Winter Arc 2025: Mindful Strategy for Content Creation

After last year’s winter arc yielded tremendous success, it was obvious that I would close 2025 and enter 2026 in the same style. Of course, this journal entry should have happened almost a month ago, but there have been a few one-time distractions.

The winter arc begins in October and ends in March. I didn’t get the start I wanted, especially in terms of the volume of useful work done. A lot of the effort has gone in vain, and it’s never a positive feeling.

At the same time, there have been a few wins, which is encouraging for the remaining four and a half months of the 2025-26 winter arc.

In this meditative session, the target is to unpack what has happened so far and set better objectives based on the lessons learned.

A side-quest-filled October

Plenty of social and career-based incidents happened in the previous month, which led to a sizeable amount of unforeseeable mistakes, both operational and psychological. This sucked massively because October bought a week-long vacation that could’ve offered a huge boost.

Socially, the conversations around my marriage are gaining more traction. While it is happening in the background, I still have to give cognitive bandwidth to it. Additionally, there are plenty of tasks in this realm that are tech-driven, requiring my direct involvement.

Due to the deeply personal and emotional nature of the marriage conversations in Indian households, it is costly in terms of time and energy. Getting ready mentally to get married means you have to analyze your life to ensure you can accommodate the upcoming changes.

I also pledged to do more research about content marketing trends to help my career. This took multiple days out of the week-long vacation, which pissed me off.

Basically, I wanted to know what brands seek from their content marketing endeavors because of the widespread adoption of AI-powered search platforms. In the same breath, I needed to know what various marketing agencies are offering and whether they are hitting the mark.

It was a bit more complicated than checking out a few Reddit posts and watching some YouTube videos. I studied case studies of various agencies and read testimonials from different brands to uncover the strategy that produced those gains.

I discovered that my intuitions were right. All you have to do is produce a high volume of brand-centric content that champions your customers. While the validation felt great because it proved that I am going in the right direction, it also felt frustrating because I lost a few days.

Furthermore, I got sick for a few days during that vacation period due to the changing weather, which decreased my content output. Taking time to recover means you can’t do anything that stresses your system, leading to more inaction.

The positives from last month

While this year’s winter arc wasn’t off to a great start like last year’s, there were still some winning moments.

For starters, the execution was on point. It was the best it’s ever been. Yes, most of the things that happened were useless in terms of driving tangible results in my professional and personal journey, but I did them well.

I can take the lessons from those events to ensure operational excellence for the remainder of my life. It also gives me hope for the next few months that I can close this winter arc on a much stronger note than last year’s.

Two biggest highlights were my video creation skills and workout sessions.

For the last few weeks, I have been feeling much more comfortable in front of the camera, and it’s showing in my performance. My presentations flow much smoothly, allowing me to integrate my sense of humor in a natural way. Of course, more upgrades are coming, but this is a good place to be.

Looking back, it’s crazy how much I lacked patience in this regard last year. I was needlessly panicking that my creative skills weren’t good enough. All I needed was more practice.

Similarly, my workouts and meals were as perfect as they could be. The reps were solid, and I was in the zone for most, if not all, of them. This included maintaining a calm mentality during my 5k runs.

There were a few days on which I fancied a bit of junk food from outside, but these things happen. Those incidents happened when I had to work till late at night, and there was nothing at home.

The mentality gained through careful and methodical execution will allow me to put in more work in the upcoming weeks without thinking of their potential outcomes, reducing anxiety about the future, and building patience.

Of course, I will set better goals for the next few months and trust my instincts more on various things to save time.

Content creation goals for the next 4.5 months

First, let’s start with video. 

There are three grand prix weekends left in the 2025 F1 season, if you exclude Brazil, which will happen in a few hours of time. It will give me limited opportunities that must be capitalized on as much as possible.

I want to make grandiose promises, but I know from experience now that execution can face disruptions because of side-quests. So, I will refrain from binding myself to numerically definable output, such as the number of videos or live streams.

Instead, I will create as many as possible based on the ideas that pop into my head. There are plenty of drivers that are turning heads around the paddock, and too many incidents that aren’t being covered thoroughly by other creators.

It’s not that there will be a shortage of in-demand topics. However, they will be time-bound, requiring me to be on top of my game at all times.

Apart from F1 videos, my other YouTube channel will continue to get one upload per week to improve my monologue skills. I need to put in more quality in this regard. Simply showing up and incoherently ranting about things isn’t particularly helpful.

Second, this website and my Medium profile.

I have to ramp up my blogging efforts in the next few months. Due to various reasons, the frequency of publishing dope articles has decreased, which has limited my exposure to the outside world via Medium.

Now, I have to go full throttle to make up for that and do significantly more volume. This means every second has to be dedicated to content creation. It will be extremely challenging because of several life responsibilities, which demand a fortified mindset.

Conclusion: The emotionless robot mentality

I’ve observed that the less attention I pay to my emotions and feelings, the higher my output gets. This isn’t rocket science because whining and overthinking destroy your flow state and cost you valuable energy for nothing.

However, realizing it takes time and putting it into practice takes even longer. It is so because everyone is different. For some, emotions are their strength; for others like me, they are not.

Anyway, the operational excellence in October has helped me realize that focusing on the upcoming task while retaining my attention on my breathing during recovery periods works best.

Now, I have all the signs I need to realize that I am headed in the right direction in life. It is just that the projects I’ve undertaken will only work on a long-enough timescale, provided every day is properly executed.

Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s to get to this level of performance takes years, especially when you literally start at the bottom. And I don’t just mean it in terms of circumstances. As a person, I was a loser in every sense, requiring years of conscious effort to mitigate that.

Currently, it seems that everything is in place. I just need to glide from one task to another, and the results will follow in time.

Game is game.