious, and it's also extremely hard to pull off consistently. So that's what makes this special. And, I genuinely enjoyed the time that I spent making this with my son.

Reflection in between.

The main channel has slowed down a bit for two reasons:

1) Life has caught up a bit, and I haven't been able to move as fast with my "online effort" as I would like. (kids were sick a couple days, including three yt-days). 

2) I had one video that just didn't take off, so I started analyzing that against a video that did extremely well. So I took it down, went heavy on the edit for the next one. But it took more time. 

So over Christmas I will reflect more on "everything", but my current take is that I will have to concentrate on projects for the main channel that I can complete within one day. It will make it easier to not fall behind when I will not be able to do any work on the yt-day.

I am proud though of this next video on the 2nd channel. When I uploaded it I felt like it was a bit "extreme", but now looking at it once it's actually online----it's solid. 

2 months 1 full day dedicated to yt

 The end of October marked two months of dedicating one full day to yt. I wanted to document my feeling, so that's what I did in this video. Most of the feeling is that I feel good in the moment right now, and I expect that I will look back on all this a year from now----and then I will be like "why didn't I do this earlier?".

Prep Doc

One of the things that I have to work on is my camera presence. What is hard for me right now is to "talk to get a complex idea across". When things are simple, no problemo, but where it gets interesting I realize that I simply don't have the practice. So that's why, as I'm evolving this format, I'm editing out a lot of stuff.

But what I want to work towards is to just hit record, and to have a clean enough copy that I can just upload without too much editing. So that's where this prep doc comes in. What I try to do with it is to prepare the emotion that I want to communicate, and also the big ideas. It's evolving as always, but it's where it's at right now. The video of this one will be public on Tuesday.  

 

Can I make a Wood Ball (1.0)

 I was watching a podcast a week ago, and there was this question: "How do you decide what to do next?". The answer was "I just create what's cool to me, and sometimes the world agrees." And this is so true, because to make something that resonates with people "your heart needs to be in it". If it's not something that you're at least a bit excited about, then it's simply not going to work. 

So that's my take with this video: I just wanted to see if I could pull this off (make a wood ball). I was excited about trying it out, and I will just see "if the world agrees with me". 

One thing that I may need to reconsider: I posted 3 shorts very closely around posting this main video, but now the analytics show that it's not being pushed out. 

shake-up

I have been playing around with the same format since the summer, so it's time for a shake-up. That's what a storm is about, so that is the perfect in between. I wish I taped some content of the storm itself, but unfortunately I didn't. But what I do have is some footage of me cutting up some branches after the fact.

Starting next week I will shake up the format: it will start with an intro in the same style as the videos since the summer, but then I then I will throw in a story that I threw together in the moment. I want to get better at this way of story-telling, because that's a skill that I want to develop (so the ability to figure out ideas, while telling an impromptu story and mixing in elements from my personal life).

No more cheap cabinet repairs!

A while ago I added a skeleton to a cheap cabinet, and some time later I had two cheap cabinets of which one door each fell off. I'm done with cheap cabinets, but sometimes you need a lot of stuff and there is no better choice. 

So I made this video fixing the doors. What I like about it is the fact that I tried something new (cutting a rim in a thin piece of wood). Also, it started to rain very softly throughout, which is a rarity where I live. 

First collaboration with my son.

In May I shot the first vid in which my oldest son Teake was taking part as well. It was big for me, because at the time I was aiming for something in the middle of "Outdoor Boys", "Quiet Nerd" and what I would in general call family content. 

Maybe I will come back to that later on, but moving forward it will mostly be me starring in the videos. I don't want to force my kids too much towards the things that I'm passionate about. But sometimes, the kids will be in there in the future as well.

3 days vacation + thoughts

This week I took my family on a three day vacation. It was the best, because we all had a good time + the 10 weeks between the summer and October are always the busiest of the year. We were basically eating, swimming, resting and hanging out at the playground. On the tv they were blasting a series about living in Alaska, and that for me was the perfect backdrop to "zero-think". I reflected a bit on everything; these are my take-aways as it comes to my "journey towards establishing online income":

1) instead of twitter, I will use my blog to post updates, thoughts and ideas. I started calling my blog "the nexus of Jelmer's world", so I should be treating it as such as well.

2) I want to work towards releasing weekly videos on both the main channel and the 2nd channel. It will be do-able if I manage my time wisely.

3) The 2nd channel will not just about my "ideas", but I will literally start showing certain aspects of my life. But, my family I will deliberately keep them out of it.

Repairing Handle of Wheelbarrow

I released this video last week Friday at 3pm local time. It's one of the things that I had to fix around the house anyway, so I figured this might be nice content to watch + educational if you ever find yourself in the situation where you will have to fix a wheelbarrow yourself. 

Currently I can manage to release 3 videos a month on the main channel, but I'm trying to figure out a strategy to release weekly videos. What I'm considering is to add small wood toys that are pretty easy to make (that would be the 4th video), as well as a monthly "look behind the scenes". I think this will be manageable with the time that I currently have, and I think it will also be good to boost the channel (based on past experiences when I was just "throwing stuff at it"). 

Note to self: I think this vid is okay, but it lacks some "jokes", "talks" and "quirky stuff". So this will be part of the 1% improvement, moving forward.

Enjoy the vid!

Never apologize for ambition.

One of the truly unexpected things about “wanting more out of life” is that it sometimes feels like you should apologize for ambition. It’s so weird because ambition is the stuff that we generally admire, but maybe deep down we feel that we should hide it from the world because it also instills fear and trembling in those around us.

The sort of fear that the other person will not remain as they are.

The sort of fear that the other person can’t be as easily controlled as before.

The sort of fear that the other person will become powerful.

The sort of fear that the other person will outgrow and leave everything behind.

And this is almost silly if you think about it, because this is one of the most primal ideas at its core: adapt or die. Because without ambition it’s just a matter of time before you will become irrelevant. And that’s why it in no way means that you should let it control you.

Because it's the reason why you should always pursue your ambitions.

And it’s all in line with the stuff that you should never ever do.

Never ever apologize for wanting more.

Never ever apologize for wanting to get bigger and better than you ever were before.

Never ever apologize for wanting a better life.

Never ever apologize for shooting for the moon.

And that’s why you should never ever deny your ambitions, and that’s why you should never abandon your missions.

You only have one life to live, and you better live it well.

Because Ultimately it’s totally irrelevant what other people think.

So if you are being kept back: leave.

If you ain’t getting what you need: leave.

If you are not getting the energy you need to get excited: leave.

If you are not part of a tribe that is on a similar mission as you: leave.

Because you should leave people behind who are not in line with what you’re after.

It’s as simple as that.

And you might think something like “yeah, but, well…” No!

Because ultimately the most important and most fulfilling thing always comes down to pursuing ambitions, to forge a path and to boldly live the life that’s uniquely yours.

Because the fact of the matter is that you will meet interesting people along the way.

Even though it may be lonely for a while, it will not always be that way.

There will always be people who vibe with similar things as you.

And some of them will stick around shortly, and others will be there for a longer time.

Life has always been like that, and you shouldn’t shy away from it but embrace it.

It’s adapt or die, and your ambitions are just an extension of that.

So you have to pursue your ambitions. You don’t just owe it to yourself, but you owe it also to the world, because ultimately, if your ambition is right, it will contribute to making the world a better place. And that means that you will do your small part to advance the human cause. Now ain’t that something?

Obsession beats talent

There is this notion out there that talent is the big deciding factor that will determine how far you will get in life. And it’s one of the great myths that we all sort of grew up with, until you start looking at the world around you and you realize that there are so many things that we take as facts, but which in reality function as restraints because they keep us back.

Sure, a bit of talent helps.

But it’s also over-rated, because it comes cheap.

It’s just there and you don’t need to work for it.

It’s the 1 percent, and all the rest is Hard Work and Working Hard.

And this really takes a while to wrap your head around, because it’s so easy to just believe that someone just “got the talent”, or even worse, to say that someone just “got lucky”. Both of these are just excuses that sort of explain away why it “would never happen to you”.

Well, that ends today.

Because luck is something that you can feed into. And this means that you can use this to your advantage to get leverage. Because “Being lucky” will be the latest addition to your war chest.

The secret is that “Being lucky” is a tool.

It’s a way of looking at yourself.

And it’s a way of approaching new situations.

Because if you see yourself as a lucky person then that will feed into the rest of your life. It may get you to think that things just go your way, but what actually happens is that it will get you to take more action, to look at things differently, to look for opportunities and to forge a path where none exists. Because seeing yourself as a lucky person is just a proxy for bias for action, it will make you pro-active and turn you into the go-getter that you always wanted to be.

And all of that ties into being totally obsessed to the point where it’s top of mind at all times. This is where you wake up in the morning, and your obsession is the first thing you think about. It’s where it’s the last thing you think about before going to bed, and every free moment when you’re not taking care of your business, your family, your house, your chores, your job: it’s your obsession that you relax with, your obsession is where you pour your energy into, your obsession is your way of realizing a better future for you and your family.

And people will not get it that you’re not up to speed on certain things. They might not get it that you don’t care about a big game, and don’t know all the ins and outs of the big players, they don’t get it that you don’t really care about the news, that there are so many things that other people just do for fun that you just don’t do. Because if you’re obsessed about something you limit your scope to just that thing. And this will be your secret weapon.

Because it truly is the only way to really make a move on anything. Because if you strike the right balance, where you’re obsessed, where you’re clear on your mission, where you can dedicate time and energy, while you still maintain a good relationship with your wife and kids, then you are well on your way to realize great things.

It’s then that hours don’t matter, and it’s then that you will achieve far more in a few months than what others will accomplish in a few years. It’s then that you will blast straight through talent and luck, and instead you lean into action, you will be getting things done and you will be getting what’s yours.

But you have to do one thing that will enable you to do all of this: you will have to be clear on your obsession. If you can’t put it in two or three words and literally see and feel the thing before you, then you don’t have a proper obsession yet. If it takes you more than a few sentences, then it means that you need to hone down, it means that you need to lean in, and to just cut out all the unnecessary stuff. And you will have to be relentless until you’re left with the bare minimum. And what you are left with is something to truly obsess over.

But you have to be cautious as well: when you roll like this for a while, there ain’t no turning back. You will not want to live without a proper obsession for the rest of your life. Because you will find out that it will give you the spark in your belly that you had when you were way younger, and everything was exciting because it was all still very new. Well, this will get your spark back, and it will get you to go further than anything else has ever done before. Now ain’t that something?